Matt Imbrogno, Author at River Avenue Blues

Al’s War

May 3, 2015 by Matt Imbrogno 98 Comments

Remember Disney’s “Hercules”? I recall seeing it in theaters as a kid and liking it because, hey, funny talking satyr voiced by Danny DeVito. On merit or accuracy to the actual Hercules myth, I doubt it holds up any, if at all. Regardless, a major plot point in the cartoon’s progression is that young Hercules has all this talent and strength that should be admired, but his bumbling personality and pervasive awkwardness thwart his efforts at appreciation and acceptance. Sound familiar?

About 2,000 years after Hercules, the Yankees were gifted, thanks to a big contract and the player’s union, a similarly talented and equally awkward star in Alex Rodriguez. In that decade-plus, he and the Yankees have been through euphoric highs, lamentable lows, and just about everything in between. Even before he came to the Yankees, this shifting dynamic defined A-Rod’s image. His image was variable: built up, torn down, redeemed, sullied again. Now, it looks like we’re on redemption part two. And surely next year, there will be yet another title to hoist upon Rodriguez.

To paraphrase “Field of Dreams,” the one constant through all the A-Rod years has been interest. Love him, hate him, we can’t stop talking about him. And I loathe to do this, but I can’t help but compare him to Derek Jeter, another figure we couldn’t stop talking about for 20 years, though for other reasons.

Despite more recent criticisms of his fielding and batting order position, the vast majority of Jeter discussion was positive, if empty. He was lauded, applauded, cheered, and revered. But, generally, he was boring as hell and in retrospect, perhaps a bit aloof in an untouchable way; it’d be impossible for anyone to reach that status. Rodriguez, meanwhile, has run the gamut as the Grantland piece demonstrates. He’s been deified and vilified; he’s been cheered and booed. He’s done all the right things; he’s done all the wrong things. He’s been warm and open; he’s been distant and unaware, awkward and aloof in an entirely different way than Jeter was. Like the young Hercules, Rodriguez’s aloofness and awkwardness tended to stem from trying so hard, almost too hard, to want to be loved and adored by his fans. With the possible exceptions of his actions leading up to/during his suspension, none of Rodriguez’s faults and miscues were malicious. He wanted to always do and say all the right things and be the hero in all the big spots and never let anyone down, but it didn’t play out that way; baseball hardly ever does. Still, he is a student (and teacher) of the game and in love with it in ways that we as fans hope players are and he’s managed to somewhat reinvent himself at an advanced age, showing he can still do it despite sitting out a year.

Ultimately, he and Jeter are among the best in history at what they do (or did in Jeter’s case). At times, though, Rodriguez has done it while being more flawed and nuanced than Jeter ever was. In that way, he appears more real to us, more relatable. Perhaps that is why we’re so drawn to him. We love stories and narratives, especially complex ones that we can examine and mold to any extent we desire. The Rodriguez narrative, even in 2015, is ever-evolving and hardly follows a straight path; it offers us just what we tend to like in narratives. No matter if you have rooted for him from day one or have been skeptical of him from the get-go, it’s impossible to deny that nothing regarding “Al From Miami” is ever easy or straightforward. But that’s what makes Rodriguez so relatable. Complex stories like his tend to be the most fascinating ones to follow because they’re real. Like our own lives, there’s no script for Rodriguez to follow here. The only thing we know with certainty as Rodriguez’s story wraps up over the next two and a half baseball seasons is that this last part of his journey will be just as unpredictable as his story so far.

Seeing and Believing

April 26, 2015 by Matt Imbrogno 643 Comments

Note: This was written Thursday and Friday afternoons before anything in the Subway Series went down. Past me is sure that everyone is reacting calmly and rationally to Friday’s and Saturday’s games.

As you read this, there’s a decent chance I’m staring at a computer screen, specifically TurnItIn.com, reviewing and marking up the papers my students wrote about A Streetcar Named Desire and submitted on Friday. They were asked, as they usually are, to take in some information, digest it, and spit it back as an analytical (or creative) product. While my role as a baseball writer has diminished over the years, and I haven’t written an essay since 2011, it’s easy for me to relate to my students’ task.

Generally, I observe something during a game or a set of games, then look up the corresponding information — the numbers, the facts, the figures — and produce something for consumption. As much as possible and as frequently as possible, I attempt to ground this product in something empirical; and if you’re reading this here at RAB, it’s likely that you, too, have an appreciation for that same hard data. This does not mean, of course, that I eschew the visuals of the game, or just the experience of the game, when making observations and evaluations, and that brings me to the 2015 Yankees.

Though the tone of this piece is going to be generally positive, generally optimistic, I did find myself being a touch realistic earlier in the week when one of my students in study hall proclaimed that the Yankees would “suck” in 2015. Calmly, teacherly, I explained that the Yankees will likely not “suck” but will probably be mediocre. Objectively, this makes sense; their rotation has upside, but also questions marks. Similarly, their lineup has potential, but it has the same question marks. He quickly got back to his math or science or whatever I couldn’t actually help him with, and that’s when I thought of this piece.

2013 and 2014 were frustrating seasons and the hangover from both of them has no doubt tempered my expectations for 2015. By the end of each of those seasons, there were few reasons to watch, mainly Mariano Rivera’s, Andy Pettitte’s, and Derek Jeter’s farewell tours and the emergence of Dellin Betances. But let’s be honest: those seasons didn’t feel all that great for most of them, Vernon Wells’ April explosion notwithstanding. It’s early, sure, but this year feels different.

Masahiro Tanaka is beginning to Masahiro Tanaka. Michael Pineda is Big Mike-ing all over the place. Dellin Betances may be rounding back into form. CC Sabathia is striking lots of people out. Mark Teixeira is hitting nothing but extra base hits. And then there’s Alex Rodriguez. While I was already inclined to root for the guy, I feel that his at-bats are, once again, appointment viewing; I get slightly peeved when I miss his trips to the plate for whatever reason.

Even the down things give me a sense of excitement and enjoyment that just weren’t always there in 2013 and 2014 — don’t get me wrong, I love watching the Yankees and hung on to the bitter end in each of those years, but those years weren’t exactly fun…but I digress. Something as uncomfortable as watching Didi Gregorius go through a fielding slump has been at least slightly pleasurable to watch. His range is something we’ve not seen at short in a long time (how many times have we said: ‘That’s an RBI single last year…) and arm has not failed to impress me on throw after throw.

This is all a long way to say something similar to what I said in my first piece here about Sabathia and Nathan Eovaldi: I’m choosing to be optimistic about the 2015 Yankees. Seeing is believing and from what I’ve seen this year, I believe, even a little. And it feels good.

Nathan Eovaldi and the Non-Fastball

April 19, 2015 by Matt Imbrogno 68 Comments

Process and results. In the past few years, those have become (sometimes annoying) buzzwords in baseball. All of us, at some point, have used the term, whether earnestly as I have when describing the second Javier Vasquez trade, or ironically in poking a bit of fun at the Astros. That doesn’t mean that we can’t find meaning in the phrase, though, like in CC Sabathia’s two not-as-bad-as-the-box score-would-suggest starts and Nathan Eovaldi’s start on Thursday night in Baltimore.

In terms of the process, how Eovaldi went about things against the Orioles’ lineup, things weren’t all that different from his first start of the season against the Red Sox. On that night, Eovaldi threw 44 fastballs and 50 non-fastballs, broken up between what Brooks identified as one changeup, 26 sliders, 11 curveballs, and 12 splitters. During his second start , Eovaldi threw 45 fastballs and 56 non-fastballs (37 sliders, 17 curveballs, and two splitters). But the feeling was completely different.

While watching the game on Thursday, I couldn’t help but feel that Eovaldi was much more confident in his breaking stuff, more willing to use it in big spots or just to use it overall. In that first start, the breaking stuff seemed rudimentary at best with iffy location and not the sharpest of movement. However, Thursday, it seemed much crisper to my amateur eye. This was especially evident in the bottom of the third inning when his first five pitches of the inning, to Everth Cabrera and Adam Jones, were all breaking balls. Cabrera saw only breaking pitches in his at bat and struck out swinging; Jones saw a mix, but his at bat ended on a breaking ball he grounded fairly weakly to Didi Gregorius, who booted the ball at short. I mention this inning because it specifically lent to the good feeling I got from Eovaldi’s non-fastballs. The results lived up to that promise; let’s take a look at the pitch results section for Eovaldi’s two starts to examine my claim a little bit more closely.

When we look at these sections, I want to pay attention to two columns: whiffs and balls in play (no outs). Against Boston, Eovaldi ended 13 at bats with fastballs. 12 of those were swung on, with each one being put into play, resulting in four non-outs. The other 12 at bat-ending pitches were seven sliders, two curveballs, and three splitters. They all had something in common with the fastball: no whiffs, meaning he didn’t end a single at bat with a swing-and-a-miss against the Boston batters. This is a complete contrast with Thursday’s start. In Camden, the O’s put just 14 balls into play compared to the 22 against the Red Sox. More encouraging, though, were the seven whiffs he generated, five on his slider alone to go along with one each on a fastball and a curveball. As opposed to start number one in which his lone strikeout was a backwards K in the scorebook, seven of his nine strikeouts in start number two were swinging, mostly on breaking stuff.

The Eovaldi-centered narrative coming into this season focused on his secondary pitches; the improvements he makes (or doesn’t make) on the non-fastballs will determine whether or not he takes the next step as a big time pitcher. Thursday night gave us a glimpse at what’s possible when Eovaldi has his non-fastball pitches working. Keeping this up–confidence in the breaking ball and generating whiffs–means good process. And, generally, good process leads to good results.

Choosing to anticipate good things from Nathan Eovaldi and CC Sabathia

April 12, 2015 by Matt Imbrogno 93 Comments

Ed. Note: In addition to Katie and Sunny, we’ve also added Matt Imbrogno to the RAB roster. You know him from IIATMS. He’ll be contributing an article every Sunday. So think of him as a specialist. RAB’s LOOGY.

Just as much as any sport, if not more than any sport, baseball is one of anticipation; the action in the moment may not be constant and is over relatively quickly. In those hanging instants just before and just after contact, infinite possibilities exist. It’s those instants that bring us to the edge of our seats, bring our hands to our faces in excitement. They ready us for the joy or for the agony and they are where the beauty of baseball lies. In games, those instants are obviously short, fractions of a second. Even during the season, the anticipatory moments are relatively quick since teams play just about every day. Those simple facts of the game make the offseason seem even longer, giving us long, cold, miserably snowy months to build anticipation bit by bit. That anticipation is generally focused on new things: the new season, new players, new prospects. Such was the case regarding Nathan Eovaldi’s first start in pinstripes on Friday night.

Eovaldi carried with him from Miami and Los Angeles a reputation for being a bit of a project and that was definitely on display Friday; though he lit up the radar gun, he registered just one strikeout and five swings-and-misses and, as he’s done with some frequency in his career, gave up more hits than innings pitched. The non-fastballs he threw, as advertised, were certainly a work in progress as well. His performance didn’t change the fact that before the game, I was certainly feeling that aforementioned anticipation.

He came into that game as a new thing among new things. While we’d gotten used to his presence during Spring Training, he came to the Bronx as a relative stranger. He’d spent all of his career in the National League, either out on the West Coast with the Dodgers or in the relative obscurity with the Marlins, and did not face the Yankees in any interleague matchup. Aside from that “demographic” newness, Eovaldi’s the type of player you can dream on — a big, seemingly strong guy with a dynamite fastball (even if he does look like Carl Pavano). The anticipation I felt for him on Friday night will continue as the season wears on: Will he harness the breaking stuff? Will he stop giving up such hard contact? Will he put batters away and thus prevent Twitter from making Phil Hughes flashback jokes? Eovaldi has just as many questions around him, even if for different reasons, as does another pitcher whose 2015 debut I was anticipating highly: CC Sabathia.

Of course, the anticipation I felt for Sabathia on Thursday night was completely different than the anticipation I felt for Eovaldi on Friday night. Going into the game, I still felt a familiar optimism that I get when Sabathia pitches. It may not be deserved at this point, but for some reason, I still believe in CC. I liken it to the feeling I get when an even-slightly-diminished Alex Rodriguez comes to the plate: when he’s up there doing his thing, there’s the potential for something special to happen. Maybe this anticipation is a bit of misplaced nostalgia that will come crashing down on me as CC repeats his mostly disastrous last two seasons of pitching. But, on the other hand, however small that hand may be, I’m still anticipating a repeat of 2009-2012.

While we can’t repeat the past with Sabathia and we can’t tell the future with Eovaldi, this is the most anticipatory time in a sport driven by anticipation. I choose to anticipate good things for both Sabathia and Eovaldi.