Last year, by April, he had vanished, more or less, becoming the 2019 version of Chance Adams - that is, a prospect who wins everyone's attention and then gets hurt. After being shut down in spring training, King last year pitched only 46 minor league innings, plus two scoreless ones for the Yankees. Overall, a lost season.
In about 30 days, King will again report to Tampa as a wild card starter, a guy who could boom or bust. Odds are, he'll open 2020 in the shadows of Clarks Summit. If he pitches well in Triple A, he'll be just an Uber ride from the Bronx. If he flounders - well - the Yankees recently cut ties with Adams in order to protect King in the Rule 5 draft. If he's getting belted around in Scranton, there will be somebody else to keep, to whet the Yankiverse's thirst for new meat. That's how things go.
My point: If in January, the Death Star seems loaded with pitching, don't you believe it. In January, nothing is real.
As we speak, somebody out there is feeling an occasional twinge, which he's absolutely certain will disappear in spring training. Somewhere out there is the next Chance Adams. It could be one of our mainstays. It could be somebody we've only heard about in prospect lists. But February's saddest news usually involves a highly anticipated kid getting shut down for a day, which then becomes a week, which morphs into the season. It happens to every team. It will happen again to the Yankees. You simply cannot have too many arms.
Today, here is our rotation. (Let's ignore Domingo German, who won't be available until the all-star break.)
Damn, you'd almost think we have too many. (I think we're out of options with Cessa.) Just don't believe it. And before we go trading Happ, or anybody, in a search for specialty parts or a payroll dump, we ought to see how the first weeks of spring training play out.
I believe that's what Cooperstown Cashman has decided to do. It makes for a boring January. And maybe that's just what we need.
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5 comments:
Hey! It's almost February! And it was 67 in New York yesterday!
Whoo!
Jim Kaat (best baseball color-guy ever - period) always said, "Work hard, always tell the truth and you can never have enough pitching". Truer words were never spoke.
Yaymen, Kitty Kaat. Derek Jeter, upon winning in '09: "It's all about pitching."
Aren't we all, always in the shadow of the towering Clarks Summit?
I take it you're talking Clarke Schmidt?
I would love to see guys like Schmidt and King added to the pen, rather than useless mop-ups like Cessa. It would be a great way to give them some innings while sparing their arms the full-time workload of a starter, AND I think they would be devastating in such limited roles.
Nobody's seen them, and King, at least, seems to have incredible movement and variety in his repertoire.
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