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Watching A.J. Burnett frustrates the heck out of me. Now, keep in mind, I’m a very spoiled guy. For more than 10 years I’ve been paid to watch and write about the Yankees over at the Pinstriped Bible, and the Yankees have put out a consistently entertaining product in that time. Had I been hired to write the Kansas City Royals Bible, I might have jumped off a bridge by now, having lost the will to live after watched 1,198 losses in 2,040 games. I really have no right to complain about any single pitcher.

Yet, A.J. drives me nuts. Part of the aggravation derives from Burnett being a pitcher with great stuff but inconsistent results. On any given day, he may emerge from the bullpen with no-hitter stuff. More often, he emerges with very limited command of that stuff, and you know you’re doomed to watch a pitcher fight himself for six innings. In 2009, the first year of his Yankees tenure, he was actually effective more often than not, turning in 21 quality starts in 33 attempts, though he also had only a good-not-great ERA of 4.04 because of some spectacular meltdowns, particularly in key games against the Red Sox, who hit .291/.417/.608 against him, leading to an 8.85 ERA.

Last year, the wheels came off completely, but even then he would tease with better games. In June he had an ERA of 11.35, in July it was 2.00, in August it was 7.80. He wasn’t pitching hurt, he was just pitching A.J. And therein lies the other source of the frustration: The Yankees vastly overpaid to get Burnett and now they have to live with him. Compensated generously at $16.5 million per year through 2013, you might be able to trade him straight up for a lemon contract like Alfonso Soriano’s, but that’s about it. As a result of this, a young pitcher like Ivan Nova, no future $16.5 million man but a more effective hurler than Burnett can be at this time in his career, was banished to Triple-A.

This year, Burnett’s ERA+ is 98, which doesn’t seem too bad until you realize that he has made only eight quality starts in 20 tries, that his ERA has risen each month of the season, that he’s leading the league in wild pitches (despite the removal of Jorge Posada, who was supposed to be causing Burnett distraction with his inability to block the curveball in the dirt) and that with the exception of an April start against the White Sox and a June turn against the Indians, he hasn’t had any truly ace-like starts. More typical was his Monday start against the Rays (five innings, eight hits, four runs, six walks, four strikeouts), which was similar to his start against the Rockies, another one against the Red Sox, and so on. The Yankees are 10-10 in his starts, 47-28 (.627) the rest of the time. The Yankees were 11-6 in Nova’s starts.

Because the Yankees are a better team when Burnett isn’t pitching, they are still very likely to make the playoffs; our playoff odds report rated their chances at 94.1 percent through Wednesday. They could win a championship with that guy on the roster or even in the rotation. That got me started thinking: Who was the worst pitcher ever to have a regular role on a championship team?

Ask this question the wrong way and you get answers that are right in fact but wrong in spirit. By this I mean that the plain vanilla answer would give you a number of good pitchers having bad years, including David Cone, Jack Morris, and Dennis Martinez. The 2000 Yankees are one of the weakest of the club’s many World Series winners, and Cone was one of the reasons why, his command and stamina deserting him at 37 and leaving the former gunslinger with a 4-14 record and a 6.91 ERA. But Cone was hardly a Burnett; this was a pitcher who won a Cy Young award, had top-ten finishes in four other votes, and made five All-Star teams. This as opposed to Burnett, who has never been involved with either.

Burnett’s 4.19 ERA is 0.32 below league average. In the entire history of championship teams, there have been only 26 pitchers to throw 150 or more innings with an ERA that high. If you expand the cutoff to pennant winners, the population doubles plus a little more. It’s a lesson in how hard it is to win the big series while carrying a weak pitcher. When you consider all the pitching staffs of all the pennant winners, each with multiple hurlers of 150 or more innings, 60 is not a very large number.

The two worst ERAs on a championship team belong to Cone and Morris, whose 6.19 ERA in 1993 didn’t prevent the Blue Jays from getting to, and winning, the World Series, albeit without his picking up the ball. If you eliminate those two, the worst pitcher ever to receive a ring for work his teammates did was left-hander Randy Lerch of the 1980 Phillies. Lerch, career WARP 9.6, matched Cone’s 4-14 record while compiling a 5.16 ERA in a league in which the average hurler had an ERA of 3.61. Catnip for right-handed power hitters, Lerch had career rates of .385/.407/.962 against Gary Carter, .324/.405/.811 against Ron Cey, and .394/.412/.697 against Reds manager Dusty Baker, just to name a few of his most frequent nemeses. Actually, it wasn’t just right-handers; the left-handed Keith Hernandez hit .340/.419/.623 against him. When it came to the two-round postseason, manager Dallas Green opted to pass him by.

The list of mere pennant winners inserts one pitcher between Cone, Morris, and Lerch, Cubs righty Tex Carleton-1938 vintage. Carleton wasn’t a Cone or Morris, but he wasn’t a Lerch either, posting some very solid seasons in a short career, including 1937, in which by WARP he was the sixth-best pitcher in the National League. In 1938, however, he was the worst pitcher in all of baseball, not only recording a 5.41 ERA in a 3.78 league but also leading the circuit in hit batsmen and wild pitches. After a year in the minors, he came back up to have a good year for the 1940 Dodgers, pitching a no-hitter against the Reds.

After Carleton and Lerch, the list runs through Jason Marquis 2003; Jeff Weaver, also 2003 (unlike Cito Gaston with Morris and Green with Lerch, Joe Torre was dumb enough to use the guy, and it cost him the championship); Dennis Martinez 1983; the deservedly obscure Byron Houck of the 1913 A’s, who pitched well in the Pacific Coast League and drifted into film work; Kyle Kendrick 2008; and rounds out the top 10 with Al Nipper of the 1986 Red Sox. Houck’s  4.15 ERA in a 2.92 league was something special, but he was just passing through. No pitcher was as bad as Lerch both in a career sense and in the championship season.

Burnett isn’t quite in this group yet; he has his work cut out for him if he wants his career to be memorable for just its dollar-to-results imbalance. Will he get there? No, probably not. He’s too inconsistent even to be consistently bad for long enough to make his mark on history. Instead, he’ll weave his mediocre way through the rest of this season, and then the next, and also the one after. No, my life isn’t so bad; it’s not watching the Orioles or the Astros each day, but once in every five the ol’ blood pressure gets raised a few points. As long as I lay off the anchovies I’ll be alright.

I can’t say the same for the Yankees, not if they keep suppressing young talent because they sunk so much money into a feckless pitcher. Derek Jeter bats leadoff not because he’s a better candidate to do so than Brett Gardner, but because he used to be Joe DiMaggio; Burnett stays in the rotation over Nova (or about five other minor-league starters) because he’s owed a lot of money. How many times can you overrule talent until you finally lose a ring? We may find out, but… These are Kansas City Bible thoughts. Shhh. Shhhh. CC Sabathia starts today. Peaceful thoughts. Pass the anchovies.

Thank you for reading

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darts1
7/21
Is this Pinstriped Bible or Baseball Prospectus? I have been getting the two confused recently.
SirVLCIV
7/21
Too bad BP only runs one article a day.
redsox2011
7/21
http://www.pinstripedbible.com.
PBSteve
7/21
This has been bugging me all day. Of 45 Broadsides (I might have missed one or two), the team I have most written about is no team-15 columns have been about broad topics that applied to more than one club. That leaves another 30 columns. Of these, seven have had topics that were inspired by the Yankees, which is not the same thing as saying they were solely about the Yankees; I usually try to extrapolate so that even if the example comes from a certain team, the lesson is more broadly applicable. If Joe Girardi bunted in a bad situation, the idea may have started with the Yankees but the lesson drawn applies to all the other clubs. Columns have also been inspired by the Cardinals, Cubs, Tigers, Rays, A's, Red Sox, Mets, Braves, Marlins, Indians, Nationals, Mariners, and Dodgers, some more than once each.

I'm satisfied with the mix and the approach that I've taken. If you think that makes this the Pinstriped Bible, then you haven't been reading either site.
eighteen
7/21
Sorry, Steve, but I read this site every day, and you and Jaffe talk about the Yankees way too damn much. I'm not necessarily put off by it, but you gotta realize lots of your subscribers don't give a rodent's rectum for the Yankees.

Or the Red Sox, either.
SaberTJ
7/22
Regardless of whether you like the Yankees or not. The story still has applications to any team. Or if you hate the Yankees, does it not make you smile to see them run their operation inefficiently?

How often do you see a team stick with a big contract over a younger replacement? Sometimes I can see a smaller income team having being limited by a payroll mistake, but this is the Yankees. They can overlook their financial mistakes because of their cash flow. However, they are choosing to keep Nova and their other SP prospects in the minors for veterans.

It blows my mind how the Yankees will risk tons of $$$ on free agents, but are absolute nits when it comes to testing their home grown pitching talent.
Michael
7/22
Write about any baseball-related topic that inspires you. It's still good reading.

Joe Posnanski writes about the Royals a lot. It doesn't bother me either.
dianagramr
7/21
I'm working on a similarly-veined post for my blog. I'm looking at the pitchers with the worst W-L % (or total losses) for great teams (the flip side of Steve Carlton's 27-10 record for the 59-97 Phils).

So far, the best (so to speak) I've come up with is those same 1938 NL pennant-winning Chicago Cubs, who went 89-63 overall (.585). Their worst pitcher, in terms of W-L %, was not Carleton, but Larry French, a swingman who went 10-19 (.345), making 43 appearances (27 starts). 15 of those losses came in starts, the other 4 in relief.

Good stuff, Steve (as always).
qwik3457bb
7/22
Extra Credit to the St. Louis Cards of 2006, whose regular rotation that season featured:

1. Jason Marquis, 14-16, 6.02, ERA+ 74, bWAR -1.9, who did not pitch in the postseason.

2. Jeff Suppan, a career mediocrity having what for him was a good season, 12-7, 4.12, ERA+ 108, bWAR 1.1

3. Jeff Weaver half-time in the Cards' regular season rotation. He went 3-10, 6.29 for the Angels, then traded to the Cards in mid-season, he "improved" to 5-4, 5.18 ERA for a total of 8-14, 5.76, ERA+ 79, overall bWAR of -1.0.

4. Anthony Reyes, who went 5-8, 5.06, ERA+ 88, bWAR 0.3

and to round things out...

5. 13 starts from Sidney Ponson, 4-4, 5.24 ERA, ERA+ 88, bWAR 0.1

These 5 men started 126 of the 162 regular season games for the Cards that year, and 11 of the 16 post-season games. I can't think of a worse rotation that ever won a title. I doubt there's any very close to it.
drawbb
7/26
Brought to you by the Bud Selig three-divisions-and-a-wild-card scheme, expanding soon to another mediocre undeserving future champion near you!
darts1
7/24
I'm just saying in the past year the amount of Yankees coverage by yourself and Jaffe has significantly increased. Not to mention the fact that the AL East breakdown columns earlier in the year were essentially Yankees columns, with a little bit of Red Sox sprinkled in. I understand the Yankees are far more interesting than the majority of the teams, and can accept the fact they will get covered here more than teams like the Padres, but I can go to thousands of other sites to get Yankees coverage for free.

That being said I really enjoy your writing, I just wish it was applied a bit more consistently to other teams throughout the league.
rawagman
7/25
The new writer of the Al East columns is actually a Toronto-based writer, whose work I am familiar with and enjoy regularly. I shared your opinion of that series before, but I can't fault Steven for where his inspiration comes from. Inspiration just is. You can't force yourself to be inspired by the Colorado Rockies, or the Minnesota Twins just because they haven't moved you recently.
I try to read BP, because, after most articles, I can say that I have learned something new about baseball, or at least a new angle to watching the game. And it doesn't matter who the article is about.
AlexHoefer
7/25
No one is making you read the piece. Your acting as if you are forced to take in material related to the Yankees against your will.
hotstatrat
7/24
Steve, you have my support - as does any writer to take inspiration from wherever they find it. I recall a couple of my favourite Bill James artcles happened to be inspired by Kansas City. If someone counts stories and gets and unhappy and jealous about, that's kind of sad. However, I'm sure they can find websites that devout stories just about their favourite team.
BrewersTT
7/25
I don't see this as a Yankee column. It's about the rarity of pitching weak points on championship staffs. The Yankee angle is just an intro and humorous wrapup to the real topic. And if a writer is most familiar with team X, and they want to use team X to set up topics, or even as a subject themselves, why not. I would be surprised if NYY didn't get more than 1/30 the coverage in any baseball venue anyway. Unique team, unique opportunities to learn from them.
darts1
7/25
Folks, I understand that he is using the Yankees as a larger example to make a point about all of baseball, or managers throughout baseball in some cases. It's just frustrating to see the Yankees used as the tease when any of the 30 teams could be used in some cases. I enjoy his work, and many of the writers new and old on the site, but I do feel that I can at least point out that Yankees coverage has increased dramatically in the past year by Steve and many other writers on this site. If that's a business decision then that's entirely within their right, but it doesn't mean we can't point it out.