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RIVER AVENUE BLUES

 * About
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A GOODBYE AND A THANK YOU

April 29, 2019 by Mike

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–



Filed Under: Administrative Stuff


A GUIDE TO LIFE AFTER RAB

April 29, 2019 by Mike

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

 * Mike Axisa (Twitter: @mikeaxisa): CBS Sports
 * Ben Kabak (@benyankee): Second Ave. Sagas
 * Joe Pawlikowski (@joepawl)
 * Jay Gordon (@jaydestro)
 * Derek Albin (@derekalbin): Bronx Beat podcast (occasionally) and Baseball
   Prospectus
 * Matt Imbrogno (@mimbro1): Locked on Yankees podcast (occasionally)
 * Sung Min Kim (@sung_minkim): FanGraphs, The Athletic
 * Bob Montano (@mr_bobloblaw)
 * Katie Sharp (@ktsharp): Talkin’ Yanks podcast
 * Steven Tydings (@StevenTydings): YES Network


YANKEES NEWS AND ANALYSIS

 * Lindsey Adler at The Athletic (subscription site but well worth it)
 * Bronx Pinstripes
 * It is High! It is Far! It is … Caught.
 * Pinstripe Alley
 * Replacement Level Yankees Weblog
 * Start Spreading the News
 * Yanks Go Yard

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

 * Bronx Baseball Daily
 * Pinstriped Prospects
 * Prospect Pipeline (daily box scores in one place)
 * The Bronx View

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

 * Baseball Savant (Statcast data and the site has so many tools that it’s
   intimidating)
 * Baseball Reference (my go-to for quick look-ups)
 * Brooks Baseball (PitchFX data)
 * Cot’s Baseball Contracts (in-depth contract information)
 * FanGraphs (good for easily accessible batted ball and plate discipline stats,
   among other things)
 * The Baseball Gauge (many neat tools, including Championship Probability
   Added)

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.

Filed Under: Administrative Stuff


RAB: ORIGINS

April 29, 2019 by Joe Pawlikowski

(Al Bello/Getty)

Contemplating the end of RAB, I thought of its origins. Why did the three of us
come together to create this site?

Ben covered the basics in his own farewell post so apologies if I’m covering
known ground. But this is the story as I remember and can document it.

In 2006 we were all writing on our own blogs — The Sporting Brews, Off The
Facade, In George We Trust. At that stage in the evolution of blogging everyone
read everyone else’s blogs, so we were all familiar with each other’s work. Ben
and I both started new jobs in the second half of 2006 and were posting less
frequently than we had previously. When Ben asked me to join him on Off The
Facade, which was part of a network and much bigger than my puny operation, it
was an easy yes. And so it began.

After a few months things were going well, but not exceptionally well. The
network was having some technical issues. We felt a little stifled in terms of
what we could write. On a Wednesday in mid-January, Ben emailed:

> I’m getting really sick of all of this [network] server downtime and I am not
> against the idea of taking our writing elsewhere.

A few hours later in the same email thread, a name was born. Ben again:

> I’ve always liked tying in River Avenue to a Yankees blog. It’s more
> out-of-the-box than Pinstripe Something or Bronx Anything. River Ave. Blues is
> what I had going…

Two weeks later Ben and I still hadn’t made a decision, but we’d talked more
about setting off on our own. In the middle of an email thread about something
completely different, I wrote:

> Re: breaking off. We need to set a deadline on a decision for this. Say, by
> March 1. I’d actually like to get Mike A. on board…

That was February 2. It took maybe a day to get Mike on board. At that point it
was all technical: how quickly could we buy web hosting, set up the site, and
start publishing?

The answer was just over two weeks. On February 20, Mike kicked it all off.
About an hour after he christened the site, he sent this in an email.

> I’m not in the writing business, nor do I have any desire to enter into it, so
> it’s really up to you guys.

Good call, Mike.

Later in the week I was enthralled by how many people actually visited the site:

> 252 unique visitors yesterday, 242 today, 405 total — not too shabby for the
> first two days in the office.

The blog grew. It grew and it grew and it grew. It grew to levels we couldn’t
even imagine when it launched. Had we kept at it, I daresay it would have
continued growing. But that passion faded years ago, as anyone who’s been
reading since the early days can tell you. If this farewell doesn’t seem very
emotional, it’s because I moved on long ago.

And so I close the RAB chapter of my life with some gratitude:

Dad for basically everything: my Yankee fandom, encouragement of my writing
pursuits, and constant readership. In those early days, when barely anyone read
or commented, Dad was there to support us.

Ben, Mike, and Jay for friendships that extend far beyond River Ave. Blues.
Y’all were at my wedding, we were all at Ben’s wedding, and it’s reassuring to
know that we’ll see each other long after these doors close.

Jonah Keri and Jay Jaffe for using their relatively prominent positions to help
spread the good work that independent bloggers were doing back in the day.

Keith Law, Rob Neyer, and Peter Gammons for the little praises that sent more
readers our way.

JP, Steve H, James K, Stephen, Brock, Hannah, Larry, Moshe, Jamie, Eric, Matt W,
Katie, Betsy, Sung-Min, Steven, Dom, Matt I, Bob, Ashley, Derek, and countless
infrequent contributors for helping us maintain our high standards for content
both in quantity and quality.

All of you who found us over the years. I’m fairly certain we would have kept
this thing going through at least 2011 without the level of readership that we
attained. But boy did y’all keep us motivated. Thanks for stopping by.

Filed Under: Administrative Stuff


OUR BACK PAGES: A FAREWELL TO ALL THIS

April 29, 2019 by Benjamin Kabak

(Rob Tringali/Getty)

A lifetime ago, Joe and I were in charge of the Yankees site for the Most
Valuable Network, a long-defunct sports blog network, when we decided we could
do a better job on our own. We wanted Minor League content too and invited Mike
along for the ride. We felt we could provide comprehensive Yankee coverage from
a fan perspective and do a better job than anyone else out there. It was typical
early 20s hubris from a bunch of kids with internet hookups, and somehow it all
worked out.

Twelve years and over 28,000 posts later, we decided it was time to say good
bye, but quitting is never easy. Beyond the ins and outs of the Yanks’ rocky
2010s, we’ve all been through a lot together – job changes, career changes, grad
school, weddings, births. We started out as business partners and became fast
friends, adding Jay a few years in to keep everything humming smoothly.

At some point, though, over the years for each of us, what started as a passion
project becomes less fun and more of a burden. I couldn’t keep up with posting
after law school ended and my current career began. Joe’s writing slowed down
with the birth of his daughter. Mike, our Energizer bunny, kept going and going
and going, but when a passion project isn’t a passion any longer, it’s time to
hang up. We still love the Yanks, warts, frustrations, injuries and all; it’s
just time to love the Yankees as fans again.

It’s a trite cliche to quote Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” in a farewell piece,
but after 12 seasons, I think about Dylan’s lyrics a lot. Back in 2006 when the
idea for RAB came together, I was so much older then. We’re all younger than
that now. When we started RAB, the general tenor of online baseball writing
focused around doing a better job. We all thought we could do a better job than
our favorite team’s GM. We thought we could out-manage our favorite team’s
manager. We thought we could out-coach our favorite’s team’s coach.

RAB came of age at a time when the volume of data about baseball was readily
available and increasing dramatically. The statistical understanding of the game
shifted from Bill James’ printed books to Baseball Prospectus’ annuals to daily
WAR updates to wRC+ in the span of a barely a decade. With it, came a different
approach to team-building that turned everyone into Moneyball accolades and led
everyone to propose a budgetary-constrained approach to baseball team-building.
As more online analysts were hired by teams, that approach shifted from the
Internet to the game before we knew it, and now teams are underpaying players
while the game is based more on an all-or-nothing understanding underpinned by
batted ball profiles more than anything else.

This is not to say that River Ave. Blues was instrumental in changing the game
of baseball any more or less than any other site, but as I reflect back on the
past 12 seasons, I see shifts in the way baseball works that grew out of the
idea that a bunch of kids knew more than anyone else. Today, I can see how
baseball writers helped drive a hidden search for value, how we all helped shift
understanding of the game, and how we had a role, even if slight, in whatever
labor battles loom. I wouldn’t change RAB’s approach over the last 12 seasons
for the world, but if we all knew then what we knew now, many of us would think
twice about that Moneyball approach (and we sure as hell would’ve traded the Big
Three).

As RAB comes to a close, I think about the friends we made along the way, the
baseball friends I chat with every day on Twitter and the ones I see in real
life. I think about the playoff games at Bleecker Heights Tavern, a World Series
championship at Blondies, and I think about the babies born, the weddings, the
parties, the games in the Bronx. I think about the fans and readers who have
written to us lately talking about how we expanded their baseball horizons and
their love and appreciate for the game. And I think about how we did it. Joe,
Mike, Jay and I set out to build a better baseball blog, and we accidentally
stumbled into a community of great people, lifelong friends and some amazing
Yankee fans. I wouldn’t trade the world for it. Thanks for coming along for the
ride. And as we go gently into that good night, just remember the 2-2 pitch to
Tino was a ball and no, I’m still not going to eat the hat.

Filed Under: Administrative Stuff


A THANK YOU TO RAB, WHERE IT ALL STARTED FOR ME

April 29, 2019 by Sung-Min Kim

(Al Bello/Getty)

In January 2017, the Yankees were doing the “Winter Warm-Up” series to introduce
newer players to the fanbase through sandwich workshops, surprising
ticketholders, going to museums, etc. At one point, they also had a presser at
the Yankee Stadium. I was informed of the opportunity to cover it for River
Avenue Blues and simply took it. I had dreamed of being a part of the press corp
at the Yankee Stadium someday and it was happening.

While I was soaking it all in in the Yankee Stadium hallways, all by myself, I
saw Brian Cashman walking from a distance. I would recognize that face from just
about anywhere. I was wearing a University of Maryland jacket at the time.
Cashman, who also went to a school in Washington, DC area (Catholic University
of America), saw that. He said, “Maryland, huh?” We had a little conversation
about DC area, the winter weather, the Yankees, etc. At some point, he looked at
the credential card hanging below my neck and said this:

“River Avenue Blues! Love the website. I read it all the time.”

I’m not going to sugarcoat that comment too much. It’s obviously a weighty
praise especially given the context. What I want to emphasize here more is how a
website created by fan bloggers – out of labor of love, nonetheless – became so
developed and established enough to get first-hand praise from the general
manager of the New York Yankees, earn a commercial spot at the YES Network, get
funding to pay the writers, etc. It just goes to show us, while it may be
daunting to start something from scratch, the persistence and the love for it
can lead it to something so impactful. This not only goes for baseball blogs but
also for pretty much everything in our lifetime.

It’s been awhile since I wrote on this website. A lot of things have happened to
me for the past half a year or so. I got hired by FanGraphs, I joined Baseball
Prospectus to occasionally write about Korean baseball, I contributed for The
Athletic, etc. It’s not easy to openly admit this but things shifted a bit for
me in terms of my career opportunity and priority – but I always had River
Avenue Blues in the back of my mind, because for me, this is where it all
started.

Truth be told, this website is the foundation for all of what I’ve been able to
do in the baseball media. As it is the case for many that are trying to find a
footing in an industry they’re trying to enter, there was a time where I
couldn’t get any publication’s attention to save my life. I was contacting
basically every blog’s emails to give them my hand. At some point, I got Jay
Gordon’s attention and wrote about a few Korean players for River Avenue Blues.
Jay and Mike got back to me a few months later and asked me if I wanted to be a
contributor for the site starting the 2015 season. As someone who was trying to
find a footing somewhere writing about something I love, it was an offer I
couldn’t pass.

I was a reader before I was a writer. I can’t exactly pinpoint when I started to
read RAB, but it was around 2007 or 2008. River Avenue Blues was my main reading
spot for Yankees information along with LoHud Yankees Blog. I was in high school
at the time and had no idea what I was going to do with my life, so I never
really saw myself ever writing for the site. Flashforward to junior year in
college, I declared journalism and *kind of* saw myself writing about baseball
in future. I tried taking essential reporting and journalistic writing classes
and it turned out I was pretty trash at that (at least back then). I ended up
switching to broadcast journalism and took up internships in sports radio and
television. I thought my future was in working the radio control board, editing
soundbytes on Adobe Audition, cutting video files and putting captions, etc. It
wasn’t glamorous, but I would have been more than okay going that path.

Even doing all that, there was always a thing in back of my mind that I yelled
at me about baseball writing. I took one sports writing class – and I did pretty
okay in it – but my connection to the industry was pretty lacking. I had no
sports writing internship, my school newspaper’s sports section was quite filled
up, etc. yes, these are bunch of excuses, but having been in the industry for a
bit by now, I learned that these things matter. I got my foundation of all these
through River Avenue Blues.

Writing for RAB was a trip – I got a lot of the “real life work experience”
moments through my first several blog posts. I was sloppy, lacked attention to
detail, attracted some critical comments, etc. I felt like a pitcher who just
got called up from minors who was too amped up to find a strike zone. Usually,
writers get yelled at by editors or other higher-ups for such mistakes. But RAB
people have been very gracious – they always had my back, they allowed me to
improve by my own and most importantly, they never hesitated to give me a
confidence boost. So many times, I’ve seen a lot of my peers from school get
burnt out in writing industry for various reasons. For me, however, it was all
joy. The more I wrote for RAB, the more I was enthralled with baseball writing.

I know I talked a lot about myself and my experience of the website but it’s
much moreso about guys like Mike, Ben, Joe, Jay, Betsy and others who have laid
the foundation for River Avenue Blues to be such a big part of many Yankee fans’
online fandom. It’s also about people like Derek, Steven, Matt, Bobby, Katie,
Domenic and Ashley who contributed their time and effort to also make this blog
much moreso than just a blog. This site was a community: where anyone could come
in and get their daily dose of the New York Yankees.

Yankee fans are lucky that there isn’t exactly a shortage of Yankees contents
around the web, but I can’t help but feel like it will leave a huge void in my
mind knowing that there won’t be any newer RAB posts starting April 30. At the
same time, it is what it is. As Mike said, River Avenue Blues lived about a
billion years old for blog standards, and it would not have been possible
without the love of everyone – especially you, the readers – involved. Whoever
you are, thank you for reading this blog post and this website. I hope you are
having a nice day.

Filed Under: Musings


TEN YEARS OF THE RAB FAN CONFIDENCE POLL

April 29, 2019 by Mike

(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.

Filed Under: Administrative Stuff Tagged With: Fan Confidence


YANKEEMETRICS: BOMBERS COASTING OUT WEST (APRIL 26-28)

April 29, 2019 by Katie Sharp

(Getty)

As RAB closes shop today, I personally wanted to thank everyone for their
tremendous support of this website and my writing over the past four-plus years.
It was truly an honor to contribute to this amazing site, to be able to write
about my favorite team, and be a part of a really special and passionate
community of fans. Keep following me on twitter @ktsharp for all my Yankees
stats and analysis the rest of the season and more details on the future of
Yankeemetrics.

April 26: When Gio Urshela is your cleanup hitter … all you do is win!
The Yankees got back in the win column on Friday night as they continued their
road trip up the west coast to San Francisco and won their season-opening
Interleague matchup, 7-3.

James Paxton ‘only’ struck out eight batters but still was solid in holding the
Giants to five hits and three runs. Paxton has quietly been excellent this
season in doing the things a pitcher can control on the mound (excluding his
defense behind him) — strikeouts, walks and homers. After Friday’s start — among
pitchers with at least 25 innings pitched — he led the AL in FIP (2.24), ranked
third in strikeout rate (36.2%), was third in Strikeout-to-Walk ratio (5.1), and
had allowed only three homers in 34 2/3 innings.

Luke Voit had another monster game, going 3-for-4 with 3 RBIs, including his
eighth home run of the season. Voit’s dinger was a bomb over the center-field
wall, another example of his ridiculous dead-center power.



?Since the start of last season, he has a 1.067 slugging percentage and .533
isolated power to straightaway center, both the highest among all MLB players
(min. 50 PA). It was also his fifth dead-center homer this season, tied with
Pete Alonso for the most in the majors through Friday.



And because there can never be too many #LukeVoitFacts, we’ve got this for you
to enjoy: He is the first Yankee with at least three hits and three RBI in a
game against the Giants since Joe DiMaggio in Game 5 of the 1951 World Series.

April 27: The Kraken is unleashed
Welcome back, El Gary! The Yankees won their second in row on Saturday, 6-4,
thanks to the big bat of Gary Sanchez and the stellar arm of J.A. Happ. The
victory clinched their fourth series win in a row (yeah, remember when they lost
four of their first five series to start the season?).

Happ delivered his best start of the season (7 IP, 0 runs, 5 hits, 0 walks, 2
strikeouts), a performance that earned him his first win and our Obscure
Yankeemetric of the Series: He joined Randy Johnson as the only Yankee
lefthanders to pitch at least seven shutout innings, give up no more than five
hits and walk zero batters in an Interleague game. Randy did it in 2005 against
the Cardinals and 2006 against the Braves.

Sanchez had only one hit in this game but it was a HUGE one – literally and on
the scoreboard. He came to the plate in the fifth inning with the bases full and
clobbered a 91-mph fastball deep into the seats in left-center for his first
career grand slam. The 467-foot blast was the longest grand slam hit in the
majors since Statcast distance tracking began in 2015, and the third-longest
home run hit at Oracle Park in that span.

Although he’d never before gone deep with the bases full, Sanchez has been a
productive hitter over the last three seasons in those situations. Since 2017
(through Saturday), he was 13-for-29 with 29 RBI and just two strikeouts in 32
plate appearances, and his .448 bases-loaded batting average was the fourth-best
in MLB (min. 30 PA) in that span.

Let’s give Sanchez some more love with our most-awesome #FunFact of the Series:
He is the second Yankee catcher ever to hit a grand slam in a National League
ballpark. The other? Yogi Berra against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in
Game 2 of the 1956 World Series.

April 28: Bay Area brooms
The Yankees capped off their third sweep of the season with a 11-5 win on Sunday
afternoon, continuing their scorching-hot streak over the last couple weeks.
Since bottoming out on April 12 with a loss to the White Sox that dropped them
to 5-8, the Yankees have the best record in baseball (12-3). And in that span,
they also put three players on the IL — Greg Bird, Aaron Judge, Clint Frazier —
while getting one player back (Gary Sanchez). The Little Pinstriped Engine That
Could keeps chugging along!

For the millionth time this season, the Yankees raced out to an early lead,
scoring two runs in each of the first three frames. Actually, it was the 21st
time this year that the Yankees scored first. They are the only MLB team in the
last 15 seasons to score first that many times in their first 28 games.

Luke Voit paced the offense with three hits, two runs scored and two RBIs, the
third time in the last four games he’s had three hits. That’s pretty remarkable,
considering he had three-or-more hits in just five of his first 133 career
games.

Gleyber Torres and Gary Sanchez put an exclamation point on the win with a pair
of homers in the third and sixth innings. Torres’ blast was a two-run shot — 15
of his 29 career homers (52%) have come with men on base, a rate that is well
above the MLB average of 39%.

Sanchez’s dinger was the 79th of his career, moving him into a tie for 50th
place on the all-time franchise list (reminder, he has played only 279 career
games). It was also his 59th longball since his first full season in 2017, five
more than any other major-league catcher in that span. And we’ll end with a
ridiculous fun note: Sanchez has eight homers in 15 games this season, an
86-homer pace over 162 games!

Filed Under: Players Tagged With: San Francisco Giants, Yankeemetrics

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