Yankees sign Jason Johnson
According to the Journal News, the Yankees have signed right-handed pitcher Jason Johnson to a minor-league deal. Peter Abraham notes that Joe Girardi said Johnson would compete to be the fifth starter.
Johnson was actually a halfway decent pitcher a few years. He's always had an above-average sinking fastball that hits 93 MPH, a decent slider and good command. It does not appear as though his diabetes will be a problem anymore because he is allowed to wear an insulin pack. If he can get his game back on track and pitch a little better than he did with the Dodgers last season, he could really come in handy - in a Dan Giese sort of way. I highly doubt that the Yankees would be comfortable with Johnson as the fifth start all year, but Phil Hughes might show the organization that he's ready. I wonder if this is a message to Andy Pettitte, who supposedly rejected the Yankees offer again.
Plenty of Yankee-related news to blog about later, expect some new posts later on tonight.
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3 comments:
Lets move on from Andy! I understand the benefit of having Andy pitch the 200 innings from the back end of the rotation but for 10 million it is not worth it and he is not getting any younger and has elbow problems. Andy breaking down is more of a given then getting the 200 innings. Lets go with Hughes, Coke, Aceves whoever gives you more quality. Gentleman we are talking about the 5th starter. Heck trade Nady and someone else & get Sanchez from the Giants is a better move then Andy. What say you?
Doc,
Glad your commenting here again. I missed your insights, they are always terrific.
I'm fine with moving on from Pettitte. I'm sorry to see it ending this way, but the ball was in his court and he dropped it.
Congrats to whoever gets his spot. (My vote is Hughes)
Dan,
After watching the first 2 months of the 2008 season and seeing the same bugaboo plaguing my Yankee team I stopped everything relegated to baseball. What you ask bothered me so much? Two things:
1) Not hitting a sac fly with less then 2 outs with a runner on 3rd.
2) Not moving the base runners into scoring position. Once I saw those things happening again I stopped all baseball related activity.
Do you know that if a team could just hit the sac fly or ground ball 75% of the time how much more successful they would be? The sac fly is what prevented the Yanks from 2003 WS!
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