A few odds and ends from Yankeeland to discuss before the series with the Rangers kicks off tonight. First up is the continuing questions surrounding Brian Cashman's ability to build a pitching staff. With Kei Igawa headed to Tampa for Remedial Pitching with Billy Connors and Carl Pavano en route to a fourth opinion on his elbow it's hard to avoid the thought that Cashman failed in his attempt to build a competitive staff this offseason. Pavano's contract was going to keep him in New York but that doesn't mean that Cashman had to count on him filling one of the five spots in the rotation. After all they carried him all of last year and, even before the current nationwide quest to find a doctor willing to recommend Tommy John surgery, they knew he didn't have the mental makeup for the job.
Igawa was an even worse decision because of the investment made in a market with established major league starters available. Be it Ted Lilly or Jason Schmidt, Vicente Padilla or Freddy Garcia there was no shortage of pitching available as free agents or in trades but Cashman really reached to bring in Igawa instead. The trip to the minors is really the only thing that could save the Iguana, he clearly wasn't going to solve his issues with the big club and the team has too much riding on each game right now to let him try and find his way.
On a completely different tack, another pitcher not on the Yankees has weighed in on the Roger Clemens signing. The gout and diabetes-ridden David Wells says that Clemens is disrespectful to his team by signing during the season and demanding special treatment.
"I don't think I would ever do it because of the fact I personally think it would disrespect the team and your teammates," Wells said. "You look at the other players. How are they going to respect you? What are they going to think if you're not there pulling for the team?"
I guess Wells would know something about disrespecting the team and the game. After all he claims to have pitched his perfect game while hungover and, as everybody knows, there's no better way to show respect for your teammates than getting drunk the night before a start. And then there was the fight he got in at a diner on the Upper East Side with a pesky fan who kicked his fat, alcohol-soaked ass. Wells respected the game and his teammates so much that no one was sorry to see him go even after throwing a perfecto and winning 18 games for the historic '98 club because, as Buster Olney writes in The Last Night Of The Yankee Dynasty, "Wells was troublesome and inconsistent: throughout his career, these were the only constants in his personality."
At least with Clemens you know he will show up on the days he's scheduled to pitch without bloodshot eyes and smelling of something other than dried vomit from a night out among the rabble. Supposedly some Astros complained that they hardly saw him and he wasn't part of the mix, but seeing as how that team was perenially an underachiever until Clemens showed up and took them to the NLCS and World Series in back to back years I don't know who is going to look at that opinion as one that matters in the least. Yankees like A-Rod, Jeter, Mussina and Abreu can likely salve any wounds about Clemens not being a "good teammate" with their improved chance of winning and the jillion dollars they all got regardless of the awful play in April.
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