River Avenue Blues

River Ave. Blues » Archives for Mike

A Goodbye and a Thank You

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Don’t be sad it’s over. Be happy you were along for the ride. (Getty)

I’m going to let you all in on a little secret. There has never been a moment — not once — where I felt like I deserved the recognition or praise that came my way for RAB. I’m not oblivious to the site’s success and to this day I have a hard time wrapping my head around it, but I don’t feel I’ve earned it.

To me, I’m just a guy who had an internet connection and met the right people at the right time, has a love of dingers and Mariano Rivera frontdoor cutters …

… and has a curiosity about baseball. When we launched RAB, it started as a passion project, and I did my best to keep up with Joe and Ben. We’ve added writers over the years to reduce my workload and also to bring different perspectives to the site, and I felt the same way. I’ve just been trying to keep up.

I never expected RAB to become what it did or last as long as it did or lead to where it did, and I feel I played only a small part in that. RAB was at its best with multiple voices and different opinions, and I am only one person. Everyone here made me better. So did all the other baseball bloggers out there, Yankees or otherwise, though they may not know it.

No one pushed me to be better more than you folks though. Through mailbag questions, emails, social media, and our comments (RIP), RAB readers pushed me to be better. You helped me broaden my horizons, helped me come up with post ideas — I couldn’t possibly tell you how many topics I “stole” from the comments or random Twitter interactions over the years — and kept me on my toes.

The Yankees provide great subject matter and a dedicated fan base, and that made RAB all the more fun. More demanding, but also more fun. Building a successful blog is almost impossible nowadays. Building one in the New York media market about this team? I look back and wonder how we managed to do it, and I know I couldn’t have done it without everyone who read. Your passion pushed me.

RAB has led to some pretty cool things, including my current spot with CBS Sports. Eventually I became credentialed — I am forever grateful to Marc Carig for showing an overwhelmed blogger the ropes in a big league clubhouse (you can all Marc thank for talking me into keeping RAB alive as long as I did) — and now I’m in the BBWAA and halfway to a Hall of Fame vote. This was not the plan, but here I am.

The best part of RAB has been the friendships, both the new ones I’ve made and the existing ones that grew stronger. I’ve put a lot of time into RAB and the friendships make it all worth it. There are things I would change if we could go back and do it again — we were jerks to people unnecessarily in the early going, which I blame on youthful know-it-all-ness — but not that. I have friends for life because of RAB.

RAB started as a hobby and evolved into a life-changing journey. I’m sad the site is shutting down but I also know it’s time. Part of me is sad to see RAB go and the rest of me is excited to figure out what’s next. Whatever it is, I know it won’t be as rewarding. Even though I never met most of you, you were part of my life for 12 years, and you helped me get to where I am today.

Thank you for reading, thank you for the thank yous and the stories about what RAB meant to you, and thank you for pushing me to make RAB the best it could possibly be.

–30–

A Guide to Life After RAB

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How it all started.

In the three weeks since we announced RAB is shutting down, I’ve been overwhelmed by thank yous and people reaching out to tell me what RAB means to them. It means a lot to me (to us) and I thank everyone who reached out.

In those three weeks I’ve also been overwhelmed by folks asking where they can get their Yankees fix going forward. With no more RAB, people want to know where to go next, so I figured it was worth putting together this “guide to life after RAB” post. It feels presumptuous (who made me bloglord?), but people want it, so here it is.

Going forward, the RAB website will remain live so you can go back through the archives, though the site will not be updated. Our Twitter account @RiverAveBlues will remain active though. That’s easy enough. Here is everything I could cobble together for the post-RAB world. I hope this helps, and thank you again for reading.

“RAB Thoughts” Patreon

In our shutdown post I said I was considering a mailing list/newsletter type thing with a weekly “thoughts” style post. Posts like this. You’ve seen plenty of them even if you haven’t been reading RAB all that long. I’ve decided to go through with the once-a-week thoughts posts. I’m still going to have the itch to write (and fanboy and complain) about the Yankees, and one post a week shouldn’t be a burden.

These weekly thoughts posts won’t appear at RAB and they won’t be free. I’ve set up a $3 per month Patreon page called RAB Thoughts. Create a Patreon account (the account itself is free) if you don’t have one already, then click the “Become a Patron” button on the RAB Thoughts page, and you’re in. Weekly thoughts posts for the cost of one non-Starbucks cup of coffee a month. You’ll get an email each time a post goes live. There’s also a Patreon mobile app and you can received a notification for new posts. Easy peasy.

I am leaning toward Wednesday being thoughts post day. I definitely don’t want to do it Monday because it’ll hang over my head all weekend. Wednesday’s a good day right in the middle of the week. Maybe Thursday works better because it is typically the end of the previous series and start of the new series. I’ll see how it goes. For now, the first post will be Wednesday, May 8th. I’m taking the rest of this week off, so it’ll start up next week.

(Update: Just to be clear, the Patreon will be year-round, not just during the baseball season.)

Where you can find us

Yankees news and analysis

I leave you with a smorgasbord. Try a little of everything and see what you like. Personally, I read everything Lindsey writes (no, The Athletic is not paying me to say that) and pretty much everything at RLYW. I enjoy the snark and the short, snappy posts.

Minor league daily updates and analysis

The Bronx View runs a daily update post similar to DotF. Pinstriped Prospects is the best independent source for farm system news and they provide lots of original reporting, including Extended Spring Training information that is impossible to get anywhere else.

Stats and other information

FanGraphs has a bullpen workload page similar to ours, though it doesn’t include warm-ups or Triple-A pitchers. The individual player pages at Baseball Savant (here is CC Sabathia’s, for example) are incredibly useful. Traditional stats, Statcast, heat maps, the works. My best advice — my only advice, really — is to keep playing around with each site. There’s so much information and so many tools available these days that it can be overwhelming, I know. Give it time and you’ll learn your way around.

Ten Years of the RAB Fan Confidence Poll

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(Chris McGrath/Getty)

I did not realize this at the time, but the ten-year anniversary of our Fan Confidence Poll was this past March 2nd. The big stories when we launched the Fan Confidence Poll? Alex Rodriguez needing hip surgery, Mark Teahen trade rumors, and CC Sabathia’s and A.J. Burnett’s Spring Training debuts. Feels like a lifetime ago.

Like pretty much everything else with RAB, I did not expect the Fan Confidence Poll to last as long as it did. I was hoping to capture a few months worth of data, maybe two or three years worth if everything went well, and now here we are a decade later. The idea is pretty self-explanatory: Take the pulse of the fanbase over a long stretch of time.

There has always been a lot of week-to-week noise in the Fan Confidence Poll. A good week will cause fan confidence to spike. Going 1-6 and getting swept by the Red Sox meant a tumble. Big trade? Series of injuries? They all have a short-term impact on fan confidence. Here’s an interactive Fan Confidence Graph and here’s an annotated version:

(1) The absolute peak of the Fan Confidence Poll is, of course, the 2009 World Series. The Yankees won the World Series on a Wednesday. The prior Monday they had a 3-1 series lead and the Fan Confidence Poll peaked at 9.27. The following week it was at 9.25. People were apparently more confident about winning the World Series before winning the World Series than after actually winning the World Series. Huh. It’s come close a few times, but fan confidence never again reached 9.00 after the 2009 World Series hangover faded away.

(2) Eyeballing it, I would’ve guessed that dip in mid-2010 was the Cliff Lee non-trade. Fan confidence went from 8.01 one week to 6.85 the next week. But nope, it was not the Lee non-trade. That came a few weeks later. That big dip came after … a series loss to the Mets? A series loss to the Mets. The Yankees dropped two of three in Citi Field to a pretty mediocre Mets squad that weekend and fans were Mad Online. Fan confidence actually increased from 8.01 to 8.48 following the Lee non-trade. It increased because fans were happy the Yankees held on to Jesus Montero. What a time to be alive. Also, Fan confidence dropped only slightly (6.99 to 6.67) when Lee signed with the Phillies that winter.

(3) The big sudden dip in 2011 (7.42 to 5.43) is one of the largest week-to-week drops in Fan Confidence Poll history and it was because the Yankees lost five in a row the previous week, including getting swept by the Red Sox over the weekend. Also, the Yankees were 3-10 in their previous 13 games at the time, and fan angst was on the rise.

(4) In the span of about an hour one January 2012 afternoon, the Yankees traded for Michael Pineda and signed Hiroki Kuroda. Questions about the rotation persisted for two straight years up to that point (remember when they went into 2011 with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia penciled into rotation spots?), then, in one fell swoop, the Yankees added a high-upside youngster and a quality veteran on a one-year contract. Fan confidence jumped from 7.06 to 8.41.

(5) About four months later, fan confidence dropped from 7.69 to 6.07 in the span of two weeks because we learned Pineda had a torn labrum and needed season-ending surgery, and also because Mariano Rivera blew out his knee on the Kauffman Stadium warning track during batting practice. That was not a good week.

(6) The single biggest week-to-week drop in Fan Confidence Poll history came during the 2012 ALCS. The Yankees beat the Orioles in Game Five of the ALDS and fan confidence sat at 7.98. The next week it was down to 4.41. The Yankees trailed the Tigers two games to none in the ALCS and Derek Jeter broke his ankle in Game One. Gloomy postseason series situation and the captain’s devastating injury led to a massive, massive drop in fan confidence.

(7) Despite a plethora of injuries, a good start to the season had fan confidence on the rise early in 2013. As the season played out and reality set in, fan confidence dipped and eventually bottomed out at 3.06 on September 23rd, 2013. The Yankees had been eliminated from the postseason race, the roster was old and expensive, and the farm system was unproductive. As a result, fan confidence was at its lowest point during the RAB era.

(8) A busy offseason (Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Masahiro Tanaka) and Tanaka’s early season dominance had fan confidence on the rise early in 2014. However, because things went so poorly the year before, the big increase only brought fan confidence back up into the 7.00 range. Fan confidence very rarely dipped below 7.00 from 2009-12. Now the Yankees were struggling to give their fans reason to get back up to that level.

(9) Aside from a few spikes at midseason, fans never really did buy into the 2015 Yankees. They faded badly in the second half and were quickly dispatched by Dallas Keuchel and the Astros in the AL Wild Card Game. By the middle of 2016, fans were as consistently low on the Yankees as at any point in Fan Confidence Poll history. They were bad, they sat just under .500 most of the first half, and there were no indications major change was coming …

(10) … and then major change did arrive. The Yankees traded veterans for prospects at the 2016 deadline, were universally praised for their moves, and fan confidence climbed from 3.51 to 6.02 in two weeks. Two weeks after that, it sat at 6.75. Gary Sanchez arrived soon thereafter and went on a two-month assault of American League pitching. Fan confidence steadily climbed starting with the 2016 trade deadline and continuing through the 2017 season and into early 2018.

(11) Last May 7th, fan confidence hit its highest point (8.71) since April 19th, 2010 (8.93). For all intents and purposes, that was the lifespan of the rebuild transition. The Yankees won the 2009 World Series, faded a bit from 2010-12, bottomed out from 2013-16, then rose back up in 2017 and 2018. Fan confidence slipped as last season progressed because the Red Sox ran away with the AL East, and it has slipped again early this year because there are so many injuries. Given how well the Yankees have played the last two weeks or so, I would’ve expected fan confidence to rise as the Yankees got healthy.

* * *

The week-to-week noise is inevitable. The overall trends in fan confidence across the last ten years are pretty easy to see in the graph though. Fans were feeling good about things from 2009-2012, then fan confidence really sank from 2013 to the middle of 2016. The climb from the 2016 trade deadline through 2017 is pretty neat. It is essentially a measurement of fans falling in love with Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, and all the other youngsters.

There will be no Fan Confidence Poll this week because there’s really no point with RAB shutting down today. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote over the years, even the trolls who voted “one” each week. I hoped this little spur of the moment project back in the day would help us take pulse of the fanbase, and I think it’s done that quite well. The injuries stink, but I’m glad we’re going out on a high note with a talented young homegrown core.

Update: I’ve had a few people ask about weekly voting sample sizes and whatnot, so here’s my Fan Confidence Poll spreadsheet.

Yankees 11, Giants 5: Yankees close out RAB era with a sweep

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All things considered, I’m not sure I could’ve asked the Yankees for a better ending to the RAB era. With RAB set to close its internet doors Monday, the Yankees went out and clobbered the Giants in Sunday’s series finale to finish the three-game series sweep. The final score was 11-5. The Yankees have won eleven of their last 13 games.

Our high flyin’ large adult baseball sons. (Presswire)

Two In The First, Two In The Second, Two In The Third
The Yankees have played a lot of bad teams in the early going this season. The Orioles, the Tigers, the White Sox, the Royals … the Yankees have played them all already. The Giants have more name value on their roster than those four teams combined, but gosh, they are every bit as bad based on what we saw this weekend. Every bit as bad on the field and way more expensive. San Francisco has some onerous contracts, for sure.

It did not take long for the Giants to show their badness on Sunday. DJ LeMahieu opened the game with a single to left, then righty Dereck Rodriguez nibbled the bases loaded. He walked Luke Voit on six pitches and Brett Gardner on five pitches, and only six of those eleven pitches were fastballs. Rodriguez kept trying to get Voit and Gardner to chase something soft and they wouldn’t do it. Three batters, three baserunners.

Gary Sanchez gave Rodriguez and the Giants the double play ball they needed. Tailor-made 6-4-3 double play ball. Instead, the usually sure-handed Brandon Crawford bobbled the grounder and zero outs were recorded. The Giants did turn the 4-6-3 double play on Gleyber Torres’ broken bat grounder, but another run scored to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. It’s nice being on the other end of those sloppy mistakes, isn’t it?

The second inning opened with two quick baserunners (Gio Urshela single, Tyler Wade walk) and two quick outs (Domingo German strikeout, LeMahieu fly out). For whatever reason, Giants catcher Erik Kratz tried to pick Urshela off second base with a snap throw, but no one was ready for it. Certainly not the infielder at second. The throw sailed into center, the runners moved up, and Voit brought them home with a single against the shift.

Two runs in the first after the botched double play, two runs in the second after Kratz’s ill-advised snap throw, and two runs in the third on a Gleyber homer. Rodriguez walked Sanchez to start the inning and Torres parked one in the left-center field seats. This is one of the few times the behind-the-plate camera angle is #ActuallyGood:

Good gravy Oracle Park is huge. Look at that left-center field gap. Also, the way Gleyber smiled and pointed at the dugout as he rounded first base leads me to believe he called his shot there. Either he called it or whoever he pointed called it. Pretty cool. The Yankees worked Rodriguez over: 3 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 4 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 1 HR on 81 pitches. Two of the three strikeouts were German, the opposing pitcher. Eighty-one pitches to get three outs. Lordy.

German Hits A Wall
As great as he’s been, Domingo German was not going to sustain a sub-2.00 ERA all season. That’s just not happening in Yankee Stadium and in the AL East in general. At some point the correction was coming. It came in the sixth inning Sunday and it came at a good time. If you’re going to give up four runs in one inning, the best time to do it is when your team has given you an 8-0 run cushion.

German cruised through the first five innings against an admittedly terrible Giants lineup. He retired 15 of the first 17 batters he faced and the two baserunners were a single by the opposing pitcher (Rodriguez) and a Voit error. Voit had more time than he realized when he rushed and airmailed a throw to German covering first base. Only three of those first 17 batters managed to hit the ball out of the infield. German made it look easy. Very easy.

The wheels kinda came off in that sixth inning. Tyler Austin worked a hard-fought ten-pitch leadoff walk, Cameron Maybin misread a ball off the wall in left field, German hung a two-strike breaking ball to Kevin Pillar … just not a lot went right in that sixth inning. After throwing 59 pitches in the first five innings, German needed 28 pitches to get through that sixth inning. His final line: 6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 4 K. Looks worse than it was.

Even after seemingly hitting a wall in that sixth inning, German owns a 2.56 ERA (2.79 FIP) with strong strikeout (25.8%) and walk (7.3%) rates through 32.1 innings. He walked five batters in five innings in his first start, remember. Only four walks in 27.1 innings since. I’m not sure the homer rate will last forever (0.57 HR/9 and 6.3% HR/FB), but gosh, German looks so confident right now. It really seems like something has clicked. Exciting!

Domingo Dandy. (Presswire)

Leftovers
Second homer in as many days for Sanchez, who hit a two-run shot deep into the left field bleachers in the sixth inning. Maybe a row or two from the concourse. It wasn’t as long (430 feet) as Saturday’s grand slam (467 feet), but it looked longer because it was closer to the line and nearly cleared the bleachers. Even after missing time with the calf injury, Gary still leads all catchers with eight home runs.

The Giants made some more mistakes in the ninth inning to help the Yankees score three more insurance runs. Maybin (one run) and Wade (two-run) both had run-scoring singles that inning. Three hits and a walk for Voit, who’s up to .283/.397/.538 (149 wRC+) on the season. Two hits and a walk for Torres, two hits for Urshela before getting hurt (hit-by-pitch in hand), and two hits for Thairo Estrada after coming off the bench to replace LeMahieu (knee inflammation).

Pretty easy afternoon for the bullpen, even after the Giants hung a four-spot on German in the sixth. Jonathan Holder went 1-2-3 in the seventh, Tommy Kahnle pitched around a walk in the eighth, and Joe Harvey allowed a garbage time solo homer in the ninth after the offense tacked on those insurance runs. Nice and easy game for the relief crew. Thanks for that.

And finally, make it a 39-game on-base streak for Voit. It is the longest active on-base streak in baseball — Freddie Freeman is second and he extended his streak to 28 games Sunday afternoon — and it is the longest streak by a Yankee since Mark Teixeira had a 42-gamer in 2010.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
MLB.com has the box score and video highlights and ESPN has the updated standings. Here’s our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the win probability graph:


Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
For RAB, one final day of posts. Tomorrow is the site’s final day. For the Yankees, it’s an off-day. They’ll spend Monday’s off-day in Phoenix before opening a quick two-game series with the Diamondbacks on Tuesday. CC Sabathia and righty Merrill Kelly are the scheduled starters for Tuesday night’s opener.

The Final DotF: Park, Gittens have big games in Trenton’s win

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RHP Nick Green has been placed on the Double-A Trenton injured list, the team announced. He joins RHP Trevor Stephan and RHP Nick Nelson (and others) on the shelf. Also, RHP Garrett Whitlock was removed from yesterday’s start after one inning, though he remains on the active roster. No word on what’s wrong with any of these guys. The injury bug that bit the big league team has spread through the minors too, apparently. Sheesh.

The Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders were rained out. No word on the makeup date yet.

Double-A Trenton Thunder (4-2 win over Erie)

  • SS Hoy Jun Park: 3-3, 1 R, 1 2B, 1 CS — 13-for-34 (.383) with five doubles and three triples in his last eight games
  • LF Ben Ruta: 1-3, 1 2B, 2 RBI, 1 K — this game *lowers* his batting line to .403/.506/.582
  • 1B Chris Gittens: 2-3, 1 R, 1 2B, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 BB — 12-for-27 (.444) with three doubles, one triple, three homers, eight walks, and six strikeouts in his last eight games
  • DH Brandon Wagner: 0-3, 1 BB
  • RHP Rony Garcia: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 8 K, 1 HB, 3/1 GB/FB — 55 of 101 pitches were strikes (54%) … some control issues, but that’s a fine Double-A debut for the 21-year-old, who has been pressed into duty here because of all the injuries

[Read more…]

Update: DJ LeMahieu exits Sunday’s game with right knee inflammation

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(Getty)

7:33pm ET: LeMahieu will get an MRI and see an orthopedist tomorrow, Aaron Boone announced following the game. It looks like a deep bruise but they want to make sure that’s it.

5:45pm ET: LeMahieu has right knee inflammation, the Yankees announced. X-rays came back negative. Hopefully he’ll be able to return to action following the off-day tomorrow.

5:06pm ET: DJ LeMahieu was removed from this afternoon’s game in the third inning with a possible injury. He walked off the field gingerly following the bottom of the second and was slow going down the dugout steps. LeMahieu fouled a pitch into his knee two days ago.

I’ve honestly lost count of how many Yankees are on the injured list right now. I think it’s 13? At least 12, I know that much. Among those injured Yankees are three infielders (Miguel Andujar, Didi Gregorius, Troy Tulowitzki), and three outfielders (Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton). Geez.

LeMahieu had a single and a fly out earlier in the game, not to mention several fairly routine defensive plays, and he seemed to be moving okay until the end of the second inning. With a sizeable lead and an off-day tomorrow, hopefully this is just precautionary. Stay tuned for updates.

Should LeMahieu miss time, the Yankees already have Thairo Estrada on the big league roster, and the recently signed Brad Miller in Triple-A as an obvious call-up candidate. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. We’ll see.

Update: X-rays negative after Gio Urshela takes pitch to hand

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(Presswire)

7:14pm ET: X-rays on Urshela’s hand came back negative, the Yankees announced. That’s great news. That said, I’m sure Urshela’s hand is swollen and sore. He might need a few days before returning to the lineup. Hopefully he can avoid the injured list. Here’s the video:

5:38pm ET: Ah good, another injured Yankee. Gio Urshela exited this afternoon’s game after taking a pitch to the top of the left hand in the fifth inning. DJ LeMahieu exited the game with a possible injury earlier as well. Urshela will presumably go for x-rays. So many little easy-to-break bones in the hand.

The Yankees have either 12 or 13 players on the injured list. I forgot exactly how many at this point. Urshela is filling in at third base for Miguel Andujar and he’s been great, including reaching base three times Sunday. Add in the defense and you couldn’t have asked him for much more.

Thairo Estrada is already on the big league roster and the Yankees have Brad Miller in Triple-A as an obvious call-up candidate. If they need to replace LeMahieu or Urshela, they go do it easily. If they have to replace both? Goodness, I have no idea. Stay tuned for an update on Urshela.