With the Major League rosters expanding today, the Yankees have opted to add five players in their initial round of call-ups. While four are familiar faces, one — Michael Dunn — will be making his Bronx debut this month.
Chad Jennings first brought us word of these call-ups this afternoon. As expected, Ramiro Pena, Francisco Cervelli, Mark Melancon and Edwar Ramirez will rejoin this team as well. Jonathan Albaladejo remains the odd man out.
Dunn is an interesting case simply because he has been largely off the Yanks’ radar this year. The other four call-ups have all spent significant time in the Bronx this year, but Dunn has not. Dunn, a lefty, is a 24-year-old pitcher who spent time at AA and AAA this year. On the season, he has thrown 73.1 innings in relief and has 99 strike outs. While he has walked 46, opponents are hitting just .216 against him. He’ll see some low-leverage innings out of the pen and should provide Phil Coke with a few days off. I’ll be curious to see how his K/BB ratio plays among selective hitters in the American League.
For now, these five players will be the only ones summoned to the big leagues for the Yankees. The team is, after all, still involved in a pennant chase and won’t be resting its regulars until much later in the month. Meanwhile, Scranton too is involved in its own pennant chase. The AAA farm club has a 3.5-game lead in its division, and the Yanks won’t strip it of too many regulars before the season is out.
With these five men up, the only remaining members of the 40-man roster eligible for call-ups are as follows:
Jonathan Albaladejo
Andrew Brackman
Anthony Claggett
Wilkin De La Rosa
Christian Garcia
Ian Kennedy
Kevin Cash
Juan Miranda
Shelley Duncan
Brett Gardner
We’ll see Gardner back as soon as his thumb is healed, and we’ll probably see Shelley, Miranda, Claggett and De La Rosa at some point this month too. The rest are injured or not quite ready for the Show.
Update: Feinsand notes that both Shelley Duncan and Austin Jackson could join the team once Scranton is done with its playoff run.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.