I’m not sure what to think of Girardi wanting new arms

Yankees rotation 09

I was reading the NY Daily News today and read that Joe Girardi wants new arms in the rotation. I’m not one that likes going after free agents and I keep flip flopping on this issue. On one hand, the Yankees need starting pitchers that can pitch over 200 innings and actually pitch well. On the other hand, I don’t like the fact that the Yankees went after the biggest free agents or traded for name players between 2001 and 2008 and it didn’t work out. They went out and got Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, Jose Contreras, Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Sidney Ponson, Kei Igawa and have 0 World Series Championships to show for it. So excuse me if I’m feeling a little ambivalent about bringing new starting pitchers into the rotation.

The difference with CC Sabathia is that he is a much more dominant pitcher than the pitchers I mentioned. I wouldn’t mind getting him but don’t get me Burnett too. Just because Burnett has great career numbers against the Red Sox doesn’t mean he’ll pitch well when he faces them. I’ve seen where a team would get a player just because he pitches well against a certain team and then not only does he fail to pitch well against the team he was signed to pitch well against, he pitches lousy against the rest of the league and then you are stuck with his contract. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t sign Pettitte or Pavano but resign Mussina. I’d sign CC and then leave the last spot open for competition between our farm hands.

Yankees could start CC Sabathia, Mike Mussina, Chien Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain and leave the last spot open for competition between Phil Coke and Alfredo Aceves. Neither guy can do worse than what our 5th starters did this year. Phil Hughes has shown improvement in his last two starts and I think he’ll come around and be an effective pitcher. Not a great one but some one who can get 13 wins. Not one team has a great starting rotation 1 through 5 so I like the idea of open competition for the 5th spot.

The thing with Sabathia is that he might not want to leave the National League because of how much more dominant he is pitching against teams that use the pitcher in the 9th spot in the batting order. Also, I don’t know if Mussina wants to pitch again. He might call it quits.

The bottom line is this and I’m sure all of you know it, winning championships starts and ends with great starting pitching and right now, the Yankees don’t have great starting pitching.