Yanks Aren’t Only Ones With a Damaged Staff

Mired in the four-team pack that trails the Red Sox in the AL East, the Yankees have been able to blame a goodly amount of their early-season failures on their rotation woes. Between injuries and ineffectiveness, Joe Torre has had to pencil in 11 different starting pitchers, with Roger Clemens likely to become the twelfth sometime soon.Now, admittedly using 11 different starters through your first 57 games isn’t something you plan on, but are the Yankees’ rotation woes really that remarkable? Perhaps somewhat, but in the context of this season, not especially, not even within the AL East. On average, American League teams have had to use eight starters apiece barely more than two months into the season, and no team in the American League has been able to use the same starting five all season. Even the Red Sox have had a minor hiccup, having to replace Josh Beckett briefly when a blister problem forced him to the DL.Although the Yankees have had only one rotation starter — Andy Pettitte — to regularly take his turn, they’re not the only team in the division that can make that (dubious) claim. The Blue Jays have been similarly ill fated, with only A.J. Burnett consistently making his assigned starts since Opening Day. When measured using Support-Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Above Replacement (SNLVAR), a metric that illustrates how well starting pitchers have performed against their opponents without factoring in their own run support, the banker’s dozen of Yankees starters don’t as a unit rate anywhere close to the bottom of the league. Instead the team rates a relatively pedestrian 18th in the majors, barely a sliver behind those same luckless Blue Jays.In short, each of the other teams in the division has suffered its share of upsets in the rotation, and has had to respond accordingly. Again, using SNLVAR, the best rotation in the division belongs to the Orioles, and they’ve had to cope with losing three starting pitchers since Spring Training began — Kris Benson, Jaret Wright, and top prospect Adam Loewen. Benson will miss the season, Loewen might miss it as well, and Wright’s fragility is something Yankee fans are only too aware of. Although New Yorkers might snigger and suggest, “You get what you paid for,” with regard to former New York blights like Wright or Benson, the Orioles also summoned up Mets castoff Steve Trachsel from the scrapheap. Trachsel has delivered six quality starts in 12, not bad for a guy who didn’t have a contract when camps opened. When they lost first Wright and then Loewen, the O’s plugged in a pair of waiver claims, Brian Burres (snagged from the Giants in January of ’06) and Jeremy Guthrie (swiped from the Tribe this past winter). There is no more straightforward definition of free talent: When two of their big-money pickups and a top prospect scragged, the Orioles didn’t just roll over, they adapted to the situation and have gotten value from pitchers anyone could have picked up.The Jays’ situation might be superficially similar to the Yankees, since four rotation slots have been in flux for much of the season. The Blue Jays have lost their staff ace, Roy Halladay, for a stretch, and their third starter, Gustavo Chacin, for a couple of months. The team just discarded its fourth, veteran Tomo Ohka, and the original fifth starter, Josh Towers, went up in flames once again — a reminder that spring performance can often prove illusory. Now, by relying on homegrown talents Dustin McGowan and Shaun Marcum, the Jays have stabilized their staff without surrendering much in terms of talent or treasure.That’s more like the scenario the Devil Rays are working through. Sitting atop a mother lode of young talent, Tampa Bay has enjoyed the freedom of action to cut bait on former Met Jae Weong Seo and dispatch for Red Sox prospect Casey Fossum to the pen so they could make room for gifted lefty J.P. Howell and strike-throwing machine Andy Sonnanstine. If either of the new pair fails, and/or Edwin Jackson doesn’t improve his 7.77 ERA, the Rays have more talent on the way with which to replace them. Although the club’s 6.02 Fair Runs Allowed and some of the ERAs reflect how the staff has kept manager Joe Maddon at sixes and sevens, for the Rays, instability isn’t a setback. It represents an opportunity to find talent that will help the franchise finish higher than fifth for only the second time in its existence.The true unfortunates have it a lot worse than the Yankees do, regardless of much turnover (much of it self-inflicted) the Pinstripers have had to deal with. Consider the plight of the Texas Rangers, easily the worst rotation in baseball. They’ve had to use “only” nine starters this season, and of those, two have made only one appearance apiece, so we’re really talking about a group of seven. Staff ace Kevin Millwood has had to go to the DL twice for the same hamstring injury, and has been awful when he’s been available, making only two quality starts in nine. The Rangers rotation is barely delivering five innings per start, and by allowing 7.5 runs per nine, they’ve had an unfortunate knack for taking a club that was expected to contend out of ballgames early.The world champion Cardinals are also among the truly unfortunate, and not just because they lost Chris Carpenter early to bone chips in his elbow. Top prospect Anthony Reyes earned a demotion by going, and the team’s decision to bring in Kip Wells as its top free agent add-on has generated only bitter rewards — he’s gone 2–10 with an ERA in the sixes. Not even the Yankees’ flurry of injuries should elicit much sympathy. The Nationals manager, Manny Acta, is almost completely on his second rotation since Opening Day, having lost every starter except rookie Matt Chico in the early going. With five starting pitchers on the Disabled List, it’s a testament to how well Acta and general manager Jim Bowden have done damage control that the Nats aren’t anywhere close to being as bad as the Rangers. Last year’s surprise rotation of wunderkinds down in Florida has generated big disappointments as well, with top rookies from last year like Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Anibal Sanchez (owner of last year’s nohitter against the Diamondbacks) are all on the shelf.In short, everyone’s got it bad. What separates the hopeless from the hopeful has been how well they adapt. No team should be able to say it’s surprised by injuries to its rotation, and no team should be caught flat-footed when one starter or another is ineffective. It’s a hallmark of good management how well they adapt, and though the Yankees have had their share of misfortune, the team has adapted relatively well. Given time, they may have to starting a new excuse for why they’re still among the four also-rans instead of getting back to running with the Red Sox atop the standings.Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseballprospectus.com.

Yanks Aren’t Only Ones With a Damaged Staff

Yanks Aren’t Only Ones With a Damaged Staff

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