For Chillz, Phoostal and the other Yankee Haters

[Admin]

Walks, change of luck will save Yanks

For Yankee haters, these are the good old days. Getting to watch Derek Jeter absorb a boo barrage at the big ball orchard in the Bronx well, it doesn't get any better than that, does it? When New York fans start eating their own like that, surely it's a sign that the Yankee apocalypse has come to visit the Earth, isn't it?

Not so fast.

The Yankees lineup is too good to stay down all season.

Three-fifths of the Yankee starting rotation has been pretty sub-par and the team batting average is the worst in the league. Because box scores still follow the practice of listing that arcane novelty called "batting average" next to the player game lines, looking at a Yankee box makes one wonder just how they've managed to win as many games as they have. Yesterday's box against the Red Sox is filled with lots of very defeated-looking numbers which lead one to believe the Yanks are in serious disrepair.

The worm, though, is bound to turn -- and not just because this is a group of talented players playing below their own personal pars. With this in mind, the Yankee haters among you might want to savor this day because things are about to turn much brighter. How do we know this? Two reasons.

The first is that, through it all, the Yankees are still walking up a storm. They have a lineup filled with men who know how to take a pass -- and it's a good thing, too, because little else has gone their way so far. They lead the league in walks drawn once again, much as they did in both 2002 and 2003. What is more, they've also been hit by the most pitches, giving them an extra dozen baserunners that they have so desperately needed.

Walks are more of a constant than is batting average. So, when the hits start coming again -- and they will (as I am about to discuss) -- the Yankees will still be drawing more than their share. If you take a look at a team like the Angels, you'll see the opposite model in effect. Right now, they're hitting around .270 as a team, 50-some points higher than the Yankees. They also have half as many walks. Therefore, if Anaheim were to go into a funk like the one currently being experienced by New York, they would be less suited to handle it.

Consider this, too: the Yankees are struggling to get hits without striking out all that much. Through Sunday's games, only Tampa Bay, Minnesota and Baltimore have struck out fewer times in the American League. That means that a more-than-average number of their outs are on balls put into play. Here are the three worst teams in the American League at turning balls put into play into hits:

Tampa Bay: .309

Toronto: .304

New York: .260

The best team is the Rangers at .377 and the league average is at .329.

We have to assume that if the Yankees maintain this low level of whiffing and this high level of walking, they are going to start scoring runs in bushel baskets full when the balls they put into play start moving toward that league average -- and this much I guarantee: they will start moving toward league average. Last year, that league average was .324 with the highest team at .345 and the lowest at .300. As you can see above, the current range between Texas at the top and New York at the bottom is 117 points. As the season goes on, this range will narrow so that even if the Yankees somehow remain the worst in the league in this category they are still going to end up much better than 26 percent.

What this all means is that balls put into play have a tendency to even out over time and that right now the ones the Yankees are putting out there are finding leather as their final destinations. It simply can't go on like this indefinitely -- unless you believe that cosmic forces are at work here, denying the Yankees a chance to operate within the law of averages. I can't make that great leap into the supernatural, I'm afraid.

[cyman3]

im not a YANKEES fan nor am i a YANKEES HATER.

now that ive said that... heres what i think

1)like u said... Yankees are too talented to keep struggling offensively. The hitting will come back, its just a matter of time. They're strugglin, but its no biggie.

2)pitching has to improve. Yankees fans out there (includin u DOLFAN) cant just rely on ur offense.

[phoostal]

Yes, I hate the Yankees. However, I still think they will win the division. I do enjoy watching them struggle though. The team is too talented to not win this division. Things will come together, unfortunately.

I have enough things to worry about being a Braves fan.

P

[chillzatl]

is pretty damned sour in NY.

Too many ego bats. I stand by it. It's affected Jeter and Sheffield looks like L.A Sheff, not ATL sheff.

Baseball is just like every other sport in that you can have too many stars. Things like batting order and "who bats cleanup" matter in the scheme of team dynamics and, many times, individual performance.

But I know they'll start to score runs. Probably lots of them. The question is will it really matter?

It's hard to make up 7-8 games on good teams. The yanks have two very good teams in their division this year.....