Previously
Changeups: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveballs: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Two-Seamers: MLB Starters.

With May running out of days, it’s about time we laid to rest our series evaluating the individual pitches of 2016 ERA-qualifying starting pitchers. By the end of the week, we’ll be done. I’m splitting up the final two articles in a slightly unorthodox manner in order to make them run about the same length. There were so many good sliders in the NL last season that they deserve their own article later this week. Today, it’s the sinkers in both leagues, plus the AL sliders.

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As you may have heard, the Yankees are retiring Derek Jeter’s number on Sunday. ESPN’s coverage of the ceremony — and the subsequent game, of course — will begin at a surprisingly early 8:00 a.m. EST. The first pitch of the game between the Astros and Yankees, two of the powerhouse teams in the American League, is scheduled for 7:35 at night. Sunday Night Baseball usually kicks off at 8, but the Yankees got ESPN to agree to moving the game up to give the pre-game ceremonies (and theoretically the game itself) a larger audience and reach.

Of course, a player can’t have his number retired unless he himself is retired, and indeed, Jeter hasn’t suited up since 2014. His retirement was kind of a big deal, as you likely remember. It turned into a media bonanza that facilitated the sale of many tickets and even more merchandise. Jeter struggled that year to a -0.1 WAR and the Yankees just barely missed the playoffs. He started at shortstop in the All-Star Game. Even when he clearly had overstayed his welcome as a productive player, he still represented a massive source of revenue for the Yankees and for the sport.

MLB social media has spent the week doing a tournament of Jeter’s best moments under the #Jeets16 hashtag. Budweiser just put out an ad that uses the number retirement as its inspiration. The league, and a corporation as huge as Anheuser-Busch, wouldn’t be doing a Jeter-shaped media blitz if there wasn’t profit to be made here. And there is, of course, seeing as Jeter was the most recognizable figure in baseball, and one of the most recognizable people in all of sports, for nearly two decades.

There’s still something a little strange, though, about having this much hullabaloo about a retired player. The Sunday night game features two strong teams chock full of exciting young talent. Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and George Springer will all be taking part in this game.  There’s absolutely room to celebrate both Jeter’s past and those players’ present and future. Given the pre-game focus on Jeter, it will be interesting to see how much of the game broadcast is spent discussing him and not the game itself. It could go some way to revealing ESPN’s production interests.

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Back in the spring, there was a gaggle of starting pitchers under consideration for the final spot in the Yankees rotation. Eventually, the lesser-known starter who wowed management got the chance. Jordan Montgomery has been a top-five rookie starter this year so far and, by all accounts, looks like a major leaguer. Now, the question has shifted. Now, we ask not “Will he pitch in the majors?” but “How good will he be?”

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It’s not supposed to be the Yankees’ time — not yet. I think we’ve all sensed a coming resurgence, given their resources, and given their farm system. We knew the Yankees would bounce back eventually, and it’s considered a foregone conclusion they’re going to grab at least one of the big-name future free agents. But this year — this was supposed to be an average year. Maybe a wild-card year, one of those years where, if everything went right, the Yankees could scrape to 85 or 90 wins. The division was going to belong to the Red Sox. How could that division not belong to the Red Sox?

Still might. Red Sox are good. But everyone’s aware of the Yankees, now. They opened the season 1-4, losing consecutive series to the Rays and Orioles. Yet they just pulled off a road weekend sweep in Wrigley Field. If you sort the regular standings, the Yankees have baseball’s best winning percentage. If you sort the nerd-friendly standings, the Yankees have baseball’s best BaseRuns winning percentage. By outcome and by process, the Yankees have been better than anyone, and what might be truly frightening is just how much has gone wrong.

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The Yankees have gotten off to a surprising start, sitting in a first-place tie in the AL East even despite having mostly played without Gary Sanchez. These being the Yankees, there’s not much that happens under the radar, and I’ve already fielded a number of chat questions about a reasonably young outfielder with a high walk rate and a 191 wRC+. He’s helped to power the Yankees to where they are today, far exceeding expectations with a slugging percentage of .640. Aaron Judge, also, has been terrific.

Judge, in fact, has been the club’s best player. For one month, he’s played at his ceiling, and he’s become a household name just as a function of his highlight home runs. Yet Aaron Hicks, too, has also been playing at his ceiling. Where Judge is a 25-year-old prospect, Hicks is a 27-year-old post-prospect, if you will. Until now, he felt a little like a bust. It might still end up a bummer of a season. But maybe, just maybe, for Aaron Hicks, it’s clicking.

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Many are skeptical that Yankee Stadium II’s dimensions represent an exact replica of the original stadium’s — or, at least, a replica of the post-1976 version of old Yankee Stadium. The club contends on its official site that the distances from home plate to the outfields walls are identical to the previous park’s.

Because of the volume of home runs hit there since it opened, however, and because the outfield depths sure seem different, many have wondered if the club’s claims are true. The New York Times, for example, was compelled to explore the issue back in 2009.

When I asked if he still believed the dimensions were the same as before, as some folks have disputed with visual evidence, [Yankees general Brian] Cashman said, “I’ve been told they’re the same. I know they’re supposed to be the same.”

Still, without access or permission to survey the field, it’s never been possible to know exactly how honest any team is being with regard to its outfield dimensions depths. There are many who believed Fenway’s left-field wall was closer than the listed dimensions, and to anyone who has hit, pitched, or watched a game in New Yankee, the right-field wall seems awfully close. I would suggest that it’s unreasonably close to home plate.

We’ve never known which dimensions we could trust, though. Until now. It’s my understanding that the Doppler radar of Statcast is quite accurate. With that as backdrop, it’s my goal in this post to employ that radar technology to measure home runs that have passed just over the wall of Yankee Stadium to get a better sense of the park’s dimensions — especially those areas of the field that are left unmarked. Only five outfield depths are listed on the Yankee’s official website and posted on the outfield-wall locations. I was especially curious with regard to the unmarked territory in right.

Let’s begin. First in left field.

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Previously
Changeup: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveball: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.

May has arrived, and sample sizes are beginning to mount. We’ve still got a little ways to go in our review of 2016 qualifying starters’ pitch quality before turning our attention solely to 2017. We’ve already looked at changeups, curves, cutters and splitters; today, it’s the four-seam fastball’s turn. We’ll begin by looking at 2016 ERA qualifiers from the American League.

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I met Aaron Judge in Tampa, Florida, this spring near his locker in the corner of the Yankees clubhouse. Prior to the interview we shook hands, that most culturally traditional way of greeting a stranger. He engulfed my right hand with a catcher’s mitt of an appendage, and a grip something like a vice tightening. Thankfully for the structural integrity of my metacarpals, he relaxed the grip.

Judge is a strong man. He is a giant among men. This is only a slight exaggeration:

It should come as no surprise that he has as much raw power as any player in the game. It should come as little surprise that he already holds the Statast record for exit velocity of a batted baseball (119.4 mph), surpassing that of Giancarlo Stanton (119.2 mph), whom is his most commonly cited, best-case comp, and a fellow could-have-been Division I tight end.

Judge, of course, is off to a tremendous start — a start documented yesterday by FanGraphs’ Craig Edwards, who notes that the young outfielder has enjoyed one of the most power-laden Aprils on record. Judge is one of the most compelling young assets Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has accumulated, a player who could be part of the next Yankee dynasty. While few expect Judge to continue his torrid pace, he has answered questions about his ability to serve as a quality regular, and he’s reduced the distance from the floor to his considerable ceiling.

The question with Judge — as with Stanton or any hulk of a player — has been clear: can he make enough contact? Can he translate more of his raw power into game power?

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Remember last August when Gary Sanchez hit a ton of home runs and put up a .442 isolated-power figure for the New York Yankees? It was amazing. It was also special, so far as exhibitions of power are concerned. Consider: only four batters produced a higher single-month ISO last year than Sanchez. It wasn’t just improbable for a rookie; it was improbable for a major leaguer.

But the improbable is different than the impossible. Now another power-hitting Yankees prospect, Aaron Judge, has just finished his first real month as a starting outfielder in New York and has recorded a .447 ISO in the process — or slightly higher than Sanchez’s mark. The power is as large as Judge himself.

And while Judge has been the most impressive hitter for the Yankees, the club has received quite a few pleasant surprises. Starlin Castro, Chase Headley, Aaron Hicks, Matt Holliday, Austin Romine, and Ronald Torreyes have all exceeded expectations.

The result? A very successful first month of the season, leading to a 15-8 record. And while some of the club’s surprising performances won’t last — Judge included — the Yankees have banked some wins, increased their projections, and significantly improved their playoff odds, as the chart below shows.

The Yankees entered the 2017 season with playoff odds of 15.9%, the worst of any team in the AL East. Their strong April has put them over the 50% mark the rest of the way, however. At the start of the season, the Yankees were projected to have a .488 win percentage. Going forward, that number is already up to .509. Add in the wins they’ve already received, and their projected end-of-season winning percentage is up to .529.

Largely responsible for that positive trend is Judge himself. As with the club itself, his own personal projections now appear more optimistic.

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To start, we might as well revisit the difference between command and control, or at least the accepted version of that difference: control is the ability to throw the ball into the strike zone, while command is the ability to throw the ball to a particular location. While we can easily measure the first by looking at strike-zone percentage, it’s also immediately apparent that the second skill is more interesting. A pitcher often wants to throw the ball outside of the zone, after all.

We’ve tried to put a number on command many different ways. I’m not sure we’ve succeeded, despite significant and interesting advances.

You could consider strikeout minus walk rate (K-BB%) an attempt, but it also captures way too much “stuff” to be a reliable command metric — a dominant pitch, thrown into the strike zone with no command, could still earn a lot of strikeouts and limit walks.

COMMANDf/x represented a valiant attempt towards solving this problem by tracking how far the catcher’s glove moved from the original target to the actual location at which it acquired the ball. But there were problems with that method of analysis. For one, the stat was never made public. Even if it were, however, catchers don’t all show the target the same way. Chris Iannetta, for example, told me once that his relaxation moment, between showing a target and then trying to frame the ball, was something he had to monitor to become a better framer. Watch him receive this low pitch: does it seem like we could reliably affix the word “target” to one of these moments, and then judge the pitch by how far the glove traveled after that moment?

How about all those times when the catcher is basically just indicating inside vs. outside, and it’s up to the pitcher to determine degree? What happens when the catcher pats the ground to tell him to throw it low, or exaggerates his high target? There are more than a few questions about an approach affixed to a piece of equipment, sometimes haphazardly used.

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