Chien-Ming Wang is a Yankee again

After three years with the Nationals the Yankees are bringing back Chien-Ming Wang on a minor league deal. Wang will be down in the Scranton primarily to eat some minor league innings and provide some depth for the big league rotation. It's unlikely that Wang will ever be needed at this point, but over a 162 game season anything can happen.Wang won 19 games in 2006 and 2007 with the Yankees but everything pretty much fell apart when he tore a ligament in his foot while running the bases in Houston during the 2008 season, then requiring shoulder surgery in 2009 after a very bad start to the season. Wang was non-tendered after 2009, signed a major league deal in Washington but missed all of 2010 and he was limited to 16 major league starts and a little over 200 major/minor league innings between 2011-2012. As I said here Wang has not been able to regain his super ground ball ability, but he looked good in the WBC and was the main reason that Taiwan advanced to the second round.
Minor League deals are no risk and so the Yankees lose nothing with this deal and its possible he could pitch for New York this year, but I would expect that hes low on the depth chart at this point and he will be able to opt-out of his contract on June 1st if he’s not called up to the big leagues by then.

Checking out Wang

Well to open the World Baseball Classic Chien-Ming Wang pitched 6 shut out innings on 65 pitches against an admittedly weak Australian Lineup. According to Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman the Yankees remain interested in bringing in Wang on a minor league deal, however he is apparently still looking for a major league deal, that he could still get if a starter goes down somewhere. His fastball was reportedly around 89-92, that's encouraging considering that its still only march and having watched the Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) v. Australia game his sinker looked very good.
One thing to remember is that Wang is never going to be what he was, Washington thought he might and after three years he managed 94 major league innings between 2011 and 2012 after missing all of 2010. His 2011 was decent with a 4.04 ERA, but in 2012 he was just deplorably bad in both the majors and the minors with a 6.68 ERA in 32.1 innings.
It will take a while for this to develop as Wang will hold out for a major league deal, but it would be nice if the Yankees were able to bring him in and stash him in AAA.

George King says his fastball was clocked in the 88-92 mph range - See more at: http://riveraveblues.com/#sthash.AP14pTr7.dpuf

George King says his fastball was clocked in the 88-92 mph range, - See more at: http://riveraveblues.com/2013/03/yankees-interested-in-chien-ming-wang-had-major-interest-in-javy-vazquez-83086/#sthash.gxTFfZ2p.dpuf

George King says his fastball was clocked in the 88-92 mph range, - See more at: http://riveraveblues.com/2013/03/yankees-interested-in-chien-ming-wang-had-major-interest-in-javy-vazquez-83086/#sthash.gxTFfZ2p.dpuf

George King says his fastball was clocked in the 88-92 mph range, - See more at: http://riveraveblues.com/2013/03/yankees-interested-in-chien-ming-wang-had-major-interest-in-javy-vazquez-83086/#sthash.gxTFfZ2p.dpuf