Over at Baseball Musings, David Pinto runs the Yankees' projected starters through Marcel the Monkey's projections and finds some pretty impressive numbers, with Mike Mussina posting the worst ERA (4.31). As usual, though, the numbers are open to interpretation ...
This is a very tough rotation to call for 2008. [Andy] Pettitte's and [Chien-Ming] Wang's number look about right, although I suspect both will top 200 innings this year. The other three are question marks, however. Mike Mussina's strikeout rate fell off the table last year, and in three of the last four seasons posted ERAs over 4.00. The three young pitchers hold lots of promise, but there's a huge difference between promise and production. My guess is that they find four good starters among these five and [Joba] Chamberlain. I'd also bet the odd man out eventually is Mussina.
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Marcel shows Pettitte with a 4.07 ERA in 188 innings, and Wang with 3.83 ERA in 181 innings. Projecting innings is tricky because you want your system to factor in the possibility of an injury, but you can't just have the machine randomly grab guys and knock them out for half a season with an elbow injury. Which is why projections rarely give a guy 200-plus innings, even when a particular guy (Pettitte) has topped 200 innings in each of the last three seasons.
Aside from Pettitte and Wang both being good, though, I find it essentially impossible to predict what's going to happen here. In fact, that's my prediction: Every prediction will fail. Too many moving parts. Between Mussina's recent struggles and the young starters' lack of experience and non-history of durability, how can anyone know, really?
Will Mussina be the odd man out? Sure. But when? And for how long? I'll bet he's the odd man out for a while, and then isn't, and then maybe is again. And for all the talk about the Yankees' six starters, would anybody like to bet they'll get by with only six? Last year nine Yankees started more than five games. The year before that, seven; the year before that, nine. We may guess that in addition to the six guys we've heard so much about, at least two others will play significant roles in the rotation.
The Yankees have done a real good job of accumulating talent. They've got six starting pitchers who have demonstrated -- some for many years, some for a few months -- abilities that sometimes lead to Hall of Fame careers. But if the Yankees wind up winning 95 games (again), we'll look back with admiration for
Joe Girardi and
Brian Cashman's ability to take advantage of all those talents through six months of twists and turns and sprains and tender elbows.
Rob Neyer
