If you'd like to take a look at the reasons for this discrepancy, you can check the article out here .

Anyway, today I thought I'd look at the pitcher at the other end of the True ERA/ERA luck spectrum for 2009, and it's none other than Yankees righty Sergio Mitre, whose 50-plus innings in 2009 appeared to go horribly wrong, to the tune of an ugly 6.79 ERA.

Now, True ERA doesn't peg Mitre as an ace, but it does have him at a solid 4.12 mark for 2009. Essentially, he pitched about as well as a fourth or fifth starter is supposed to.

Before getting into what caused the difference, I'd like to briefly examine Mitre's skill set.

Mitre's two big skills are that he throws strikes and gets ground balls. Over his career, he's walked 3.01 batters per nine innings, and an excellent 59.7% of balls hit off him have been grounders.

In 2009, Mitre actually had better control than he usually does (2.26 BB/9), and his GB% (57.8) was still excellent.

Because he gets so many grounders, Mitre has done an excellent job limiting line drives throughout his career, with just a 16.5% career liner rate. His 2009 rate of 18.2% isn't great, but it's above-average.

Mitre has two main weaknesses: he doesn't get a lot of strikeouts, and when he leaves the ball in the middle of the plate, it gets hit hard.

Mitre did a better job with strikeouts than he usually does in 2007, striking out 5.57 men per nine innings, which is acceptable given his high ground ball and low walk totals. However, he did allow 10 homers in just over 50 innings, which made for a very poor 1.74 HR/9 ratio. More on this in a bit.

So what I've established is that the Mitre of 2009 generally got grounders, avoided walks, and got an acceptable number of strikeouts while having some homer issues. That sounds like a 4.12 ERA pitcher, not a 6.79 ERA pitcher.

So, what's the deal with Mitre's 6.79 ERA?

The first clue lies on his .349 batting average on balls in play, which is bad luck-driven given that he limited liners well. Remember, he only pitched a little over 50 innings, so bad luck can really drive an ERA up in small stints. Given his batted-ball profile, Mitre's BABIP should've been about 30 or 40 points lower, and his career mark (including 2009) is .332.

But BABIP alone doesn't account for 2.67 runs per nine innings. Another factor is Mitre's stranded runners rate, which, at 57.5% for 2009, is far too low to be anyone's true level of performance. Most pitchers, good and bad, tend to be in the 70-80% range. 

Mitre's career rate for stranding runners (including 2009) is 65.5%, so it's possible he has trouble from the stretch, but even if 65.5% is his true level of ability, that's another good chunk of runs off the board if he strands an extra 8% of runners.

Finally, there is perhaps the biggest factor at play--Mitre's homer rate.

21.7% of fly balls off Mitre left the park last year. Most pitchers, over long periods of time, wind up in the 7-14% range. Mitre's career HR/FB ratio is 14.7%, a bit high, but much lower than 21.7%.

Again, remember the inning samples at play here. If four of those fly balls off Mitre happen to not leave the stands, he's at six homers in 51 innings, an average 1.05 HR/9 rate, and sorta normal 13% HR/FB ratio.

He also probably drops a good run or more of ERA.

This is particularly relevant in Mitre's case because he spent 2009 with the Yankees, and New Yankee Stadium is widely believed to be the most hitter-friendly park in baseball, particularly to lefties, who Mitre struggles with.

I don't have visual evidence to confirm this, but I'd bet that at least one or two of those homers wouldn't have been homers outside of Yankee Stadium.

What this means is that Mitre, while perhaps ill-suited to be a Yankees pitcher, is still suited to be a major league pitcher, and teams should look past the 6.79 ERA and realize he's still got a nice skillset to be a back-end starter or middle reliever in the majors. With the Yankees in hyper-transaction mode this offseason, it might be a good idea for a pitching starved team to call up Brian Cashman and see if he'd like to unload Mitre, who isn't likely to play much of a role on the Yankees in 2010.

Read more New York Yankees news on BleacherReport.com

With a .362 Weighted On Base Average and OPS of .831, the Yankees have been able to bail out their struggling pitchers night in and out, while striking fear in opposing ones.

With a playoff berth in reach, my question is simply: "How will you get these guys out?"

While there isn't much hope of completely shutting the Bronx juggernaut down, especially in their launching pad of a home park, there are ways to minimize the damage this lineup can inflict. But no one has found those ways out.

Once that strategy is determined, I'll look at what pitchers on the potential AL playoff teams may be able to perform against the formidable lineup.

The first thing to consider is platoon split, or how the team does against left-handed pitchers and right-handed pitchers.

This season, the Yankees have crushed lefties to the tune of .293/.377/.490 and hit righties at a .270/.350/.465 clip.

With right-handed hitters like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, and switch-hitters Jorge Posada, Nick Swisher, Melky Cabrera and Mark Teixeira getting everyday at-bats, that's not too much of a surprise.

So righties are more likely to have success against New York than lefties, although the Yankees' OPS against RHPs (.815) is still higher than any other team's overall OPS.

But, for the sake of this argument, the ideal pitcher against New York is right-handed.

However, given the Yankees' high number of switch-hitters, the righty will need to be able to get lefties out.

Next, let's take a look at plate discipline.

The Yankees chase the fewest pitches outside the strike zone of any team in baseball (21.8 percent). They also swing at the second-fewest pitches overall (42.2 percent), just behind the Mets.

Because of their excellent plate discipline, the Yankees make contact on 83.7 percent of their swings, the third-highest rate in the majors.

From these numbers, it's clear that a pitcher needs to throw quality strikes against New York to succeed. While that seems extremely obvious, it's not the approach I'd advise taking against a team like the Giants, who chase 32 percent of pitches outside the zone.

With a team like that, pitchers who throw lots of chase pitches are likely to succeed. With New York, however, hitting the corners of the strike zone is imperative.

Since the Yankees make a lot of contact, it's preferable to pitch to contact against them. They aren't a particularly groundball-or-flyball-heavy team, but when they do hit the ball in the air, it goes a long way. 13.7 percent of the Yankees outfield flies clear the fences, easily the highest mark in the majors.

Some of that may be due to the hitters' park the Yankees play in, but a lot of it has to do with the power hitters in the lineup.

Because of the power threat, it's a big plus to be a groundball pitcher against the Yankees. If they can't lift the ball, no amount of raw strength or park effects can push it over the wall.

So thus far, it seems that a right-handed groundball pitcher with good command is best suited to face the Yankees.

The final aspect I'm going to look at is individual pitch types. Let's take a look at this quick table of the Yankees' rank against each pitch:

Pitch                 Fastball   Slider   Cutter   Curveball   Changeup   Splitter
Yankees Rank     1            11       10        1              5              18

The Yankees are the best team in the majors at hitting fastballs and curveballs, and the only pitch they rank in the bottom half of teams in is the splitter.

Clearly, pitchers who throw lots of fastballs and curves are poor bets for success against New York.

So what we'd ideally like to see in a pitcher "born to beat the Yankees" is a righty with good command, groundball tendencies, and an excellent slider, cutter, or splitter. The pitcher can't overuse his fastball or curve though.

Now that we've got the ideal profile, let's see if there are any pitchers on AL contenders that meet it.

John Smoltz looks like a decent bet. He only throws his fastball about 40 percent of the time, and throws a good slider and splitter. He has pinpoint command, with only 1.23 walks per nine innings this year. He doesn't have the pronounced groundball tendencies one would like to see, but he's got an average GB/FB split.

Mark Buehrle throws a lot of cutters and changeups, has pinpoint command, and does a nice job keeping the ball on the ground, but he is a lefty.

Jose Contreras, the former Yankee, has a good slider and splitter that make up half of his pitch selection. He gets a good amount of grounders as well, and while he doesn't have pinpoint command, he throws enough strikes to get by.

Texas' Scott Feldman throws an excellent cutter, gets a good amount of grounders, and pitches to contact very nicely.

Those four look like the closest matches for the ideal pitcher to face New York. As you can see, there aren't many who really fit all the criteria to keep the Yankees' lineup in check.

As the statistics will tell you, it's not an easy task.

Or so we think.

Another way to measure "control" is by using plate discipline variables. These aren't "fancy stats" by any means, but they describe every aspect of a batter-pitcher interaction.

The plate discipline variables are:

Swing%--Percentage of pitches swung at.

O-Swing%--Percentage of pitches outside the zone swung at.

Z-Swing%--Percentage of pitches inside the zone swung at.

Contact%--Percentage of swings that make contact (O-Contact% is for outside the zone; Z-Contact% is for inside the zone).

Zone%--Percentage of pitches thrown by a pitcher that are in the zone. This does NOT mean "percentage of pitches that are strikes." It means the percentage of pitches that find the zone (according to the ultra-sensitive MLB cameras meant to specifically measure this), regardless of whether they're called balls or strikes.

F-Strike%--Percentage of first-pitch strikes.

Sorry for that long list, but it's necessary information.

Anyway, these variables give us a nice look at a pitcher.

The higher a pitcher's O-Swing%, the more he gets batters to chase pitches, and the more "deceptive" he and his pitches are.

The higher a pitcher's Contact%, the more "hittable" his pitches are.

Obviously, Zone% and F-Strike% are very important as well.

At first glance, it may appear that Zone% is similar to walk rate: the more a pitcher pitches in the zone, the fewer walks he'll allow, right?

Well, sort of.

There's something of a correlation between the two, but it's not as strong as one would expect.

Just to use an extreme example, Jamie Moyer only finds the strike zone about 44 percent of the time, but he walks just about two batters per nine innings.

The Zone% and walk rate are both very low. Moyer doesn't throw strikes, but rarely walks hitters.

There's an easy explanation, however.

For one thing, batters chase a lot of Moyer's pitches. His 29.2 O-Swing% is well above the average.

Also, Moyer throws a bunch of junk to the plate, so when batters swing, they make contact and don't walk. Moyer's Contact% is 86.5, well above the MLB average. 

Moyer also throws a lot of first-pitch strikes (61.7%), so he gets ahead in the count and then throws the ball out of the zone.

So, while Moyer doesn't throw many pitches in the zone, he does three things to counteract that and lower his walk rate:

1.) Get batters to chase out-of-the-zone pitches, turning balls into strikes
2.) Inducing contact when batters do swing
3.) Getting ahead in the count

Those three things combine with Zone% to be the four important factors of walk rate.

Since Moyer's 3-for-4 on the factors, his walk rate is good.

However, while the four factors correlate to walk rate in most cases, occasionally, they don't.

There's no better example of this than Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.

Let's run through Rivera's performance in the four factors.

Rivera's pitches have hit the strike zone just 46.3% of the time, well below the average of 49.3%.

He does a decent job of throwing first-pitch strikes, coming in just above the MLB average in F-Strike%.

Batters do chase a lot of Rivera's pitches outside the zone (35.4%), and make a slightly-above-average amount of contact (83.3%).

So Rivera throws far fewer pitches in the zone than normal and rates slightly above average in the other three factors.

One would think Rivera has an average or maybe slightly better than average walk rate, right?

He's walked just 1.04 batters per nine innings.

Now, I'm sure most of you are thinking, "Well, Rivera's special and awesome, so he makes it work."

And I would totally agree with that, if it wasn't for the fact that he's never pitched like this before.

Consider Rivera's four-factor stats going back to 2002:

Year      O-Swing%      Contact%      Zone%      F-Strike%
2002      23.3              78.6             58.5          63.1
2003      29.9              75.2             55.0          60.7
2004      27.3              80.1             57.4          64.9
2005      26.0              80.0             52.8          61.1
2006      34.4              81.1             54.1          62.5
2007      35.4              76.6             53.4          60.7
2008      36.3              76.3             51.4          62.6
2009      35.4              83.3             46.3          59.4

Rivera's 2009 Zone% and F-Strike% are career-lows (at least since 2002, which is when pitch-by-pitch data began to be collected). The Zone%, especially, is far below any other one Rivera's put up.

His O-Swing% has basically held steady for four years as well.

Rivera's been slightly more hittable this year than in the past, but not enough to make up for the decrease in Zone% and F-Strike%.

Despite that, Rivera's walk rate is at the second-lowest mark of his career (2008 was the lowest).

If we look at 2007, just to pick an example, Rivera had the same O-Swing%, a much lower contact rate, a far higher Zone%, and a higher F-Strike% than 2009.

Yet Rivera's 2007 walk rate was 1.51 BB/9, higher than this year's 1.04 mark.

Rivera's numbers show that walk rate doesn't always reflect a pitcher's control properly. It's clear that he's thrown fewer strikes in 2009 than ever before, but his walk rate describes him as a pinpoint-control pitcher.

It will be interesting to see if Rivera's walk rate increases if his plate discipline numbers stay in this range.

The first was that Pablo Sandoval saw way fewer strikes than anyone. I took a look at the reasons for that in this article.

The second thing I noticed was that Ken Griffey Jr. and Melky Cabrera were on the first page of the leaderboard.

Griffey ranks 24th and Cabrera 29th out of 167 qualified players.

That makes very little sense.

See, two types of players don't see many strikes. The first is great hitters who pitchers don't want to pitch to, and the second is free swingers who will chase pitches out of the zone.

Pablo Sandoval is the only hitter who fits in both categories in the present day.

Below Sandoval, you have some great hitters (Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard, Justin Morneau, Lance Berkman, Joe Mauer, Mark Teixeira, Chipper Jones, etc.) and some free swingers (Chris Davis, Alfonso Soriano, Hank Blalock, etc.).

You also find guys who aren't great hitters or free swingers, but still fall into the category of hitters who shouldn't see many strikes.

Why?

Because they are one-tool power guys who will crush a fastball if it's left over the plate.

So you get guys like Chris Duncan, Nelson Cruz, Jay Bruce, Matt Holliday, and Kendry Morales on the list as well.

Griffey and Cabrera don't fit any of these molds.

Griffey is hitting .222/.342/.404. He's got some power in his bat, but his bat speed has tumbled and he struggles with curves and changeups.

He is, however, a disciplined hitter who won't chase bad pitches.

Cabrera's hitting .285/.347/.439. He's not a bad player, but he doesn't have the sort of power that would make pitchers want to avoid him. He also is disciplined at the plate.

If there's a pitcher out there who is scared to come in the strike zone to Ken Griffey Jr. and Melky Cabrera, he doesn't belong in the major leagues.

Cabrera and Griffey also both chase a below-average number of pitches out of the strike zone, so pitchers probably don't think they can get them to chase pitches.

There are three possibilities for why Griffey and Cabrera don't see many strikes.

1.) It's just a random variation of luck; pitchers just happen to miss their spots a bit more.
2.) For some reason, pitchers are either afraid to throw them strikes or think they can get them to chase pitches, despite the data to the contrary.
3.) Other stats can explain it.

I can't speak to either of the first two scenarios, both of which are somewhat possible, but I sure can investigate the third one.

First, let's look at Ken Griffey Jr.

The Mariners, as a team, see the fifth-fewest pitches in the zone, at 48.1 percent. At 46 percent, Griffey is quite a bit below that, but it could be that the Mariners just have drawn wilder pitchers and that contributes.

However, Griffey sees the fewest first-pitch strikes on the team, just 47.3 percent. He's seen fewer pitches in the zone than anyone else on the team besides Russell Branyan (Mike Carp, Guillermo Quiroz, and Mike Sweeney also saw fewer, but didn't have enough at-bats to qualify).

In a real surprise, Griffey sees fewer good pitches than Ichiro. Ichiro is more in the Sandoval realm of bad-ball hitting, so you'd expect pitchers to just throw the ball off the plate and get him to chase. Apparently, that's not the case.

I thought the explanation might have something to do with pitch selection. Griffey doesn't hang in with curves and changes well anymore, so maybe he gets a lot of those. Curves and changes are harder to control, so then he'd get fewer pitches in the zone.

It was a nice theory, but it's wrong.

Griffey actually sees more fastballs than anyone on the team but Ronny Cedeno. He gets them two-thirds of the time.

Apparently, the book on getting Griffey out is to throw fastballs out of the zone.

That makes no sense to me, and I don't know why anyone would try to get Griffey to chase a fastball when he doesn't chase pitches and he's good at hitting fastballs. That's about the worst approach a pitcher can take.

But hey, it's easy for me to say that sitting at home, right?

Anyway, the way Griffey's being pitched to doesn't make any sense to me, and if you have any idea why pitchers are doing this, I'd love to hear it in the comments. For now, it's a mystery.

Does Melky Cabrera's low zone percentage make any more sense?

Well, the Yankees see the second-fewest pitches in the zone in baseball, so that's a start.

However, when you consider some of the great hitters the team has, it's obvious why pitchers would be averse to throwing the ball over the plate.

When you consider how great the AL East pitching is, it's tough to imagine that the Yankees would really be facing a bunch of wild flamethrowers.

Indeed, the rest of the AL East teams are more middle-of-the-pack in zone percentage, while two other teams in the Mariners' division (Texas and the Angels) are first and fourth, lending credence to the idea that Griffey sees pitchers with worse command than average.

The Yankees zone percentage is dragged down by predictably low figures from Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira (and Cody Ransom, in his few ABs). Pitchers want to pitch around A-Rod and Teixeira. That makes plenty of sense.

Melky Cabrera sees fewer pitches in the zone than anyone else on the team.

Free swingers like Robinson Cano and Angel Berroa see far more good pitches to hit.

As with Griffey, this makes little sense on the surface.

Again, I decided to test out the "he sees more offspeed pitches, which are harder to control" theory.

Cabrera doesn't have the completely frustrating pitch type split that Griffey does, but he sees pretty much an average number of fastballs (the easiest pitch to control) and curveballs (the hardest pitch to control).

What's interesting is that Cabrera sees very few sliders and a lot of changeups.

Cabrera has historically struggled against changeups and done well against sliders, but that's reversed this year. It could be that the book on him is that he can't recognize the changeup and will chase it as it sinks out of the zone.

Cabrera has corrected that flaw and improved from a terrible changeup hitter to an average one this year. Obviously, the scouting reports don't change overnight, so pitchers may still approach him without knowing Cabrera's made an adjustment.

That's the only explanation I can come up with, and it's semi-satisfactory. If any Yankee fans know more about why Cabrera sees so few pitches in the zone, I'd love to hear it.

Ken Griffey Jr. and Melky Cabrera are useful players, but they certainly aren't stars. Pitchers, however, are pitching to them with so much caution that you'd think they were fearsome power guys.

Even looking at all sorts of numbers and scouting data, it's tough to come up with a real conclusion as to why these two unspectacular players receive such odd treatment.

Not only has Albert Pujols done the most destruction to heaters this season, but it's not even close.

Pujols is 4.07 runs above average against every 100 fastballs. The second-best fastball hitter of 2009, Indians catcher Victor Martinez, is 3.02 runs above average.

The gap between Pujols and Martinez is bigger than the gap between Martinez and 17th-place Derrek Lee (2.00 runs above average).

Pujols also excels on sliders (2.90 runs above average) and changeups (1.88 runs above average).

However, Albert Pujols does struggle a little bit with curveballs, coming in at .28 runs below average.

The best curveball hitter this season has been Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano, who is a whopping 5.85 runs above average against curves.

There's also a sizeable difference between Cano and second-place (Royals 2B Alberto Callaspo at 4.60 runs above average). The difference between Cano and Callaspo is greater than the difference between Callaspo and 11th-place Clint Barmes (3.37 runs above average.

Cano does a nice job with fastballs (1.59 runs above average), and is average against sliders (.09 runs below average), but has struggled with changeups (3.93 runs below average).

Pujols is having a career year against fastballs, and Cano is having a career year against curves, but their career numbers indicate they have been excellent against the respective pitches.

I wanted to take a look and see if Pujols' excellence against fastballs (but struggles with curves) and Cano's excellence against curves (but struggles with fastballs, which he was well-below-average against prior to 2009, and changeups) prompted opposing pitchers to pitch Pujols and Cano differently.

Both Pujols and Cano are very good hitters, so neither one gets pitched around very often. I was wondering if pitchers recognize the fact that their best hope against Pujols is to throw curves and their best hope against Cano is to throw fastballs and changeups.

Here's what Pujols has seen this year:

Fastball (mph) Curveball (mph) Slider (mph) Changeup (mph)

53.8% (91.7) 8.5% (75.6) 21.1% (83.9) 10.2% (83.0)

And Cano:

Fastball (mph) Curveball (mph) Slider (mph) Changeup (mph)

63.5% (91.2) 6.3% (76.7) 13.2% (82.4) 9.1% (82.5)

Thanks to Fangraphs.com, as always, for their excellent breakdown.

As you would expect, Pujols sees more curves and Cano sees more fastballs.

It's clear that the scouting reports that pitchers see mention Pujols' brilliance against heaters and Cano's excellence against breaking balls.

What surprised me is that Pujols sees far more sliders than Cano. Pujols is 2.99 runs better against sliders than Cano, yet he sees over 50 percent more of them.

What's probably happening is that Pujols is talked about as a "fastball hitter" and Cano as a "breaking-ball hitter," so pitchers throw Pujols a ton of sliders and curves while staying mainly with the fastball to Cano.

Cano is actually worse against sliders than fastballs, so it would make sense to throw him more sliders. Pujols is better against sliders than against any other pitch except the fastball, so while pitchers seem to understand to use the heater sparingly, they don't realize that throwing him a slider is nearly as bad an idea.

I did notice that Pujols sees faster fastballs than Cano, so it appears that only harder throwers try to challenge him.

The changeup data is also confusing. I suppose throwing Pujols a changeup makes a certain amount of sense: while he's good against changeups, he's worse against them than fastballs or sliders. If a pitcher just throws a fastball, slider, and change, the change is the logical choice.

Cano is another matter. The two pitches that he is worst at hitting (the slider and changeup) are only thrown to him 22.3 percent of the time. Compare that to Pujols, who sees them 31.3 percent of the time, even though he's more effective against both.

Cano is thrown a fastball 63.5 percent of the time, even though he does better against fastballs than any pitch other than the curveball.

Now, it could be that AL East pitchers have worse changeups and sliders than NL Central pitchers, which would probably make them less inclined to throw them to any hitter, regardless of how good the hitter is at hitting them.

Checking the data for all the Yankees' and Cardinals' hitters, that does seem to be part of it.

No Cardinals batter sees more fastballs than Cano, while three Yankees (Johnny Damon, Derek Jeter, and Brett Gardner) do.

No Yankees batter sees more sliders than Pujols, while two Cardinals (Khalil Greene and Ryan Ludwick) do.

The Yankees' hitters do seem to see about 1 percent fewer changeups than the Cardinals' hitters. There's no real difference in curveball percentage.

I thought that maybe instead of just looking at the raw numbers, I'd look at where Pujols and Cano ranked among their team's hitters in terms of percentage of fastballs, curves, sliders, and changeups seen.

Pujols' ranks (out of 13):

Fastball Curve Slider Changeup

8 8 3 9

And Cano's (also out of 13):

Fastball Curve Slider Changeup

4 11 4 7

This data presents a new set of problems.

What one would expect to see for Pujols is to have pretty low fastball and slider ranks, and higher curve and changeup ranks. The inverse has happened here. Pitchers throw him an equal proportion of his favorite pitch (the fastball) and least-favorite (the curveball), when compared to their pitch selection against other Cardinals hitters.

The pitch they use the most to Pujols (relative to the normal usage pattern) is still the slider, which, as I mentioned before, has been only marginally more effective than the fastball.

The data seems to lead nowhere with Pujols. It could be that since he's the best hitter in the game, pitchers simply resolve to throw him their best stuff rather than worry about what Pujols is actually good at hitting, which is why his fastball, curve, and change ranks come out near average. 

Either that, or pitchers are being given incorrect scouting reports, or are ignoring the scouting reports.

Cano's data, perplexing with the raw percentages, does make a little bit more sense now. When comparing him to the rest of the Yankees, Cano actually sees a lot of sliders and very few curves. Since he struggles with sliders and hammers curves, that's a good approach for pitchers to take.

Beyond that, there's still the issue of Cano seeing just an average amount of changeups even though he's struggled terribly with them. Nick Swisher and Mark Teixeira see nearly twice the amount of changeups as Cano. Teixeira is average against changeups, and Swisher, while well below-average, is nowhere near as bad as Cano.

That just has to be a misperception on the part of pitchers, who must be given bad reports on Cano's ability to hit the changeup.

Overall, while we can see some evidence that Pujols and Cano are pitched to like they should be, the statistical data is inconclusive, and it could be that the scouting reports simply don't match the numbers.