Nervous Excitement for the Pettitte Situation

On Friday afternoon, I was driving home from the Modell’s in Stamford, CT, having just bought my father a gift card for his birthday (original, I know). At a red light, I took out my phone to clear a blinking email and happened to hop on Twitter. I didn’t see the original tweets, I didn’t even see any retweets of them. No, all I saw was one name over and over again: Andy. As the light turned green, I was able to piece things together and the radio confirmed it: Andy Pettitte was coming back to the Yankees after a year away from the game. The only thing I could do was smile and laugh over and over again. Andy was always a favorite of mine and having him back in the Yankee fold will be a pleasure.

But of course, good news for some is bad news for others. The “others” in this case are most definitely Freddy Garcia and Phil Hughes. Both Steve and Eric touched on this over the weekend, so I’ll chime in as well. Like I said, this is most definitely exciting news, but I am a bit nervous over this.

No, I’m not necessarily nervous that Pettitte won’t be himself and that it’ll be hard to watch him or that he’ll embarrass himself. If that situation arises, I imagine Pettitte would shut himself down. I guess I’m nervous about the Yankees themselves. The move definitely isn’t bad, but it’s not all that great, either. I’m worried, maybe a bit irrationally, that the Yankees will send one of Ivan Nova or Michael Pineda down when Pettitte is ready to come back. I’m worried that they’ll hastily pull the trigger on a deal involving Hughes or Garcia (though that’s probably the best course of action). I’m going to go out on a (very short) limb and assume that Garica is the one who’s not with the Bombers when Andy makes his triumphant return. And I have a feeling that at that point, Phil Hughes will make the transition to full time reliever. When I think about the present, the near future, and the future itself, that’s the most logical plan I can come up with. Hughes has struggled as a starter, but flourished as a reliever. Manny Banuelos may very well be ready by this time next year. It just lines up. But if there’s one thing baseball has taught us, it’s that what lines up isn’t always (ever?) what happens.

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