This Post Doesn’t Have a Headline Because the Yankees Dropped It
The Tampa Bay Rays won the most games in the American League this year while running the AL’s second-lowest payroll. That’s a feat of team-building, first and foremost, but it also speaks to how well their players dodged leaks. On offense, they had the lowest strikeout and whiff rates in the majors; their pitchers had the league’s lowest walk rate and just 18 blown saves. You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Rays.
That’s a well-worn cliché, but here’s a novel spin on it: You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Yankees either. Presumptive AL Cy Young winner Cam Schlittler did some terrific work in his first career playoff road start, and no one’s going to remember it, because the other eight guys in gray pajamas played like the ball was covered in dish soap in Game 2.
The Yankees committed three errors in the bottom of the first inning, and another in the fifth. The Rays scored five runs across those two half-innings, and there’s your final score: Rays 5, Yankees 2.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
The Chisholm “attempt” for the DP was just bizarre. They did well to get the out at 2nd and he tried to hot dog it and it cost them big time. It sort of just set the tone for the game. I’m definitely not a Yankee fan, but you’ve got to feel for Schlitter when your team fields like a 3rd division U12 squad.
The defense was atrocious of course, but Cam wasn’t Cam. He did a great job of limiting the damage but he just had no swing and miss in his game. His velocity was down across the board, and not just after he started to tire (his first few 4-seamers were sitting around 98 compared 100-101 against Boston). He wasn’t hitting his spots and his curve was generally useless. I’m not blaming him for the defense of course but when he only strikes out 2 guys, more balls in play = more opportunities for defensive ineptitude.
Maybe throwing 117 high-stress pitches (including way more curves than you’ve ever thrown) when you’ve never thrown over 107 (and when even that was a year earlier) isn’t the best thing for a young pitcher. Weird.
I think his first two K’s came in the 4th (?) maybe even later.
Rays should have won by a lot more.
I thought Cam was making very good pitches; to me it looked like he started missing his spots more consistently after his 40 high-stress pitches in the first two innings, and it looked like he was just trying to be too fine rather than just pound the strike zone.
These Rays would work 10-pitch at-bats off of 1999 Pedro Martinez.
Cam wasn’t Cam? Possibly. But could it not have been the case that the Rays prepared and then executed against him? His average fastball was 98.2 mph, up 0.2 mph from his season average. And it didn’t decline during the evening. In addition, the spin rate on his 4-seamer was up 100 RPM, and his sinker spin rate was up 200 RPM.
Yep, the fielders botched several plays in the first inning, including an CI, but the Rays-like grand slam came in an inning that started with Aranda smoking a 109 mph single and Caminero crushing a 112 mph double. The runs that followed reflected the Rays’ modus operandi: not swinging for the fences, but putting the ball in play, thus forcing the defense to execute.
Is the increase in spin rate unambiguously good? I don’t understand those metrics at all.
My understanding is usually, yeah for fastballs
Increased spin rate usually means a greater Magnus effect which means more movement.
We have innings like that in men’s league. Granted, in July, the dirt is practically concrete and uneven. Catching the ball cleanly is itself an achievement. Baseball might just be more fun to watch with sketchier facilities.
I was on the chat last night and Chisholm’s defense, which is always suspect, was a main topic of discussion. Lombard saved him from another grotesque miscue with a nice grab of Chisholm’s awful toss. I think he is in for a rude awakening when he comes expecting $20M for several years.
Not sure if it’s a pride thing a refusal to admit mistakes or what, but it’s a terrible financial move to come out after the game and say if he had to do it over again, he’d still make the throw. It’s not hard to say, “in retrospect, maybe I should have held it and live to fight another day”, which could have worked out with the way Cam was putting out fires.
On a perfect throw, the runner still beats him by two or three steps. It’s a rough look at any time, but especially in the playoffs, unless you’re cream of the crop, no front office wants to deal with someone that selfish.
With his talent, I hope it works out for him, but if I was his agent, I’d be lowering my expectations for the commission from his next contract.
I don’t think anyone has ever planned on paying Chisholm for his defense. He’s a potential 30+ HR guy at 2B, and even in the age of advanced metrics some GM will always fall for that potential.
Although now that I mention it, Fangraphs has this year as Chisholm’s best year with the glove, so yeah…
This is yet more evidence that OAA is a terrible approximation of defensive value. I would buy an MVP membership if FanGraphs reconfigured fWAR to use DRS instead of FRV (which is OAA plus a few things).
Agreed – but there’s a difference between bad defense and bad decision making. If he’s willing to make that reckless decision to attempt that throw again in that situation, it just shows poor overall judgement that bleeds into other aspects of his game.
All that said, that was an answer he gave coming off an emotional game that his team lost, and most people don’t always give their clearest, most objective answers, so I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt that in the unlikely event of him running into this same situation again that he will just take the out at 2nd and remove the added risk.
Absolutely delighted to see Richie “Big Breakfast” Palacios have a big game.
Palacios is a personal favorite for me — he braces that right leg and puts “all 185” into it when he swings.
For me personally there is no better storyline than a guy from Brooklyn sticking it to the Yankees.
They need some hitting tips from Assistant to the Travelling Secretary Costanza.
“Guys, hitting is not about muscle. It’s simple physics. Calculate the velocity, v, in relation to the trajectory, t, in which g, gravity, of course remains a constant. It’s not complicated.”
Palatial Breakfast Palacios
Booser only faced Rice and Bellinger, the latter of whom nearly hit a grand slam. Seymour has been worse over his career against left-handed batters than he has been against right-handed batters.
The problem for the Yankees wasn’t who Boone selected, it’s that he has no one to select from. Their only consistent performers at the plate this season have been Rice, Judge, and Bellinger. Goldschmidt faded badly after the All Star break while Luis Garcia Jr. has regressed back close to his career marks since leaving the Nationals. Spencer Jones is the only other hitter on the team with an above average wRC+ with at least one hundred plate appearances and he’s sporting a 36.3% strikeout rate.
No, it wouldn’t. As noted, Seymour is significantly better against RHBs than he is against LHBs. Cash knows that.
Performance-wise, i.e., in terms of the actual outcome, you are correct about Seymour (.334 wOBA vs. LHH, .295 vs. RHH), which may have played into Boone’s thinking about not calling for pinch hitters. However, in terms of expected outcomes, Seymour’s xERA this season showed no bias toward the batter’s handiness. 3.47 vs. LHH, 3.59 vs. RHH. I expect Cash to call on Seymour several more times as a long closer.
Seymour did have a large reverse platoon split in the minors, and is a changeup guy instead of a huge breaking ball guy, so I think the reverse split (which I’m normally very skeptical of) is actually legit.
You may be correct. The problem with reverse split numbers, especially with starters, is that one is never completely sure whether the numbers are due to the fact that same-side batters see the pitches better than non-same-side batters, or if the managers are limiting their same-sided batters to the very best batters, thus making an uneven pool for the comparison. Is there a way to weight these metrics by batter quality?
Seymour has faced 266 left-handed batters and 527 right-handed batters over his major league career. That’s enough of a sample to validate the reverse splits. I’m not sure why we’re even discussing it at this point since it is clearly true.
As terrible and embarrassing as the Yankees’ defense was, their hitters not named Rice and Wells are 1-46 in this series. One for forty-six. That’s the story.
If my math is correct, that’s just one more hit than I could get in 46 tries against Rays pitching…and I suck!
It’s just one more hit than you would get going to the plate without a bat
Oh I’m definitely bringing a bat. Or a broom. Is hitting with a non-cylindrical object addressed in the rule book? (Probably)
(Spoilsports)
Of course it is. Rule 1.10(a) states: “The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.”
He could just bunt 46 times and have a non-zero chance at one hit (or more!)
Then again, I know nothing about Jason B’s physical conditioning.
You’d probable run a higher OBP than the Yankees by not bringing a bat and hoping for a BB or HBP.
Am I crazy to think I could get one hit if you gave me 46 at-bats against major league pitching? That’s an .022 average. I feel like you could just close your eyes and swing, and eventually you’d run into one little infield dribbler that dies in no-man’s land, or a blooper over the third baseman.
Well first of all you’d have to stand in the box without fear, which probably rules out most of us that didn’t play the game beyond youth levels.
If I recall correctly, attempts to estimate it indicate that if you don’t bother to bring a bat to the plate, you’ll walk about 10% of the time, because hitting the strike zone is hard and MLB pitchers don’t practice throwing meatballs down the middle.
I doubt that I could get a hit off MLB pitching if you gave me a hundred tries, but I could probably get quite a few walks.
And who would’ve thought Wells would be one of the Yanks’ best hitters? Certainly not anyone who watched them this season. Dude’s been brutal.
He’s actually been pretty good since July. Had a horrific start in part due to playing through chronic migraines.
One question I would ask of Boone is if he might have been better off going with Volpe’s experience over Lombard’s potential at shortstop. They grade similarly by DRS, but Lombard committed seven fielding errors in just 373.2 regular season innings. The aforementioned lineup struggles probably made this a moot point, but I do think it would have been better to err on the side of caution in such a pressurized environment.
The Rays are this good without Brandon Lowe, Mason Montgomery, Jake Mangum and Tristan Peters. Amazing.
Nominate that Title for an award
Legitimately everyone should be fired, and the level of play reflects so poorly on Judge as a captain that the organization needs to seriously discuss whether he should be stripped of the title. Unfortunately you can’t fire him too but at least maybe humiliating him would light a fire under his ass to whip this team into shape.
What on earth does “the level of play” have to do with Judge as a captain, especially when he’s not even playing?
Why would it have nothing to do with him? I know we’re all analytically inclined to look at the raw numbers but this is a team that routinely comes out unprepared for the moment every October and he is its leader as much as Boone is. I’m sure he’s being very welcoming and reassuring to George Lombard Jr. through his defensive ineptitude and I think we saw how that approach worked out with Volpe. A harsher vibe of holding teammates accountable is clearly needed.
they made the world series two years ago.
granted, they got clowned by the dodgers when they got there. but they did get there.
Do you really want to reference the 2024 World Series as a data point for good leadership
Just want to make sure I understand: you think the team as constructed and coached is fine, and the biggest issue is that Captain Aaron Judge is not getting the best out of them, including George Lombard Jr.?
To single out Judge here is such a bizarre take — where do you even come up with that?
Because no one else matters. Every other player — besides I guess Stanton — has come and/or gone in the Boone era and the results remain the same, a sloppy and unprepared team that folds embarrassingly in big moments. No other serious team gives away outs at this rate. It has to be someone’s fault at the end of the day.
I think you’re on the wrong website to present this line of thought.
Yeah this is some NY Post message board material.
They play in NYC and the Mafia is not gone.
Eat a snickers, bud.
Yankee fans are the best. “How dare they not win!”
Always a fan of the “They’re not taking these games seriously enough!” takes.
Bravo.
“Thanks for the call Tony from Staten Island. You’re listening to WFAN, back after this commercial break”
Some thoughts:
1) Cash has been criticized since 2020 for pulling his starter too early. At the time he came out in the 5th inning of last night’s game to bring in Booser, Peralta had given up only 3 hits, of which only 1 was extremely hard-hit, i.e., Wells’ double. (Rice’s HR, at 100 mph, was at the perfect launch angle.) He pulled Peralta because he probably had little faith the Rays would score too many runs, and because Peralta had become a single-pitch pitcher. The Yankees were not chasing Peralta’s changeup. And his control consisted of several center-center fastballs or non-competitive balls. Oddly, his much-maligned curve was fabulous: 2 whiffs and 1 called strike on 3 tosses.
2) In the 5th, Boone had runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs, with the LH pitcher Headrick on the mound. Yes, Palacios is a left-handed batter, but his career splits aren’t radically different (102 wRC+ vs. RHP, 92 vs. LHP). He could have walked Palacios and had Headrick face Walls, a known black hole in the lineup. Walls is worse batting right-handed (in 2026, 53 wRC+ vs. RHP, 85 vs. LHP). Walls was not going to hit a home run, and there was near-zero probability Cash would pinch-hit for Walls, so it did not matter if Palacios was on first.
3) Fans remember when the contact play leads to the baserunner being thrown out at home. They don’t remember when it works. Last night, at least one, and probably two, runs were scored by the Rays on executed contact plays. Also, it’s unclear whether either runner would have been tagged out if the fielder played the situation properly.
4) The narrative about this game is about the poor fielding by NYY, especially in the first inning, which gave the Rays one run. However, it should be noted that the Rays had several other opportunities to score and did not. But the Yankees had essentially only one. The xBA for the game:
NYY: .196
TBR: .313
Again, the story will be about how poorly the Yankees played. It could be argued that the Rays executed their game properly and benefited from increasing their odds of scoring.
Excellent analysis and a nice compliment to the article, thanks for sharing.
Thank you. I do wish to compliment the writing of the article, especially the headline, and I was hoping my thoughts would complement it. (LOL! I misspell the two words frequently.)
Doh. For me it’s both compliment/complement and principle/principal.
Your point is correct, but you typoed his stats. It should say either “53 wRC+ vs LHP” or 53 wRC+ as a RHH”
Yes, that was a typo:
53 wRC+ as a RHH, 85 wRC+ as a LHH.
Thank you.
I wish TBS still had the tagline of “TBS very funny” because this game was a riot
It’s my fault for complimenting their defense. Sorry Yankee fans.
Just in case the above is true and it is your fault, would you please compliment how well they do something prior to every Yankees game next year?
Asking for a friend.