That's interesting. I'm tending to see it a little more as the parts than the sum. You're looking at the overall stats, but unless I'm forgetting something, it seems like the Yanks are a jeckyll-n-hyde team. Sometimes they'll score a lot and sometime they won't. I'd be interesting in seeing a split stat here... like, what's the Yanks record when they score more than 5 runs? What's their record when they score less than 5? Not only will that tell something, but it will also expose how often they're scoring high. They could be a team that scores unbalanced across their games... in bunches.

...I don't necessarily buy the "they're just unlucky" thing. Over the course of a season if these trends continue, fine; we might be able to look back at this and think the same things we did about Cleveland last year. But the number that stands out to me is the Yankee Sv%, which is a mindblowing %23. They've had the second-lowest number of save opportunities available--13 total, better then Texas' 11--and blown TEN of them.

Given that the next-lowest Sv% is %52 and belongs to the Cubs, I'm guessing the Yankees are going to do a bit better as the season progresses. But I wonder just how much of a bullpen's success in holding a lead is attributable to luck. %23 seems impossibly low, but I'm just not sure. If nothing else, it confirms what everyone already knows: the Yankee bullpen has been awful late in games.

I wish I had a way to look at its numbers in close/late games compared to its overall performance, but even if I did...it sort of goes back to the question of whether "clutch" exists. Only in this case it's more complicated because of the manager's direct involvement and the like. I dunno...I guess I just have trouble looking at a bullpen that coughs up leads with that frequency and saying, "That's an unlucky team" because of a solid run differential.

One other thing...the average team Sv% in the AL (and across the Majors...) is %69. If New York had been successful in %69 of its opportunities, they'd have 6 more wins, and an overall record of 27-23. Perhaps not coincidentally...that's exactly what the MLB.com X-W-L says they should have.

So Pythag predicts 27-23, and a league-average Sv% says the same. I would guess this sort of lends a little credence to the unlucky-argument--no bullpen can be that bad all year. But it's not like the relief corps is just going to suddenly jump to league-average...right?

FWIW, league-average since 2004 has been in the high-60's to low-70's, with plenty of teams falling well-above or below. The teams that fell below were awful and sometimes underperformed their pythags. Case in point: Cleveland last year, bottom of baseball at %51, and Atlanta finishing at %57.

Well, it depends on if you believe that Riviera has turned into a pumpkin or not. He's of an age where that's possible, but one rarely makes money betting against The Best That Ever Played Their Position.

Certainly, that's a big part of what's killing the Yankees this year.

except that just about everything is killing the taem.

SP: Pettitte's done well, Wang's been a little inconsistent but pretty good overall, after that it just gets ugly where pitchers are derailed by injuries (and only 1 of them is a real pitcing related injury ..wow that's some luck, how do you get 3 hammy pull and 2 guys out for several months with comebacker in less than 2 month is beyond me) or ineffectiveness (though i still have hope that Igawa will end up effective at somepoint in his career)

2. hitting: it started out well but now just goes completely down the drain, where several guys are struggling with nagging injuries but can't sit due to attrocious record and overall scoring, and another guy who somehow completely fell apart at the age of 33 after 8 freakin year of dominance. while not as dramatic because he wasn't as dominant, Abreu's collaspe feel eerily similar to the collasp of Micky Mantel in 64 (and Roger Marris) and not only that, the kids are back tracking too, you figure even if Cano last season was fluky he should still be good for .750+ OPS. but he's hitting like Tony Womack right now. Cabrera got off to a disastorous start and picked up a little in May, but not nearly enough to bring his overall line back to respectability either. it's funny that with all the complain before the season about the 1B, Doug have actually been one of the few Yankees that's still hitting something this month.

RP: probably the best collection of arms the Yankee's had in a long time, but the early SP collaspe pretty much brought them down with it. and Torre's strange commitment to Luis Vizcaino makes things much worse, Farnsworth's continue suckitude baffles me, while Proctor is simply overworked beyond belive.

Defense: while it havn't exactly been downright bad, it's costing them games. and Posada's again regressed to a below average defender after a good 06 and Damon's injury have rendered him usless in the field.

Is this luck? a lot of it is i suppose, the everything bad happens at the same time and drag each other apart and making it nearly irreversable (pitching injury collaspe blew away the pen and forced guys to try and hit and then that in terms ruined the offense etc...)

But seriously, even if this wasn't NY, a team with this much talent and payroll is going to see heads roll with this sort of result.

(Sweet Lou and the Cubbies are probably glad the Yankees are bombing like this, otherwise they'd be in the same boat)

To me, the key factor is the starting rotation. When the starters are bad, the bullpen is under a lot more pressure. With effective starting pitching, the bullpen only has to cover an inning or two -- and most of the work can be done by the top relievers. When the starter exits early, the bullpen has to cover 4-5 innings. That's a lot tougher task. Your top relievers work harder, and your not-so-good relievers are called on to perform in key situations. Hence, a lot more blown leads.... and as others have pointed out, a team that underperforms its Pythagorean projection.

The big difference between the current Yankees and the perpetually-winning Yankees of the late 90s and early 00s is starting pitching: the championship teams all had at least four solid-to-excellent starters.

I'm not saying this team has no other problems; there are a whole bunch. but the rotation is the most important of them all.

jvwalt, the starters haven't been bad at all for the past couple of weeks, so that can't be the right diagnosis.

Other Josh, that's interesting -- late relievers are a very plausible candidate for explaining differences between pythagorean record and actual record. I think SAVE is kind of a silly, arbitrary statistic, but I bet something like what you're pointing to is at least a part of the explanation for the PYTH - ACT discrepancy the Yankees have this year.

Oh, puh-leeeeeeeeze.

Is this going to be the Yankees' newest whine?

First it's the umpiring, and now they just can't catch a break.

Wah wah wah.

The Yankees burned out the bullpen from the get go, when the starters were going down every game. Now the starters are pretty healthy, but the pen is shot and the offense has taken the month off.

Pitching and defense. Period.

The Yankees pitching staff is near the bottom of the league as measured by FIP and the defense is right along side them as measured by DER. Are there some weaknesses to those metrics? Sure, but they are great for measuring a team against the rest of the league and the Yankees are lagging badly in those two areas.

Where they are not lagging badly is hitting, despite the "feel" of the situation. Yeah, Abreu and Cano are stinking it up this year (so far), but any team that has 2 batters atop the league for BA and the HR/RBI leader has little grounds for complaining.

The Yankees, with all of their flaws, aways found a way to win in the past. This year the flaws are too deep to overcome easily. That's not luck, that's the assumed risk of your lineup coming back to bite you.

Yanks are 4th in the AL in runs scored. If you'd asked Cashman at the beginning of the season "Say, what if you guys finish 4th in AL in runs?" he'd have said "We're f***ed." Team is built around mashers, they hoped to have enough pitching to get by. They don't, but they're not mashing enough either. "Pitching and defense, period"--that's just dumb. It's a whole bunch of factors, a whole bunch of areas, where they're underachieving. Give em 20 more runs, think it makes no difference? Think again, buddy.....

I dunno, checking BP, by defensive efficiency the Yanks are pretty darn good in the field. 3rd in the AL, 6th in baseball.

The problem has recently been hitting, sure, but overall it's still the pitching, and primarily the fact that they walk too many and don't strike out enough of the other team.

That's what the problem boils down to, and in that sense, there's little luck involved. Throw hard and throw strikes. Until Clemens and Hughes get there, they simply don't have enough guys who do that.

"Pitching and defense, period"--that's just dumb.

So dumb it got the Tigers and the White Sox into the WS.

Nick - So tell me genius, what is the difference between scoring 20 more runs or giving up 20 less runs? 20 more runs doesn't equal the 14.5 games they are behind the Red Sox. They give a run more a game (~50 so far this year) than the team they are chasing and that is a bit more significant. Even if you gave them the 20 runs AND they played to their pythagora they would STILL be trailing because of the pitching. Think about that, "buddy"

Yankee Fan in Chicago - You are right on the money, I was off base on the defense.