{"id":575,"date":"2011-02-06T12:40:20","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T17:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=575"},"modified":"2013-01-24T13:34:51","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T18:34:51","slug":"pettittes-retirement-spells-doom-for-the-yankees-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=575","title":{"rendered":"Pettitte&#8217;s retirement spells doom for the Yankees season"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_585\" style=\"width: 276px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/andy1019.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-585\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-585\" title=\"andy1019\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/andy1019-266x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"266\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/andy1019-266x300.jpg 266w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/andy1019.jpg 533w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 266px) 100vw, 266px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-585\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pettitte is done ... leaving a massive hole in the Yanks rotation.  Photo: noahhunt.org<\/p><\/div>\n<p>One of the last major off-season issues to resolve prior to the beginning of spring training (the status of lefty <strong>Andy Pettitte)<\/strong> was resolved with the pitcher <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/sports\/baseball\/yankees\/2011\/02\/04\/2011-02-04_andy_pettitte_says_the_desire_to_compete_isnt_there_as_he_announces_his_retireme.html?r=sports\">announcing his retirement<\/a> earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>The retirement leaves the Yankees rotation in serious trouble.\u00a0 Pettitte may have only given the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/NYY\/2010.shtml\">2010 team<\/a> 21 starts but he went 11-3 in those starts and was the Yank&#8217;s 2nd best pitcher.\u00a0 They failed to acquire any of the marquee free agents or trade targets in the off-season and are going into 2011 with this as a rotation: <strong>Sabathia<\/strong>, <strong>Burnett<\/strong>, <strong>Hughes<\/strong>, <strong>Nova<\/strong>, and <strong>Mitre<\/strong>.\u00a0 The problem is that after Sabathia, every one of these guys has serious question marks;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hughes may have gone 18-8 but his accompanying numbers (4.19 era, 1.28 whip) only rated a 102 era+ for the season.\u00a0 That&#8217;s essentially league average.\u00a0 He benefited from some pretty amazing run support that probably cannot be sustained in the long term.\u00a0 It was also his first year starting full time.\u00a0 He has a great pedigree (1st round pick in 2004) and has pitched well.\u00a0 But he may be a candidate for the Verducci effect of quickly increasing workload.\u00a0 The Yanks have been burned in the past by young starters blowing out their arms (Wang).<\/li>\n<li>Burnett may be the latest in a long line of quality pitchers who just cannot perform in the spotlight.\u00a0 He was relatively awful in 2010; 10-15, 5.26 era, 1.511 whip.\u00a0 Most teams would put up with this in a 5th starter if the guy was a promising rookie &#8230; but Burnett is a highly paid supposed ace starter.\u00a0 He&#8217;s never been a complete <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/burnea.01.shtml\">lights out starter<\/a>, sports a career 110-100 record and should never have been given a $84M contract to begin with.<\/li>\n<li>Mitre is a 29-yr old journeyman pitcher with a career 13-29 record.\u00a0 And he&#8217;s slated to be the Yankees #4 starter.<\/li>\n<li>Nova looks like he could be a ok back of the end starter prospect &#8230; but he owns a grand total of 3 career major league starts.\u00a0 And he&#8217;s slated to be the #5 starter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>New York has signed a couple of MLB veterans in <strong>Freddie Garcia<\/strong> and <strong>Bartolo Colon<\/strong> to minor league deals, and they may provide insurance\/competition for Mitre and Nova in the spring.\u00a0 But there is a reason these guys couldn&#8217;t catch on with even the worst teams out there; they&#8217;re more likely to put up a 6.00 era than a 3.00 era.\u00a0 Perhaps Garcia&#8217;s decent 2010 season may land him a rotation spot, but Colon hasn&#8217;t pitched in the majors in over a year and was awful then.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the Yankees are still one of the best offensive teams in the league and can slug their way to a number of 8-6 wins &#8230; but in a division where Boston has restocked and looks dominant and Tampa has a rotation that New York only wishes it had, 3rd place looks like it is in the Yankees future.\u00a0 Writer <strong>Jon Paul Morosi<\/strong> thinks that the Yankees <a href=\"http:\/\/msn.foxsports.com\/mlb\/story\/New-York-Yankees-will-not-really-miss-Andy-Pettitte-that-much-020311\">won&#8217;t miss<\/a> Pettitte, but i think he&#8217;s crazy.\u00a0 His article seems to just assume that a <strong>Fausto Carmona<\/strong> trade is a done deal (despite the fact that the Yankees have swung and missed on every pitcher acquisition this off-season).\u00a0 He also assumes that 3 prospects that nobody has heard of (<strong>Dellin Betances<\/strong>, <strong>Manny Banuelos <\/strong>or <strong>Andrew Brackman<\/strong>) will magically come to the rescue.\u00a0 Banuelos and Betances each are grizzled minor league veterans with 3 AA starts to their credit, and Brackman isn&#8217;t that far ahead of them (he was 5-7 with a 3.01 era in 15 AA starts in 2010).\u00a0 Yeah; not exactly Jeremy Hellickson-esque prospects waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2\/7\/11 update<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/dailypitch\/post\/2011\/02\/andy-pettitte-2011-yankees-rotation-retires-burnett\/1?csp=34sports&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UsatodaycomSports-TopStories+%28Sports+-+Top+Stories%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader\">Seth Livingstone<\/a> at USA Today wrote about this same topic and reviewed some other possible prospects in the Yankees system that may be better options than the three mentioned above.<\/p>\n<p>There are definitely some arms to be had in the trade market.\u00a0 <strong>Joe Blanton<\/strong> is probably available, the Braves may have an extra starter in <strong>Kenshin Kawakami<\/strong> if their up and coming prospect <strong>Mike Minor<\/strong> blows it out in the spring, the Dodgers have 6 starters for 5 slots and may give up <strong>Vicente Padilla<\/strong> once the season starts, and even the Washington Nationals may have an extra arm or two worth gambling on (<strong>Maya<\/strong>, <strong>Wang <\/strong>and <strong>Detwiler <\/strong>are all slated to start in the minors right now).<\/p>\n<p>Without a move though, I say &#8220;Welcome to 3rd place&#8221; and only the 2nd time you&#8217;ve missed the playoffs since the wild card era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the last major off-season issues to resolve prior to the beginning of spring training (the status of lefty Andy Pettitte) was resolved with the pitcher announcing his retirement earlier this week. The retirement leaves the Yankees rotation in serious trouble.\u00a0 Pettitte may have only given the 2010 team 21 starts but he went [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[700,1463,704,343,47,37,1461,1460,321,412,213,439,1465,1462,775,956,51,1459,1464,1466,883],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-aj-burnett","tag-andrew-brackman","tag-andy-pettitte","tag-bartolo-colon","tag-cc-sabathia","tag-chien-ming-wang","tag-dellin-betances","tag-fauso-carmona","tag-freddie-garcia","tag-ivan-nova","tag-joe-blanton","tag-jon-paul-morosi","tag-kenshin-kawakami","tag-manny-banuelos","tag-mike-minor","tag-phil-hughes","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-sergio-mitre","tag-seth-livingstone","tag-vicente-padilla","tag-yunesky-maya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}