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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Chase Wright?

With Carl Pavano headed to his rightful place, the Yankees were in need of someone to take over his rotation spot. It was just announced that the pitcher to do so will be Chase Wright. Along with a few other guys, Chase Wright was amongst the most impressive invited to Spring Training. His call-up is a result of that as well as his stellar AA performance to begin the year and his position on the 40-man roster.

Wright throws a 2 seam fastball that typically runs 87-90. He used to throw a bit harder and can, from time to time, get his fastball into the low 90s. However, things seem to turn out better for him when he’s working in his comfort zone. Wright’s fastball doesn’t have a TON of movement, but it is by no means straight and he generally does a great job of keeping the ball down. The 24-year-old lefty does a great job of generating groundballs by keeping his fastball low.

In addition to the fastball, Wright throws a changeup and a slurvy breaking ball. Wright’s changeup is regarded as his best pitch. He is usually able to throw it about 10 MPH slower than his fastball and uses it to get whiffs when needed. His breaking ball is a show-me pitch. There are times when it shows flashes of being more, but his command and control of the pitch is too inconsistent for it to be considered more than a fringe offering. When Wright gets in trouble it’s usually because he has fallen behind in the count and has to throw a fastball to get over. The breaking ball is a contributor to this problem.

This season I’ve compared Wright to Ron Villone. I think that he’s a guy with good enough stuff to be a league average pitcher, but he will be held back by his control issues. While he’s only walked 1 in 14 regular season innings thus far, he did walk 6 in 12.2 spring innings. I think Wright might be ready to give the Yankees performance similar to the other guy named Wright that they had in their rotation last year. If the offense plays like it’s supposed to, this might be enough to weather the storm until one of the guys on The Carl Pavano DL Watch is ready, because I have no faith in Carl Pavano’s ability to recover.