Sixty-nine is a good number in New York Mets lore, but since this is a New York Yankees’ game thread, let us not think of such things. Two lefties are on the mound tonight as the Subway Series Part Deux begins at Citi Field. Andy Pettitte will make his eighth start and hopes to improve on his 3-2 record. Pettitte will match up with Jon Niese, one of the Mets better pitchers, but one the Yankees have seen plenty of times before. Niese is 4-3 with a 3.82 ERA. He has no wins against the Yankees through the years and has a 1.83 WHIP against the Bronx Bombers.  There will be no designated hitter for the Yankees since they are playing in the National League park.

The Lineups:

New York Yankees:

1. Derek Jeter – SS
2. Curtis Granderson – CF
3. Mark Teixeira – 1B
4. Alex Rodriguez – 3B
5. Robinson Cano – 2B
6. Nick Swisher – RF
7. Andruw Jones – LF
8. Russell Martin – C
9. Andy Pettitte – P

New York Mets:

1. Andres Torres – CF
2. Ronnie Cedeno – SS
3. David Wright – 3B
4. Scott Hairston – LF
5. Lucas Duda – RF
6. Justin Turner – 2B
7. Ike Davis – 1B
8. Mike Nickeas – C
9. Jon Niese – P

Game time is at 7:10 and can be seen locally on MY9 or WPIX and nationally on the MLB Network. Oh! And Jason is at the game and will be in the press box., seated beside Dan Marcus.

The 2012 Andy Pettitte story seems too good to be true. That is either a scary statement for those that follow the New York Yankees or a wondrous one. He has made seven starts. Tonight will be his eighth. And, after taking a year off, his peripherals are better than his 2010 season. And we cannot forget that 2010, before he hurt himself, was one of Pettitte’s best campaigns in years.  During that fine season when he went 11-3 in 21 starts, Andy Pettitte had a 3.28 ERA, a 3.85 FIP and 4.00 SIERA. This season, his ERA is 2.77 with a 3.50 FIP and a 2.90 SIERA. That is amazing. Roy Oswalt will make his first start for the Rangers tonight after taking almost a half a season off. The Rangers can only hope to catch the lightning in a bottle the Yankees have caught in Pettitte.

But it is not just the ERA and other pitching stats based on runs. Across the board, his numbers in 2012 are better than his 2010 numbers with the lone exception of his homers per nine rate. This season, Pettitte is striking out 8.51 batters per nine innings. That figure was 7.05 in 2010. In 2012, Pettitte is walking 2.22 batters per nine. That figure was 2.85 in 2010. Those figures give Pettitte a 3.86 strikeout to walk ratio compared to 2.46 in 2010. And there is more. Much more.

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1959 was an odd year for the New York Yankees. After winning it all in 1958, the team had basically the same personnel as it did the season before. The team never gelled in 1959 and they came a in a distant third place, fifteen full games behind the Chicago White Sox. They would go on again to win the pennant in 1960, but 1959 was not their season. Bob Turley had won the Cy Young Award in 1958 and had won 21 games. With basically the same peripherals, his ERA rose a run and a half and he won only eight games in 1959. Role players such as Andy Carey and the aged Enos Slaughter were great in 1958 but fell on hard times in 1959. Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra were still producing, but were slightly off their best that season. The season started promisingly enough. As morning dawned on April 22, 1959, the Yanks were at 6-3 and only two games out of first. And on that Wednesday, their best pitcher, Whitey Ford, would take the mound against the Washington Senators, a bad team that was off to a 3-7 start. The Yankees would prevail that day, but it took a long time and Ford would have to pitch the best game of his career.

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The thought here before the season started was that if Alex Rodriguez could reverse his trend of limited action and play 140 or more games, then his numbers would return somewhat to normal. And while the over/under game played before the season on A-Rod’s total games played is going the Yankees’ way, Rodriguez just has not been the same kind of offensive force. After the first couple of months of limited pop, the party line (stated publicly by Joe Girardi) is that A-Rod hits homers in bunches and they will come. Will they? He hit four homers in April, three in May and three so far in June.  And to add to the ten homers, he has only hit six doubles. In 2010, 41 percent of his hits were for extra bases. That number went down to 35 percent last year. This year, it sits at 25 percent. The hope that he has some pop left is diminishing.

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Tim Hudson (4-3, 3.90) is the Braves’ version of Andy Pettitte except that he is right-handed. He is a proven winner without overwhelming stuff and just knows how to get major league hitters out. If anyone has a chance to end the Yankees’ current ten-game winning streak (Gosh, that’s fun to type), it is Tim Hudson. Yes, the Yankees beat him last week. Facing Hudson and trying to make it eleven in a row for the Yankees is Hiroki Kuroda. Kuroda has given the Yankees exactly what they expected. He is 6-6 (his career M.O. to a tee) with a 3.47 ERA (also right along with his career average). Kuroda will give up his share of hits and strike out his share of batters. The one thing he must do is keep the ball inside Yankee Stadium as the Braves’ lineup will feature six batters that can go deep. Freddie Freeman will be back in the lineup for the Braves and that will help their offense. Nick Swisher will be back in right field for the Yankees.

The Lineups:

Atlanta Braves:

1. Michael Bourn – CF
2. Martin Prado – LF
3. Brian McCann – C
4. Dan Uggla – 2B
5. Freddie Freeman – 1B
6. Chipper Jones – 3B
7. Jason Heyward – RF
8. Andrelton Simmons – SS
9. Eric Hinske – DH

New York Yankees: 

1. Derek Jeter – SS
2. Curtis Granderson – CF
3. Alex Rodriguez – DH
4. Robinson Cano – 2B
5. Mark Teixeira – 1B
6. Raul Ibanez – LF
7. Nick Swisher – RF
8. Eric Chavez – 3B
9. Russell Martin – C

Game time is 7:05 and can be seen locally on MY9 and nationally on the MLB Network

During the course of Robinson Cano‘s career, the one area of weakness in his game appeared to be his lack of patience at the plate. His career walk percentage of 5.3 percent is definitely in the free-swinging category. He seemed to be making some strides in that area from 2008 to 2010 when his O-Swing rate (the rate of pitches swung at that were not strikes) went from 40.4 percent in 2007 to a low of 34.2 percent in 2010. But he regressed in that area last season and bounced up to 36.8 percent. As good a hitter as Cano is, he gave up a lot of at bats due to that lack of discipline. He walked only 38 times last season and eleven of those were intentional. That meant that he only had 27 unintentional walks all season. All those numbers are better this season.

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Back on May 21, 2012, the New York Yankees sat in last place with a record of 21-21. They were shut out that day by Felipe Paulino and the Kansas City Royals, 6-0, and were five and a half games behind the division leaders. Hiroki Kuroda got hit around pretty good that day. The tone around here was pretty grim. Our wonderful readers and comments were getting testy. What a difference a month makes. Here we are and since then, the Yankees have gone 19-4 and have gone from a .500 record to a winning percentage over .600 with the second best record in the majors. The only little blip in the road during that time was a series against a red hot Angels team that took the Yankees two out of three. Three series sweeps in a row have capped the giddy run and all were against the best teams in the National League East and the last two on the road. It has been a fun ride.

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I loved Brien’s game recap yesterday. The best part of his post was his skewering of the Yankees’ inability-to-win-without-a-homer thing. Well, sure, the Yankees had an 0-12 streak going on such games and “broke” that problem yesterday. But the statistic was meaningless. It was one of those coincidental things that happen in the numbers all the time. The problem is that everyone has access to the numbers now. And with the explosion of on-line content, everyone is trying to come up with a fresh angle. All of us that are trying to come up with something new every single day and will at times reach for such numbers. Perhaps I was guilty as well when talking about the number of fastballs Hughes is throwing. Who knows. But the over-arching point is that in this day and age of instant and accessible baseball statistics, we need to be able to filter out what matters and what doesn’t matter.

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