Sorry for being a day late to post something, but flooding created a few personal nightmares.
On the subject of nightmares, the Yankees have arguably the two best offenses in the league on the schedule back-to-back â Cleveland at home and the Red Sox at Fenway Park â and a rotation that right now is Andy Pettitte and pray for, well, letâs not pray for any more rain. But you get the idea.
On Tuesday night, they are starting Chase Wright, who has started two games above Single-A. They have a hole over the weekend in Boston that they hope Jeff Karstens could rush off the DL to fill. But letâs keep perspective, this is Jeff Karstens. It is not exactly like saying that Roger Clemens is ready, willing and able. And somewhere in between Wright and the mystery guest in Boston, we get to see more of Kei Igawa and Darrell Rasner.
It is April, but it also is a crisis point. And I think it also is a seminal point in Brian Cashmanâs reign. Again, considering our local weather problems, I hate to categorize something as the Perfect Storm, but Cashman is dealing with questions about his new strength and conditioning coaches just as he is dealing with whether he left the rotation well armed enough.
Cashman has been pretty much left alone to run baseball operations for the past two seasons and nothing has reflected this phase of his stewardship more than his fervor to protect his own pitching prospects and go out and add young pitching whenever possible. Well, we are going to get a quick 2007 report card on how Cashman has done hording pitchers. Because we are going to see a lot of them.
Cashman was asked in spring training by several teams about Wright. He ignored much of the American free-agent market to land Igawa, who was not universally touted throughout the majors. Karstens and Rasner reflect his desire to hold onto even secondary-type starters. He has nurtured Tyler Clippard and Phil Hughes to Triple-A and obtained Steven Jackson and Ross Ohlendorf to join them. He has a Triple-A wild card in Matt DeSalvo.
In other words, Cashman has stocked a lot of pitchers, and the early signs are he might need to reach into a lot of that stockpile. Now we get to find out if Cashman protected and picked the right youngsters, we get an early â and important â grade on his administration.