Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Where the Hell is Johnny Barbato?


You heard me, where the hell is Johnny Barbato? At one point this season the New York media, bloggers and such were calling Barbato the Yankees “secret weapon” and now these same journalists are writing about how thin the Yankees middle relief is outside their three-headed monster. So I say again, where the hell is Johnny Barbato?

Barbato made the Yankees out of spring training this season and pitched many meaningful and effective innings for Joe Girardi at the beginning of the season. In an extremely limited sample size Barbato, ignoring the small sample sizes in ERA and FIP and instead focusing on things that aren’t ballooned up by one or two bad innings of relief, Barbato struck out over 10.0 batters per nine innings while limiting his walks and hits allowed. Does he have the Robert Refsnyder going on or something?

Listen. I fully realize that Barbato only faced 53 batters in 15 appearances and I am fully aware of his 4.14 FIP and 5.54 ERA and I am in no way saying that he will be the savior and the absolute answer to the Yankees middle innings relief problem. What I am saying is why do you give a guy a shot and he proves himself only to snatch the rug out from under him after a bad outing or two? That doesn’t happen when Stephen Drew goes a season and a half and couldn’t hit water in an aquarium and that doesn’t happen when Esmil Rogers, Chris Capuano and other veterans couldn’t strike out a little league team but it seems to happen to the Yankees prospects and I’m fed up.


I say one last time. Where the hell is Johnny Barbato?

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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)