Yankees pummel White Sox 18-7

31 Responses to Yankees pummel White Sox 18-7

1. Pete C. says:

   August 4, 2011 at 7:37 am

   Burnett to the pen? Good idea, but he makes too much, and the F.O. won’t let that kind of money go to waste.
   Huh?

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   • Pat says:

     August 4, 2011 at 8:26 am

     Who cares how much he makes- sit him or make him clean the uniforms! If he’s not performing what he’s paid to do give him something he CAN handle. Or get rid of him like any other employer would in this country.

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     • says:

       August 4, 2011 at 10:15 am

       Why would the Yankees eat the remainder of Burnett’s contract when he’s still able-bodied enough to pitch at the major league level?

       “[G]et rid of him like any other employer would in this country.”

       Burnett works in Major League Baseball. What AT&T or IBM or JPMorgan or Ray’s Famous Pizza would do with an underperforming employee is wholly irrelevant. In baseball, teams don’t just willingly “fire” a player that has an additional $38,500,000 guaranteed on his contract.

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   • Marek says:

     August 4, 2011 at 10:27 am

     Hard to imagine he’s healthy, pitching the way he has lately… perhaps the 15-day DL is just what he needs. (wink)

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2. Scout says:

   August 4, 2011 at 8:22 am

   “On a final note, if Nova pitches well, why not sit A.J.? Where is it written that you have to play a guy who doesn’t perform just because you pay him a lot of money? If Phil Hughes and Nova deliver and A.J. doesn’t why should he keep his job?” Mostly because, as Pete C. suggests, it would imply Cashman had blundered in signing Burnett to that ridiculous contract. And also because sitting a veteran would take too much guts for the manager to do it.

   I supported the Burnett signing as a necessary move forced upon Cashman by earlier organizational failures to develop front-line pitching. It paid off for one year, and now we’ll spend the remaining years of the contract counting the days until it ends. But that doesn’t mean Burnett’s place in the rotation must be guaranteed. I don’t believe it would reflect poorly on the GM if Burnett were banished to the bullpen. The fans would back the move, too, because they would like to see both Hughes and Nova given a chance to develop. Usually, injury or ineffectiveness creates an opening, the move would be a temporary one.

   Burnett’s defenders, including Girardi (does he REALLY believe himself?), point out that his overall numbers this year have been decent. This is a case, though, where the eye test or visceral impression should be given some weight. Burnett usually manages to pitch well enough to lose. He’ll give up early runs, putting the team in a hole, but not get blown out. I suspect (though I haven’t done the analysis) that if you look at his performance in the inning after the Yankees score, he gives back more runs than most pitchers do. To sum it up, he ranks highest among Yankee starters now in what I call Scout’s Suckiness Quotient or SSQ (tedious to watch + gives back leads + puts team in a hole + overpaid per actual value). This week he displaced Hughes at the top of the SSQ ranking. :-)

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   • says:

     August 4, 2011 at 10:03 am

     12 of Burnett’s 23 starts have resulted in run support of four runs or less. In nine of those 12 starts, the run support has been three runs or less.

     Before we talk about things like pitching well enough to lose — what does that even mean anyway? — we shouldn’t forget all those games where Burnett pitched well enough to win but the offense didn’t show up.

     It’s a team sport. Some nights, the offense will let the pitcher down. Some nights the pitcher will let the team down. Going into last night’s game, Burnett was pitching to a .227/.316/.415 batter “slash” rate with 7.8 K/9. Last night sucked because Burnett couldn’t get through the fifth inning with a 12-run lead. But I’m convinced that Burnett bashers are looking at 2010 when talking about last night’s lousy game.

     Let’s all stop aiming the shotgun at AJ Burnett. He’s been adequate: neither good nor atrocious. He’s overpaid but then so are most free agents. Burnett’s salary hasn’t constrained the Yankees in any way so who gives a shit anyway how much he’s paid?

     To be clear: I’m not arguing that being angry at Burnett isn’t a valid emotional response. I was irritated last night as well. But conflating 2010 with last night seems silly to me because Burnett has more than a few starts this year that he could rightly blame on a lack of team support.

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     • Scout says:

       August 4, 2011 at 10:22 am

       So, MJ, who do you think should go to the bullpen?

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       • says:

         August 4, 2011 at 10:28 am

         Why do I have to make a decision right now? Burnett’s been better than Hughes in 2011 and Nova hasn’t done enough to absolutely convince me that he’s better than Burnett either.

         Remember, Nova was called up because there was a doubleheader on Saturday night and the team had a need for an extra starter. If Nova hadn’t been called up then you wouldn’t even be asking me the question of who should be relegated to the bullpen anyway.

         The bottom line is that we’re reacting to a good start by Hughes and a bad one by Burnett on consecutive nights. It seems foolish to organize a rotation based on the most recent night’s boxscore. If Nova gets crushed tonight, do you automatically change the tenor of the discussion and say that Nova must be returned to the minor leagues or put in the bullpen?

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         • Duh, Innings says:

           August 4, 2011 at 3:55 pm

           MJ

           Burnett is a game under .500 for his Yankees career and would’ve been three games under .500 had it been any other night than one the Yanks scored 18 runs in. There are months where he’s never won a game for the Yankees, this one (August) is one of them.

           He has been ehhh to awful in his last ten or so starts. The only positive besides the win last night was it was the first time Burnett didn’t pitch at least 5 innings, if you want to turn a negative into a positive.

           He is not the #2, #3, or #4 this year. He is a #2 by salary only. He is an overpaid #5. If the ALDS began tomorrow, my Yankees rotation for it would be Sabathia/Colon/Garcia/Nova with Burnett available for mopup duty and Hughes available to make a last-minute emergency start (most likely for Colon if you consider him the most injury-prone of the Yankee starters like I do.)

           If Nova has another solid outing tonight, Hughes has another solid outingnext Tuesday, and Burnett has another stinker next Wednesday, I would give him just one more start – 8/15 at Kansas City – to get it together and if he can’t against that sorry team, he should be removed from the rotation and be in the bullpen until someone outside of Sabathia falters (my guess Nova or Hughes.) The Yanks can’t go with a six-man rotation long-term and they can’t afford to give away games.

           This isn’t a 100% endorsement of Nova and Hughes for one of them has to go if he doesn’t get the job done, but Burnett is more and more looking like he did last year and that’s not cutting it for the postseason. Game 4 of the ALDS is a critical game if you’re up or down 2-1 because if you lose it, your season is over or you have to go to a Game 5 and use Sabathia. You’d prefer to wrap it up in 4 so you have the option to go with Sabathia for Games 3 and 7 or Games 1, 4, and 7. Burnett or whoever starts Game 4 has to be good.

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3. dlogan says:

   August 4, 2011 at 8:37 am

   I agree. Put him in the pen for mop up duty (only when losing big though) until someone gets hurt or performs like he does.
   I still say Cashman signed him because it guaranteed the Yanks 5 or 6 less losses a year. Remember how he just dominated the Yanks in 2008?

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4. Mike Jaggers-Radolf says:

   August 4, 2011 at 9:15 am

   My point is simple. Why force either Nova or Hughes out of the rotation if they’re pitching well when A.J. is pitching badly? Is there such a thing as tenure in baseball?

   The entire point is winning. If a rotation of CC-Bartolo-Sweaty Freddy-Phil-Nova is the best way to win, run with it.

   One of those five will stumble at some point (not CC) and then maybe A.J. gets his job back, but if Burnett goes on one of his patented melt downs, why send Nova to Scranton?

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   • Professor Longnose says:

     August 4, 2011 at 9:38 am

     A.J. clearly is not performing as the number 2 pitcher in the rotation, but as far as taking him out of the rotation goes, the question is, “Is he likely to pitch better than either Hughes or Nova for the rest of the season?”

     What’s your answer?

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     • says:

       August 4, 2011 at 10:08 am

       People are too hung up with rotation slotting. Girardi demonstrated that he didn’t consider Burnett the team’s #2 starter last year in the playoffs so it’s more or less a silly point to obsess about Burnett’s #2 starter status when the team doesn’t even see it that way.

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       • Professor Longnose says:

         August 4, 2011 at 10:28 am

         That basically was the point I was making–that considering him a No. 2 misses the point, which is that his spot in the rotation is contigent on him being better than the other options for a No. 5, not whether he’s a legitimate No. 2.

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         • says:

           August 4, 2011 at 10:29 am

           Gotcha. I guess we’re saying the same thing then.

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     • Mike Jaggers-Radolf says:

       August 4, 2011 at 10:21 am

       I’m not suggesting for the rest of the season. I’m not sure anyone expects the roster decision to be made in the next week or so to last for the remainder of the season. But, if Nova and Hughes can be expected to pitch better over their next couple of starts, sit A.J.

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       • Professor Longnose says:

         August 4, 2011 at 10:26 am

         Of course. But the question I asked was, do you think Burnett will pitch better than either Hughes or Nova?

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         • says:

           August 4, 2011 at 10:36 am

           Despite the fact that I like Hughes and still believe in him (perhaps irrationally so), I believe Burnett will outpitch Hughes in 2011. Hughes’s start on Tuesday night was incredibly encouraging but what Hughes has lacked is consistency from start to start.

           It’s anyone’s guess if Burnett > Nova or Nova > Burnett for the rest of 2011. I could go either way on that one, I guess.

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           • Professor Longnose says:

             August 4, 2011 at 11:06 am

             I respect your opinion on the issue. So basically, if we don’t get much more data than we have now, you’d punt Hughes. I can’t strongly disagree. As you say, he’s been too erratic.

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             • says:

               August 4, 2011 at 11:43 am

               If I had to make a decision today, I’d leave Hughes in the bullpen because he hasn’t been effective enough to warrant a ranking higher than either Burnett or Nova.

               Having said that, because salary and seniority do play a role in these types of decisions, I’d imagine that the Yankees will promote Hughes over Nova. I’m not saying that would be the right (or fair) move; I just think that we’d be unrealistic if we thought otherwise.

               I want to reiterate, however, that I don’t think a decision can be made today. We’ve just seen the very best of Hughes and the very worst of Burnett. If the Yankees intend to go with a six-man rotation for a few more turns then perhaps we can make a decision at the end of a few cycles through the rotation. We obviously can’t pull the trigger on a decision based on one good or one bad start.
5. bornwithpinstripes says:

   August 4, 2011 at 9:45 am

   skip him a few starts, everyone talked about nova, hughes, colon ,garcia all year..if one of them had a bad start, boy , he is done, what do we do now..this guy for three years has tortured us..and he complained about coming out last night.. he should sit and watch for 2 or 3 starts.. those other guys have pitched with guts and fire..and not good , great..AJ should have the sense to see he is by far the worst pitcher on the yanks..we all see it..enough with how much he gets paid..so double punish the team ,pay him then play him..i rather just pay him right now.. try and trade him in the off season to the NL. i had enough of his entitlement …

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   • dlogan says:

     August 4, 2011 at 9:57 am

     Maybe it’s not Posada’s fault.

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6. Eric J says:

   August 4, 2011 at 10:14 am

   Everyone seems to have short term memories. Hughes was left for dead 3 days ago and now everyone feels his spot in the rotation is cemented. While aj hasn’t been great, he’s been significantly better than Hughes. Let’s let things play out a little longer before solidifying the 5 man rotation. Everyone is so reactionary day to day…

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   • says:

     August 4, 2011 at 10:15 am

     +1

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   • bornwithpinstripes says:

     August 4, 2011 at 11:14 am

     hughes has been hurt,and deserves a chance to get some innings. AJ has been torture even when he has a good game, i wait for the inning for him to fall apart, throw his arms one way and his body another..this guy has issues,we been hearing how great his stuff is for 3 years now, when the yanks got him ,i loved the move.. he killed the sox and us…he no longer kills the sox..but still kills us..and we pay him.. we got him to beat boston.. i would never have him face that team again..he needs to miss a few starts, just like a hitter in a slump..this guy had a history of injuries, boy did we lucky or unlucky he has not went down.. in the past we blamed posada, his wife, eiland not being around, his stuff is so good he can’t throw strikes..dog ate his home work..maybe posada got heat from him, i think now posada was in the right..a head case..he got cervelli, now martin..who next johnny bench..

     Reply
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   August 4, 2011 at 12:25 pm

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8. froszty8519 says:

   August 4, 2011 at 2:24 pm

   Now that is an awesome offense, I hope they will continue like that in the following games as well, cause they will sure need it for the games against the Red Sox !

   Reply
9. smurfy says:

   August 4, 2011 at 3:21 pm

   With Phil, nothing worked till he had pressure applied to him. He denied that, but maybe that was part of him internalizing that pressure to succeed. AJ needs something like that to stir him to engage what we all know he’s got. It should be communicated that he is not bad AJ and he’s being punished, but that this timeout should get you to think about it, and develop that winning determination.

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   • says:

     August 4, 2011 at 4:23 pm

     We can only assume that is what prompted Hughes’s good outing on Tuesday night but it’s just as likely that finally getting a feel for his secondary offerings is what led to the good start and that any “pressure” is just media/fan narrative.

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10. Duh, Innings says:

    August 4, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    Burnett is awful. One more bad start and he should be kicked out of the rotation and brought back until someone (most likely Nova or Hughes) falters.

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11. james dinsmore says:

    August 4, 2011 at 9:59 pm

    we lose division,a nd playoff round, if giradi stays with burnett, i may jump off a bridge if he stays in there, My heart cant take it any more.. dinz

    Reply