Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Final Four Bullpen Spots, That Should Be Final Three

He's a starter until proven otherwise.

I've always been a firm believer in that statement, and I thought about it yet again when reading about the final two bullpen spots available on the team.

Two of Johnny Barbato, Anthony Swarzak, Kirby Yates, and Luis Cessa, will join the Yankees on Opening Day.

In his five minor league seasons, Johnny Barbato has appeared in 179 games, however he's only started 20 of them. And more than half of those starts (13 to be exact) happened back in 2011, his first professional season after being drafted by the San Diego Padres the year before. Johnny actually hasn't started a game since 2013, and he wasn't too successful at it.

Anthony Swarzak started four games for the Minnesota Twins in 2014, however he came into 46 other games that season as a reliever. In 2015, Anthony gave it a shot in the Korean Baseball Organization, starting in 17 out of 20 games appeared in, however a 5.26 ERA in the KBO didn't "wow" anyone. Swarzak returned to the States last season, and appeared in ten games of relief for the Cleveland Indians

Kirby Yates has been a professional baseball player for seven years. In those seven years he's appeared in 285 games, and started just 18 of them (only one of them coming after 20111).

It's safe to say that these three men are relief pitchers. They were given a shot as starters, but those experiments didn't pan out.

Then we come to Luis Cessa. Luis has appeared in 95 professional baseball games, and started 86 of those. And the nine games he appeared as a reliever all came back in 2011.

I think it's safe to say that Luis Cessa's career as a starting pitcher are not over with yet.

Therefore I believe it would be best for the Yankees to send Mr. Cessa to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to continue work as a starter.

Last season ten different pitchers started at least two games for the Yanks, and seven of those started in 11 or more. The point being that the five pitchers to be awarded spots in the starting rotation on Opening Day, along with the next guy in line... Ivan Nova, will not be enough to get the team through the season.

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