Mar
11
Checking in on some old friends
ByChad Jennings at the SWB Yankees blog has up a Where Are They Now? post about former Yankee farmhands. With Tyler Clippard and his spring WHIP of nearly 2.00 destined for AAA, Jennings checked in with Matt De Salvo, Josh Phelps, Ron Villone, Andy Phillips and T.J. Beam, among others. My favorite piece of news is that Kevin Thompson has a legitimate shot at sticking around with the Pirates. Yikes.
Good for Villone and Thompson. Villone is a solid work horse (for the first half of the season).
Maybe if Torre didn’t overwork him the first half of the season, like he did to Proctor and Vizcaino, he wouldn’t have fallen apart in the second half. There’s a reason relievers haven’t really stuck around in New York the last few years.
Kevin Thompson wasn’t that bad. In AAA he put up an .809 OPS in ‘07 and a .773 in ‘06. I think he could easily be a 4th outfielder for most teams in baseball.
No offense to KT, but a sub-.800 OPS as a 27-year-old at AAA does not generally translate into Major League success.
Thompson is a bad AAA player.