(Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
The Yankees last faced the Reds in a 2008 set at Yankee Stadium, and the last time they were at Cincinnati was in 2003. Quite a bit has changed for the Reds, who spent every season over the last 10 years as a below-.500 team (though for the most part, one that could often rake) until winning the NL Central last year for the first time since 1995, largely on the strength of the best offense in the National League (.339 wOBA). For their troubles they were swept out of the NLDS by the Phillies.
The Reds are once again boasting a mighty offensive attack this year — a .325 team wOBA (4th in the NL) and 14.1 fWAR (tops in the NL) — though once again their pitching staff leaves a bit to be desired, with a staff ERA of 4.15 (4th-worst in the NL) and FIP of 4.22 (worst). They are currently 2nd in the NL Central and right in the thick of both the division and Wild Card hunt, and figure to be so for the remainder of the season.
The Reds’ offensive attack is of course paced by the two-headed beast known as reigning NL MVP (.415 wOBA) and (.379 wOBA). Thankfully no one else in the lineup hits at quite the level of those two — though Ramon Hernandez is annoyingly wOBAing .372 for no apparent reason — but (.347), (.338) and (.317) are varying degrees of dangerous. Hopefully the Yankees can keep the Reds’ big guns in check and force some of the lesser bats to try to carry the day.
Tonight’s game has Reds ace (1.68 ERA/3.29 FIP/3.52 xFIP), whose miniscule ERA would be leading the league if he had enough innings to qualify, facing . Cueto’s K/9 is currently at a career-low, but he’s scorching the earth with a 55% GB% and his .234 BABIP has helped him strand over 80% of his runners. Add in a nice walk rate (2.5 BB/9) and small HR/9 (0.5), sprinkle in some luck, and you get a sub-2.00 ERA. At 10.1 runs above average, Cueto’s fastball (avg. spd. 93.2mph) would be the 4th-best in the NL. He has an above-average slider that he barely throws, and his other secondary offerings are below average.
For all the hand-wringing done regarding Nova, his inability to miss bats and general unevenness, I think we probably need to take a step back and acknowledge that he’s actually done a pretty decent job for a pitcher who is maybe a 5th starter-type at best. The numbers may not be ultra-pretty, but the Yankees are 8-6 in his starts, and I’d be interested to see how many teams are getting better than a 4.38 ERA/4.47 FIP/4.53 xFIP out of their 4th/5th starters.
In the Tuesday night game, (5.11/4.31/4.44) will face (3.38/4.64/6.57), who did enough in holding the Rangers to two runs over 5.1 innings last time out to earn himself another start. Wood’s an extreme fly-ball guy (32.5% GB%) who doesn’t punch too many people out (6.15 K/9). Wood has the second-least effective cutter in the league (-5.8 runs above average) and doesn’t throw particularly hard, with an average fastball of 90mph. He’ll occasionally mix in a change (16.3% of the time) and curve (5.7%), but neither are terribly effective. Wood’s probably not as bad as his ERA indicates, but he’s also not very good, either, as xFIP sees him as a 4.44 ERA pitcher going forward.
And in the Wednesday finale, (4.04/3.76/3.65) takes on what I presume to be Freddy Garcia (3.60/4.48/4.12), although as of this writing it hadn’t yet been announced on Yankees.com. Garcia has continued to outpitch his peripherals, and an 80.3% strand rate (5th-best in the AL) certainly helps matters. Leake has the best K rate (6.43) and BB/9 (2.27) of the three hurlers the Yankees are facing in this set, and the rest of his peripherals are pretty sound. His best pitch is his cutter (thrown 33% of the time), though it’s not overwhelmingly good, at 1.2 runs above average. In addition to his fastball (36%), he’ll mix in a change and a slider, both of which are right around average. Nothing about Leake’s stat profile seems all that outstanding, but nothing is all that poor, either. I’d expect a fairly solid performance out of the righty.
This should be a very interesting set, given that these are both strong offenses. In fact, the Yankees’ and Reds’ lineups might actually be more evenly matched than the numbers would indicate, given that the Yankees’ standard attack will be slightly diminished due the automatic out they have to cede every nine hitters when the pitcher comes to bat. Ah, the NL and its absurd insistence on forcing non-hitters to hit. If MLB , it’d be stellar if they also forced the National League to end its antiquated clinging to an arcane rule and finally adopt the designated hitter once and for all.
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Whoah whoah whoah, the problem isn’t that the NL still has pitchers bat, the problem is that interleague creates an awkward situation for AL teams who aren’t used to it. Blame interleague, not the NL. I won’t waste time and write a 2,000-word essay on why the DH shouldn’t exist, but suffice it to say that I can.
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Larry Koestler Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 8:24 am
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. There’s nothing you can say that will make me think pitchers hitting makes a modicum of sense. I don’t give a shit about the double-switch, or needing a super deep bench, or trying to figure out if you can squeeze one more inning out of your starter or whether you should pinch-hit for him. I truly don’t care.
I’m a born and raised American League baseball fan, and none of that shit matters to me. Good luck finding a Yankee fan who is pining for the team’s pitchers to be automatic outs every nine plate appearances. National League baseball may as well be Australian League Rules football for all I care — it’s a different game than AL baseball with silly, arcane rules.
That being said, I’d be happy to post your hypothetical 2,000-word missive on why you hate the DH as a guest post if you’re interested. I may despise having to watch pitchers hit, but I’m all for creating discussion.
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Well, I’m afraid my argument would be mostly sentimental and not necessarily entirely practical. I’m 18 years old and obviously a Yankee fan, my first memory as a human came after the institution of interleague play, I’ve watched ten times more American League ball than National League, and yet, call it blind nostalgia for an era I can obviously never experience, but I like support columns blocking my view, I like high socks with stirrups, and I like pitchers batting. It’s not just a desire to recreate something lost, or even to continue a tradition – the idea that you put nine players on a field but that only eight of them have to bat reeks of unnecessary meddling and, in my view, degrades the idea of a pitcher. One of the great things about baseball (there’s an idiotic opening to a sentence for you) is its perfect numbers – 9 players, 9 innings, 3 outs per inning, 3 strikes. (Yeah, I’m ignoring the annoying 4 balls thing.) This is a pretty abstract reason, but if you have only 8 fielders bat, why do you even have 9 men come up to bat to begin with and not 8? Why not lower the innings to 8 while you’re at it? Why should you be allowed to use a player in any other circumstance than what they’re labeled as – i.e., use a pitcher as a pinch hitter or use a position to player to pitch – if a player’s role has been so narrowly defined? The DH messes with some of the basic foundations of the game that makes it so beautifully designed. I’m a fan of the Yankees, of good and fair competition, of the game running smoothly, but, although I know not everyone feels this way, I’m a fan of the game and the idea of the game first and foremost. (I live in Ohio, so sometimes I think that I’m a Yankee fan only for its convenience, in order to maximize my exposure to winning, a nice ballpark, and future HoF players. Occasionally I wonder if I should sometimes root for another team over the Yankees if the other team’s win would make a better story.) This last argument isn’t really an argument – it doesn’t actually have much weight in a real debate – but if the DH had been born with baseball, Babe Ruth never would have become Ruthian.
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Gee Rube, that was quite a soliloquy — and certainly a heartfelt and soul-searching one — but hardly an argument for your point. Like you, we could probably all cobble together a quick 2,000-word essay on the DH here, and suffice it to say none of them would likely change a single mind on the matter.
One thing, though: If the DH had been born with baseball, Babe Ruth would still have been Ruthian. He just might’ve been so awhile longer.
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It certainly agree that it’s hard to change anyone’s mind on this one, and I’m fine with that. I just think it’s a shame that one day the highest level of ball without a DH will be the little league world series. But that’s just me.
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Too bad you’re so young and so adamant about this issue, Rube. You’re in for quite a bleak and disappointing future.
All of the non-independent minor leagues have adopted the designated hitter as well as the national governing bodies of both college and high school sports and most — but not yet quite all — amateur leagues, and it is universal now in international play too. It’s just a matter of time before Little League and MLB’s National League are forced to see the logic. The only question left is which league will “man” up first.
Guess once that happens you’ll just have to move to the U.K. and watch cricket, croquet or some other “sport” where the rules never change and the crowds number in the hundreds.
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Not to belabor the point, but one more thing: Did you see the Braves-Jays game last night where Tim Hudson pitched 8 scoreless innings and provided all the runs of the game? The mere fact that pitchers usually don’t hit makes it more exciting when they DO hit than when DHes churn out yet another homer. The biggest problem with baseball is not that there isn’t a DH in the NL. I have no problem with changing things up, reconfiguring the league, adding instant replay and whatnot. The DH, though, is just something that, although not criminal, seems unnecessary and unneeded. Alright, that’s it, I shut up now.
Actually one more thing: actually, by some estimates, cricket is the most popular sport in the world, but whatever.
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nyyankeefanforever Reply:
June 22nd, 2011 at 1:29 am
Rube, since you did indeed choose to belabor the point: I did indeed note Hudson’s performance and thought it most eloquently illustrated two of the most obvious (even to you) arguments for a DH in the NL: First, that NL teams have an unfair advantage playing AL teams who have to sit one of their most potent bats while sending to the plate a batter who in many cases hasn’t faced a live pitcher in years, and second; the glaring rarity of Hudson’s feat only emphasizes how the pitcher is far more often than not little more than a black hole sucking the action and flow from NL games. Not to mention the fact that it poses a ridiculous risk to pitchers (remember Chien-Ming Wang?).
You say you don’t want to “belabor the point,” then you do. You say you have “no problem with changing things up,” then persuasively argue to the contrary. You finish up with your unsourced citation that “cricket is the most popular sport in the world.” My oh my, but how shall I ever respond to such a steel-trap intellect? Hmm.. got it:
Left. Right. Left. Right. Sit down kid. Come back when you’re old enough to drink and we’ll talk about it over a beer.
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My god. I’m trying to have a nice, didactic discussion about the DH and you try to claim a superior “intellect” and make fun of my age? I didn’t realize this was a competition. Sometimes a debate isn’t just about proving your point.
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