Saturday, March 26, 2011

Rotation is Set - Yankee Style

Which to me means with little intelligence applied. The Yankees announced how the rotation will begin the season. Well really they have announced how the way the last two spots will shake out since they named CC as the Opening Day starter (obviously) and Burnett the number two starter with Phil Hughes the number three.

Girardi has made the obvious choice of inserting Ivan Nova into the four spot in the rotation. Its hard to argue with that since Nova has pitched exceptionally well this spring and is the one candidate of the group who can still become a decent starter in the near future. Not only that, but unlike the last few Yankee starting prospects, he is actually stretched out to pitch an entire big league season.

The last spot was a little tougher to decide. The Yankees were running out two retreads in Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. Colon hasn't pitched in the majors since 2009 and hadn't pitched a full season since 2005, but he was exceptionally strong this spring. The rotund right-hander had good velocity and movement all spring and it seemed like he would come out of left field and surprise everyone to grab that fifth spot.

His competition was Fraddy Garcia and while it had been a long time since Garcia was an above-average pitcher, it wasn't absurd to think of him lasting most of the year in the rotation and providing serviceable production. Hell, he had just thrown 160 innings last season with the White Sox with decent numbers.

The Yankee logic seems to be that Colon would be more versatile than Garcia. It's something that doesn't seem to mesh with either players history or physical profile. Based on their recent injury history it would seem wiser to have Colon in the rotation. Being overweight with a history of shoulder issues doesn't scream flexibility.

Either way the addition of Kevin Millwood will make Garcia or Colon expendable if they fail within their first three or four starts.

3 comments:

Joe said...

Please examine when & how the yanks get Milwood. I haven't heard anything about it.

Dennis said...

It's just not a good rotation, the Yankees are going to have to score 7 runs a game to win. I am not saying they aren't capable of doing it, but it is not going to be pretty.

Joe said...

Kind of like the 2010 Sox.