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Sunday, July 1, 2007

The Outfield

-At the present time, the Yankee outfield has amounted to a bunch of suck. Damon, Abreu, and Matsui look done as far as being good to great players and Melky Cabrera has an uninspiring overall line despite hitting for an OPS of roughly .800 over the last two months. Because of this, Brett Gardner’s season is gaining importance. Gardner has added gap power to his arsenal this season and after another productive stretch of games his OPS is over .800. He’s going to turn 24 at the end of August and is repeating the league, so I’m not going to act as though he’s a great prospect, but if the Yankees promote him to AAA and he continues to be similarly productive he will have placed himself in the ‘08 OF picture. In a way, it’s kind of sad, but the Yankee OF is going to need a major overhaul.

-On the topic of future Yankee OF, Jose Tabata finished the month of June at .346/.420/.436. I would love to see even more power, but right now he’s representing himself well enough. Given their history of handling offensive prospects, I would say Tabata is on the verge of being promoted and might have that occur if he has another hot week. There might even be some pressure to fast track Tabata considering next year’s dreary OF picture.

-The Alan Horne AA Experience continues to perplex. After 7 more dominant innings of 1 run ball, Horne now ranks 2nd in the EL in Ks and ERA. He’s not overly young. RunElvis (hat tip to wherever I saw this, but I can’t remember) is in the AAA rotation. There’s no reason for him to still be in AA. None.

-Don’t look now, but Brett Smith’s hot streak is apparently over. Smith has given up 19 ER in his last 29 innings. Brett has had a nice run, so hopefully he can rekindle whatever he was doing enough to get traded for something useful.

-John Flaherty tried to reason that Kei Igawa gave the Yankees a start you can take from your 5th guy over the weekend. I disagree. Igawa gave up 4 runs on 3 homers in 6.1 innings. That’s not good and it’s not really acceptable from anyone in your rotation. If Igawa continues to suck and he’s given no indication for anything else to be assumed, Steve White might be the millionth Yankee pitcher to debut. White’s peripherals are poor, but he has a flashy ERA and a big fastball, which at this point might be enough to give him a leg up on the competition. Such an awful season. Phil Hughes please come back.