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?
You’d think that any problems with your number 2 starter would be watched very, very carefully. You would think that a young, inexpensive pitcher who throws a 95mph sinker would merit some special attention. You’d think that rehabilitation for a guy that won 19 games in back-to-back seasons despite being a ground ball pitcher backed by the worst defense in recent memory would be of the highest priority for your baseball team. Why is it, then, that the New York Yankees don’t even seem to have a plan (or a clue) when it comes to the health of Chien-Ming Wang?
First they completely chowder his initial rehab, despite having almost SEVEN MONTHS to rehab. The guy was soft-tossing on OCTOBER 17th, for @#$$’s sake. Yet it took the 3 worst back-to-back-to-back starts in baseball history to recognize that something was off in his rehab!!
Next, they put him on the D.L. and begin a rehab assignment in extended Spring Training, culminating in AAA Scranton Wilkes-Barre with 13 scoreless innings, but still a noticeable lack of his traditional velocity. This is fine, he’s getting better, but he’s clearly not quite back to his old self, yet. This was Ma7 17th.
So now the Yankees feel that his stuff is not quite recovered enough yet to get out major league hitters, so they decide to give him at least one more AAA start on his regular rest for May 22. This is when all Hell breaks loose and Joba’s bruise makes the Yankee Brass believe that they’ve been entirely too logical and careful with Wang the last few weeks and they need to return to their systematic campaign of screwing with his head.
“Let’s turn a perpetual Cy Young contender into Dan Giese!” Cashman apparently said to himself and cancelled Wang’s scheduled start so that he could languish in the Yankee bullpen, picking splinters out of his rear instead. This was TEN days ago, or two scheduled starts. To add insult to injury, Joe Girardi proved last night that he has no intention of actually USING the Wanger in a long relief role, preferring Alfredo Aceves. So why is he here, exactly, missing two possible rehab starts? It sure beats the heck out of me. Why are they treating this guy like he’s a 40 year-old unwanted journeyman relief pitcher instead of one of the best pitchers in baseball when healthy? What the heck is going on here? Does anyone have any idea, because I sure don’t.
. . . and his name is Chien-Ming Wang. Yes, its OK to start panicking now.
Now the question is what to do about him. His next scheduled turn is Friday, in Boston vs Josh Beckett. There’s zero chance he makes that start. He has trouble with the Sox under normal circumstances, and these are anything but. We have an off day on Thursday, that will give Girardi and Cashman a chance to skip his turn while they figure out what to do next. I still doubt they will take the drastic move of taking him out of the rotation, but it has to be on the table at this point. If they skip him, his next scheduled turn will be Tuesday, April 28th against Detroit with Edwin Jackson going for the Tigers. His career numbers are good against Detroit, but I’m not sure that they mean anything at this point.
What troubled me most about today’s start was how deflated he became after the 3 run HR. He made a good pitch, the batter simply did a good job of going with it. It was as much a product of the count (3-1) as anything else. But Wang simply lost it after that, and that tells you that mentally all of this is weighing on him, heavily. Pitchers with his amount of big league experience should be able to bear down and get the final two outs, but he just gave up. That is a very, very troubling sign.
Options right now include sending him down to Tampa to work with Nardi Contreres or “finding” an injury and putting him on the DL. Sending him to AAA Scranton to regain his confidence isn’t going to happen. Wang is out of options, so sending him down would mean he would have to ckear waivers, which he wont. Of the choices, I would send him to Tampa and see if Nardi can reach him. Girardi may not like it, but Eiland has tried and tried to get to him and nothing has worked. They keep saying his bullpens between starts have been good, that he’s just not taking it out on the mound with him. They even tried a simulated game between starts, where he pitched to Ransom and Melky. Once again, to no effect. They need to try a different voice, a different approach to see if they can get him past this rough patch. But one thing that can’t be considered is to keep doing what they’re doing now. That, as Einstein once said, is the definition of insanity.
