When faced with a tough decision that seemingly had no great answers, Joe Girardi has decided to go with AJ Burnett as the Game 4 starting pitcher, whether the Yankees win or lose tonight against Cliff Lee.

The most popular alternative was to have CC Sabahtia pitch on short rest, taking Game 1, 4, and 7, but that wouldn’t have eliminated the need to have Burnett start unless they also asked Hughes and Petitte to pitch on short rest as well, and there are some legitimate problems with that. Hughes has never pitched on three days rest, and Pettitte has a pretty long list of arm problems in his background. Getting potentially reduced performance by both, not even factoring in Sabathia’s two starts on short rest, makes that idea unappetizing.

There are other options, however, and I’m a little bit surprised that they didn’t give those much consideration before settling on Burnett as the Game 4 starter.

Option 1 – Bullpen Game

Perhaps they’ll have a short enough leash with Burnett that this will end up being the final result anyway, but the bullpen game is an underutilized idea in the playoffs. Despite being inferior in talent level, relievers outperform starting pitchers because it is simply easier to get outs when only being asked to pitch one or two innings.

You could piece together a complete game using Dustin Moseley, Boone Logan, Joba Chamberlain, David Robertson, Kerry Wood, and Mariano Rivera, splitting up the innings so that no one throws more than 30-40 pitches and you get as many platoon advantages as you can. If the early game relievers get bombed and the game gets out of hand, you can just use Sergio Mitre to soak up the end-game innings and save your setup guys for Game 5.

Yes, you’d end up working your bullpen pretty hard and wouldn’t be in the best of shape for Game 5, but you have Sabathia going the next day and can expect him to pitch at least six innings and hope for seven or eight.

Option 2 – Start Burnett in Game 3

This essentially boils down to match-ups and attempting to leverage the most winnable games. With Cliff Lee going tonight, the Yankees are going to be underdogs no matter who takes the hill. They could have chosen to start Burnett against Lee in Game 3, lowering their chances of winning a game where they are already likely to lose, and then using Pettitte in Game 4. Rather than having a disadvantage on the mound in both Game 3 and Game 4, they could have consolidated their problems in tonight’s game in order to increase their odds of winning tomorrow’s.

The problem with this strategy is that the Game 3 starter is then on track to start Game 7, and they clearly don’t want Burnett pitching twice in the ALCS. They’d have to bring Pettitte back on short rest for Game 7, which is still not a great option. But with three days off after the ALCS ends before the start of the World Series, they’d theoretically have all hands on deck for that final game. Sabathia could be available for a couple of innings, as it would be his normal throw day, and they could simply ask Pettitte to throw fewer pitchers to compensate for the reduced rest.

I’m not sure that either of these options are clearly better than keeping everyone on their normal workloads and starting Burnett tomorrow night, but there are arguments to be made for considering them. If Burnett blows up and the Yankees find themselves down 3-1 on Wednesday, expect that decision to be the one that get second guessed all winter.

In the comments of yesterday’s post about the rise of the cutter, several of you wondered what kind of increase we’ve seen in the pitch usage over the last few years. Here’s the data beginning in 2005, when Baseball Info Solutions began to track cutters as an individual pitch type.

2005: 2.2%
2006: 2.7%
2007: 2.9%
2008: 3.6%
2009: 4.6%
2010: 4.7%

As you can see, there’s been a distinct up-tick in usage of the pitch over the last five years, according to the data. But, as has been pointed out, we want to make sure that we’re not just calling the pitch something else now, but that it’s actually measuring a pitch that is being added to repertoires around the league. After all, pitch classification can be a challenge, especially among different varieties of fastballs that are pretty similar.

To test whether we’re actually seeing new pitches, let’s look at Cole Hamels, who added the cutter as a new pitch this year. Below are Pitch F/X graphs of his pitch types from April 23rd, 2009 and April 23rd, 2010.

As you can see, the 2010 plot includes a new cluster of pitches – those light blue dots with almost no horizontal movement are his cutters, a distinctly different pitch from anything he threw last year, and with different properties than his four seam fastball. The data supports the anecdotal evidence that there is growing adoption of a pitch that hadn’t been used as frequently in past years.

One thing I found interesting, however, was the group of pitchers that were adding the cutter to their repertoire. Twenty eight qualified starting pitchers used the cutter this year, according to the BIS data, ranging from Roy Halladay‘s 34.2 percent usage to Derek Lowe’s 4.5 percent usage. The average velocity of that group’s fastball was just 90.2 MPH. The average velocity of the starters who didn’t throw the cutter was 91.2 MPH. None of the top 12 pitchers in average fastball velocity have added a cutter, as they all just prefer to stick with the fastball that got them to the show in the first place.

The cutter is something of a pleasant revolution, as pitchers who are not blessed with great stuff are adding it to compensate for the fact that their fastball may not be something they want to throw all that often. For pitchers like Mark Buehrle and Shaun Marcum, the pitch represents a chance to throw a type of fastball that minimizes their lack of velocity, and they’ve taken advantage of the opportunity.

Tonight, you’ll see C.J. Wilson pounding the Yankees with cutters, while CC Sabathia will stick with the good old fashioned two-seam and four-seam fastballs. If Wilson could throw as hard as Sabathia, perhaps he wouldn’t have picked up the cutter to begin with. But the pitch has allowed him to even the playing field, and so with the hot new pitch of the day on his side, we should be in for a pretty good pitching match-up.

You are probably sick to death of the “Year Of The Pitcher” label by now, as it has been trotted out endlessly this year. The lowest scoring division series in history just reaffirmed that we’re going to keep hearing about it, though, and people will continue to speculate as to why the guys on the mound have seemingly grabbed the upper hand in their fight against offense. Looking at the ALCS match-ups, a thought came to me – perhaps the Year Of The Pitcher is due to the Year Of The Cutter.

You can’t watch a baseball game without seeing a guy who recently added a cut fastball to his repertoire. It is undoubtedly the hot pitch in baseball right now, and it will be in full display when the playoffs kick off tomorrow.

What team threw more cutters than any other in baseball this year? The Phillies, at 15.8 percent of their total pitches. In second place was the Tampa Bay Rays, who just lost out to the Texas Rangers – the team that threw the third most cutters in baseball.

Other playoff teams and their respective rank in cutter usage? The Yankees (6th), Reds (8th), Braves (20th), Giants (21st), and Twins (26th). The Giants are the only team among the remaining four that don’t have a starter who uses the pitch, but their caveman-like closer throws it 35 percent of the time.

In fact, nearly half of the starters taking the hill in each LCS will feature the cutter with regularity.

Roy Halladay – 34.2%
Cliff Lee – 19.8%
Andy Pettitte – 20.4%
C.J Wilson – 18.6%
Phil Hughes – 16.4%
Cole Hamels – 14.7%
Joe Blanton – 6.5%

And that’s just the starters. Brian Wilson, as we mentioned, will use it to close out games for San Francisco. Ryan Madson and Chad Durbin both throw the pitch a lot coming out of the Phillies bullpen. The Rangers don’t have any relievers who lean on the pitch, but the Yankees make up for that, giving high leverage innings to Kerry Wood and that Mariano Rivera character, who I’ve heard dabbles with the pitch from time to time.

This is a pretty impressive crop of names, all with one secondary pitch (for everyone but Rivera, anyway) in common. Given the success these guys are enjoying, its no wonder that the cut fastball has become the in vogue pitch of our times. Given that its a relatively new weapon that has risen heavily in usage over the last couple of years, I do wonder if we need to explore its role in the offensive downturn. It’s clearly a weapon that pitchers didn’t use extensively before, and with the best arms in baseball leaning heavily on it, it’s worth exploring whether this one pitch has had a significant impact on the shift in run prevention.

When the ALCS kicks off in Arlington on Friday night, Texas won’t have their best player on the field. Because he carried the Rangers past the Rays last night, Cliff Lee won’t start again until Game 3 of the ALCS. Because he’s not comfortable going on three days rest, he’ll only get two starts if the series goes the full seven games. The natural assumption is that this is a big problem for Texas, and gives the Yankees a huge advantage. In reality, it doesn’t matter all that much.

To advance to the World Series, the Rangers have to win four games. Lee will get no more than two starts, so the Rangers need to come out on top in at least two games started by somebody else to win the series. That would be true no matter whether Lee started Games 1+5, 2+6, or 3+7.

Psychologically, I get why 1+5 seems better. He starts two of the first five games, so you’re more likely to get that second start out of your best pitcher. But, it doesn’t change the calculus, really. They still need to win two of the five games he doesn’t start – pitching him earlier in the series just changes the dates of the games they need to win.

Let’s look at this in practical terms.

If the Rangers win three games in the series, then it’s obviously irrelevant – their best three pitchers each took the hill twice.

If the Rangers win two games in the series and lose out in Game 6 with Lee only taking the hill once, it will seem like they were significantly disadvantaged by only throwing him a single time, but the reality is that they wouldn’t have won the series no matter what. If we assume the Game 6 loss in this scenario, having Lee pitch an extra time would have only served to push back the date of the presumed loss to Game 7. Winning to earn Lee another start comes with the same requirement as winning Game 7 after Lee gets you there – a couple of wins from someone else in the rotation.

That is the requirement for the Rangers to win the ALCS, regardless of the order they pitch in. The task is the same, either way.

The other argument I’ve heard is that having Lee go in Game 1 and Game 5 would allow him to pitch in relief in Game 7. While that is true, he can still come out of the bullpen as the Game 3/Game 7 starter – he’d just do it in Game 1 on Friday night instead.

He pitched on Tuesday, and starts again on Monday. Friday is a natural throw day for him between starts, where he’d have had two days off to recover and another two days before his first ALCS start. In fact, it’s the exact same situation they would have faced when using him in relief in Game 7, where he’d be throwing with two days off after his prior start.

Whether its start in Games 1 and 5 and relieve in Game 7 or relieve in Game 1 and start Games 3 and 7, the overall effect is essentially the same. Having their rotation jumbled won’t present a significant disadvantage to winning the series. It just moves their must win games up by a few days.

We had fun during last week’s chat extravaganza, so we’ll be hanging out and watching tonight’s final game between Texas and Tampa Bay. The fun starts at 8 pm eastern.

The votes have been counted, and the results for the estimate of Carl Pavano’s contract this winter are in. First, the data:

Average length: 2.55
Average salary: $9.57 million

Median length: 3 years
Median salary: $9 million

Standard deviation, length: 0.72 years
Standard deviation, salary: $2.80 million

The length of the deal seems to be nearly a lock. Forty three percent of the voters picked two years, with 46 percent going for three years. People think that Pavano’s performance and durability the last two years will earn him a multi-year contract, but his prior injury problems will keep him from getting a long term commitment – seems logical. The split between the two year and three year crowd cries out for some kind of vesting third year option, I would think. Pavano seems to be the perfect kind of pitcher for a deal that guarantees him a third year based on a total number of innings pitched in the second year.

There was a wider range of selection on the per year salary, as expected. Ten million per year was actually the most popular choice, with 22 percent of the votes tallied. Eight million per year was just behind at 21 percent, however, with the median of $9 million coming in third at 17 percent. Even though the $8 to $10 million range was where the most votes went, 40 percent of voters picked something outside that range.

Personally, I think the median is just about right. Pavano is pretty comparable to Joel Pineiro in a lot of ways, as they have the same basic skillset of throwing strikes and getting groundballs. Pavano gets a boost for pitching in the AL while he gets dinged for his long list of injury problems. Pineiro was met with a lot of yawns when he became available last year, and ended up signing a 2 year, $16 million deal with the Angels that ended being one of the better signings of the winter.

Given that Pavano is likely to be a Type A free agent, I can’t see him getting significantly more than what Pineiro got a year ago. Something in that 2/18 range with a vesting option for a third year sounds like a logical landing place to me. If he sustains his performance from the last two years, that will be a bargain. There’s always risks with pitchers, though, and he’s a higher risk arm than most.

It will be interesting to see what the market for him plays out as. I think, in the end, the results from this will be pretty close to what he actually gets.

Because not everyone is interested in Giants-Braves or Rangers-Rays, we’ll mix in some other stuff during our playoff coverage this week as well. Today, we’ll attempt to estimate the contract that Carl Pavano will receive this winter. In order to give people some assurance that I’m not slanting the votes in any particular direction, I’ll save my commentary on Pavano for tomorrow’s recap of what you guys think he’ll end up with. For now, just the facts.

2010: 221 innings, 1.51 BB/9, 4.76 K/9, 51.2% GB%, 4.02 FIP, 4.01 xFIP, 3.75 ERA

2010 salary: $7 million – accepted arbitration last winter.

Compensation: Projected Type A free agent

Due to various commitments, I saw very little baseball this weekend, including missing both of the final two Reds-Phillies match-ups. That makes writing up reviews of them a bit challenging, as I’m relegated to box scores, highlights, and scrolling through my twitter feed for at-the-time reactions to what was happening. Based on those three things, this is what I can basically surmise:

The Reds sucked at defense. Cole Hamels was excellent.

And that’s basically the story of the weekend. On Friday night, the Reds committed four critical errors which led to most of the Phillies offense. Back to back fifth inning botches by Brandon Phillips and Scott Rolen set up a base hit by Chase Utley to score two runs, and then the epic double error by Jay Bruce and Phillips gave up the lead for good.

On Sunday, another error by Orlando Cabrera gave the Phillies their first run, and the only one they would need, as Hamels did his best Roy Halladay impression, shutting the Reds down and giving his team a first round sweep.

Clearly, the Reds were just outplayed. They didn’t hit, they didn’t field, and while they pitched well, they didn’t pitch quite well enough. They managed to hold the Phillies to a .212/.301/.273 line for the series, but didn’t spread the baserunners out, so the Phillies were able to get 13 runs in three games out of a .574 OPS.

You could make some arguments that Dusty Baker made a few poor decisions and the umpiring wasn’t exactly stellar, but those things didn’t affect the outcome of the series. This series was decided by two excellent pitching performances and one terrible defensive performance. Everything else is just superfluous.

So now, the Phillies advance for a match-up with either San Francisco or Atlanta, where they will be large favorites again. The Reds head home and prepare for 2011, and while the season didn’t end the way they would have hoped, they have to be happy with the results overall. They have a lot of talent to build around and a winter to address some of the problems on the roster. Given a few days to get over their performance in the division series, they’ll look back and be proud of what they accomplished this year. And they should be.

Tonight, the Reds try to do something they couldn’t do on Wednesday – get a base hit off a guy named Roy. This time they have to contend with Roy Oswalt, who is not quite as good as Roy Halladay, but is still no walk in the park. There’s nowhere to go but up from their Game One offensive performance, but even still, the Reds shouldn’t count on a scoring bonanza. In order to win this game, they likely need to hold the Phillies to three runs or less.

The man who begins the game with the pressure of stopping the Phillies? Bronson Arroyo, who besides having a “roy” in his last name is not really comparable to his counterpart. His 4.60 xFIP is a better representation of his abilities than his 3.88 ERA, and, well, that’s just not all that great. Especially concerning are his struggles against left-handers. Here are his career splits:

Vs RHB: 2.37 BB/9, 7.48 K/9, 0.87 HR/9 .278 BABIP, 3.64 FIP, 4.08 xFIP
Vs LHB: 2.87 BB/9, 4.56 K/9, 1.39 HR/9, .297 BABIP, 5.21 FIP, 4.95 xFIP

His line against lefties this year was right in line with his career numbers, so he hasn’t gotten any better at getting them out. And, of course, the Phillies line-up is going to be lefty heavy tonight. It’s not a good match-up for the Reds starter.

And so, just like with game one, I’d argue that the Reds best chances of winning tonight involve pulling Arroyo early. You’re tempting fate every time you ask him to get the Rollins-Victorino-Utley-Howard group out more than once. With Aroldis Chapman fresh and the day off tomorrow, I think the Reds should empty their bullpen tonight, regardless of what the score is early. Arroyo gets the first 11 batters and that’s it. If he gets 11 outs, great. If he only gets five or six, well, you live with it.

Once Utley comes to the plate a second time, I’d have Chapman on the mound. Yes, Utley is good against left-handed pitchers, but Chapman is not your average LHP, and the odds of him putting one over the wall are substantially higher against Arroyo. You’re going to want Chapman in against Howard and Ibanez anyway, so maximize the batters he faces by bringing him in to face Utley.

Even though he’s been used in shorter stints out of the bullpen, he’s clearly got the ability to go multiple innings, and I’d try to squeak nine outs out of him if I could. He’s probably the Reds best chance to put zeros on the board, and that’s what they need tonight.

If the Arroyo/Chapman combo gives the Reds five innings and keeps it close, they have a chance. They could then mix and match Homer Bailey, Bill Bray, Nick Masset, Arthur Rhodes, and Francisco Cordero to cover the final four innings, getting the platoon advantage in most situations and generally having pretty good relievers on the mound. But, those guys aren’t going to matter much if the Phillies are up by several runs before they even get to the bullpen.

Arroyo’s had a nice year for the Reds, but this isn’t a game where he should be asked to give you too much. If he can get through the line-up once, he’s done his job and should be congratulated. This isn’t a time to reward him for his regular season work, especially not with a bunch of guys who swing from the left side coming up.