Yankees on track for best ERA in years?

By On June 22, 2011 · 14 Comments · In Whimsy

Though offense is down league-wide and has been trending in that direction for the past two seasons, it doesn’t change the fact that, for all the concern about Yankee pitching heading into the 2011 campaign, the staff has actually acquitted itself quite well through the season’s first 71 games.

While ERA is mostly an afterthought these days due to the enormous wealth of pitching data we have at our disposal, it’s still worth noting that the Yankee pitching staff on the whole is currently carrying the 4th-lowest ERA in the American League at 3.55 — behind only the stingy pitching staffs of the A’s, Mariners and Angels. If they were to somehow keep this impressive pace up through the end of the season, the team would post its lowest full-season ERA since 1978, when they logged an absurdly low 3.18 (league average was 3.78). As it so happens, if the current AL average ERA of 3.88 were to hold, that too would be the lowest since 1978 (not counting 1981 as it was a strike-shortened season).

For fun, here’s a chart of Yankee team ERAs since 1978, compared to the AL average.

While it seems rather improbable that this year’s Yankee pitching staff will end the season on such a historic note, it is worth noting that the 2011 team really hasn’t been blown out all that frequently, which is partially why the team’s ERA sits where it does right now. The Yankees have only allowed 8 or more runs five times, and have never allowed more than 11 in a game. Their biggest margin of defeat is six, which has only happened twice — once against the Royals and once against Boston.

Even if the 2011 team can’t end the year at 3.55, if they’re able to finish below 4.00 it would only be the 11th time in the last 34 seasons (the staff’s xFIP is currently 3.87, so this could very well happen). The last time a Yankee pitching staff was below 4.00 on the season was 2002, when they put up a 3.89 ERA.

The worst Yankee staffs since 1978? The 2000 squad, which somehow put up a 4.76 mark (presumably this is one of the worst full-season ERAs by a World Series winner of all time, although the league ERA was an even-uglier 4.92) and — this likely comes as no surprise — the 2004 team, which had a 4.69 ERA.

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14 Responses to Yankees on track for best ERA in years?

  1. stunna4885 says:
    June 22, 2011 at 9:28 am

    larry id love to get your opinion on 2 guys i really like as potential trade targets for the yanks. hiroki kuroda and wandy rodriguez.

    Reply
  2. Professor Longnose says:
    June 22, 2011 at 9:31 am

    Interesting. Of course, there’s a good chance the staff will perform differently in the second half. We’re all still expecting Garcia and Colon to regresss (although maybe not olon as much as we did before), and if Hughes comes back, he’s a question mark, even aside from how long it will take to find a groove and how long the Yankees will stick with him before he finds it. Plus some of us are expecting a trade.

    And ERA is what you want to look at here. It’s only a mediocre predictor of what will happen in the future, but it nails how successful a team has been in the past, whether they deserved to or not.

    Reply
  3. Matt Imbrogno says:
    June 22, 2011 at 9:52 am

    The 2004 team ERA is what makes me get over that ALCS. That team, frankly, had very little business being in the ALCS.

    (Yes, I realize how little sense this makes, but let me have my coping mechanism!)

    Reply
  4. Captain Mick says:
    June 22, 2011 at 9:59 am

    But the 2000 team was above average! It looks to me based on this graph that the worst squad was actually the 1988/1989 team.

    Reply
  5. stunna4885 says:
    June 22, 2011 at 10:00 am

    i have a question for larry and matt. when was the last time the yankees had a great rotation 1 through 5? could u imagine if this team ever has a “great rotation to go along with the offense and pen.

    Reply
    • Larry Koestler says:
      June 22, 2011 at 10:15 am

      The 2002-2003 teams were probably the last time the Yankees had truly rock-solid pitchers 1-5, though “rock solid” is obviously pretty subjective.

      Everyone who pitched in the 2002 rotation was above league average:

      Mike Mussina 109 ERA+
      David Wells 118
      Roger Clemens 102
      Orlando Hernandez 122
      Andy Pettitte 135
      Ted Lilly 130/Jeff Weaver 110

      And the 2003 rotation was dynamite, save for Weaver, who if I recall correctly was swapped out for Contreras at some point during the season:

      Mike Mussina 130
      David Wells 106
      Roger Clemens 113
      Andy Pettitte 110
      Jeff Weaver 74/Jose Contreras 134

      Reply
      • stunna4885 says:
        June 22, 2011 at 10:21 am

        wow i would have completely overlooked that staff. it also makes you wonder what the heck cashman and company have been doiing with the rotation since then.

        Reply
  6. stunna4885 says:
    June 22, 2011 at 10:27 am

    our philosophy seems to be to batter teams with our lineup, lock down the game with our pen and basically get by with mediocre to slightly above average staffs. (offcourse weve had some terrible staffs too) and yet we win 90+ games every year and make the playoffs every year and are always 1 trade away from putting it all together. to me this year’s team is 1 quality starter away from being the team to beat.

    Reply
    • T.O. Chris says:
      June 23, 2011 at 4:37 am

      Were more than a “quality starter” away in my opinion. To be the “team to beat” wed need to trade for a top end starting pitcher, and then it would still be debateable. Trading for anyone who is nothing more than a 3 or 4 in the playoffs isn’t going to make a huge difference, not in the way adding a starter to bump AJ to number 3 would be. Unfortunately I don’t see an arm like that being available, however I do think we need to look hard at Liriano. He has plus potential, but he wouldn’t cost Montero, or Banuelos, and probably not Betances. If we add an arm like that we give ourselves a shot.

      Reply
  7. Yankees on track for best ERA in years? | New York Yankees blog … | Yankees News Source says:
    June 22, 2011 at 1:01 pm

    [...] more from the original source: Yankees on track for best ERA in years? | New York Yankees blog … AKPC_IDS += "22871,"; AKPC_IDS += [...]

    Reply
  8. Yankee starter ERAs through the years: A graphical look | River Avenue Blues says:
    December 2, 2011 at 11:31 am

    [...] June 22 of this past year I noted that the 2011 Yankee pitching staff appeared to be on its way to racking up one of the franchise’s lowest single-season ERAs in years, and in fact, the [...]

    Reply

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