 |
| David Phelps |
Today the Yankees activated David Robertson from the 15 day Disabled list and sent down David Phelps to Single A Tampa so that he can stretch himself out before returning to AAA. This leaves Freddy Garcia as the Yankees long man and even though David Phelps outperformed him in every respect the Yankees made the right move in sending down Phelps. As good as Garcia was last year he has been almost unusable this year and his 7.66 ERA shows that, He has been less terrible in relief but unfortunately his lengthy warmup time means that he is not ideal to come out of the bullpen. David Phelps has been better than sweaty Freddy by far, but quite frankly Long relief innings usually come in blowouts or extra innings and while I would definitely trust Phelps more than Freddy he was wasting away in the bullpen. Phelps hadn't been used since June 2nd when he threw nine pitches recorded 1 out and put runners on 1st and 3rd before Boone Logan came in and gave up the walk off sac fly to the Tigers. The point is that Phelps had thrown nine pitches in 18 days and the Yankees decided that rather than have him waste away in the bullpen like Hector Noesi did last year they decided to send him down and stretch him back out as a starter.
The other reason why this is a good idea is that Phelps may be the Yankees best starter in the minors as all of their starting pitching depth has been mediocre. Dellin Betances, DJ Mitchell and Adam Waren have all been mediocre while Manny Banuelos has been hurt. The most effective starter for the AAA Yankees has been 39 year old Ramon Ortiz and once Phelps is stretched out he will be the primary call up candidate for a starter and at some point the Yankees will need one. I'm not sure what Phelps future in the Yankees organization is as he definitely has more value to the Yankees organization stretched out in the minors than wasting away in the bullpen.
No comments:
Post a Comment