Monday, April 20, 2015

Yankees May Use 6th SP This Series


The New York Yankees discussed this winter the possibility of using a sixth starter to give all their starting pitchers with question marks regarding their health an extra day or two of rest early in the season. The team has yet to utilize that idea but Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild has stated that the decision may finally come down during this impending four game series with the Detroit Tigers. The Yankees either want to give their pitchers, specifically Masahiro Tanaka, an extra day either this series where he is scheduled to pitch the fourth game of the series or during his next turn against the Tampa Bay Rays inside Yankee Stadium. How can the Yankees pull this off and who would they choose to make the spot start?

The obvious candidate and probably the easiest question to answer here is the who, and that's Chase Whitley. Whitley had the best spring of any of the fifth starter candidates including Esmil Rogers and Adam Warren and was still sent down to Triple-A to be stretched out. Whitley could be back with the big club as early as this week to give the likes of Tanaka, CC Sabathia, Michel Pineda and others an extra day off. Whitley's stat line this season looks a little something like this:

YearTmWLERAGSIPHERHRBBSOWHIPH9HR9BB9SO9
2015Scranton/Wilkes-Barre102.45211.07306111.1825.70.04.99.0
The hard question to answer is probably the when as that comes along with a 25 man roster move as well. The Yankees play every day until the final day of the month on the 30th so any day would be as good as any I would imagine. Rothschild did specifically say they wanted to give Tanaka an extra day so (presumably) Whitley would pitch this Thursday against Detroit (currently a TBA but it may be Anibal Sanchez) or on the 28th inside Yankee Stadium against the Rays. One thing I do know if the Yankees are going to pull the trigger on this they need to go ahead and do it now rather than try it again later in the season. And if they aren't going to then they need to stop teasing us all with the idea of it season after season, pee or get off the pot Yankees.

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