Your YBNH Halligators—The Breakdown (and I DO mean breakdown!), Part IV: The Starting Pitching!

You knew we had to get here sooner or later.  The most rickety part of the team to start with, that termite-ridden set of side stairs most likely to fall apart the next time your litigious second cousin Wicklow comes by, to drop us all on our collective keisters.

Starting pitching was the weak part of this team last year, and the problem was never really fixed even though the Hallies' cracked front office knew it was only likely to get worse.  It's easy to see a total meltdown here, one that could take us down from One-Game Wild Card Play-In Contenders to 70-something-wins terrritory.

Luis Severino was not tipping pitches, it turned out, but had a bum shoulder.  Oh, what a surprise!  I know I called this sometime last August, and I'm sure most of you did, too.  I'm just happy it's not something worse, like a (non-PED) drug problem.

Who knows how much more damage Sevy did to that wing while the Hallies and pitching coach Rockhead insisted he was just tipping his pitches?  Plenty, probably.

The bottom line is, our former ace is almost certainly headed for rotator cuff surgery, and despite what Tommy John surgery did for for Tommy John—a very smart, veteran pitcher who never did live off the fastball—most players don't ever fully come back from it.

At best, we'll see Sevy sometime in 2021, probably still at half-strength then.  At worst, well...he and Chien-ming can sit around on Old Timer's Day pantomiming heart-rending conversations about how close they came to that 20th win...

Next up on our fabulous staff, soon to be renamed, "The Invalid Corps," is Masahiro Tanaka, someone who is very much more like Tommy John.

Even I can't bitch about the five strong regular seasons and the excellent postseason starts Tanaka has given us, and I know he's looked pretty good this pre-season (even if he has allowed 11 hits in 10 innings thus far).

But let's face it: Tiger Tanaka's arm has been hanging by a string for what, three seasons now?  The odds are not great that he will last, even if he is only 30.  Why do you think he didn't test the free-agent market for 2018?

Then there's CC.  Hey, I love The Bear to death.  Who doesn't?  But in his current condition, he's even money to become the first major-league player ever to die on the playing field (Ray Chapman, fatally beaned by the Yanks' Carl Mays at the Polo Grounds, actually expired in a hospital.).

We can all pray it won't come to that.  But the chances of a 300-plus-pound pitcher with bad knees going on 39 completing an entire season are ridiculously low.

Even at $8 million, this has to be one of Coops' most ludicrous mis-expenditures—particularly for an organization that claims to be broke because it HAS TO SPEND $90 MILLION A YEAR ON DEBT SERVICE!!

This brings us to James Paxton, entertainingly described in your local neighborhood press box as an "ace."  Oh, those wags!  Sure, Paxton's an ace, if your idea of an ace starter is a 30-year-old who has never thrown more than 160 innings in a season, never pitched in October, and never won more than 12 games in a season.

After years of injury and disappointment, Paxton won those dozen games along with a 2.98 ERA in 136 innings in 2017.  Huzzah!  But providing yet another of the blinking dashboard lights that Coops Cashman, stressed housewife, chooses to ignore when she's in a hurry, Paxton actually slipped backwards in 2018.

His record dipped just slightly, to 11-6, but Paxton's ERA ballooned, by over 3/4 of a run, to 3.76.  Even more alarming, the number of homers he allowed bulged from 9 to 23—something you really ought to consider when you're acquiring someone to pitch in the bandbox known as YS III.

Was this really the guy you want for your highest rated pitching prospect, Justus Sheffield?  (Not to mention another pitching prospect once held in high regard, and an outfielder who hit 22 HRs in 100 Single-A games last year?)  All on the data gleaned from Shef's 2 2/3 innings in the show last season?

Either Shef is yet another Hallie minor-league fraud, or Coops has badly miscalculated.  And no matter what the answer, the bigger question is whether "Ace" Paxton is also about to blow out his arm, something all those dingers may be indicating.

Why is it that something tells me Coops "Lucy" Cashman won't make it back home with Ricky's dinner in time?  Hilarity won't ensue.

Rounding out the staff, ironically, is the Hallies' surest bet to finish the whole season, at age 36:  J.A. Happ.  Actually, no pitcher is really a lock to get through a season at 36, of course, but Happ has already weathered past injuries, he is a veteran grinder, and he haas pitched very well against our main rival (or at least he did, before Ma Boone decided to pitch him twice in the space of days against Boston last year).  And he is a southpaw.

(Quick question here:  Why, if being a lefty no longer matters in YS III, does Coops have three of them in his starting rotation?  Just asking.)

What is there behind The Invalid Corps?  Precious little.  Just two years ago, our farm system was teeming with terrific young prospects the way the Okeefenokee used to swarm with tadpoles in June.

Since then, though, Crane Coops has relentlessly gobbled up most of them for one or another of his tread-milling deals, and an extraordinary number have seen their arms implode under the crack tutelage of the Hallies' instruction and training.

One of the very worst deals was to give Oakland three prospects (one of them a pitcher) for Sonny Gray, then turn around and dump Sonny for moist towelettes and a draft pick. I never much cared for Sonny and didn't want him in the first place. But he was still a sought-after entity, still under 30.

If that was really the best Coops could get for the hoser, they should have kept Sonny, let him pitch the way he wanted to pitch, and at least seen if his value went up.

But no could do, and after a big injury to Mike King, who put in a great minor-league season in 2018 but now has been dropped down the Bronx memory hole, there really isn't much left.  Chance Adams, who the Hallies wouldn't give a chance even before he was injured, and was cutting through AAA lineups like a hot knife through cream cheese?

Johnny Lasagna, Domingos Acevedo and German?  Luis Cessa—who right now looks likely to be the first substitute into the pool???

Hey, no snorting bourbon through your nose.  That may be our starting rotation come June.