Daily Archives: April 17, 2007

Got four starters on the DL? No problem, call up a kid with just two starts above A-ball, knock the opposing starter out in the second inning, and coast to an easy win. The Yankees made it look just that easy last night.

Rookie Chase Wright made his major league debut with a Sean Henn-model glove on his right hand, a steady rain falling on his head, and no where near the reported 38,438 fans in the stands on a cold Tuesday night in the Bronx. Wright went full on his first batter, Cleveland’s Grady Sizemore, and just missed outside for ball four. He then walked Jason Michaels on five pitches to put two men on for Travis Hafner. That drew an early mound visit from his new pitching coach, Ron Guidry. After an enthusiastic pep talk from Guidry, Wright got Hafner and Victor Martinez to ground out (plating a run in the process) and Ryan Garko to line out directly to Derek Jeter.

The Yankee offense then took some of the pressure off the rookie by plating a pair of runs in the bottom of the frame on a Damon walk, Jeter single, Alex Rodriguez RBI single, Giambi walk to load the bases, and a Jorge Posada sac fly to dead center that just missed being a game-breaking grand slam.

Wright again put the first two men of the inning on base in the second via a single and a walk, but again retired the next three in order, this time without yielding a run. Then the Yankees broke the game open for real.

After Melky Cabrera grounded out, Doug Mientkiewicz cracked a solo homer (no, really!) to the short porch in left. Johnny Damon doubled, moved to third on a Jeter groundout, and scored on a Bobby Abreu single. That brought Alex Rodriguez to the plate. Can you say two-run homer to the retired numbers? I knew that you could. That made it 6-1, but the Yankees weren’t done. Jason Giambi followed with a single and Jorge Posada, having just missed that salami in the previous frame, cracked a two-run jack of his own, his 200th career home run. That made it 8-1 Yanks and bounced Jake Westbrook from the game with two out in the second.

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Due to the rash of injuries that have placed Mike Mussina and Carl Pavano on the disabled list alongside Chien-Ming Wang and Jeffrey Karstens, the Yankees were forced to dip into their minor league system for a starter for tonight’s (and likely Sunday’s) game. The three pitchers whose turns fell on the right day were Tyler Clippard and Steven Jackson in triple-A and Chase Wright in double-A. Of the three, Wright was both the only one already on the 40-man roster and the pitcher who’d had the most success in his two starts thus far this season. Clippard’s had two middling outings for Scranton. Jackson has faired a tad better, but neither has lasted more than five innings in either outing. Wright, meanwhile, has dominated in a pair of seven-inning outings and will make his major league debut tonight in the Bronx against the Indians.

Here’s what I wrote about Wright back in February:

L – Chase Wright (24)

A third-round draft pick in 2000, Wright has spent six years in the Yankees system without cracking double-A. He’s made large strides over the last three seasons however. Check these trends:

Wright claims the difference has simply been an uptick in confidence. I suppose it could be that after bottoming out in 2004 he figured he couldn’t do any worse if he just challenged hitters. If so, it worked. Wright’s best pitch is a changeup that works off his low-90s fastball, and he’s working on developing his curve. He’s still a work in progress, but it’s certainly encouraging to see such rapid progress by a lefty starter. Indeed, he’s come far enough that the Yankees had to add him to the 40-man to protect him from the Rule 5 draft last fall.

To that I’ll add his spring training and double-A lines from this year:

Those 14 innings at double-A are divided evenly between two equally excellent starts in which Wright has posted a fantastic 2.29 groundball-to-flyball rate. Accordingly, Wright hasn’t allowed a home run in any of his 26 2/3 innings thus far this year and allowed just one round-tripper in 119 2/3 innings last year.

After I wrote the above, I received a note from Kevin Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus’s minor league guru. Kevin said that one thing he felt I got wrong was my estimation of Wright’s velocity (which I got from assimilating various on-line scouting reports). According to Goldstein, Wright’s fastball tops out in the high 80s, adding something to the effect that if Wright did throw in the low 90s, he’d be a world-beater. Judging by his recent results this season and last, I tend to wonder if Wright’s recent improvement has had as much to do with an uptick in velocity as with an increase in confidence. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on the YES radar gun tonight. If it turns out that he is indeed working in the low-90s . . . look out world.

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