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[behindthewriting-blog]

It is June 26 and it is Derek Jeter’s birthday. It also is the 11th anniversary of the first time I stepped foot in a major league baseball press setting.

You’re asking how do I remember this? Well if you know me, you might be aware of my memory ability especially when it comes to baseball. So...

[behindthewriting-blog]

The day began with lunch at the table of a longtime writer and the conversation morphed into the discussion about access and other modern media topics. Then it ended with a lament of how with so many people at games in New York, nobody writes about the visiting team anymore.

It’s a fair point and...

[behindthewriting-blog]

It’s about 11:30 PM on a Saturday night and I’m standing on the platform waiting for a downtown number four train outside of Yankee Stadium. While I have a 10-minute wait, one of my favorite Neil Young songs comes on the radio.

As I listen, I am content that what I wrote about the Yankees’ 4-2...

[behindthewriting-blog]

Fans chant, I write about Pettitte strikeouts

Anyone who knows me, knows that my speaking voice is not exactly the loudest. So maybe the headline is an exaggeration but there was a time I was in the stands to watch Pettitte pitch.

In fact, Thursday will be the 17th anniversary of the first time I saw Pettitte in person. It’s also the same day that he pitched seven innings, allowed one run and four hits for his first career victory.

What led me to that game was no special reason other than at the time, the Daily News had coupons or vouchers for free Yankee tickets as teams did what they could to get people back in the stands following the lengthy and ugly baseball strike.

Since the next day was Brooklyn-Queens Day for public school students in those boroughs, that was the game I picked to attend.

That came against an Oakland Athletics lineup featuring Rickey Henderson, Mark McGwire, Ruben Sierra, Terry Steinbach. It was an opponent that still had some of the bats but none of the pitching that led them to division championships in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 1992.

Moving on to the present, had I been in the stands I would have been chanting for Pettitte’s name but instead, I was writing about him again, which is fine. I can write Andy Pettitte stories for as long as he wants to pitch since besides being among the best pitchers in Yankee history, he is a good guy to talk to and listen to talk.

He’ll explain things in depth when asked and also be among the more disappointed people in the world when he doesn’t pitch well. The latter is how he sounded during parts of 2008 when he was not doing so well as the summer wore on.

As for last night, by now you might know Pettitte struck out 10. You might also know it’s his 14th career double-digit strikeout game during the regular season. And since Pettitte has made 484 regular-season starts, that’s a very small percentage.

Here’s something you might not know, that his 32 strikeouts through five starts are his most to begin a season. In other words, he has not had this many strikeouts through his first five starts in any season until this year.

So that’s what I based the article on. I started researching that figure on baseball reference around the fourth inning just as the Yankees extended their two-run lead to a six-run lead.

One of the things I also like to is provide more detailed looks at how things like 10 strikeouts happen. So as the strikeouts began piling up, I was keeping track of the pitch sequences so I could say things like:

He struck out B.J. Upton on a 3-2 cutter for the second out of the first inning. With a man on base, Pettitte recorded the final two outs of the second by getting left-handed hitters Pena, on a 1-2 slider, and Luke Scott, on a 1-2 fastball. In the third, Pettitte struck out the side. He retired Jose Molina on a full-count, outside fastball, set down Elliot Johnson on a 0-2 cutter and finished off the frame by getting Desmond Jennings on a 1-2 slider. Pettitte’s next five outs were not strikeouts, but with two on in the fifth he retired Johnson again, this time needing just three pitches before getting the swing and miss on an 0-2 slider. His eighth strikeout was an outside fastball that retired Jennings for the first out of the sixth. It occurred after Jennings fouled off five of 10 pitches and was Pettitte’s only called strikeout. For his ninth strikeout, Pettitte got Pena to chase a pitch that appeared well out of the strike zone. His last strikeout was getting Scott on a check swing.

I knew I was going to write about Pettitte at around that point, though I thought there was an outside chance I might be writing about the same thing Johan Santana did last Friday. 

In the postgame, I had wanted to get some color from catcher Russell Martin, but Pettitte had not come out yet and I didn’t want to risk not hearing him properly. I had wanted to ask him what accounts for all his strikeouts, but the strikeout question was asked differently and covered what I figure he might say in response to my question.

“I don’t really try to strike guys out,” Pettitte said. “I feel like I’m able to keep guys off balance an awful lot right now. I’ve been real happy with my command and the feel of all my pitches. I didn’t think it would come back so quick.” So that’s how I handled a double-digit strikeout performance by Andy Pettitte. Maybe he’ll turn in another similar performance for a future blog post.

[larryfleisher-blog]

Granderson hits three home runs with some technical hitting support

The headline is about a game in April against the Minnesota Twins when Curtis Granderson hit three home runs. At some point during the postgame interview when the television cameras were rolling, Granderson said something about his timing and mechanical adjustments that allowed him to hit three home runs.

I was kind of standing in the back listening but as the crowd thinned out, I was curious about what he said, especially since I'm interested in the technical aspects of the game.

What he said was the following:

“We had Weber in the cage today and we just had him throw pitches from the windup. I really didn’t care about the result,” Granderson said. “I just wanted to make sure I was down in position to hit. I had Kevin Long standing behind me saying, 'yes, no, yes, no' if I got it right. I could feel it right away, 'Hey I didn’t get it and OK I got that one.' We weren’t even looking at the results.”

And that quote became the one that drove the story of Granderson hitting three home runs.

http://www.metro.us/newyork/sports/article/1140920--granderson-s-three-homers-power-yankees-win

[larryfleisher-blog]

Using Advanced Statistics - How it happened

This piece was written last week before a Yankee-Royals game. The backstory is this, Mark Teixeira had not hit much due to a bronchial infection. He missed a weekend series and batted seventh for two games. Then he was placed in the third spot. The obvious story is him returning to the third spot in the lineup. 

But then he said something that was interesting: 

“I think, for me, I’ve been putting too many balls in play,” Teixeira said. “That sounds crazy. But I don’t think I’ve been as aggressive at the plate. So when I’m swinging, instead of fouling a pitch off or missing it — there’s nothing wrong with missing the first pitch of an at-bat — but if you ground it out or pop it up, you go, ‘Man I just wasted that at-bat.’”

That led me to wonder about some of the advanced stats about Teixeira, such as his batting average on balls in play, which is a stat that measures batting average excluding home runs. In other words, everything that gets hit besides home runs such as ground balls, singles and so on. The findings were easily discovered via fangraphs.com and they seemed to back up what Teixeira was saying.

Mark Teixeira stood at his locker and said all the right things about hitting third after spending two days as the team’s No. 7 hitter. A few minutes into his session with reporters before Wednesday night’s game with the Royals, he freely confessed something that numbers will back up. “I think, for me, I’ve been putting too many balls in play,” Teixeira said. “That sounds crazy. But I don’t think I’ve been as aggressive at the plate. So when I’m swinging, instead of fouling a pitch off or missing it — there’s nothing wrong with missing the first pitch of an at-bat — but if you ground it out or pop it up, you go, ‘Man I just wasted that at-bat.’” Teixeira has a .229 batting average through 153 at-bats and 167 plate appearances. So far, he has seen 616 pitches. That translates to 3.68 pitches per at-bat, which is the lowest of his career. Teixeira has walked just 11 times and his .281 on-base percentage is the lowest among Yankee regulars. His average has also not been helped by a career-high 46.7 percent groundball rate, up from 34.9 in 2011. It also means that when Teixeira is putting balls into play he has a .231 average, which among regular first baseman is the fifth-worst in the majors. It ranks ahead of Todd Helton, Albert Pujols, Ike Davis and Eric Hosmer. The statistic measures batted balls with home runs excluded and for Teixeira, that number has declined from .302 in 2009. In 2010, it was the second-worst in the game among first baseman and last season his .239 BABIP was the worst at his position. That occurred even as Teixeira slugged 39 home runs and drove in 111 runs. “I’ve been putting too many balls in play,” Teixeira said. “Instead of taking that swing to hit a home run and to drive the ball, I’ve never been someone that just wants to put the ball in play. And in years past on a 1-0 pitch or a 2-0 pitch and it’s maybe a little bit up or a little bit down, you swing and foul it off or you swing and miss. Now I’m putting that ball in play, which sucks.” Since returning, Teixeira’s at-bats have been mixed in terms of pitches seen. He saw three pitches in his first at-bat Tuesday and grounded into a double play, but faced five pitches in his next at-bat and lined a double that began the Yankees’ modest comeback. “If you look at his at-bats, I think they’ve gotten better,” manager Joe Girardi said. “Unfortunately, he’s been plagued by this cough. I still see him cough from time to time. Obviously not as much as I did before.” Eppley into the fire On Tuesday, with Cory Wade and Boone Logan already used and the injuries to David Robertson and Mariano Rivera, the eighth inning was split by Cody Eppley and Clay Rapada. Eppley has a sidearm motion, which is designed to get ground balls when the time calls for one.  When he entered a one-run game with nobody out and a runner on first, that is exactly what he delivered “You look at his track record; he is a ground ball guy and that’s kind of how I have to use him,” Girardi said. “If you’re looking for a double play or a runner on third with the infield in, those are the situations that I’ve kind of picked for him the last couple of days.”  So far, Eppley has faced 33 hitters and gotten 15 ground balls. In those 8 1/3 innings, he has allowed seven hits, though Tuesday was the first time he pitched in the eighth with a one-run lead. “He’s obviously throwing from his arm angle, so he’s going to have more success against right-handers than left-handers, so I’m going to have to pick that [time].”

http://www.metro.us/newyork/sports/article/1143914--yankees-notebook-teixeira-to-third-soriano-to-closer

[larryfleisher-blog]

About this Blog

For 10 years or so, I have been writing in various capacities, mostly about sports. People sometimes ask me about how I came up with a story angle or how the story progressed. Sometimes I am unsure as it just happened. Other times I know how it happened. In other words I know the back story to it and there are enough details to it to explain it. That's what we'll do here.