To say that Rafael Soriano has struggled so far this season would be akin to saying Babe Ruth was a decent ballplayer: you’d technically be right, but off by multiple factors of ten. Soriano has struggled mightily since making his Yankee debut, allowing at least one baserunner in nine of his ten appearances, and posting an “Ouch!” inducing 7.84 ERA and 5.55 FIP. He has three meltdowns already this season (only had four total in 2010), and he’s blown two Yankee leads: once on April 5th against the Twins and once last night against the White Sox. Last night was particularly painful, as Soriano plunked Carlos Quentin with a slider and then grooved a fastball down the heart of the plate to Paul Konerko. I don’t think I need to tell you where that pitch ended up.

Since it’s so early in the season, it’s easy to write off these struggles as relatively unimportant; odds are, this is just a slump and Soriano will be his normal, dominant self for the rest of the year. Soriano has only thrown 10 innings this year, so it’s way too early to begin putting credence in his ERA, FIP, or xFIP. But while that may be true, I don’t like leaving analyses at this level; I want to know why Soriano is slumping now. Is this simply a matter of bad luck? Has he changed his pitching approach? Is he struggling with any of his pitches?

To the Pitch F/x data we go!

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Johnny Damon’s case for the Hall of Fame has recently come up (again). Indeed, some people seem to think it is time to start discussing which hat he should be wearing for his induction. My initial response is “he’s been good, but not good enough,” but hey, I’ve been wrong before. Many times. While the voters have made some progress in recent years, they aren’t exactly known for their objectivity or consistency. What the voters will do with Johnny Damon is one question, one that involves stuff like history and folk psychology, things I’m not interested in dealing with here. Instead, I want to address what the voters should do in Damon’s case.

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When the Yankees acquired Curtis Granderson from the Detroit Tigers prior to the 2010 season, many expected the All-Star center fielder to thrive in the New Yankee Stadium, even relative to his excellent tenure in the Motor City. Although 2010 wasn’t a disappointing season by any means — Granderson put up a .346 wOBA and solid defense in center en route to 3.7 WAR — he didn’t realize the power boost that many expected with the move from lefty-suppressing Comerica Park to lefty-friendly New Yankee Stadium. That is, until this season. After a modest 24 homer season in 2010, Granderson has slugged seven quick bombs in 2011, lending credence to those who expected Granderson to go supernova last season but were left disappointed. Even though it took a full year, though, we shouldn’t be surprised Granderson is showing some premiere power.

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Jorge Posada doesn’t always get hits, but when he does they’re home runs.* In his 67 PA so far this season, all from the DH spot, Posada has managed a mere nine hits, good for a .153 batting average. As Bradley wrote last week, that gives him a “laughably terrible BABIP,” which is now down to .086. That might seem a bit odd at first glance. A .154 BA against a .086 BABIP? That’s what happens when six of your nine hits clear the fence. It’s clear that Posada will still run into one from time to time. Unfortunately, similar to Vladimir Guerrero, about whom I wrote last week, Posada has looked a bit washed up at the plate.

*Gotta credit River Ave. Blues commenter whozat for this one.

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“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

-ye olde Bill Shakespeare (Friar Laurence from Rome and Juliet)

After waiting many hard winter months without any baseball, it seems unfair to ask us sabermagicians to wait even longer to saberize our favorite teams and players. Unfortunately, that is what we must do. One of the core principles of sabermetric thought is the value of sample size.

We cannot do as our detractors think we do: We cannot resort to looking for greater truths from lesser findings.

So, this early part of the year features a lot of articles about players’ plate discipline numbers and pitchers’ pitch f/x changes — small slivers of reality that give us clues to how the big reality will start to look.

One such thing we can look at early in the season: batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Why? BABIP stabilizes slowly, but tends to stay in a particular range for hitters (somewhere between .250 and .350, with most hitters being quite near to .300). So, early in the season, we can usually take a gander at the Luck Loserboard (those hitters with BABIPs at or beneath .200) and get a good idea about which players are poised to rebound.
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It has been 633 days since Bartolo Colon last took the mound as a starting pitcher in the Major Leagues. With Phil Hughes suffering from dead arm, Colon will once again toe the rubber as a major league starter. A low-risk, non-roster invitee, who looked like a long-shot to make the roster this spring, Colon was impressive in the month of March and has continued that in three relief appearances with the Yankees.

As Phil Hughes’ shadow over the first few weeks of the season, Colon has tossed 11. 1 innings out of the bullpen. His ERA and defensive independent metrics look good and his peripheral statistics look even better. The right hander has struck out 13 batters while walking just three and allowing one ball to leave the yard. After giving up four runs in his first appearance, he has allowed one earned run over his last two appearances while striking out eight and walking two.

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On the Monday evening ESPN SportsCenter, Dave Winfield was highlighting the big plays of the afternoon tilt between the Rangers and the Tigers. Since Michael Young went two-for-four with a big RBI double that broke open a tied, scoreless game in the seventh inning, Winfield was right to attribute much of the offensive glory to the longtime Ranger. He was the offensive WPA champ of the game (+.184) on the revamped box scores.

But maybe Winfield went a little too far when he said “Michael Young is the Derek Jeter of the Texas Rangers.” Derek Jeter still plays shortstop and owns all those rings! Then again, we might find with a little uncovering that the description was apt.

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Like most non-Yankees fans, I typically change the channel when the 9th inning rolls around and Mariano Rivera is trotting to the mound. Why bother watching when the outcome is near-foretold? Especially now that “Ni Hao Kai Lan” is on streaming Netflix? I have better uses of my time, dear Yankees closer.

In 2011, I have found this ignore-the-Yankees-ninth tradition has extended now into the 8th inning. As a Rays fan, I know well how Soriano can and will close down many a late inning affair. So, when Rafael Soriano took the bump last night, I considered my evening of baseball complete and retired to my chambers. I imagine a number of Yankees fans woke like me — quite surprised at the night’s result: A 5-4 New York loss.

Soriano ended with a line of 0.2 IP and 4 ER against him, leading to the eventual Yankees loss. The occasionally-injured reliever did not have his typical command last night, missing the catcher’s target on nearly every pitch. But what does this mean for the New York Yankees bullpen in the long term? Probably not much.

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A number of months ago I rolled out “the most popular player feature”. It’s basically which players were viewed the most on FanGraphs in the past 24 hour period. Over our spring training trip, it was mentioned to me several times that Rafael Soriano is always in the top five and that the list must be broken.

It’s certainly possible that the list is broken, but after combing through the code, I couldn’t find anything particularly egregious. I’m inclined to believe one of the following: the system is being gamed (maybe it can be if you do something like this), there’s a group of people who everyday can’t help but fawn over Rafael Soriano’s stats (there are a lot of Yankees fans), or he really is just that popular (I’m skeptical).

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Whenever I watch Major League action, I typically watch the games with the same intent in which I watch games I’m scouting in person.  When evaluating a hitting prospect, I’m interested in finding out how the pitchers are attacking him.  Where are his holes?  How easily are pitchers exploiting those holes?  Is there one spot or type of pitch you can get him out with or does it take a variation of approaches to get him out?

Things like this can be seen in big league games as well, except the holes are smaller, the weaknesses are more difficult to exploit, and the pitchers are better.  Even baseball’s great hitters like Robinson Cano have holes that pitchers and advance scouting departments are constantly searching for ways to exploit.  One of the ways teams might try to get Cano out in 2011 showed up on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. 

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