Rotational Depth Blues

Written by Sean P | 29 March 2010

Oh, it'll happen sometime this season. At some point the Yankees will need another starting pitcher- and with the elimination of Joba from contention, where will they turn?

It's a very good and suddenly pertinent question because the Yankees starting pitching depth has very quickly evaporated. Last year the Yankees had 9 pitchers start games. In 2008 they had 13 pitchers start games. In 2007 they used 14 starting pitchers, 12 in 2006, 14 in 2005, 12 in 2004, and 9 in 2003. In other years they reached the World Series, they had 11 in 2001, 12 in 2000, 9 in 1999, 10 in 1998 and 12 in 1996. Get the picture?

At some point the Yankees will next warm bodies to start games and parsing over the list, it's a bit frightening. I took a look at the CHONE projections for the internal candidates that might be called upon this year.

CHONE Projections

Now in defense of the Yankees before we go much further, no team is going to be so deep as to have 7 or 8 viable starting pitchers. Also many of the teams I mentioned above called on these extra guys to start 1 or 2 games- ideally we're not going to pencil in any of the above for more than 5 starts (although I imagine we'll see Sergio start more than 5 times- injuries do happen, however minor). So is the "Yikes" aspect of the list really a major impediment to success in 2010? I really don't think so at all (adjusting for health of course...)

It's obvious that Sergio Mitre would be the best choice as a 6th starter. CHONE is typically a bit conservative. Also it's not easy projecting pitchers without prior MLB experience. So this is really just a rough estimate of what these guys would be capable of this year. I would have to expect that from a logistic standpoint Kei Igawa would get some sort of shot here. He's getting an awful lot of money to set AAA pitching records and if the Yankees are depending on brilliance from one or two spot starts, the team would probably not be in such hot shape. If Christian Garcia is healthy I think I would expect a lot better from him than what CHONE is projecting. Of course that whole health thing is tricky for some guys.....Josh Schmidt started 5 games for Trenton last year although he's not a starting pitcher at all. I included his projection because I was a bit surprised by a guy I admittedly don't know a ton about. This excellent profile from Mike Ashmore details his career nicely- mostly a relief pitcher, a side armer, think RJ Swindle....Zach Segovia might also be a guy who gets a shot if the Yankees were in a jam. He's pitched halfway decent this spring and he'd have to be in the mix somewhere.

And of course if something truely horrific happened, and we were talking about more than one long term replacement in the starting rotation, there's always these guys.....

Let's hope there's no need to discuss any of this again.