Sunday, July 8, 2007
NY Times: Yankees Pin Their Hopes on Pitching and Patience
Chamberlain, Horne, Smith, Ian Kennedy, Jeff Marquez and Jason Jones lead a Trenton staff that is the nexus of the Yankees’ recent emphasis on developing pitching. In a dreary season for the major league team, the Trenton pitchers have been the organization’s highlight.
Every team knows the importance of pitching. But under General Manager Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ strategy of taking risks on amateur pitchers and exceeding industry standards for bonuses seems to be working. It suggests that the Yankees may not be down for long, and other teams have noticed.
“He recognized a few years ago the need to fortify his system and has taken advantage of every opportunity possible to infuse talent into it,” Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro said.
“The system is now one of the stronger ones in the minor leagues, and at some point, as those players become major-league-ready, the Yankees will have the most deadly combination of depth of young talent combined with elite payroll resources at the major league level.”
When Cashman assumed greater authority over baseball operations in 2005, he wanted clearly defined roles for others in the department. With Damon Oppenheimer running the draft and Mark Newman overseeing the farm system, the Yankees have steadily raised their profile in the minors.
In 2004, Baseball America ranked the Yankees 27th in minor league talent. Before this season, they ranked seventh. While the system is thin in position players, Cashman is closely guarding his pitching depth as the trading deadline nears.
2007 may stink, but the future looks promising.
For some reason, and I know this is completely irrational, seeing that the Yankees won 12-0 today pissed me off. I still have a really bad taste in my mouth from Saturday’s game so I didn’t bother to watch today. Couldn’t they have scored 1 of those 12 freaking runs yesterday sometime between innings 3 and 12?
Nothing against Chien-Ming Wang BTW, who continues to succeed, defying not just a low K rate, but what seems to be a pretty nasty fingernail issue. Wang is awesome.
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