Jaret Wright – Keefe To The City

Jul 1, 2015

Brian Cashman and Yankees Know Nothing About Pitching

The Yankees’ putting Adam Warren in the bullpen and skipping a Michael Pineda start are the latest moves on a long list of ridiculous decisions.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like the best time to complain about the Yankees’ handling of their pitching because the offense scored one run on Tuesday night and one run on Monday night and one run on Sunday and two runs on Friday and no runs on Thursday. But there’s not a whole lot that can be done when it comes to the offense except hope someone other than Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez or Mark Teixeira gets contributes, hope that Didi Gregarious and Stephen Drew hit like Major Leaguers and hope that Carlos Beltran retires. When it comes to pitching there is plenty that can be done and the Yankees seem to be doing it all wrong.

After CC Sabathia got embarrassed by the Phillies last week, I wrote that he is done. He followed it up with another ugly performance (7.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 2 HR) that actually lowered his ERA from 5.65 to 5.59. And on the same night that Sabathia made another $700,000 to lose for the Yankees in what has become the easiest and best job in the world (I will gladly pitch in the majors and lose games for $23 million), the Yankees announced Adam Warren had been removed from the rotation and put in the bullpen. The same Adam Warren who boasts the lowest ERA in the Yankees’ rotation.

Twenty-four hours after Warren was put in the bullpen to supposedly give the Yankees the right-handed reliever they lacked, he entered a game the Yankees were losing and got the last eight outs of a loss. The Yankees’ ERA leader among starting pitchers wasn’t even setting up for Dellin Betanaces in his new role, he was holding a one-run deficit that was never overcome. That role makes a lot of sense and seems like the best use of his abilities.

The Yankees had their PR statement ready for reporters by citing Warren’s inning limits as the reason for the decision. With 82 2/3 innings as a starter, Warren had exceeded his innings totals for the last two seasons, but as a starter in the minors in 2012, he threw 155 innings between Triple-A and the Yankees, and in 2011, he threw 152 1/3 innings. This isn’t really unchartered territory for Warren, it’s just unchartered enough that the Yankees think they can get away with their reasoning.

Maybe the fans who believe the Yankees can do no wrong (the fans that believe Didi Gregarious was worth trading for and that Stephen Drew was worth giving $5 million to and that Esmil Rogers will turn his career around after 454 career innings) might have bought the Yankees’ answer to Warren going to the bullpen if Joe Girardi hadn’t said last week that Sabathia would remain in the rotation because of money. But Girardi gave away their not-so-secret secret last week: this isn’t about innings limits, it’s about money and money owed.

Money is the reason Sabathia was on the mound to lose to the Phillies last Tuesday and it’s the reason he was on the mound to lose to the Angels on Monday. It’s why he will get to start against the Rays on Sunday at the Stadium and likely lose that game too. The Yankees pretend that winning is everything, but when they owe a 35-year-old left-hander more per start (around $700,000) than they are paying a much better starter in Warren for the entire season ($572,600), well, it’s obvious why they chose to let Sabathia continue his campaign to allow 40-plus home runs this season.

But let’s pretend for a second that the decision to remove Warren from the rotation is about innings limits and that the Yankees think everyone is stupid enough to believe their lie. In order to even pretend, we need the answer to two questions: 1.) When was the last time the Yankees successfully handled a starting pitcher when it comes to injuries? and 2.) How do the Yankees think they can protect pitchers from injury? Recent Yankees history can answer these questions for us.

Eight years ago, Joba Chamberlain was called up to the Yankees and the “Joba Rules” were set in place to protect him. Joe Torre would have to give Chamberlain one day off for each inning pitched. And if Chamberlain were to pitch two innings, he would have had to have been rested two days beforehand.

“That’s in stone,” Joe Torre said about the rules in July 2008. “That’s basically to protect the future of the kid.”

The Yankees stuck with that version of the rules through 2007 and Joba’s dominating rookie season, and then in 2008, with his transformation from reliever to starter, they created new rules for him based on innings and pitch counts as if he were an 11-year-old in the Little League World Series. After his 12th start in the majors, Joba went on the disabled list with a shoulder injury, and in 2011, Brian Cashman said, “(Joba) hasn’t been the same since that episode in Texas.” But weren’t the rules Cashman created supposed to prevent that episode in Texas from happening?

In 2009, Joba remained a starter, though not a very good one (9-6, 4.75 ERA in 31 starts) before being put back into the bullpen for the postseason. He never started another game, but he did pitch to a 4.40 ERA out of the bullpen in 2010 and after 28 2/3 innings in 2012, he needed Tommy John surgery. Since returning from the surgery, he has a 4.01 ERA in 146 innings.

Since the 2003 offseason, the Yankees replaced the loss of Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens and David Wells with Kevin Brown, Jon Lieber and Javier Vazquez; gave Jaret Wright a three-year, $21 million deal; traded away Tyler Clippard for Jonathan Albaladejo; relied on Carl Pavano and Kei Igawa in 2007 and because of it were forced to pay Roger Clemens $17.1 million for 17 mediocre starts; overhyped and rushed Phil Hughes to the majors; gave Ian Kennedy a starting job he hadn’t earned; replaced Hughes and Kennedy with Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson; gave A.J. Burnett a five-year, $82.5 million contract and then traded him to Pittsburgh and paid him to pitch for the Pirates. At this point, I feel like Lenny Koufax telling the judge in Big Daddy all of the reasons why his son, Sonny (Adam Sandler), shouldn’t have custody of Julian. Except there isn’t a happy ending here.

Three weeks ago, the Yankees skipped Michael Pineda’s start to supposedly protect his innings limit. Pineda at the time was 7-2 with a 3.33 ERA and coming off back-to-back wins with 17 strikeouts in 12 2/3 innings. With 10 days rest, he was rocked by the Orioles (4.1 IP, 9 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR). In the four starts since he was skipped, he is 1-3 with a 6.45 ERA, 1.478 WHIP and .311 batting average against. The Yankees interrupted and derailed Pineda’s ace-like season for no reason other than some made-up innings limit idea in order to protect a pitcher who already missed the entire 2012 and 2013 seasons and most of 2014.

Pitchers get hurt. That’s what they do. And the only real way to protect a pitcher from getting hurt is to not let them pitch. The idea that the Yankees have some formula or science to protecting pitchers is a bigger joke than calling Jacoby Ellsbury “tough”. They have no idea what they’re doing, no one does, and even though no one does, the Yankees have even less of an idea than anyone else.

The Yankees’ unnecessarily tinkered with their best starting pitcher’s season and he hasn’t been the same, their $155 million free agent pitcher with a torn elbow has been inconsistent, their former ace wouldn’t be picked up off waivers and their best starter in the last week has made two starts since returning Tommy John surgery. And now their most consistent starter all season is pitching out of the bullpen in games the Yankees are losing.

The Brian Cashman Yankees don’t know pitching. They don’t know how to develop them consistently and they certainly don’t know how to keep them healthy. The only thing the Yankees know when it comes to pitching is how to give a free-agent pitcher a blank check and from there they just hope they stay healthy. Even then, they don’t know what they’re doing.

My Christmas Wish List

I won’t be getting playoff football this year, so that means I will have to ask for some other things this Christmas.

When I put together my Christmas list for this year, I didn’t bother to ask for anything to do with the New York Football Giants. At 6-9, their season has been lost since their Week 12 loss to the Cowboys and this season marks the fourth time in five years the Giants won’t play in the postseason.

After reaching the playoffs in each of the first four years of Eli Manning’s career as the full-time starting quarterback (2005-08), the Giants’ lone playoff trip since their loss in the 2008 divisional round as the No. 1 seed was in 2011 when they won the Super Bowl. I’m very grateful for the two Super Bowls since 2007 and that Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin prevented Tom Brady and Bill Belichick from being 5-0 in the Super Bowl and football immortality as the best quarterback-coach combination in history. But at this time of the year with the Cowboys and Eagles playing for the NFC East title and the Bears, Packers, Panthers, Saints, Seahawks, 49ers, Cardinals, Patriots, Dolphins, Bengals, Ravens, Steelers, Colts, Broncos, Chiefs and Chargers all playing for something this Sunday, it’s not fun being on the outside looking in.

Yes, it’s another Week 17 of wondering what could have been, but I’m not going to let the Giants ruin Christmas since they already ruined October and November (the Yankees ruined September). And if I can’t have playoff football this year, which I can’t, then this is what I want.

Something That Resembles A Starting Rotation That Can Compete In the AL East
If it seems like I have asked for that before, it’s because I have. Back in 2010, I asked for the same exact thing after the Yankees lost out on Cliff Lee and I was staring at a potential rotation of CC Sabathia, Phil Hughes, A.J. Burnett, Ivan Nova and at the time no one else. (That’s right, Phil Hughes, coming off an 18-win season, was going to be the Yankees’ No. 2 starter.) Thankfully Bartolo Colon decided to get some “help” and Freddy Garcia reinvented himself and the Yankees won 97 games and the AL East before the heart of the order went missing in a five-game series loss to the Tigers in the ALDS.

So far this offseason the Yankees have signed Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran and Brian Roberts and lost Robinson Cano to the Mariners. The November 2013 Yankees are better than the September 2013 Yankees were and are better in theory than the 2013 Yankees were ever going to be at their healthiest point. But the rotation is still a problem just like it was at this time last year and the year before that.

The best free-agent options for the rotation are Matt Garza, Ervin Santana, Ubaldo Jimenez, Bronson Arroyo, Paul Maholm and …. wait for it …. wait for it …. wait for it … A.J. Burnett! The only one of these six options I would be OK with would be Garza, but even then he’s going to command (and receive) a ridiculous contract in this market for someone who has a career .500 record (67-67), a 3.84 ERA and has started only 42 games over the last two years.

Brian Cashman said going into this winter that he was going to have to find 400 innings from somewhere and I don’t think the Yankees are going to sign one of the “top” free agents just because they are the best available right now like they would have in the past with Carl Pavano or Jaret Wright or Burnett. That means that “somewhere” will likely be from within the organization and some combination of the current favorites Michael Pineda, David Phelps and Adam Warren. Unless, the Yankees can give me the next thing on my list …

Cliff Lee
Yes, three years later I’m still asking for Cliff Lee. I don’t need to explain it. Just read this. But since Lee isn’t exactly realistic, I will ask for someone who is …

Masahiro Tanaka
I know nothing about Masahiro Tanaka other than from searching “Masahiro Tanaka” on YouTube and watching a video titled “Best of Mashahiro Tanaka” that is synced to what sounds like nearly four minutes of an instrumental version of a song by The Offspring. But I’m going to guess that the only knowledge most North American “experts” who talk about how good Tanaka is happens to be this same exact video. No one knows for sure how Tanaka’s Japanese success will translate to the majors and given the history of highly coveted Japanese pitchers coming to North America, there’s a better chance that Tanaka will be more like Daisuke Matsuzaka than Yu Darvish. But as long as he’s not Kei Igawa (I haven’t typed that name in so long), I’ll take him.

2013-14 Henrik Lundqvist To Be 2011-12 Henrik Lundqvist
Since signing his seven-year extension, Henrik Lundqvist is 2-4-2. I’m not sure if you want your franchise player, who you recently locked up through 2020-21 to be saying he “kind of expected” that a rookie backup would be starting in place of him for the second consecutive game and night. And after recording two wins and allowing just two goals combined in 48 hours, I’m not sure that Alain Vigneault is necessarily going to go back to Lundqvist over Cam Talbot on Friday night in Washington.

Lundqvist has admitted to over-anticipating plays and being jumpy and it has shown this season. While it’s hard to fault him for a five-goal loss to the Islanders on Friday night when you consider they were getting shorthanded breakaways and odd-man rushes left and right, he isn’t bailing out the team that way he used to. And because Lundqvist isn’t bailing out his team the way he used to, it brings me to the next thing I’m asking for …

A New Rangers Defense
I asked for this last because this is going to be the most unrealistic of them all. It would be like asking for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this year.

Since 2008-09, the Rangers’ problem has been scoring goals, but now with Lundvist struggling and having a down year so far, preventing goals is even more of a problem. And if Lundqvist is going to be more human-like than King-like this season, the Rangers aren’t going anywhere because they don’t have the defense (especially with Marc Staal injured) many thought they did. Through the first 46 percent of the season, Lundqvist hasn’t been bailing out the incompetence of the Rangers defense the way he has through his entire career. But rather than focus on his entire career, let’s focus on since 2011-12 when the current Rangers defensive core started to become the foundation of the defense.

We all know that I don’t think the 2011-12 Rangers were worthy of the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed or as close as “two wins away from the Stanley Cup Final” as they technically were. They earned the top seed and won two series in Game 7 before losing the Devils in six because of Henrik Lundqvist. Not because of their offense and certainly not because of their defense. Lundqvist made everyone believe Dan Girardi was an All-Star and that Michael Del Zotto could be trusted in his own zone the same way Sidney Crosby has made everyone believe Chris Kunitz is some kind of superstar despite his career season-high in goals being 26 and now as a linemate of Number 87, he has 20 goals in just 39 games.

Prior to Lundqvist signing an extension, there was a worrying sense that overpaying Lundqvist would cost the Rangers a chance at re-signing Girardi this offseason. But right now I’m not sure anyone would want to sign Girardi. When he’s not falling down or giving the puck away, he’s busy scoring goals against his team, a stat which he must lead the league in by at least 15.

As for Del Zotto, it’s pretty obvious his time with the Rangers is dwindling. When the Rangers beat the Maple Leafs on Monday night at the Garden, I watched Del Zotto intently as the Rangers saluted from center ice and wondered if Del Zotto was thinking it could be one of the last times he would salute the MSG crowd. If it is, the Rangers will be a better team.

Merry Christmas!

Welcome Back, Chien-Ming Wang

Once upon a time Chien-Ming Wang saved the Yankees and now he’s back with the organization.

Since I was seven years old, the Yankees have missed the playoffs once: 2008. I refer to that year as the Year Without October the way I refer to the 2004 baseball season as the Season That Never Happened. (There was a strike that season and no games were played. Don’t you remember?)

I remember the 2008 Yankees for being miserable and making my summer miserable. And because I relate specific years to how that Yankees season went, when I hear “2008,” I think, “That’s the year I graduated from college and the year the Yankees ruined my summer” and sometimes I think of those two things in reverse order. (OK, I always think of them in reverse order, but I didn’t think it would be a good look to put the Yankees ahead of college graduation.) The truth is that the 2008 Yankees didn’t suck and weren’t even bad. And given their circumstances they were actually pretty good.

That Yankees team went 89-73, which would have been enough to play in a one-game playoff if they were in the AL Central and would have been enough to win the NL West by five games. Their 89 wins were the fourth most in the AL and more than the 2000 Yankees had (87-75) and that team won the AL East by 2 ½ games and won the World Series. But the 2008 Yankees ended the run of 13 straight playoff appearances and because of that I remember them as a failure even if they really weren’t.

That season the rotation featured Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson for 35 combined starts. Andy Pettitte posted career worsts in losses (14) and ERA (4.54) pitching through injuries the entire year in the only .500 season of his 17-year career. Jorge Posada didn’t play in one game in May and played in his last game of the year on July 19. Jose Molina had 297 plate appearances, Chad Moeller had 103 and Ivan Rodriguez had 101. Pettitte, Posada, Jonathan Albaladejo, Wilson Betemit, Chris Britton, Brian Bruney, Joba Chamberlain, Johnny Damon, Dan Giese, Phil Hughes, Jeff Karstens, Ian Kennedy, Hideki Matsui and Alex Rodriguez all landed on the disabled list at least once. LaTroy Hawkins was in the bullpen and so were Billy Traber, Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez. Richie Sexson got to put on pinstripes. So like I said, “Given their circumstances, they were actually pretty good.”

Even during the Murphy’s Law season with all of those things happening during the same year in which the Yankees cared more about Jobamania and his transformation from the best setup man since 1996 Mariano Rivera to starter (which became a circus), the season really ended on June 15 in the sixth inning at Minute Maid Park.

The season ended when Chien-Ming Wang and his .000 career on-base percentage reached base on a fielder’s choice after a failed sacrifice bunt attempt and suffered a lisfranc injury running home on his way to scoring his first career run. The Yankees won that game 13-0 and Wang earned his second-to-last win as a Yankee to this day (the other coming on June 28, 2009 against the Mets), improving to 8-2 on the year with a 4.07 ERA.

To that point in the season, Wang had averaged 6 1/3 innings per start in 15 starts and the Yankees were 12-3 in games he started. He had won 19 games in both 2006 and 2007 and looked to be a lock for that number again in 2008. With the win over the Astros he improved to 54-20 in five seasons with the Yankees and had become the “ace” of their staff even if Chris Russo strongly believed otherwise.

(To me, Wang was an “ace” during the regular season where his heavy sinker worked the majority of the time over 33 starts. But come postseason time when you didn’t know if Wang’s sinker would sink or not, he was a disaster when it didn’t. He didn’t have strong enough secondary pitches to get outs and would be stubborn on the mound trying to find the sinker because he had to be stubborn about it. He couldn’t really grind his way through starts without his pitch and because of it I consider him a “regular-season ace.” His playoff numbers would consider him that too: 4 GS, 1-3, 7.58 ERA, 19 IP, 28 H, 19 R, 16 ER, 5 HR, 5 BB, 7 K, 1.737 WHIP. The same pitcher who allowed nine home runs in 116 1/3 innings in 2005, 12 home runs in 218 innings in 2006 and nine home runs in 199 1/3 innings in 2007 somehow allowed five in just 19 postseason innings. “Regular-season ace.”)

The Yankees missed the playoffs by six games in 2008 with Rasner and Ponson starting 22 percent of the season and with Dan Giese, Brian Bruney, Carl Pavano and Kei Igawa also getting starts. Six games ended up separating the Yankees from the Red Sox for the wild card (and eight games separated the Yankees from the Rays for the division). You can’t tell me Chien-Ming Wang wouldn’t have made up that difference if he hadn’t been injured. He would have.

Wang saved the 2005 season (along with Robinson Cano’s emergence, Tino Martinez emptying the tank and Jason Giambi turning back the clock or possibly reverting to undetectable performance-enhancing drugs). Wang picked up the only win in the 2006 ALDS against the Tigers (Game 1) and from April 30, 2005 until June 15, 2008 (minus the two months he missed in 2005), he was the closest thing the Yankees had to a guaranteed win every five days before CC Sabathia came to town.

I eventually got used to Wang’s painfully slow windup and let the way he curved his hat go because when you win those things become trademarks and cool and mimicked by others. There isn’t any young baseball player trying to mirror A.J. Burnett’s herky-jerky, inconsistent windup. At least I hope there isn’t. (If A.J. Burnett used Wang’s windup or curved his hat the way Wang did, I would have had enough material for at least three or four more columns from 2009-2011. That’s the difference between winning and losing.)

But if I’m going to mention his 55 wins with the Yankees and his calm and collected demeanor and his victory in Game 1 of the 2006 ALDS then I’m afraid I’m going to have to mention how he single-handedly lost the 2007 ALDS with this majestic pitching line for two games: 5.2 IP, 14 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 4 BB, 2 K, 3 HR, 3.174 WHIP. With that WHIP, Wang essentially loaded the bases every inning he was on the mound in Games 1 and 4 on his way to a 19.06 ERA for the series, which I thought would never be touched, but Phil Hughes made a run at those numbers with his 2010 ALCS performance against the Rangers. (I won’t put his numbers here for fear of having a nervous breakdown remembering that series, knowing it could have ended differently if Hughes had just been atrocious and not disastrous.) And also 2009 when Wang was supposed to be the Yankees’ No. 2 start, but instead was the worst statistical pitcher in Yankees history.

During the last half of the aughts, when Brian Cashman was trading for a 41-year-old Randy Johnson, giving $39.95 million contract to Carl Pavano and $21 million to Jaret Wright, begging a 45-year-old Roger Clemens to unretire and make 17 starts for the Yankees for $28 million and paying $26 million for the rights to give $20 million to Kei Igawa, Chien-Ming Wang was busy winning 68 percent of his starts for the Yankees while being grossly underpaid.

Wang is back where it all began on a minor-league deal with the Yankees that will have him start the season in Triple-A, a place that five years ago you never thought he would never have to pitch again unless it was a rehab start. When asked about Wang’s return to the team, Joe Girardi said, “He was a very good pitcher for the New York Yankees.” But he’s wrong. For four seasons, he was the best pitcher for the New York Yankees.

So welcome back, Chien-Ming Wang. You were never thanked for what you did. Here’s to hoping you get the chance to do some more.

Tag: Jaret Wright

Brian Cashman and Yankees Know Nothing About Pitching

My Christmas Wish List

Welcome Back, Chien-Ming Wang