Just how bad was AJ in 2011?

By On November 6, 2011 · 25 Comments · In Player Analysis

2 more years of this?

In digging through the Fangraphs 2011 MLB pitching leader boards for another piece, one name kept popping up at or near the bottom of the page over and over again. That’s right, one Allan James Burnett. Brian Cashman can talk all he wants about the problem of having to replace his innings, but the fact of the matter is just about every other pitcher in the game who pitched a similar amount of frames did so with more quality. One thing you can say about AJ, he’s consistently among the league leaders. Just on the wrong side of the ledger.

Let’s start out with the positives, since it won’t take too long. He gave the Yanks 190.1 IP in 2011, He struck out 8.18 per 9 which puts him at 11th in the AL. That’s pretty much it for the plus side of the ledger.

Now to the negatives. He walked 3.92 batters per 9 innings pitched, which was 4th worst in baseball. He gave up 1.47 HRs for every 9 IP, only 2 other pitchers (Colby Lewis 1.57 and Bronson Arroyo 2.08) allowed more.  His 1.5 WAR was tied for 12th worst among starters, and if you know how WAR is calculated you’ll know its not easy to throw that many innings and provide so little value. His 4.77 FIP was 4th worst in the sport, behind Joe Saunders, Brad Penny and Bronson Arroyo. After becoming the first player in Yankee history to pitch 180+ innings and have an ERA over 5 in 2010, he reprised his historic futility in 2011. His 5.15 ERA was only bested by two other starters in the sport in Fausto Carmona (5.25) and Brad Penny (5.30). As usual, he led the league in Wild Pitches for the 2nd time in the past 3 seasons. Among active players in that category he’s just 10 behind Tim Wakefield, who throws a knuckleball and has played 6 more seasons than AJ has. At 25 WP last year, he should easily pass the oft-unused Timmy sometime next season.

For the past two years it’s been 2 pitching coaches, two off seasons of reworking his mechanics, two glittering Aprils followed by unwatchable pitching the rest of the year.  If you subtract the first month from each of the past two seasons, he has thrown 307 innings and allowed 140 walks and 193 earned runs. His W/L record falls to 14-25 and his ERA balloons to 5.66. Of course April counts, but that illustrates how he has given his team little chance to win for the vast majority of the past two seasons.  Don’t forget, he plays for a good team that’s among the league leaders in Runs Scored annually. It’s not easy to be that bad on such a good team. The Yanks won 97 games despite AJ taking the ball every 5th day, just imagine what they could have done with a league average pitcher in his place.

There’s no team in baseball that will take his production at $16.5 M per, unless they’re sending someone equally bad and expensive in return. The Yanks have a policy of not eating salary in trades, for fear of setting a precedent where teams will expect the deep-pocketed Yanks to do it all the time. If there was ever a time to make an exception, it’s now. If the Yanks are truly serious about fielding a championship caliber team in 2012, AJ Burnett can not be part of that rotation.

 
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25 Responses to Just how bad was AJ in 2011?

  1. Clintfsu813 says:
    November 6, 2011 at 10:24 am

    Preaching to the choir. Won’t happen tho. Can you think of any possible scenario?

    Reply
    • Steve S. says:
      November 6, 2011 at 10:49 am

      The most likely way the Yanks move him without picking up salary is by taking back someone who’s equally unproductive at the same rate, or someone who’s completely dead weight who earns around 10 mil per year for the next 2 years.

      Zito is worse and more expensive. Cash will never trade for someone like Zambrano. Aubey Huff would fit, but the Giants are probably looking for salary relief after increasing payroll last year and some big arb raises coming. Ted Lilly is a match, but you might as well just keep AJ.

      Someone who might work is Juan Uribe. He was awful for the Dodgers, makes 8 mil for the next 2 years. Make him your infield supersub and get AJ off the team. That works. He has some upside, he was a decent player for the Giants a few years ago and is only 32.

      Reply
  2. Professor Longnose says:
    November 6, 2011 at 10:48 am

    How much rope do you thing he has this coming season? And if he doesn’t sparkle in April, how much rope will he have in May?

    Reply
    • Steve S. says:
      November 6, 2011 at 10:53 am

      It’s not a matter of rope anymore, and I don’t think moving him to the bullpen will work either. When his mechanics are off, he’s batting practice. I don’t think you want to play roulette with him out of the pen. Plus he’s so fragile mentally, if you move him to the bullpen you could lose him completely and wind up with another Oliver Perez.

      Brian Cashman isn’t a fool, he knows that he is who he is. I’m sure he’d love to deal him, the trouble will be finding a trade partner.

      Reply
      • Professor Longnose says:
        November 6, 2011 at 12:44 pm

        I’m not sure what you mean. Cashman has stuck by him, and as far as anyone has said, he’ll start the season in the rotation. If he doesn’t, great. But no one on the Yankees has said that.

        Reply
        • Steve S. says:
          November 6, 2011 at 12:55 pm

          If you wanted to trade someone, would you be knocking them publicly? It’s just not in their interest to do so. As long as he’s on the team, they will support him, I’m simply saying they see the same things the rest of us do.

          Reply
  3. maria says:
    November 6, 2011 at 10:52 am

    i never and still don’t think robbie is that great a hitter and a worse fielder. if he didn’t have jeter to the right and textiera on the left he would be a lost soul, sorry and he seems to end the innings too often. he’s too young to appear so lackadaisical

    Reply
  4. S says:
    November 6, 2011 at 11:22 am

    2 more positives his xfip was a nice 3.88 and his gb rate was 49%

    but I found something interesting, in his 109 er he’s given up 48 of them are due to his 28 hr’s. This is especially strange given his gb tendencies. I think overall he did not pitch badly, but his weakness for the hr kills his numbers.

    Reply
    • Steve S. says:
      November 6, 2011 at 11:30 am

      He did pitch badly, he just has a tendency to allow runs in bunches. So his rate numbers don’t look bad overall, since most of the time he’s putting up zeroes and then allows 6 runs in an inning.

      Reply
      • T.O. Chris says:
        November 6, 2011 at 1:58 pm

        This. Burnett is bad because you don’t know what inning he will blow up. He may come out the gate bad, and give up 6 in the 1st or 2nd. Or he may go 4-5 scoreless, and then implode late, and lose you the game. That’s a hard situation to be in as a manager, and an offense.

        Reply
  5. Brad Vietrogoski says:
    November 6, 2011 at 11:54 am

    The real scary thought is thinking of how much uglier his outings and numbers are going to look moving forward. His stuff is trending the wrong way and he’s already shown to not have the ability to pitch when his stuff is off. That isn’t something he’s just going to learn next year at his age.

    I shudder to think what that ERA/FIP split is going to look like in 2012.

    Reply
  6. UYF1950 says:
    November 6, 2011 at 12:49 pm

    Can I jump ahead to say the end of the 2012 season concerning Burnett. AJ will still have 1 year left on his contract (2013 season) then. What are the chances that Cashman can find someone to move him to then? Much like the Braves did just a few weeks ago with Derek Lowe. Probably a NL team he might have more luck over there. It’s kind of like this way as Yankees fan we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with AJ.

    Reply
    • Brad Vietrogoski says:
      November 6, 2011 at 1:08 pm

      I would say that scenario is far more likely than Cash being able to move A.J. this offseason. And I think by the time 2012 wraps up, most of us would be willing to dump A.J. for the bag of balls that Atlanta got for Lowe.

      Reply
  7. michael says:
    November 6, 2011 at 10:06 pm

    Sorry, have to nitpick: ‘can not’ is different from what you mean. It actually means … are able to not-do something. Based on the article I think you mean … they are unable to do this while trying to build a roster that will win the most games… so ‘cannot’.

    Reply
  8. michael says:
    November 6, 2011 at 10:08 pm

    Can he be DFA’d ? If he won’t pitch at somewhat above replacement level and he a trade won’t happen, he probably shouldn’t be kept on the active roster.

    Reply
  9. Kyle says:
    November 7, 2011 at 7:51 am

    If the Yankees would eat tons of his salary, I’m sure a National League team would take him(Padres, Nationals, anywhere that’s a pitchers’ park.) Or just cut him. He’s like Lackey with awesome stuff but may be more of a headcase.

    Reply
  10. Dale Sams says:
    November 7, 2011 at 8:48 am

    What selective end-point stats are we using that “John Lackey” never appears in this article? Trade Burnett for Lackey or Wake and Sox make the playoffs by at least 3 games. I’d do that trade in a heartbeat.

    ps: I know ‘my pitcher is shittier than your pitcher’ really has nothing to do with the article, I’m jus sayin…

    Reply
  11. Steve says:
    November 7, 2011 at 9:19 am

    If the Yanks are truly serious about fielding a championship caliber team in 2012, AJ Burnett can not be part of that rotation.

    This is kindof a ridiculous line. The Yankees can easily get into the postseason even with “bad AJ” in the rotation, as they have managed to do it 2 years in a row.

    Now, if this said “playoff rotation”, you’d have an argument. AJ can be the Yankees 5th starter, they just better build up enough quality in front of him so that he’s not starting in the playoffs.

    He’d be the most expensive 5th starter in the league, but that money is gone regardless. None of this is to mean that AJ is good, but to say that Yankees can’t win a WS while employing AJ Burnett just isn’t true.

    Reply
    • Steve S. says:
      November 7, 2011 at 10:09 am

      You’re right, that last line is an overstatement. I was just trying to wrap the article up and wasn’t as careful as I should have been.

      Reply

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