Joe Girardi, New York Yankees Manager: Sometimes He Just Doesn’t Add Up
August 11, 2011 · Joseph Browne · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
It’s easy to point to Tuesday night’s Yankees–Angels game, look at the line in the top of the sixth inning, and presume that it was simply yet another example of A.J. Burnett being his own worst enemy.
Typically, games pitched by A.J. Burnett go one of two ways. First, there’s the kind where you know from around the third pitch of the game that he has no shot of performing well, usually because he can’t locate any of his pitches and is behind in the count on virtually every batter.
The second kind is where he’s cruising along, seemingly dominant or close to it, and you know that at some point, either because of a bad call, poor fielding behind him or because a shiny object in the first row caught his attention, his outing will crumble faster than anyone could have ever imagined.
There are a number of contributing reasons associated with these tendencies—some technical, some mechanical—but the overriding issue is Burnett’s inability to maintain concentration and overcome challenges. So, again, the sixth inning of Tuesday’s game, if you didn’t actually see it, would appear from the box score to be just another example of A.J. being A.J.
The reality, though, was that the top of the sixth inning of Tuesday’s Yankees-Angels game was not A.J. being A.J. It was, rather, Joe Girardi being Joe Girardi—that is to say, a numbers-addicted automaton, often lacking the ability to recognize situations where statistics and percentages should be put aside in favor of simply knowing your own personnel.
The sixth inning did not start out well for Burnett; he surrendered a lead-off home run to Bobby Abreu. This was the first run that Burnett had yielded, so, in every way, Burnett was pitching very effectively. Up until that point he hadn’t walked a batter, which is not a common happening for Burnett by any means. He was pitching ahead of batters, locating all of his pitches and effectively working in his changeup on occasion (the pitch that, if used more often, could reinvigorate his career).
With that first run in, this would have appeared to be the time when, based on history, Burnett would begin to unravel. In the past, lesser events have reduced otherwise outstanding performances of Burnett’s to debacles, and so it would not have been unreasonable to think that the time had arrived for a patented Burnett meltdown.
This time, though, the meltdown didn’t come—or, more accurately, the meltdown that did come was not Burnett’s fault.
With one run in and no outs, Burnett retired Torii Hunter on a weak fly out to right field, and then walked the talented rookie Mark Trumbo. Vernon Wells followed with a deep fly out to left center and here, apparently, was the moment that unnerved Joe Girardi, as Trumbo aggressively tagged up and took second before Curtis Granderson’s throw reached the bag.
This development clearly impacted Girardi so tremendously that he decided to intentionally walk the switch-hitting Maicer Izturis—he, of the .270 batting average, five home runs and 28 RBI through 93 games. Granted, Itzuris was 2-for-2 against Burnett on the night; however, regardless of this reality we are not in Izturis dealing with the heart of the Angels’ lineup.
The worst-case scenario would be for Izturis to get his third hit of the evening, which in all likelihood would not be a home run due to his lack of power, and the situation to stand at one run in and a man on first with two outs and righty Peter Bourjos coming up.
This brings us back to the central argument of this article—that there are moments in games where the statistics and percentages that most managers rely on are secondary to understanding their personnel, their strengths (physical and otherwise) and their weaknesses (physical and otherwise).
While a statistic can tell us that lefties hit roughly 20 points higher against Burnett than do righties—.253 to .231 (which translates to just 14 more hits over 24 starts for the season, by the way)—you don’t need statistics to know that it’s a huge risk to put extra baserunners on when you have a pitcher that is emotionally unpredictable and incapable of consistently throwing strikes.
It’s simply not a good formula.
And while you may get away with it on occasion, the percentages when dealing with someone like A.J. Burnett, ironically enough, are simply not with you.
As you may have guessed, the inning blew up on the Yankees from that point on. Burnett, as one might expect, went on to unintentionally walk Bourjos and load the bases. Mike Mathis, the .180-hitting catcher for the Angels, then drilled one over the shallow-playing Granderson and, due to the ball bouncing over the left-center field fence for a ground-rule double, just two additional runs came around to score.
The Yankees would ultimately lose the game by two runs as the result of a ninth-inning home run by Bobby Abreu (his second of the game—this time against Mariano Rivera).
If this were the only example of Girardi wearing out his little black statistics book, then there would be little cause for comment. Playing the percentages gets a lot of people to a lot of places they want to go, and there is something to be said for understanding the implications of statistical analysis.
With Girardi, though, there is a relentless reliance on statistics and percentages.
In a Yankees-Red Sox game from this past weekend, for example, Girardi removed Bartolo Colon in the fifth inning of a game despite Colon having given up just two runs to that point. Additionally, in the inning that he was removed, Colon was not being hit hard by any means, with two of the three hits against him being of the infield-dribbler variety. Additionally, he was still throwing in the mid- to upper-90s.
Though this move ultimately worked out for the Yankees, it is just another example of what appears to be a reticence on the part of Girardi to make decisions based on anything other than the statistical data available to him.
Ultimately, are the Yankees well-positioned for the Wild Card and division titles? Yes, they are.
With that said, there will come a time later in the season, perhaps with one or both of those titles on the line, when a crucial decision will have to be made by Girardi. The decision will win or lose a game, perhaps extend or end the season, and the expectation is that Girardi will be within a couple of feet of his trusty black book at all times.
Let’s hope that, perhaps just once, he keeps the book closed, in the process opening his eyes to options that he would not otherwise consider.
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