Sunday morning
-Entering the 3rd day since his unfortunate accident, it’s still hard to get away from the Joba Chamberlain story. New details emerged yesterday on when Joba may be able to resume athletic activities, which gives us a rough sketch of when/if he’ll be able to return this season. The NY Times said the fact he’s being released so quickly indicates there’s no bone infection, which could have been career threatening. We also have this from the NY Post:
Doctors have said he will not be able to do any weight-bearing activity for anywhere from six weeks to three months, which also will impact his recovery from Tommy John surgery he had last year. The Yankees had hoped he could be in their bullpen by June.
Assuming the long end of the time of the time frame puts Joba’s 2012 season beginning in late June. If that’s the equivalent of his first day of Spring Training, he’ll need another two months to get into pitching shape. That puts him somewhere around a late-August early September date of return. Of course, that’s also the time when the minor league season ends and you start looking at September call ups. Unless Joba’s on the short end of his recovery schedule, its difficult to see him having any significant impact on the 2012 team. But just getting a look at him on a mound will be great for me to see after all he’s been through, and if he looks good he could be in the mix for the post season roster. Getting him back out on a big league mound will help the team decide whether or not to tender him a contract this offseason. All of this is very premature, however. There’s still some risk he won’t be able to pitch again this year, if ever.
-Rebounderz (the place where Joba got hurt) has showing what the place is all about. Judge for yourself how safe/dangerous you think it is.
-Dan Lependorf advances the cause of SABR metrics a bit further in his latest piece at THT. He improves upon the current measures we use (OPS+/ERA+) for comparing players across eras, taking into account the distribution of talent in the game each season. It’s a bit math-y, but well worth the read.
-Dave Cameron of Fangraphs looks at Michael Pineda’s velocity issues this spring. In a previous post he illustrated how Pineda often built up velocity within his starts, beginning games around 89 MPH and finishing in the mid-90s. In this piece, he uses Madison Bumgarner as a comp for someone who rediscovered his fastball after being demoted. Joe Pawlikowski of RAB thinks the velocity issue is largely a bogus media creation and argues against a demotion, reasoning that it could affect his confidence. I disagree with my friend Joe on both counts. It’s difficult to imagine anyone would be dismissive of reduced velocity in ST after what happened with Phil Hughes last year, or Chien Ming Wang in 2009. As far as affecting Pineda’s confidence, if being sent to AAA would ruin his career then I have to question whether or not he had the mettle to succeed in a place like NY for a team with the annual expectations the Yankees have. Young players aren’t china dolls, and dealing with adversity is a prerequisite for life in the big leagues. One of things that appeals to us about sports is that it is the ultimate meritocracy. Nothing is handed to you, it must be earned. Pineda can consider it a lesson learned for showing up in camp out of shape with diminished stuff. It’s easy to blame the team every time a young player fails, but there’s an old saying in baseball that “the good ones find their way back” from AAA. Ivan Nova did last year, as did Ian Kennedy after failing in early 2009. As Joe notes, demoting Pineda to start the season has the side benefit of adding a year of team control and delaying arbitration, which could come in handy. If the Yanks have any contingency plans for trading Freddy Garcia or Phil Hughes this year, having Pineda stashed in AAA puts them in the best position for both transactions.
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My guess is that they won’t send Pineda to the minors, because doing so makes Cashman look like a horse’s ass for trading Montero.
Most of the folks who are against sending him down were also against the Montero deal. Which I get, but think is irrelevant.
But from the team’s standpoint, that deal is ancient history. Now they have to do what makes the most sense going forward, Montero is no longer with the club and no longer a consideration.
Kieran Darcy @KieranDarcy
Joba Chamberlain will be released from hospital today. Non-weight bearing hard cast for 6 weeks, weight- bearing walking boot after that.
A bit more clarity.
I say best-case scenario is Joba is ready to start 2013, second-best is he is ready during 2013, and worst-case is his career is over.
What should be most important for Joba is for him to not rush a return, as there should be no rush. He is 3 1/2 years away from turning 30 – not a kid anymore – he isn’t one anymore now – but still young. If it takes him all this season and part or all of next to return, so be it. If he returned on his birthday in 2013, he’d be only 28. He’d be a little over 28.5 if he returned to start 2014. Time is on his side.
I would send him to AAA if he can’t touch 96 a number of times in his last spring start.
Cashman made the Montero deal for a young arm that throws hard.
If Pineda threw 90-91 all of last year, the Yankees would not have made the deal.
Plus, his velocity is not going up during his starts, like Cameron said. He is sitting at 87-91 from the first to the last inning. The 94s are coming once or twice.
We have seen this before with older pitchers where the velocity came back mid April after they got their strength back but we have also seen it with young arms where it was mostly bad news.
This sick obssesion with velocity is going a little too far, it’s gotten to the point where we’re paying more attention to how hard a guy throws and not what he does on the mound. You wouldn’t let him pitch in the majors unless he throws 96? What’s the cut off? Does he have to throw 96 just once, or does he have to throw 96 a certain number of times? You really didn’t watch his last start if you think he’s sitting 87-91. How do you know Cashman wouldn’t have made the trade if he put up the exact same numbers throwing 92-92? You think the only thing Cashman cared about was velocity? I get that velocity is important, and that you seem to be a Montero fan, but seriously many many pitchers have done well throwing 90-92 and topping out at 93-94.
As far as I’m concerned, no, I don’t see Cashman making the same trade for a guy without Pineda’s elite fastball.
Hell, I would’ve rather explored a lesser package for Gio Gonzalez than give up Montero for Pineda with 4 less MPH on his FB.
This makes no sense, the Gio Gonzalez package is considered a bigger package by about the entire baseball world. For the Yankees to match what the Nationals gave up for Gio we would have had to trade at least Banuelos, Betances, Romine, and Noesi. Which may not have been enough since Norris is miles ahead of Romine in terms of potential. Not to mention the fact that the Yankees got Campos back in the deal for Noesi, and Campos has similar upside as Pineda, with just as live a fastball as Pineda had last year.
Everyone in the baseball world believes the Gio package was an overpay. In fact I’ve seen tons of people say Washington will regret that trade, and I haven’t seen one scout or executive say they would rather do that deal over Pineda for Montero. Pineda still has more upside than Gio does even if he never goes over 94 again simply based on how much better his control is. Gio Gonzalez has led all of baseball in walks for two seasons, and he is in his late 20′s. Pineda walked under 3 batters per 9 last year and is only 23.
I don’t think velocity was the only thing Cash cared about, but without a plus FB, Cash doesn’t make the trade, it’s that simple. Who knows if Pineda would have put up the same numbers last year without the luxery of blowing people away.
I saw his last start and he is not topping out at 93-94 right now.
The YES Gun had him with 94 twice, I think. That’s it.
Keith Law had him between 95-98 last year in ST. So where is it?
Has he lost it because he is/was out of shape? We have seen it with young pitchers. They lose some miles on their FB and they are not the same pitcher.
I am not a big Montero fan, I liked him, but i don’t love him.
Well I’m glad you talked to Cashman personally and cleared that up, because for a minute I thought you were simply making something up and going off no actual facts at all. But if it’s that simple it’s that simple. The truth is you can’t say for a fact what Cashman would have done, because you aren’t Cash and you weren’t in the room when they discussed Pineda. Saying otherwise is silly.
“Topping out” quite literally means the highest velocity you can reach, and he had at least 5-8 pitches reaches 93 and 1-2 reach 94 in his last start. So yes he was sitting 90-92 and topped out at 93-94, there really is no debating that unless you believe the Yankees purposefully ticked up the radar gun to make it seem he was throwing harder.
Last spring isn’t comparable to this spring at all. Before last spring Pineda spent all winter in the DR playing winter ball, so not only was already in pitching shape last spring he had essentially already been through spring training and showed up in regular season form. This year he had no such luxury and therefore shouldn’t be expected to be that far along.
You keep saying “we’ve seen this in young pitchers” like there is some vast sample size of pitchers with Pineda’s exact problem. The truth is Pineda is as far from Hughes and Bumgarner as anyone could be and still be a pitcher, and we don’t actually know what’s wrong (if anything) with him. To suggest he can’t be effective with this velocity is absurd, he’s not being blown up in ST, and he’s striking out big league batters with the stuff he has. Control is more important than velocity anyway and Pineda has had plus control since A ball when he was a 6-5 pitcher who was throwing 90-93 before his growth spurt.
To say he can’t be in the big league rotation unless he throws 96 is absurd, since no one in our rotation (outside of Sabathia every once in a while) can actually throw 96. It’s much more important that he’s one of the 5 best options available, of which there is little doubt. I’m much more concerned about control than anything else and he has flashed good enough control to have earned his spot as the 4th or 5th starter breaking camp with Freddy in the pen. If he gets hammered in his first few starts of the regular season we can start to talk about a demotion.
I’m not Cashman, but if we go your way we don’t need to discuss anything here. Nobody is in the Yankees front office that is reading/writing TYA (I think).
There is no vast sample size of pitchers, but there are some examples. The Orioles had it last year with some of their young arms. We have seen it with Hughes and Joba.
I’m not saying Pineda is injured, I hope he is not, but I’m curious about the dropped velocity.
He is looking good so far with his control and the change looks good as well.
Maybe it is just the 10+ pounds he still needs to lose or something else. If he can’t reach back in late April and blow a fastball by someone when he needs to, there is a problem.
By the way: I’m completely with you about the Gio deal. I don’t like it and would not have made it. Way too much for a pitcher with more ??? than Pineda.
First of all I would like to apologize as my posts to you have come off some what dickish, it was not my intent, this whole issue just grates me. I fall in love with velocity all the time, in fact it was one of the things that made me go out of my way to watch Pineda last year, but I think the whole issue has gone way overblown. To me Pineda is clearly one of the 5 best starters we have, I’d love for him to be throwingh 99 but I don’t think it’s mandatory for him to be in the rotation.
As far as saying Cashman certainly wouldn’t have made the trade I just think is too far. If you think he wouldn’t have I can respect that but I don’t think any of us can say 100% he wouldn’t have. If Pineda was throwing say 91-93 and topping out at 94 with the peripherals he had I think the deal is still likely, especially since we got Campos back.
I do think at some point Pineda will get his top velocity back, unless he has some kind of shoulder injury. However I think a shoulder problem would be flushed out by now. I think the two most likely problems are either his being more out of shape than we were led to believe or possibly a Verducci effect problem with his innings jump last year. If it’s because of being out of shape he should get it back this year, if it’s the innings jump I wouldn’t expect top velocity until next year. However I think if he’s reaching back and throwing 93-94 that’s good enough to get major league hitters out this year with his control. Most guys can’t throw harder than that anyway and still blow it by guys.
I’m on record as saying I would have traded Banuelos straight up for Gio, since I think Gio is Manny’s likely upside, but that trade just stinks of overpay. They paid proven ace money for a guy who has peripherals of a number 3 starter with 2 upside.
Again sorry for coming off as a dick.
Oh, I didn’t have a problem with your prior post, only the Cashman comment bothered me a bit. Nobody knows, we are just speculating, that’s the thing.
You touched on two good points. First the Verducci Effect: It has been proven that a jump innings is a problem for a young pitcher. Mostly because they get hurt with the bigger workload. I hope that is not the case and I think Pinedas control would be off too if that was the case. I don’t think his dip in velocity is injury related.
For me it has more to do with his work ethic, or the lack thereof, in the offseason. Coming into camp with 20 pounds more fat is a problem and may as well be the simple answer.
Second: When his velocity dipped last year in the second half, his numbers were not as good as in the first half. That worries me a little. He gave up a lot more homers, so his periphels show that with less velocity he had some trouble.
I did’nt see a lot off his starts in the second half of last year, but the numbers show he had some trouble in July and August (I think I even read it here on TYA).
I can’t really shime in on the Gio and Manny Banuelos thing. For me Gonzalez is a number 3, too. I need to see Banuelos against Major Leaguers this year to get a feel of what he can become. If he gets back his control on his heater, I think he can become a number 2 on the Yankees staff.
The Verducci effect doesn’t have to do with injury neccesarily, it can just mean your arm is tired the following year and your velocity will be down because of it. The general idea is that bigger than normal work loads on young arms don’t catch up to them in the year in which they have the innings jump, the effects instead aren’t felt until the following year. Which could mean Pineda’s 100% healthy but he won’t have the arm strength he did last year until next season. Which would be bad for this year but not the longterm, which is really all that matters for a 23 year old starter.
I don’t doubt his overall work ethic, the kid has learned English in 3 or 4 years while learning to be a pitcher, and doesn’t use a translator even though he hasn’t fully mastered the language. To me that shows dedication and balls, two things he’ll need pitching in NY. But I think it’s normal for a young kid to dominate the majors at 22 and then not do everything he should that offseason. Usually a slight humbling gets a player like that right back into working harder than ever before. I’d be willing to put money on him being in great shape next spring. Let’s also not forget last spring he played Winter ball all offseason, so he was in mid-season shape coming into spring, which he may have not adjusted for not doing this year.
Actually his second half velocity drop has been vastly overstated and his overall average fastball during that time was still 94 MPH. Also his second half struggles have been vastly overstated as well since all his peripherals remained very much the same. In fact his K/9 got slightly better, his BB/9 got slightly better, and his FIP/xFIP was better as well. The only real difference in the first and second half was that he had a very low BABIP in the first half and an extremely high BABIP in the second. So he got luck in the first half and was really unlucky in the second half.
In fact the only game in which he had a real velocity dip last year was his final start of the year, a game in which he hadn’t pitched in like 8 days, and they had completely thrown off his schedule trying to limit his innings down the stretch. The second half dip in velocity/performance has been completely debunked both here and other places.
Gio has a very similar body type, very similar stuff, and very similar minor leaghe numbers. They are carbon copies in most ways except that Gio’s best offspeed pitch is a slider followed by a change, and Manny’s best offspeed pitch is a change followed by a curve. Other than that I see both as number 3 starters with 2 upside if they master control.