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Now Starting: Sergio Mitre?

Posted by Tom Gaffney at 12:31 pm 17 Responses »
Jul 062009
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A quick look at the AAA roster doesn’t look too promising for possible starters to fill in for Wang while he’s out.  If Ian Kennedy was healthy, he’d be the logical choice, but we can’t do anything on that front but wish him a quick and full recovery.  Kei Igawa is… well… Kei Igawa, Kontos is on the 7-day DL, Nova has only just been promoted and McCallister is still in AA Trenton.  The one name mentioned as a possibility is Sergio Mitre.  Is he a legitimate option?

History: The Accused psp The Yanks acquired Mitre as a FA in January, after Mitre recovered from Tommy John surgery (the Yanks loooove their guys coming off of TJ, don’t they?).  He’s been with the Cubs and the Marlins organizations, having good success in the minors, but never putting it together in the big leagues, due either to injuries or just sheer lack of stuff, it’s hard to be sure.  He put up a 2.98 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 8.3 k/9 in AAA of 2004 (age 23) which got him a promotion to the Cubbies rotation, but his career major league ERA of 5.36 in 310 innings pretty much sums up his general futility against big league competition.  This year, he’s gone 2-1 with a 3.26 ERA for Scranton.

Stuff: Mitre has a sinking fastball averaging 90.1 mph for his career.   He mainly relies on that sinker, tossing in an average change and curve on occasion.  A 90 mph sinker is slightly above average for a major league pitcher, but to rely on it extensively is dangerous.  Lefties have generally slaughtered him.

A Mighty Heart video Outlook: The Yankees must have a certain amount of faith in him if they bothered to sign him off of all his injury problems, but his track record is not good.  He’s been as bad as Igawa in the big leagues with similar questions, mainly: is his stuff good enough to get major league hitters out?  The answer so far is no.  Mitre may be a last ditch type option with the primary option being to stretch out Aceves and fit him into the role.  Why not just  stretch out Hughes, then?  I don’t think they want to jerk him around, making him start the season as a starter, make him into a reliever, stretch him back out into a starter, only to put him back in the pen after a month.  Aceves is an older, more experienced pitcher with a more resilient arm, so the risk is lesser.  What do you guys think the Yanks should do?

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Starting Pitching is Hard!!

Posted by Tom Gaffney at 5:38 pm 2 Responses »
Jun 182009

Wanger had a better outing last night and seems to finally be putting things together.  Another story from last night, however, is the dominance that Phil Hughes appears to be exhibiting out of the bullpen.  Once again, his fastball averaged 94mph, which is about 3mph faster than a typical start for him.  He went two innings, giving up only a single hit, with no walks and 2 strikeouts.

Contrasting Phil Phranchise’s stats as a starter versus his stint out of the pen reveals a stark difference.  His ERA is more than 3 points lower (2.35 to 5.45, his average against is almost .100 points lower (.179 to .276), and his k/9 is well over 9, versus a sub-9 mark as a starter.  It’s become obvious, judging by how hard Joba and Phil have to work as a starter versus the relative ease with which they dispatch helpless batters in relief, that the starting role is much more difficult.  This we’ve always known, but the two neophytes make this fact that much more apparent with every appearance.

This is why Hughes should be yanked from the pen immediately and sent back down to AAA.  Whaaat?  But you just said how good he was as a reliever.  Yes, but it just goes to show you how tough it is to find good starting pitchers and how much work Joba and Phil need to put in to fulfill their ultimate potential.  Joba needs to figure out how to maintain consistent velocity over 7-8 innings while reducing the violence of his motion and keeping his pitch count down.  Phil needs to further refine his cutter and get more consistency with his curve, particularly the spike curve.  Both players desperately need to stay healthy and up their innings count over the course of the season.  All these skills can only be learned and earned by starting.  Hopefully, we’ll make the playoffs, and Phil can make a dynamite reliever in the post-season after he’s eaten his recommended yearly allowance of innings, but until then, he should start, be it in the majors or the minors.

The Narrow Margin video

Charlotte’s Web the movie

Running on Empty Dreams

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Drippings from a Leaky Brain

Posted by Tom Gaffney at 3:51 pm 3 Responses »
May 152009

It’s Friday and I’m suffering from a caffeine bounce from the early morning jolt of liquid energy.  Exhaustion, headaches, and overall fatigue has led to this feeling where my brain is just leaking out through my skull in a disorganized pool of chaotic gak, but I’m just going with it.

Drip 1: Loan out Phil Hughes.  Soccer has this thing in Europe where, if you have a player who is good, but you don’t really have a place for him, you loan him out to another club for a short period of time and often take him back later on.  Phranchise has clearly mastered AAA but is inconsistent in the bigs.  He just needs seasoning – Once Wang comes back let’s loan Phil out to some NL team and let him get some seasoning over there for a few months.  That way he’ll be ready for next year.

Psycho hd Drip 2: Like Moshe said earlier – Yes, Cervelli was hitting .190 in his few AA ab’s this year.  Fine, but that doesn’t mean he’s a .190 hitter.  He hit .315 in AA LAST year – why don’t they ever mention that?  BA, Sickels and every other ranking service I saw left Cervelli completely off of their top X prospects lists despite putting both Montero and Romine ON those lists.  Catcher is the position where hitting matters the LEAST, yet a Cervelli’s stellar defensive play and leadership abilities were seemingly completely ignored just because he’s not a power hitter.  It’s good to see him proving everyone wrong so far.

Drip 3: Wouldn’t Juan Cruz’ 1.72 ERA, 98mph fastball and $2.25M contract look good in Pinstripes this year?  Remind me why we didn’t get him again?

Drip 4: Some Modest Proposals for selling those Legends Seats:  Everyone is decrying the class divide between the Legends section and the rest of the stadium, but we need those seats to sell.  Part of the problem is that these seats are just not special ENOUGH.  Yes there’s a moat – and that’s nice, but, as any Medieval landowner will tell you, it’s what’s IN the moat that matters.  For the money they’re paying, let’s let them feel like real european Lords.

Fill the moat with alligators, with flaming oil, give them a drawbridge – let them feel like royalty.  Assign them “serfs” for the day and give them a court jester to entertain.  Dress up the security guards in full plate armor and have them jousting with each other between innings.  On flaming pitch giveaway day, lower the drawbridge and lure in an unsuspecting young autograph seeker, only to trap them and hurl flaming pitch at them.  Better yet, you could have Medieval hunts, giving each seat owner their very own hunting hound to track down the young lad in the monuments and set the dogs on them.  Oh what fun!

You see?  Instead of making this class warfare thing into a negative, turn it into a positive.  I say just go with it.  Of course, don’t blame me when the guys in the bleachers start building guillotines and siege towers.  It wasn’t my idea to connect them to the box seats.

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What to Expect from Hughes Tonight

Posted by Tom Gaffney at 3:30 pm 6 Responses »
Apr 282009

Here is a writeup from SWB Yankees beat writer Chad Jennings on Phil Hughes’ last start for Scranton.  It pretty much sums up exactly what I feel we should see tonight.  I’ll break it down by pitches below:

Fastball: Phil will be throwing a 90-93mph 4-seamer that is relatively straight but has good late life.  He has the ability, when he’s on, to really paint the corners consistently.  Because the pitch lacks a ton of movement and isn’t in the mid-high 90s, he struggled early last year to put guys away, often seeing batters foul off multiple 2 strike counts, only to allow a bloop, end of the bat single.  The cutter seems to have solved this problem (more on that later).  Phil is on a little extra rest, having last pitched on April 22nd, so you may see a little extra oomph on the heater in the first two innings with him tagging 95 a few times on the gun.  He may lack optimal command for this reason also.  If he can get past the first two innings without too much difficulty, he should settle in nicely.

Curveball: Phil throws two kinds of curves, a nasty spike curve that dives like crazy, down and out of the zone and a more traditional Uncle Charlie that he loops into the zone to freeze batters looking for a high fastball they can feast on.  The spike curve is his real out pitch and when it’s going good, he can strike hitters out even when they’re looking for it – it has that much action.  He can go through phases where he’s not getting great action on the spike, but from what Chad Jennings is saying, it’s currently working really well.  If he’s hitting spots with his fastball and the curve is working, watch out – he may be unhittable.

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Hughes Exhibits No Change in First Start

Posted by Tom Gaffney at 11:50 am 7 Responses »
Feb 272009

Phil Hughes looked pretty solid in his Spring debut, yesterday. 2 innings of no hit, no run ball is nice. 90-92 on his fastball, for the first outing of the year is nice. Working hitters inside for a change is nice (despite nicking a couple guys). His curve didn’t have the nasty bite it had at the end of last year, but it was nice.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is… well… his change. Granted, the kid is still only 22, but that is the pitch that many pundits point to as the key to his becoming an ace or just a pretty good pitcher, and he’s been working on it for the last two years now with, uh, no change.

Obama may have won the election by calling for change, but Jorge Posada ain’t winning nothin’ if he calls for that change from Phil. Yes, the kid is absurdly young and could still develop that pitch, but it’s very odd that Hughes learned a curve in a month and made it his best pitch. He learned a cutter during a couple weeks of a rehab assignment and it was good enough to get out major leaguers within two months.

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