The Yankees have promoted 26-year-old right-handed reliever Edwar Ramirez from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and he will report today to provide support for a bullpen that has been wretched.
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To make room for Ramirez, the Yankees are expected to send infielder Chris Basak down to Scranton.
Between Double-A Trenton and Triple-A Scranton, Edwar’s thrown 43.1 innings, allowing only 19 hits and 3 earned runs while striking out 80. Yes, 80 strikeouts in 43.1 IP. He’s been beyond stellar this year, and the call-up is well deserved, but here’s the problem: it’s thw wrong move.
Edwar’s arsenal consists of a good fastball (88-91 mph), a work-in-progress slider and a devastating changeup that he uses to rack up all those strikeouts. He has so much confidence in his changeup that he can double, triple or even quadruple up on it. In fact, his change even started a bench clearing brawl earlier in the year. Here’s the problem though: you know Torre will not use Edwar in any high leverage situations.
Edwar’s going to be the last man out of the ‘pen, and he’ll be given the smallest of chances to prove himself. Ron Villone looks done (like done done), Kyle Farnsworth is a whiny bitch, and Mike Myers is pretty useless, but all 3 of those guys are still on the roster and will get the call out of the ‘pen before Edwar. I generally applaud Brian Cashman’s work, but he goofed up here.
He had a chance to make a drastic roster facelift and possibly light a fire under this team’s ass, but all he did was further weaken the team’s bench (Chris Basak managed to get exactly 1 big league AB during his month long tenure, and he crushed the ball in that AB) and sentence Edwar to Joe Torre’s “only when losing” relief corps. The team needs more offense, so he calls up a reliever.
In a perfect world, I would have liked to have seen Myers and Villone DFA’ed and Johnny Damon sent to the DL with Edwar, Chris Britton (look at me! .063 BAA in the bigs this year!) and Shelley Duncan (does his 19 HR, 58 RBI and .952 OPS do nothing for you Cash???) taking their place.
Yeah, Edwar deserves the call, but it could have gone down in a much better way. This team needs a spark, not a 13th pitcher.
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