Tyler Kepner has the story in his latest post on the NYT Bats blog. With the return of Brian Bruney, its time to take a look at how the Yankee relief corps has been faring in his absence. It turns out they’ve been doing quite well recently, after a slow start.
We’re halfway through June, and this is what Aceves, Coke, Hughes and Robertson have done this month: in 23 innings, they have combined to allow 16 hits, nine walks and just five earned runs, with 26 strikeouts.
That’s a 1.96 E.R.A. spread across four setup men, with Bruney now added to the mix.
“Coke has been pitching well, Aceves has done an outstanding job, Robertson’s been nothing short of fantastic, and Hughes has made a nice adjustment to the bullpen for a period of time,” General Manager Brian Cashman said today. “We’ve had to move some pieces around to shore it up, and we’ll continue to do so.”
I like that last line from Cash. Either Tomko or Veras should go when Bruney is activated later today, and whoever stays will have Mark Melancon, Sergio Mitre, Jon Albaladejo and (yes) Edwar Ramirez Birds of America psp For Hire full movie
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome dvdrip breathing down their neck from Scranton. I would estimate in something resembling that order as well. I know some of you saw enough of these guys earlier in the year, but in mid season form they should be able to contribute more. Melancon should perform much better on his second go-round, he clearly was just a bit overwhelmed in his first outing and wasn’t used much after that. Mitre is a veteran from Girardi’s 06 Marlin team, Alby has been throwing BBs in AAA and Edwar simply needs regular work to keep the feel for his changeup, which he’s had recently.
Hughes is a bit of a wild card. His fate as a starter in the near term should be determined with Wang’s next start, but he’s been very good out of the pen and could help the team enormously while gaining MLB experience in that role. When looking at the options I detailed above, I think its obvious that he’s the best arm out of the group, with the possible exception of Melancon.
If the Yanks feel that none of their AAA options are throwing the ball well enough to help, you know Cashman will be active on the trade market in the coming weeks as well. Right now, there aren’t many teams looking to make deals because the divisions across Baseball have tightened up recently. Only the Nats are truly out of contention, who don’t have much to offer. But that will change in the coming weeks, and the economy could force teams to move players they’d prefer to keep. Stay tuned. . .
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0 Responses to Yankee Bullpen Coming Together
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TIQ IQ
The problem with Bruney is he hasn’t been able to stay healthy and even when he was healthy they kept him from back to back games. I don’t have much faith in the current guys from AAA including Melancon. Guys that are that overwhelmed are likely to struggle in NY.
There is a list a mile long of players that were overwhelmed on the first time around, not all pitchers are like Whitey Ford, or to some extent…even Joba. Unlike IPK, Melancon is the whole package. Whereas IPK has to have very good Command/Control (like Musina) to get by, Melancon has the pitches to get the job done. This time around he will be used better (I hope) as the 6-7 or 8th inning guy…one inning at a time.