B.A.'s offensive outlook on upcoming Yankees-Tigers series, game 2

I managed to get my anger out by putting a big loan shark behind bars while avoiding capture by the MPs. Of course, the client stiffed us. Hannibal has turned the A-Team into the C-Team. C being for cheap, charity, and crap. But anyway, that just piles onto how fucking pissed I am about how this week has gone for the Yankees. Second time this week the Yankees have lost an extra-inning game. Fucking Magglio Ordonez and his .383 BA/BIP. And his PrBA of .297. And his PrOPS of .898. The guy has always been a very good hitter. There's no doubt about that. But come on, NOTHING will go wrong for him this year. It's not even like he's knocking the cover off the ball. Only 18.4% of the balls he puts in play are line drives. Well below a lot of other hitters. He and Curtis Granderson lead the AL with their .137 OPS over-performance. I mean, you can talk about how Posada's getting lucky and all that shit, which is partially true. But at least Posada is 5th in the league in line drive percentage at 22.7%. Ordonez isn't even close to the top of the league. His check swing little piece of crap over Cano's head extending inning for Guillen to drive one over the wall in left made me wanna drive my mohawked head of iron through the concrete wall. The Yankees never catch a break this year. That's why their fucking Pythagorean win/loss is 6 games better than their actual win/loss. And if they do catch breaks, it's always in bunches. That's what happened when they were OPSing .953 as a team over that one stretch. They were finally catching some breaks in addition to hitting well (they were all hitting HRs like crazy in that stretch too). Ugh, anyway. Here's the outlook for game 2.

Yankees facing Jeremy Bonderman
Bonderman after his fantastic start, like last year, has sucked in the second half. In his last 35.1 innings, he's surrendered 7 homers after allowing just 13 in 119.2 innings. His control's been erratic, too. 15 of his 40 walks on the season came over those 35.1 innings. Righties and lefties are pretty similar against him in terms of BA and OBA but lefties hit for better power off him. Righties are .270/.312/.393 off him while lefties are .270/.317/.468. The IsoP of .198 jumps out at you, as he's allowed 14 HR, 22 2B and 2 3B to lefties in 344 AB this year. This is no anomoly. It's historically true as well that lefties own him, as from 2004-2006 lefties have a .276/.340/.464 line off him. So, tonight, Giambi, Damon, and Betemit should start, and of course Abreu. This should strengthen a team of guys who have .319/.388/.505 line in 188 AB off him.

The Yankees have to win this game. They own Bonderman. They have Wang going, although he's on the road which concerns me a bit. The Red Sox are playing the embarrassingly bad White Sox and raping them. The Mariners and their overachieving by 7 wins seem to get every damn break going as far back as Gerry "Blumpkin" Davis's awful call back in May that fucked the Yankees over. They have to win the next three games. It's going to be tough to win Monday with Mussina going, although I read in the Post that he thinks he found a solution in his last bullpen session. I hope so, because Mike Mussina in his last 2 outings has been retire-when-you-get-back-to-the-dugout-after-Torre-takes-the-ball-from-you bad. Let's go Yankees.

B.A.'s offensive outlook on upcoming Yankees-Tigers series, game 1

I didn't bother writing one for game 3 because I was so fucking pissed about the first two games I couldn't think rationally. I never wanted to see backup catchers die painful deaths as badly as I did after the past two games. And watching that 467 year old loafer, Garret Anderson, who flies open on every swing and sucks, hit that 3-run homer...no words to describe my anger. Anyway, back to business.

Game 1, Yankees face Andrew Miller
Good News
Miller's just coming off the DL from a hamstring injury. Being 6'6", he not surprisingly is like a young Randy Johnson and a current Daniel Cabrera in the control department. In his major league career, here are his numbers:

Andrew Miller (career, MLB/minors)
69.1/80.0 IP
4.67/2.59 ERA
43 BB, 69 H (1.615 WHIP)/26 BB, 72 H (1.225 WHIP)
58 K/65 K

This guy ain't no Joba Chamberlain. He walks a lot of guys, and he's hittable, since he's allowed close to a hit per inning and does not have an astronomical number of strikeouts.

Bad News
This guy owns lefties. Lefties in 50 AB are .140/.233/.180 with just 2 doubles, no homers, and 20 strikeouts. A strikeout rate of 0.40/AB! You see, Mike (Myers)? THOSE are the kinds of numbers a lefty specialist puts up. Anyway, here's what I'd do with the lineup. You HAVE to Shelley Duncan and Andy Phillips in there. I'm sure Torre starts Phillips regardless but he MUST get Duncan in there. I'd put Betemit in for Cano just to give him a day off against a tough lefty, but he got half a day off in the slaying on Tuesday, and Betemit is absolutely useless as a right-handed hitter. In his career, he is .233/.280/.354 with 61 K in 195 AB. That's a strikeout every 3 AB basically. Horrible. Giving Cano the day off against Bedard last week seemed like a good idea until I realized how terrible Betemit is right-handed. The guy is purely a left-handed hitter. So, anyway, I hope Torre reads this or another person close to Torre tells him this. If he had Shelley Duncan in the lineup on Monday instead of Johnny Damon (this ain't Monday morning QB'ing either, the righties all hit Moseley hard that night), he could have given the Anaheim bullpen a nice souvenir and the Yankees could have had that game won early.

But, we got a great outing from Pettitte last night. Some big hits off Lackey. And another overpowering inning from Joba Chamberlain. Especially sweet to see him strike out that little piece of shit, Orlando Cabrera. He fucking sucks. Anybody who wants to give him credit for being a decent offensive player needs to realize that this is the first season he's had an OPS+ over 100. And he's still got time to drop, too. And he should have more throwing errors, but Casey Kotchman catches everything and has probably saved him numerous times. Games 2, 3, and 4 outlooks will each come at some point before that corresponding game.

B.A.'s outlook on Yankees' offense for games 1 and 2 of Anaheim series

Good news, Bad news, with the more significant news coming first

Game 1, August 20 - Yankees facing Dustin Moseley

Good News:
Dustin Moseley has been awful in the second half, especially in his last 5 outings. In his last 22.1 innings, he has allowed 33 hits, 9 walks, and 20 earned runs for an ERA of 8.07 and a WHIP of 1.883. Over these 5 outings he's had an exactly 1:1 groundball to flyball ratio. On the season it's 1.73, so he was clearly better when he was coming out of the pen in the first half. This second half for him has been disastrous.

Bad News:
Dustin Moseley can be tough on lefties. Lefties are performing at .222/.289/.359 clips with 19 strikeouts in 117 AB versus righties who are killing this guy at .331/.380/.455 clips with just 15 strikeouts in 154 AB. And in Moseley's last 5 outings, a lot of the damage done against him has been by Mike Piazza, Mark Ellis, Detroit's heavily right-handed lineup, Mike Lowell and Manny Ramirez. So the Yankees will need to stack their lineup with righties like Andy Phillips and Shelley Duncan. And I just checked the Yankees' lineup for tonight. Phillips is in but Duncan is not. Come on, Joe...

Game 2, August 21, Yankees facing Kelvim Escobar

Bad News:
Winning this one will not be an easy task, considering Mike Mussina doesn't throw harder than Tim Wakefield anymore and the fact that Kelvim Escobar is pitching in Anaheim. In Anaheim, this year, he has a 2.07 ERA and a 1.126 WHIP. He has also pitched well on the road, but it makes sense that he's been less effective on the road because of how much of a pitcher's park Angel Stadium is.

Good News:
If I were to put this lineup together, unlike tonight, I would get all the lefties in there for tomorrow's game. The .258/.317/.388 clips for lefties versus .220/.276/.300 for righties (and the obviously higher IsoP by lefties) would help explicate that thinking. However, I might consider starting Jose Molina over Jorge Posada because Posada has abysmal numbers against Escobar in his career, and he can use every offday he can get considering how he couldn't get a day off in the first half. I would also be ready to...yes, that's right, I am actually saying this...play some smallball. Escobar has allowed 15 stolen bases in 17 attempts and Jeff Mathis only 3 for 22 throwing out runners this year. For his career he's just 6 for 37. So, the Yankees should "have larceny on their minds" as Ken Singleton would say.

I'll give my outlook on Game 3 tomorrow.