Glad I amused you. That was for your benefit. But you don’t need any statistics to know that Wang is done. And it’s a myth that Cervelli can’t develop by playing every few days behind Jorge the way he could playing every day at Scranton. He can, has, and will continue to do so if he gets a chance.

[25] Rich, you missed my point entirely.

In the abstract, you’re right – players can and do develop in the bigs, and not just the minors. But again the context kills your argument in this particular situation. Cervelli, to develop, needs to play every day, or damn close to it. He can’t do that in the bigs because Posada is the starter at C, and Matsui is the fulltime DH (unless you want that to change). The only place he can play everyday right now is AAA. Thus, Cervelli has to go to AAA.

And Cervelli is not being asked to do the same thing as Molina, or rather he shouldn’t be. Both, of course, are being tasked at being backup catchers, with all that entails. But Molina is a fully-formed product; Cervelli is not. Cervelli should be told to work on developing his plate discipline and his eye and his approach. He should be in a situation where he can do that without consequence. That is, where he can go, say, 1 for 5 every day but see 20+ pitches in the 5 plate appearances, without that hurting the team. Again, that’s not something he can do in the bigs, where the goal is not develop, but win.

For me, I think its far more important to let Pena and Cervelli go down and keep developing so that they can contribute in 2010 and beyond, and not be stunted one-year wonders. This team can still win with Molina at BUC and Ransom as the BUIF.

And thus, I think PeteAbe has it right again.

I’m afraid I disagree about the virtues of at-bats and development. We see it too often, how a youngster needs seasoning and experience, baseball is a really, really hard game to play. He will not get more than 8 at-bats a week with the Yankees and can get 20+ a week in AAA. I think that matters. Add that the at-bats down there are learning ones, not in a pennant race. Add that we have a close equivalent vet signed, why NOT give the kid time? What’s the downside? No first to third from Molina?

Basically I think you have defined Cervelli as a lifetime backup, at 23, and I’m not so quick to do that, I guess. The spread, pointed out above, between his minor league batting and his (bad) major league batting is some evidence, no? He may never hit MLB pitching better, but give the kid a chance to grow first?

Your perspective essentially dismisses all of AA/AAA as a waste of time for youngsters. I may be overstating that, but when you call the minors ‘completely overblown’ you suggest that, anyhow.

[0] Thurman was my first favorite player and idol. i’ll never forget sitting on the apt floor in Far Rockaway at 5 yrs. old and watching the news. i can still see that horrible image of the plane crash in my minds eye. makes me cringe 30 years later.

it’s probably why i have a genuine fear of flying. i’ve gotten better about it, esp since i’ve had to fly overseas for music tours and to NY soooo many times in recent months to visit my dying grandpa. one of my older students is an airplane pilot (captain).

i’ve got a cool Thurman plaque in my bedroom and another cool game photo of him at my studio directly behind my main drumkit! : )

I guess it depends on how you define ‘Good’. If you do AAV/RCAA-RSAA, then Tex and CC won’t be on top.They are prime rib but we paid above primate rate.

For instance, Dunn is getting 2/$20m, so Tex is paid 225% of Dunns salary. Will Tex have 2.25 times the RCAA? So bang-for-the-buck wise, my guess is the other players may be ‘better’ (I have NOT done the math).

But the Yanks weren’t bargain shopping (although my guess is Swisher is a pretty good bag-for-the-buck). Cashman is not Billy Beane. We were shopping for guys to put us over the top. And in this, Cashman may have succeeded.

I liked when Heyman said that the best thing about the Teixeira signing wasn’t his great hitting or spectacular fielding, it’s “that the signing still gets under the skin of the Red Sox higherups.” Um, no, Jon. It’s the hitting and the fielding.

Sorry, but to say that a .270 OBP is horrible for a player whose learning curve is still ascending, but not horrible for a veteran player who would fill the same role, is to embark on a slippery slope in terms of logical reasoning for a very simple reason: they are both being asked to do the same thing, which is to contribute to a team that according to most people is built to win now.

If that’s true, then if Cervelli (and Pena for that matter) offer the best chance for them to reach that goal, then a balancing of the equities involved argues in favor of keeping both of them being on the ML roster.

If there is any real deficit in development, it can be remedied in winter ball.

As for Wang, he’ll be out of the rotation and off the roster by the end of the season. He’s done. Hanging on to the past like this only gives you a set of mediocre to poor starts, hampers the development of Phil Hughes, and delays the inevitable. As #20 points out, he would have been crushed by a real team yesterday. There ought to be a conversion factor for ER given up against the Mets. Each ER given up to the Mets ought to count as 2 given up against a healthy team.

[22] Well, this is one where people here are going to differ, and at least it isn’t a BIG debate. At least agree that they are pretty close, or maybe explain why you think Cervelli is so obviously ‘better at everything’ … as OYF says, we have no real framework for judging if he calls a game better (unlikely), guns down runners better (very unlikely) or hits better – stats say it is a wash. He runs better and looks cooler. And we like young.

I’m very unsure Cervelli will ‘never be our starter’ … too many variables will kick in over next 12-24 months on that one. And if he gets to AAA and hits the way he did in AA and carries that forward and up, and not the way he does in the Show now (which is NOT good, you need to realize that!) he can start for me! He he not going to develop, period, with 8 at-bats a week from here on.

I’ll tell Cashman.

No need to go all the way back to Ichiro when you just have to look at the reaction some have to Nick Swisher.

While Wang’s ERA was good yesterday, he actually had better stuff his previous 2 outings. Against a good hitting team, I think he would have been hit hard yesterday. I would NOT give up on him. However, if he can’t keep the ball down, he will hurt this team. He will not get away with those UP pitches against a PS team.

The OF walls in Shea are nuts. Is this what architects call ‘interesting’? Unique? Why not just dig a pit in the OF. That would make for some interesting plays. However, nothing is as bad as the Hill in CF in Houston, with a flagpole on the field no less. Were the designers trying to injure players? Baseball fields should not be laid out like pinball games. It’s just nuts that these ‘professio0n’ architects can’t make a field interesting without making it absurd.

What is ‘league average’ for a CFer? Is an .800 OPS with good defense above average? I don’t believe AJax is the next Beltran, but if he is above average, he is an important part of this team. Because we have a number of overpaid/highly paid players, it is crucial to be able to fill in the gaps with kids who are at least average. We have almost $100m/yr into ARod, Tex, CC and Jeter alone. We pay for our impact players. Hopefully Highes and Joba will be studs or near studs. If AJax is better then MelkyGardy, I am looking forward to his arrival.

As for the catcher situation, William and Shaun and Horace are spot on. Cervelli should be playing everyday in AA to actually refine his game, instead of every so often in the majors where the chances of him figuring things out are far slimmer. He can be the BUC next season .

But Cervelli sure does. He’s not 34-year-old with an established MLB track record – he’s a 23-year-old with a .374 minor league OBP. So, when you consider the context, for Cervelli, a .270 OBP is horrible. The odds are high that, with enough regular plate appearances against high-level pitching, he can do an awful lot better than .270. But he can’t get that regular work in the bigs, so the best place for him is AAA.

If the current division breakdowns were in place back in the ’80s, the Yanks would have made the playoffs from ’84 to ’87, each year as a wildcard – and they would have missed by one game in 1983. Not too shabby.

Except Molina’s career OBP is .278. Unlike Molina, Cervelli is almost certainly going to get better as he learns MLB pitchers.

So if .270 is horrible, I don’t understand how, as you put it, “Molina will be fine as a backup the rest of the way.”

As for your assessment that Cervelli’s energy is “hype,” at least he can score from 1B on less than three hits.