Monday Musings: This week’s pitching rotation

RAB Note: There’s no Down on the Farm for Sunday because there were no games. Two were rained out; two teams had scheduled off days.

So I got my wish on Sunday: The Yanks were rained out, thus saving us the agony of another Kei Igawa start. Almost.

The Baseball Gods, you see, are fickle. While the Yanks’ rain out meant a rejuggled rotation, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees were also rained out, and Ian Kennedy’s start will be pushed back from Sunday to Monday. Thus, instead of being the potential starter for Friday’s game had he done well in AAA yesterday, Kennedy wouldn’t be set to start again until Saturday, and the Yanks are left searching for another starter. Curses!

Already, this is shaping up to be the topic of the week. Yankee bloggers, sick of writing about fist pumps and David Wells, have turned to everyone’s favorite game, Guess the Starting Pitcher. Our first two contestants were Peter Abraham and Cliff Corcoran. They both come to the same conclusion: Anybody but Igawa. And I don’t have a better answer.

Right now, what we do know is that Kei Igawa is not and probably never will be a legitimate Major League pitcher. Buster Olney said as much on Saturday:

Kei Igawa threw 64 pitches Friday, and Detroit swung and missed only twice and mustered 11 hits in 19 at-bats against the left-hander, a mere .579 batting average. Heard this evaluation from one Yankees’ source: Igawa doesn’t have the raw stuff to pitch in the majors.

Kei Igawa is just flat-out terrible, and that is no longer news. So the Yanks have myriad options open to them. They could have Kennedy throw a side session tomorrow and bring him up next week. They could go with a AAA starter like Dan Giese or Steven White and hope to catch lightening in a bottle for a day. They could go with last year’s sacrificial lamb Chase Wright. They could — but probably won’t after Jonathan Albaladejo’s injury — ask Ross Ohlendorf to throw a three- or four-inning start with a patchwork of bullpen pitchers behind him picking up the slack.

Right now, we just don’t know, and until the Yankees announce something, I’m sure everyone writing on the Yankees will spend the week speculating. So what do you do, RAB readers? I’m at a loss for this one, but I’d settle for just about anyone other than Kei Igawa.