27 January 2009

Pettite Falls in Line

What did you want again? 16 mill? Umm, let's take the square root of your figure and add a million and a half, mmm'kay?

In a winter of low risk / high reward deals, Brian Cashman just trumped about every GM in baseball, after he already broke the bank of course, and got Andy Pettite, an experienced veteran with gobs of playoff experience, on the super-cheap.

One year, $5.5 million. That's a pretty impressive deal considering the last figure I heard floating around was one year at $10.5 million. Guess somebody wants to be a Yankee after all...

The amazing thing is that Andy was essentially our #2 starter last year considering how well Mussina did and the injury to Wang. Now he's our 4 or 5? That's pretty sick. C.C., A.J., Wang, Pettite, and Joba? Yeah, let's play ball. (I'm sure the Joba to the Bullpen crap will regurgitate itself again at this point, but let's just ignore it. Sound good?)

This rotation and the depth behind it is very reminiscent of a LoHud piece that came out right after the Yanks faced playoff exile for the first time in 13 years. Pete Abraham elaborated on a concept of a shadow rotation getting innings in and there in case of emergency. With Hughes, Kennedy, Coke, Wright, and Aceves possibly starting the season in Scranton, we have just that. A bunch of kids working to make a name for themselves only if they get the opportunity.

Depth is crucial. Looks like we finally got some.

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