Clint Frazier has made significant contributions to a banged-up Yankees team that sits atop the AL East with a hefty 38-20 record, but his performance in Sunday night’s game against the Red Sox in the Bronx was the stuff of which nightmares are made. You know, the kind in which you not only can’t stop doing that thing you’re not supposed to do, but you’re doing it in directly in front of 40,000 people emotionally invested in your success or failure, not to mention the millions more watching on television all around the world. The 24-year-old right fielder misplayed three balls in the late innings that helped to blow open a close game, the latest manifestations of his ongoing defensive woes.

Frazier’s misadventures began in the seventh, with the score 3-2 in favor of the Red Sox following a battle between former Cy Young-winning southpaws David Price and CC Sabathia. With reliever Luis Cessa on the mound, one out, and Michael Chavis on first base following a forceout, Frazier failed to keep Eduardo Nunez’s single in front of him. The ball rolled all the way to the wall, resulting in a two-base error that scored Chavis:

Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Web Application Developer – Baseball Operations

Postion Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for an experienced web developer in their Baseball Operations department. Candidate should have 3+ years of experience developing data-driven web applications using REST services and JavaScript MV frameworks like Angular, Vue.js, or React. Candidates should possess not only the technical skill, but the design sensibilities needed to create a compelling and efficient user experience.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Assist in the design and implementation of web-based tools and applications for senior baseball operations personnel.
• Migrate and adapt existing web applications for mobile devices and various hardware platforms.
• Interface with all departments within Baseball Operations (scouting, player development, coaching, analytics) to build tools and reporting capabilities to meet their needs.
• Work with major and minor league pitch, hit and player tracking datasets, college and other amateur data, international baseball data, and many other baseball data sources.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree (B.S.) in Computer Science or related field
• MUST have 3+ years of experience with data-driven web application development using:
• REST services, preferably built on ASP.NET WebAPI
• ORM frameworks (nHibernate/Entity Framework/etc)
• JavaScript MV frameworks (Angular/Vue.js/React/etc)
• Front-End CSS frameworks (Bootstrap/Material/Foundation/etc)
• Proficient in SQL databases and various database design principles (Microsoft SQL Server a plus)
• Familiarity with Microsoft Visual Studio and source code management tools (Git, TFS/VSS)
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance.
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas a plus.

Please note, full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

Job Questions:

• Describe your experience developing REST APIs and how you’ve used them in development of data-driven web applications.
• Describe your familiarity with JavaScript MV frameworks (Angular/Vue.js/React/etc) and how you have used them in your work.
• Have you ever worked with any baseball datasets? And if so, which ones and how have you used them?
• List any active websites or mobile applications you have developed (and the technologies they use) that might showcase your work.

To Apply:
To apply, please submit an application through this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Yankees.

When the 2019 major league baseball season opened, observers generally agreed with the projections that forecast the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching staff has likely to suffer like no other rotation in the American League East. Then again, not even the most pessimistic models could have predicted what the New York Yankees — and more specifically, Gleyber Torres — had in store for the Orioles in the teams’ first 12 games against each other.

First, let’s do a general body count after the latest six-game sweep the Orioles endured at the Yankees’ hands:

• New York launched 36 home runs in 12 games. That’s already the third-most home runs the Yankees have generated against the Orioles in a single season. They are 10 home runs short of their 2017 record with seven games to go.
• The Yankees’ tOPS+ against the Orioles this year is 127. Basically as a group when facing Baltimore, they own an OPS similar to Kris Bryant’s in 2019 (.967).
• The xwOBA of Yankees hitters against Baltimore is .393. This is like if the Yankees lineup were instantly turned into a 2019 version of Franmil Reyes, Mitch Moreland, or Justin Turner.

But the destruction would have never reached these levels if not for Torres. The sophomore infielder has launched 10 of his 12 homers this year against the Orioles, joining Joe DiMaggio, Aaron Judge, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig as the only players with double-digit home runs in a season against the O’s.

His triple-slash versus Baltimore this year is a ludicrous .465/.531/1.233 in 50 plate appearances and his tOPS+ sits at 275 in 2019 when he faces Baltimore.

In other words, Torres has really gone out of his way in order to bash Orioles pitchers. Just for context, if Torres didn’t play again this year against Baltimore, he would own the best tOPS+ of any Yankee hitter in history with at least 50 PAs against any ballclub in a single season:

We really don’t know what happened in 1936 between DiMaggio and the St. Louis Browns (his tOPS+ was a bit lower than Torres’ but he had 108 PAs), but fortunately these days we can dive into Torres’ carnage and play the good old “blame game” but with advance stats.

Did Orioles pitchers really deserve this struggle, or is it just the case of a batter who seems to be ascending into the elite?

To answer this, we’re not going to analyze the 20 hits the infielder has connected versus the Orioles this year. Instead, we’ll just focus on the 10 home runs, and check velocity, type, and location of the pitches Torres took yard while we compare it to the results of similar pitches in the Statcast era.

1) Alex Cobb split fastball down and in.

Pitch location:

This was the first homer of the season for Torres, and it was no-doubter. It had a 105 mph exit velocity and a projected distance of 400 feet. The pitch was an 87.3 mph split fastball. down and in to the inner part of the zone for a right-handed batter.

Verdict:
The location of this pitch is right in Torres’ wheelhouse, so it’s safe to say this was a mistake. Additionally, splitters in that zone have not borne good results for Cobb historically. Since 2016, that pitch in that specific zone has a .629 xwOBA allowed versus right-handed hitters. When he locates it somewhere else, that numbers goes down to .326.

2) Mike Wright fastball up in the zone.

Pitch location:

This was a fastball at 94.6 mph that left the bat with a 101.9 mph exit velocity and was projected for 390 feet.

If you look at Torres’ past home runs, you will see that this is the first (and only) home run he has gotten with a fastball in that specific zone. He has 18 swing-and-misses, four swinging strikeouts, and three hits against those types of pitches. If you add the velocity, this was his first hit versus an upper fastball in the zone with at least 94 mph.

Verdict:
Maybe Wright doesn’t have an elite spin rate to go up there regularly (that pitch was at 2259 rpm), but you can’t blame him for trying this in an 0-2 count. Until that day, he had only allowed three home runs pitching there with his fastball. He also has allowed an xwOBA of .283 with his heater in that zone. The idea and the execution were good on paper, but Torres had other plans. This one is all Torres’ “fault.”

3) David Hess fastball up in the zone.

Pitch location:

This looked a lot like the Wright pitch. A 95-mph heater up in the zone that came back at 104 mph projected at 408 feet. Again, high fastballs have not been Torres’ favorite in the major leagues. This was, according to Baseball Savant, his fifth hit off a fastball in that specific zone and just his second home run. Also, he has swung and missed 21 times at similar pitches and suffered four swinging strikeouts.

Verdict:
Just a day after Torres collected his first home run in the majors against a fastball up in the middle of strike zone, he decided to launch his second career homer against a fastball up and in for strike. Just like Wright, you can’t blame Hess for going up there with good velo and a decent spin rate (2294 rpm on that pitch) in a 3-2 count. Until that day, he had only allowed one homer on his fastball in that zone. Now he has three (Clint Frazier also punished him there later in May). In my book this one was also a Gleyber Torres magic trick.

4) David Hess middle, middle fastball.

Pitch location:

Do we have to explain this?

Torres crushed this fastball at 89.9 mph right at the heart of the plate and sent it home at 108 mph, projected at 427 feet, the fourth-longest home run of his career in the majors.

Verdict:
In 2019, you can’t expect good results if you throw a middle-middle 90-mph fastball with below-average spin rate (that one had 2158 rpm). Just for context, since 2017, fastballs in the heart of the plate with a velocity between 89 and 91 mph and with a spin rate between 2100 and 2200 rpm have a very spooky .445 xwOBA. It’s just not good a pitch. This one is definitely on the pitcher.

5) Andrew Cashner changeup middle out (but in the zone).

Pitch location:

Destruction. This 84.8-mph changeup located in the middle/out part of the plate was demolished by Torres, who sent it out at 104.9 mph to center field. The shot projected at 432 feet, which ranks as the third-longest home run of the youngster’s career.

Verdict:
Cashner was in a 3-1 count and didn’t want to issue a walk, so he decided to use his best secondary pitch in the zone after he saw what Torres had done against the fastballs of a couple of his teammates. Of course the pitch landed in Torres’ hot zone (middle/in), but at least he failed with the secondary pitch he uses more. Cashner has an acceptable .311 xwOBA with his changeup since 2015 versus right-handed batters, and that was the first homer he had allowed to a righty with that pitch in that specific zone in his major league career.

It was good choice in my book, but the execution was a little bit flawed, and Torres was just too hot. There was more than one responsible on this one.

6) David Hess slider down and in (out of the zone).

Pitch location:

This was an 83.3-mph slider slightly out of the zone down and in that ends up in the stands with a 93.5 mph exit velocity, projected at 351 feet.

Verdict:
This was all Torres and Yankee Stadium. In a 3-1 count, Hess couldn’t sell him a fastball again in the zone. Instead he went with his money pitch down and a little bit in, and he suffered the first home run with his slider in that zone in his major league career. It was just a tough break if you consider that those types of hits (balls between 92-94 mph exit velocity and between 27-29 degrees launch angle) have been recorded 957 times in the Statcast era and only 58 of them have turned into a homer (6%).

7) Andrew Cashner middle-middle curveball.

Pitch location:

Torres was entering “God Mode” at right about this moment. An 81.2-mph curveball at the heart of the plate was blasted to center field at a 100.2 mph with a projected distance of 415 feet.

Verdict:
I have to give this one to Torres. Cashner was down in the count and just wanted to get back with a curveball in the zone. Yes, maybe it was a pitch too noble for a guy so inspired, but it was a perfectly fine selection to try to come back in the at-bat. That was just the second homer of Torres’ career against a curveball and the very first homer Cashner has allowed on a curveball in a 1-0 count in the majors. Of course, Cashner’s curveball isn’t a great pitch (.332 of xwOBA since 2015), but a man has to work with the tools he has.

8) Mychal Givens slider down and in (in the zone).

Pitch location:

This was an 85.3-mph slider down in the zone to open up the at-bat against a hitter with seven home runs in 2019 versus the Orioles. The result was a hit at 94.2 mph that turned into a 384-foot homer.

Verdict:
Givens has a solid slider with a career .284 xwOBA allowed, but Torres didn’t care. He just tagged that baseball on the very first pitch and gave Givens his first homer allowed on his slider in 2019.

Yes, you could argue that the pitch hung a bit and stayed in the strike zone too long, but this was just the second time Givens has allowed a long ball with a slider in that zone in his major league career.

This is just Gleyber Torres being hotter than the gates of hell. Look no further.

9) Dan Straily slider down and away (in the zone).

Pitch location:

Torres already had three games with multiple home runs against Baltimore when he started this game. Straily threw his money pitch at 85.3 mph in a reasonably good zone, and Torres blasted a 102.4-mph home run projected at 424 feet.

Verdict:
Straily believes in his slider. He owns a .267 xwOBA with that pitch since 2015, so that trust isn’t unreasonable. Then again, before facing Torres in the third inning, he already had allowed two homers against that pitch courtesy of Thairo Estrada and DJ LeMahieu. Despite that, he decided to go in the zone in a 1-2 count against a hitter that was looking for his ninth homer against his team this year. That was not wise. This home run has two fathers in my book, as it wasn’t the pitch location for the count or the hitter.

10) Gabriel Ynoa’s fastball away.

Pitch location:

At this point there is no way Torres gets something in the zone, right? Well, Ynoa decided to test him with a 92.9-mph fastball away at the edge of the strike zone, and Torres returned the favor with an opposite-field home run of 377 feet and at 101.5 mph.

Verdict:
This one is all Gleyber. You could ask why they were throwing strikes to him, but the Orioles were already down 6-2 in the fifth inning. Ynoa threw a fastball to a specific zone where Torres didn’t do real damage in his rookie season. Then again, this Torres seems different. This was his first homer against a fastball in that zone in his major league career and only his second hit.

Final review:

The Baltimore Orioles may have an underwhelming pitching staff right now, but these things that Gleyber Torres did against them were not entirely their fault. At only 21 years old, the Venezuelan infielder seems to be rapidly learning and reducing his holes at the plate while growing more power in different areas of the strike zone.

Yes, Baltimore pitching helped, but more than that it seems like Torres decided to use the Orioles to make a statement to the baseball world.

A statement that is just beginning to unfold.

The Yankees snuck into first place in the AL East by dint of last weekend’s series win over the Rays, and they’ve since widened their lead to two games by steamrolling the Orioles in Baltimore, bashing 13 home runs during their four-game sweep — four of them by Gleyber Torres in a pair of multi-homer games, and three by Gary Sanchez, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Neither was in the lineup for Thursday afternoon’s contest, but both came up big while pinch-hitting in the ninth inning of a tie game, with Torres walking and scoring the winning run, aided by Sanchez’s single.

Of Sanchez’s three homers, the biggest of in terms of significance — if not distance — was Monday’s three-run shot off Mychal Givens, which broke a 7-7 tie and sent the Yankees to victory in a game they had once trailed, 6-1:

That one had an estimated distance of 389 feet. If it’s distance you crave, here’s Wednesday’s massive 440-footer off Dan Straily:

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve written a lot about James Paxton here at FanGraphs, and deservingly so. The obvious reasoning is that Paxton is a very good pitcher. The intrigue builds once you consider that he throws hard, is a lefty, has thrown a no-hitter, and flaunts a lot of tools that just have the look of being very electric. In 2019, he also plays for the Yankees, which, whether you like it or not, means that he will be in the general media spotlight more.

In the past, Jeff Sullivan wrote several articles on Paxton’s explosive fastball and how he gets swinging strikes with it in the top of the zone. In terms of fastball usage, not a lot has changed. Paxton still throws pretty hard, and he uses his heat pretty frequently and gets whiffs with it. However, there’s always a room for improvement, even for pitcher who’s as good as Paxton is.

Paxton has struck batters out a lot this season. That is not a news. He’s always been a strikeout pitcher in his big league career. But after striking out 32.3% of the hitters he faced last year, his 2019 numbers are up to 36.2%. There was a concern over how Paxton, a fly ball pitcher, would adjust to the home run-friendly confines of Yankee Stadium, but we haven’t seen any problem yet; he’s posted a 0.78 HR/9 IP and 9.1% HR/FB rate so far. And he’s been one of the most valuable pitchers in all of the majors. As of May 2, his 1.5 WAR ranks third among all starters behind Max Scherzer and Matthew Boyd. All in all, he’s having a pretty good season. So what has led to the improvement?

Looking at his pitch usage, we don’t see a huge overhaul, but there is a notable change. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night in Arizona, CC Sabathia claimed a little slice of baseball history. With his strikeout of the Diamondbacks’ John Ryan Murphy, the 38-year-old Yankee became just the 17th pitcher to reach 3,000 for his career, the first since John Smoltz on April 22, 2008, and just the third southpaw ever, after Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson. It’s a milestone worthy of celebration, a testament to longevity, dominance, and tenacity. It’s also inextricably a product of this high-strikeout era, a point worth considering when placing Sabathia’s accomplishment in context.

But first, to savor the moment. Sabathia, who entered the night three strikeouts short of 3,000, collected all three in the second inning, first freezing David Peralta looking at a sinker, then whiffing Christian Walker on a high cutter. After yielding a solo homer to Wilmer Flores and an infield single to Nick Ahmed — the latter on an 0-2 changeup well outside the strike zone — he induced Murphy (who caught Sabathia’s 2,500th strikeout in 2015) to chase an 84.2 mph changeup:

Alas, while Diamondbacks starter Zack Greinke — himself a potential 3,000 strikeout club member, more on which below — held the banged-up Yankee lineup to a single run over 7.2 innings, Flores also added a fourth-inning RBI double off Sabathia. The big lefty departed on the short end of a 2-1 score, and the Yankees ultimately lost, 3-1, putting a mild damper on the celebration.

Of the major traditional milestones among pitchers and hitters, 3,000 strikeouts is the least common. Thirty-two players have notched at least 3,000 hits, and 27 have swatted 500 home runs. On the pitching side, 24 pitchers have collected 300 wins. Nearly all of the players who have reached any of those round numbers have been elected to the Hall of Fame, with the exceptions generally related to performance-enhancing drugs and other bad behavior. Among the members of the 3,000 strikeout club who have preceded Sabathia, only Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling remain outside, for reasons besides on-field performance. This could very well be the big man’s ticket to Cooperstown. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees haven’t been able to catch many breaks to start the season. They have an insalubrious number of starters on the injured list with everything from a small labrum tear, to a strained oblique, to a left biceps strain, to a left ankle injury, to a grade 2 lat strain. Despite all that, the team itself, at least when it comes to the standings, isn’t doing badly. They just won nine out of their previous 10 games and are one and a half games back from the Tampa Bay Rays. As of April 29, the Yankees are currently tied with the Astros for the fifth-best winning percentage in the majors (.607).

In the middle of all that is Domingo German, who’s off to a stellar start. We at FanGraphs have noted his talent before, citing his arsenal, his ability to throw strikes, get whiffs, and more. We’re talking about a guy who can make hitters look like this:

Or like this:

But his 2018 left a lot of questions about his future. As a 26-year old, German put up a 5.57 ERA and a 4.39 FIP in 85.2 IP across 21 games (14 starts). True, there were some encouraging numbers — a 27.2% strikeout rate and 14.9% swinging strike rate, for instance — but the Yankees had to have hoped for more. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’re a time-traveling visitor from 900 years in the future, you’ve probably heard that the Bronx Bombers have been struck by a rash of injuries early on this season. Among the more eyebrow-raising of those maladies was the revelation that key setup reliever and very tall human Dellin Betances had been sidelined with a bone spur. As Randy Miller reported for NJ.com:

What’s really interesting about Betances’ ordeal this week – his setback in Tampa, return to New York and second MRI – is Friday night’s revealing that he’s been pitching with a bone spur in his throwing shoulder since high school that never has affected his pitching.

More interesting, GM Brian Cashman said on Friday night that the Yankees have known about the bone spur since Betances had an MRI before signing his first pro contract as a teen in 2006 … and Betances saying Saturday morning that he first heard of it on Friday night.

That’s right – it appears the Yankees knew for over a decade that their right-handed relief ace had a bone spur, and they didn’t tell said right-hander about it.

“I guess from the previous MRIs I’ve always had it,” Betances said Saturday. “I didn’t know about it until now. But, yeah, I’ve always had it. I always come into spring and I feel, I guess .. a little stiff, But for me it usually gets better and this time it wasn’t. That’s pretty much what happened.”

Why did the Yankees never tell Betances about his bone spur?

“He hasn’t had the inflammation before,” Cashman said. “On the various testing we’ve done since we signed him … (After) drafting (Betances) I gave him a $1 million to sign rather than go on to college, and you do a physical and there’s an MRI, and right away that was (a bone spur that was) an incidental incident, meaning it’s not affecting him.

“There is something there. It’s inconsequential, non-symptomatic. He hasn’t had to deal with this. It’s had no affect on his game or pitching in anyway shape or form. The various times we imaged him, if it was for insurance or whatever reason, it’s always been there, but it’s never been something that’s caused a problem.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with this: the Yankees not only knew that Betances had a bone spur, they imaged it for insurance purposes. At the same time, they didn’t tell Betances because, as Cashman put it, it was “incidental” and largely asymptomatic. The uniform Major League Baseball contract required Betances to warrant that he has “no physical or mental defects” that would “prevent or impair” his ability to play baseball. The Yankees knew Betances had such a defect, and didn’t tell him. Worse, they had a number of contentious arbitration hearings with the right-hander. In hindsight, Randy Levine’s comments that Betances was “a victim” of his agent’s “overreach,” and comparison of Betances to an astronaut, seem even worse when one considers that the Yankees knew Betances had a medical condition and had seemingly disclosed that to insurance companies but not the player himself. Read the rest of this entry »

On April 20th, 1977, Billy Martin, then in his first of approximately 176 stints as the Yankees’ manager, pulled a lineup out of his hat. Literally. In order to shake up a team that started the year 2-8 and was suffering the bouts of media drama notable for the team during this era, Martin set the batting order by putting the names of the starters on paper and selecting them from a hat. The team’s usual cleanup hitter, Chris Chambliss, hit 8th, meaning that the lie we tell to little kids about how the No. 8 spot is the “second cleanup hitter” was actually true for possibly the first time in human history. Whether coincidental or not, the Yankees won six games straight with only a couple minor changes to this pseudo-random lineup before the team returned to a more traditionally configured one.

The Yankee lineup on Sunday looked quite a lot like this lineup, but taken one step farther to even make the names random. Of course, this wasn’t due to any homage to the late, great Martin, but a necessity fueled by injuries to, well, nearly everybody. You might be excused if you thought someone goofed and you were looking at one of the team’s Grapefruit League lineups from this spring.

Narrator: You were not.

Only a single player in the lineup, Luke Voit, was both present and playing the position envisioned when the Yankees put together their roster (Gleyber Torres was healthy, but was given an off-day). Four players didn’t even start the season, just over three weeks old, on the 25-man roster, and a fifth, Mike Tauchman, was only acquired a week before Opening Day.

Naturally, the lineup, which would have shocked people a month ago, scored seven runs, eventually winning in ten innings. We’ll have to wait until the Yankees next play the Royals in late May to see if they broke some unwritten rule about crushing pitchers with their B-squad that apparently requires hitting people with baseballs. Read the rest of this entry »

Amid a slew of injuries, the Yankees have managed to keep themselves afloat. But while taking three out of four from the Royals and climbing above .500 (11-10) this weekend, they suffered a major blow: Aaron Judge, their most valuable position player in each of the past three seasons (including this abbreviated one), strained a left oblique muscle during Saturday’s victory, further depleting a lineup that right now might not pass muster for a split squad spring training game. Including pitchers, the team now has an MLB-high 13 players on the injured list.

The 26-year-old Judge, who earlier in the game had connected for his fifth home run, dunked a single into the right field corner in the sixth inning but was in obvious pain by the time he reached first base, and exited the game immediately:

Prior to Sunday’s action, the Yankees placed Judge on the injured list, and manager Aaron Boone called his injury “pretty significant” while declining to speculate on a timetable for his return. Per MLB.com, a 2017 study led by former Dodgers athletic trainer Stan Conte found that for even a Grade 1 oblique strain, the least severe, position players miss an average of 27 days. A quick-and-dirty survey of the injury logs of the outfielders on the Yankees’ roster via the Baseball Injury Consultants database yielded stays ranging from 11 to 45 days, including a 19-day one for Judge in September 2016; for that one, however, the tally of days lost stopped with the end of the season. Read the rest of this entry »