Bustin' Out Da Bronx

Dave Paisley

Never mind the hoopla about McGwire, Sosa and Griffey, those unlovable denizens of the Bronx are closing in on an all-time best W-L record, and I don't know about you, I just don't see a bunch of world-beaters out there. David Wells at 13-2 with 3.52 ERA? Not a single player voted as an All-Star starter? Is this what you get when a bunch of above-average guys all play above average at the same time?

Let's take a look inside the Big Pinstriped Machine.

Through 106 games, they have scored 626 runs, while n the pitching department, they have given up a mere 410, 25 of those unearned. Using the Pythagorean projection, that should be a .700 winning percentage, or 74 wins in 106 games. They actually have 78 wins, and while that's better than the projection, it's not out of line with the kind of margin of error you could expect for an individual team in a single season. For the more statistically inclined, it's about one standard deviation.

Projecting to the end of a 162-game season, they would score 957 runs while giving up only 627. So what, you ask, is that really very good? Well, let me point out that the 1927 Yankees went 110-44, for a .714 winning percentage, and they scored 975 runs and gave up only 599 (translates to 1025-630 over 162 games.)

So the '98 Yankees have pitching comparable to that great team, and are worse by just 70 runs scored. However, as noted above, the '98 Yanks are making more wins out of their runs than you would expect, while the '27 Yanks actually underachieved Pythagoras by about 2 wins. Take away 56 runs given up by an assortment of four scrubs, mostly in blowouts, and the '98 Yanks are looking mighty fine.

However, we already know this team is putting together an awesome season, but is it an awesome team? In the preseason nobody was picking the Yanks to be better than, say, the Braves. Heck, some alleged professional baseball writers were picking the Orioles to beat them for the division. I'll review their hitting here, and follow up with a review of their pitching in part two on Saturday.

Hitting

When the season began, the Yankee lineup looked like this:

Starting Lineup	97 OPS	5-Year OPS	Dave's Predicted 98 OPS
2B Chuck Knoblauch	.801	.801	.800
SS Derek Jeter	.775	.783	.770
RF Paul O'Neill	.913	.922	.900
CF Bernie Williams	.952	.865	.920
1B Tino Martinez	.948	.873	.900
DH Chili Davis	.895	.884	.880
LF Tim Raines	.857	.827	.820
C Joe Girardi	.645	.689	.660
3B Scott Brosius	.576	.737	.700
Average	.818	.825	.817
Bench
OF Chad Curtis	.843	.753	.850
IF Luis Sojo	.727	.737	.720
C Jorge Posada	.769	.769	.750
Average	.780	.753	.773

Chuck Knoblauch was seen as the final piece of the puzzle, and he certainly projected to be better than the previous incumbents. It was widely rumored that Joe Girardi would keep the starting catcher job, despite Posada's much better offense. Scott Brosius, coming off an abysmal year, had nowhere to go but up. Running down the rest of the lineup, Jeter looked solid, O'Neill has settled into a .900 OPS pattern, Bernie Williams was coming off a pretty good year - would he settle back down or keep improving?

Tino Martinez had a heck of a year in '97, could he keep it up? Chili Davis was expected to provide steady offense from the DH slot. Tim Raines is aging quite gracefully, and could be expected to provide most of a season, backed up in LF by Curtis. Overall, a strong, balanced lineup.

What actually happened is shown in the following table:

Starting Lineup	Actual 98 OPS	Change from Projection
2B Chuck Knoblauch	.749	-.051
SS Derek Jeter	.869	.099
RF Paul O'Neill	.878	-.022
CF Bernie Williams	1.033	.113
1B Tino Martinez	.840	-.060
LF Chad Curtis	.765	-.115
DH Tim Raines	.768	-.052
C Jorge Posada	.868	.208
3B Scott Brosius	.802	.102
Average	.841	.024
Bench
DH/OF Darryl Strawberry	.966	.116
IF Luis Sojo	.411	-.309
C Joe Girardi	.661	-.089
Average	.601	-.155

On any other team in any other situation, Chuck Knoblauch would be labeled a bust. Here he is, 50 points of OPS below his 5-year average, yet he's in a great situation. Derek Jeter, however, more than makes up for Knoblauch. He's having a great year, with his power developing. Still not in the Alex Rodriguez class, but a big improvement. Paul O'Neill is a little off, but nothing too serious.

Bernie Williams, on the other hand, has taken off like a rocket, and he more than picks up the slack for O'Neill. He also picks up the slack for Tino Martinez while he's at it. Tino's year is something of a fall back to average for him. meanwhile, Curtis and Raines filled the LF and DH slots in unusual combinations. The drop in offense is significant relative to a more youthful Tim Raines and a healthy Chili Davis. Throw in Darryl Strawberry once in a while, though, and the offense hasn't suffered too much.

Once again though, we have someone more than picking up the difference. In this case it's Jorge Posada, who was given the primary catching duty, and not only is he outhitting any previous expectations for Joe Girardi, he's outhitting his own 1997 numbers by a hefty margin.

Finally, we get to Scott Brosius. Expectations for him were so low, there's no way he could lose, but even average performance from 3B is more than adequate for this team.

To summarize, the starting offense is a very nice .024 points of OPS ahead of my preseason projection and should have scored around 588 runs so far. The fact that they've scored 626 tells me that they are making the absolute most of any scoring opportunities they get.

That's the hitting story. No superstar runaway seasons, although Bernie Williams is close. Without a lot of home runs, however, it's tough to get much attention this season.

On Saturday, the Yankee pitching...

The Pythagorean formula is: Winning Percentage = RS^2 / (RS^2+RA^2) where RS = Runs Scored, and RA = Runs Allowed

Dave Paisley still figures there's got to be a mathematical way to calculate the flavor of that mystery Starburst fruit chew. Tell him that N = Mango is false at drdjp@strikethree.com.