Yankees Pitching Woes

I was a little late this week with my FAAB write-ups, and I figured I'd get some questions about at least one player. Sure enough, raf chimed in:

how about rasner?

In a more typical season, I don't think people would care all that much about Darrell Rasner. This has nothing to do with Rasner's ability. He could be a Quad-A guy, but he might also be one of those rare prospects who peaked late, and who might provide some value at the back of the Yankees rotation.

The key element to this brief synopsis of Rasner is that he "might provide some value."

We used to look at pitchers in the Yankee system as either one of two things: filler or trade bait. Once in a while, a Chien-Ming Wang might defy the odds and break through. But the Yankees almost never broke homegrown pitchers in. Even in an organization that had started to believe to some degree in homegrown talent, the mound was not a place to risk 35 starts on an untested kid. It was fine to ease in a Jorge Posada, a Derek Jeter or a Robinson Cano in at a position, but pitching was where you spent your free agent dough.

A combination of some poor free agent signings and a system awash in arms finally made Brian Cashman see the light. Instead of tossing Phil Hughes and/or Ian Kennedy into a deal for Johan Santana, Cashman decided to be patient and give Hughes and Kennedy real shots to make the team.

That decision seems horrible now, but you can see why Cashman did it. Why commit $22 million a year to Santana and surrender Hughes when you could keep Hughes and pursue C.C. Sabathia the following off-season for possibly less coin? Besides, Hughes and Kennedy would be novelties: young pitchers the Yankees could control for years before having to deal with free agency.

We know what has happened. Hughes has been pitching through an injury for who knows how long, and is now on the DL. Kennedy stunk of the joint, and now looks less like a Top 50 pitching prospect and more like a back of the rotation guy. Rasner is up in the show and Kei Igawa is about to join him by the end of this week.

That's not even the story, though. The story is that Rasner and Igawa might actually get an extended chance to succeed or fail.

There was a time when the Yankees would have committed a good $50-60 million of payroll to their rotation. If a starter failed, the Yanks would have eaten the cost and grabbed another veteran via a trade ASAP. This year, that doesn't look like it's going to be the case.

Whether Cashman is quietly planning to rebuild within the Yankees vast payroll or is simply refusing to overpay for the best available starting pitcher in a weak market, the reality is that the Yankees may very well opt for internal solutions in 2008. How that impacts us is really what matters to us, far more than what impact it has on the Yankees play-off chances.

Guys like Rasner who were once an afterthought in the world of FAAB are now worth not only considering, but bidding on aggressively. Guys like Igawa might even be worth looking at in favorable match-ups. Where previously you wouldn't have wasted much FAAB on a spot starter, now you might be looking at 10-12 starts from Rasner, if not more.

Where others see a narrative of failure for the Yankees, you have to look at opportunity, and try to decide what the Yankees are going to do and how they're going to react. Your strategy regarding Rasner, the other available starting pitchers in the league, and how to approach trades involving starting pitchers will all be impacted. Think of the Yankees thought process as a pebble being dropped in your league's pond. It might seem small, but the decision to let Darrell Rasner sink or swim will have a far greater impact on your season than you would have thought at the beginning of the year.