A.J. Burnett: A studied and subjective nonappreciation
Posted by John Autin on July 23, 2011
[... and a long one. Feel free to bail out.]
With A.J. Burnett walking off the mound in the 6th inning Saturday -- ticked off, trailing 2-1, and leaving the bases loaded behind him -- it seems a good a time to unburden myself of this screed that's been festering for a week.
A.J. Burnett is one of my least favorite players. I don't mean that he's a jerk, or blames other people for his failings, or anything like that. And it's not because I'm a Mets fan. There's just something about his performance, his salary, his status as the Yankees' de facto #2 starter, and the way that he shoots himself in the foot that offends my baseball sensibilities.
Salary and Benefits
By the end of this year, A.J. Burnett will have earned over $87 million in MLB salary, with 2 more guaranteed years ahead that will bring his total to $120 million. Before today, he has a career 4.00 ERA and a 107 ERA+, and the trendline points down. He has never been an All-Star, nor received a single vote for the Cy Young, MVP or Rookie of the Year awards.
He's collected 2 World Series rings: The 2003 Marlins won the title without him (he went 0-2 in 4 April starts before going down with injury), and the '09 Yankees won the title without too much heavy lifting on his part. Even his good postseason starts that year were frustrating:
- ALDS game 1, he walked 5 in 6 IP but escaped with a 1-1 tie (Yanks won in 11).
- ALCS game 2, he gave up the tying run in the 5th on a combination of SB, HBP, a 2-out walk and a wild pitch.
He stank it up in ALCS game 5; with a chance to close out the series, he gave up 4 runs in the 1st, settled down, was given a 6-4 lead by the Yanks' outburst in the top of the 7th, but opened the bottom half allowing a single and a walk to the #8 and #9 hitters, and those tying runs came in after he was pulled. He did have a gem in WS game 2 -- 1 run in 7 IP, 9 Ks, 2 walks, for his only postseason win. But in WS game 5, with the champagne on ice, he squandered a 1st-inning lead with a bottom-1st sequence of single, HBP, 3-run HR, then gave up 3 more in the 3rd without getting an out.
In 6 postseason starts, he has 1 win, a 5.76 ERA and 3 quality starts.
His record since joining the Yankees, one of the best offensive teams in baseball, is 31-31 (pending today's outcome). The other 4 pitchers with more than 20 Yankee starts in that span all have a W% of at least .583. In fairness, Burnett has not enjoyed the same run support as CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes, but he's hardly the first pitcher who's had to scrape by with about 4.5 R/G.
Watching Him Pitch
In his previous start, the Yankees overcame a classic A.J. Dreckfest, rallying to beat the Rays, 5-4. Although he put the Yanks in a 4-1 hole after 2 innings, Burnett did fight the Rays to a draw in one sense: he retired exactly as many of their hitters in his 5.1 IP as he allowed to reach base safely.
They had given him a 1-0 lead in the top of the 1st, but they trailed by the time A.J. got an out. A 5-pitch walk to Johnny Damon, a Ben Zobrist single and Evan Longoria's 2-run double put the Rays on top. After Casey Kotchman singled too hard to score Longoria, Burnett got a gift -- a 3-6-3 DP with Longoria holding at 3rd. But with a chance to escape further damage, Burnett fielded a grounder from Sean Rodriguez and threw it away for a 2-base error, plating the 3rd run.
In today's sweltering heat, A.J. again gave back the lead in his first opportunity. In the top of the 3rd, he hit Jemile Weeks leading off, then picked him off; but a 2-out single by Hideki Matsui was followed by Josh Willingham's 2-run HR. His final act of the game was to walk the #8 and #9 hitters.
The Index
Years ago, Bill James devised a pitcher "junk stat" he called the Index of Self-Destructive Acts: hit batsmen, wild pitches, balks, and fielding errors. I don't recall the formula (and my own version would include walks), but I think of this "index" every time I see A.J. Burnett on the mound.
Now, Burnett has always had certain self-destructive tendencies; he's working on his 3rd year leading the league in wild pitches and his 2nd leading in walks, and he led the majors last year with 19 HBP. He's easy to run on, allowing over 1 SB per 9 IP for his career, at a 76% success rate. And even when he threw a no-hitter back in 2001, he was in trouble throughout, thanks to 9 walks, a HBP and a WP.
But he's really filled out his ISDA stat sheet in recent years with an awful error rate. From 2008 through Monday's wild throw, Burnett had made 18 errors in 133 chances, an .865 fielding percentage. For a frame of reference, the average AL fielding percentage for pitchers has been over .950 every year since 2005. (And for a "perfect" contrast, just look to the Yankee bullpen: Mariano Rivera has not committed an error since 2004, flawlessly handling his last 100 chances or so.)
On pure aesthetics, A.J. is approaching the Unwatchable state patented by Oliver Perez in his final years with the Mets. The prospect of seeing A.J. on TV again this October gives me chills.
In the 2nd inning last Monday, Burnett fanned 2 after a leadoff double by Robinson Chirinos (his first AB in the majors), but then walked Zobrist and Longoria to load the bases, so that Kotchman's infield single was enough to score the Rays' 4th run. In the 3rd, he erased a leadoff single with a pickoff, then walked Chirinos with 2 out before retiring the #9 hitter. Through 3 innings, he had thrown 70 pitches and allowed 4 runs on 6 hits, 4 walks, and 1 costly error. He got bailed out of a 2-on, 1-out jam in the 6th. The top 4 in Tampa's order reached base 11 times in 15 trips against him.
And as a final sign that just about anything can and will happen in a Burnett start, the game was halted by a power outage in the 5th due.
If it's not too tacky to propose a lifetime honor for a career still in progress, I suggest that the Index of Self-Destructive Acts should henceforth be known as The Burnett Scale.
Stats
As I wind down this spleen-venting, let's check on Burnett's career rank among the 59 active SPs with at least 1,000 IP:
- SO/9, 7th at 8.2
- BB/9, 5th-worst at 3.8 (and that's counting Oliver Perez as "active")
- SO/BB, 35th at 2.15
- His HBP rate is the 10th-worst.
- His WP rate is 2nd-worst, behind only Jose Contreras, and 47% higher than knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.
And one more:
- Since joining the Yankees in 2009, Burnett has 43 Quality Starts in 87 regular-season starts, a 49.4 QS%. Of the 34 pitchers with at least 60 AL starts in that span, only 4 have a lower QS%: Scott Baker, Rick Porcello, Luke Hochevar and Kyle Davies. The 3 just above A.J. are Jeff Niemann, Fausto Carmona and Kevin Millwood.
That's some cohort there!
I know there are many pitchers who do a worse job, some while making more money. There are guys who hide on the DL, or stare down their fielders after misplays, or get in fistfights with their catcher. As far as I know, none of that applies to A.J. Burnett.
He just bugs me. So thanks for letting me get it off my chest.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Could not agree more. In fact he bugs me every fifth day
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Burnett's career K/9 is 8.2, not 6.2. It would be incredibly sad if 6.2 were seventh among active starters.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Whoops! Typo. I'll fix it.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:24 pm
JA, amazing blog! All that pent-up rancour. 🙂
I predict many posts in response, easily. Gotta digest all the data before replying, intelligently, I hope.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:29 pm
John, could you add a little sumthin' about the worst pitcher tattoos in mlb?
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:30 pm
All I can say is, I'm glad New York has him now. Maybe the Blue Jays can't beat the Yankees consistently, but at least they can slip 'em a little poison pill every now and again. 🙂
In all honesty, he wasn't bad when he was in Toronto. The local press attributed that to the calming influence of Doc Halliday. Who knows.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:37 pm
As Johnny Twisto almost autistically points out, AJ Burnett will systematically bounce slider after slider into the dirt, whilst a member of the opposing team occupies third base, continuing this risky practice until inevitably caroming one of these nasty sliders off an exhausted Martin's shin guard, ricocheting the ball to the back stop, for a wild pitch or passed ball and an unearned run.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:43 pm
"On pure aesthetics, A.J. is approaching the Unwatchable state patented by Oliver Perez in his final years with the Mets. The prospect of seeing A.J. on TV again this October gives me chills."
John Autin, you are too much. I would hate to be excoriated by you in a similar fashion. You have laid out your case against Burnett with with clinical precision.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:43 pm
5.1 innings = 13 outs.
So, if a pitcher gives up 8 hits and 6 walks in 5.1 innings, he has allowed more batters to reach safely than he retired.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:55 pm
@9, DoubleDiamond -- Actually, 5.1 innings = 16 outs, but I get your point. The answer is, Burnett got a DP and picked a runner off base -- thus, he retired 14 batters.
July 23rd, 2011 at 7:46 pm
As a Phillies fan though, I can assure you that if he had not pitched well (and was not given an insanely big plate by the HP umpire) in Game 2 of the 2009 WS, the Yankees likely don't win that series.
July 23rd, 2011 at 7:56 pm
He's in a league of his own. Well, not quite. There's also Richard Dotson, Ed Whitson, Andy Hawkins...
July 23rd, 2011 at 7:59 pm
at least give him credit for making 25+ starts 4 straight years, and on pace to do so again this year... he's lucky he pitches for the yankees, because he'd look a lot worse without that run support
July 23rd, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Yeah, I hated him because the Blue Jays gave him a big contract, and he only gave us one 200 IP season out of 3, and when he went 18-10 mainly due to great run support, and I think he then opted out and signed bigger with the Yankees. The only consolation is that he's been worse for the Yankees. He was good for the Jays when he was healthy, but he was never a good signing, for the Jays or the Yanks.
July 23rd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Bez-ball's bin bin berry, berry good to A.J.
With apologies to Garrett Morris.
July 24th, 2011 at 12:04 am
He has a great fastball, and any number that pushes into the mid- to high-90s blinds a lot of people. They're too busy looking at the radar gun to notice that that pitch ended up in the centre-field seats.
July 24th, 2011 at 12:49 am
Symptom of the era he has pitched in--at least until the last couple of years. Reasonably durable, above-average (at least somewhat) pitchers were getting to be rare enough that the Yankees succumbed and threw insane amounts of money at him (not that there weren't a number of other teams ready to throw out tons of money for him as well). With the balance having been somewhat restored, we should see fewer and fewer contracts of that type for pitchers (with Albert Pujols hitting the market this fall, we can go back to the more "normal" state of affairs where teams throw insane amounts of money at position players).
July 24th, 2011 at 2:12 am
It must have been 2001 when I really saw Burnett pitch for the first time. That night, I strode down to the local bar and told my boy I had a new favorite pitcher. That hard, moving fastball. That hammer of a breaking ball. Wow! Fun to watch.
Over the years, I followed him. I remember his great stretch in August '02 when he was blowing people away, with 3 CG and 2 SHO in 4 games (and then got hurt, possibly related to the injury which cost most of his '03). I remember some great runs he had for the Blue Jays, including a bunch of games when he shut the Yankees down. When I'd get to watch him again, he still seemed to have that same devastating stuff.
When he signed with the Yankees, I was interested to have the chance to watch him on a more regular basis. I wanted to understand why this guy wasn't more successful.** And after almost three seasons, I don't know if I can give a better answer than "consistency." It sounds like such cliched BS, but it fits. Well, maybe I can add "wildness." He just doesn't throw his fastball where he wants. In those games when he falls behind, he walks lots of guys and/or grooves pitches. In games when the pitches go more or less where he intends, he's successful.
Of course, at this point he no longer has the "stuff" he once did. His fastball isn't as fast. His curve doesn't appear as sharp (even though McCarver still slobbers over it as "the best curve in the majors"). New pitching coach Larry Rothschild tried to simplify Burnett's windup (I think I see a small change) and perhaps it's had some effect on his command. When the Yanks signed him, I still had hopes (perhaps insane) that he could break out and become a great pitcher. Hey, he had the tools and pitchers can have unexpected life cycles. I don't expect that anymore.
I will say that Rich/11 gibes with my memory. I don't remember specific games very well, but I do have a recollection of Yankee PANIC heading into game 2 of the '09 Series. Maybe Burnett's start wasn't really that huge, but to the fanbase it felt that huge.
** I specifically remember gaining a greater appreciation for 300 wins*** at this time. I noted how guys like Burnett and Beckett**** had such great stuff, and yet they rarely even won 15 games, let alone 20, let alone keep that up for so many seasons. How amazing is it for Clemens and Maddux, et al, to do what they did?
***Put aside your opinions on pitcher wins, I think you understand my point.
****I think they've separated a bit in recent seasons, but it's interesting to see how close the career stats of those old Marlins pitchers are:
Beckett 120-77, 3.82, 115 ERA+, 1648 IP
Burnett 118-107, 4.00, 107 ERA+, 1895 IP
Penny 115-94, 4.14, 103 ERA+, 1806 IP
Pavano 103-96, 4.33, 98 ERA+, 1640 IP
Not quite Tannehill/Leever/Phillippe/Chesbro of the early 1900s Pirates, but not bad. I think they were all on each others' most similar lists a year or two ago, but no more.
July 24th, 2011 at 6:33 am
[...] Autin writes about A.J. Burnett at Baseball-Reference.com who, like anyone, is entitled to his opinion. A.J. Burnett is one of my [...]
July 24th, 2011 at 9:19 am
I totally concur with your outstanding post about Burnett. Simply put, he is unwatchable. This was one of the worst signings and attendant waste of money (among several others) on the Yankees' part in the free agent era. He was ostensibly "targeted" by the Yankees due to his Toronto success against the Red Sox, but he has been simply awful/dreadful as a Yankee pitching against Boston. But then again, the Sox have made mistakes as well. I compare Burnett to J.D. Drew as far as absurd contracts vis-a-vis performance. Drew is finishing up (rather badly) a five-year, $70M contract in which he averaged 65 RBI per season up to now. The only accomplishment he had for the Sox was hitting a grand slam in the first inning in game 6 of the 2007 ALCS against the Indians which essentially put the nail in the coffin in that comeback series. I compare that to Burnett's only Yankee accomplishment, the aforementioned game 2 performance in the 2009 World Series. In essence, the Sox paid $70M for one big hit while the Yankees have paid close to $50M (thus far) for one big pitching performance. Drew and Burnett are the essence of mediocrity. Yet somehow they have each made countless millions. I guess that's why America is (was?) a great country.
July 24th, 2011 at 9:53 am
John - thanks for doing a better job at what I was trying to say here:
http://waswatching.com/2011/07/23/allan-james-burnett/
July 24th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Burnett is also symptomatic of the Yankees problems for the postseason. Short of Sabathia and maybe Hughes if he's healthy, the Yankees' starting rotation doesn't quite pass muster compared to San Francisco, Philadelphia, or the Los Angeles Angels (if they were to make it in).
July 24th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
I have to down a whole bottle of Pepto every time this guy pitches. If the Yankees gave him a 19-1 lead in the 7th, he would find a way to blow it.
July 24th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
@16
Great fastballs mean nothing if you can't get outs. The minor leagues likely have numerous guys with great fastballs that can't hit their spot and get outs.
July 25th, 2011 at 11:22 am
@11
??? And if Cliff Lee doesn't pitch well I can assure you the Yanks would sweep. I don't see how the Game 2 result assures the outcome of a potential 7-game series in any way.
July 25th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Rivera may not make a lot of errors but he sure made a big one in game 7 of the 2001 World Series
July 29th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
@20 Drew has an .829 OPS with Boston and has played great defense. He's done many, many times better with Boston than Burnett has with New York.
July 29th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
@26 Sure, jamming someone and giving up a bloop single is a huge error.
July 29th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
@28, Brian -- No, but making a throwing error in an ill-considered attempt to retire the lead runner on a sac bunt is a pretty huge error. You might want to review the events of that 9th inning:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ARI/ARI200111040.shtml
July 29th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Sorry, I'm so used to Yankee hatred that I thought it was about the Gonzalez hit.
July 29th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
I blogged about AJ too - I'm coming from a slightly different perspective, but I hope you like it!
http://flyingtrapezeblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/aj-burnett-and-flying-trapeze.html
July 29th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
[...] history of injury problems. The maraschino cherry on top of this tenuous sundae is AJ Burnett, need I say more? If Ubaldo Jimenez is available, Cashman better get involved, if for no other reason than [...]