Just a quick update before we get to the game. According to Ed Price, the Yankees have removed Kei Igawa from the 40-man roster. He passed through waivers unclaimed. To make room on the 25-man roster for Damaso Marte and Xavier Nady, the Yankees have optioned Brett Gardner to AAA, and have DFA LaTroy Hawkins, according to WFAN. Oh, happy day!

According to Buster Olney, the Yanks are still working on a deal for Jarrod Washburn, which would be a salary dump move.

We don’t have the full lineups yet, but Nady is in the lineup, playing left field and batting 7th. You have to assume it’s the lineup as usual through five, Cano hitting sixth, and then Cabrera 8th and Molina 9th.

It’s time for the once-a-month look back at Kei Igawa! This time, it’s brought to you by Rainer Sabin and The New York Times. Reading about Kei’s predicament in Scranton and his constant trips to New York to visit his wife, I feel bad for the Yanks’ expensive left-handed flop. He just wants to do well.

Rick Peterson is currently jobless, and I’m not sure he’ll land a full-time gig before the end of the season. He’ll still be paid by the Wilpons, so you might as well sit back and enjoy the free money. That is, unless another team has use for you.

Is it outlandish to think the Yankees could do some good by hiring Peterson to work with Kei Igawa and Phil Hughes during his rehab? I think it would be a decent investment. If Peterson can do with Igawa half of what he did with Oliver Perez, I’d be more than satisfied. Plus, if Phil really is having mechanical issues, as is the popular theory, Peterson might be able to help out in that regard, too.

Or maybe the Giants will hand him a sack with a dollar sign painted on it so he can get back to working with Barry Zito.

Via Jayson Stark:

Kei Igawa isn’t quite as buried on that Yankees’ depth chart as Carl Pavano, but it’s close. And he’s already homesick. We’ve heard from two different baseball men recently that Igawa asked the Yankees over the winter if there was any way he could return to Japan. The Yankees quietly explored their options, got nowhere and gave up. They’re still on the hook for nearly $11 million to Igawa through the 2010 season.

Now, this isn’t an original idea. RAB commenters have mentioned it; my mom has mentioned it. But how hard could the Yankees have tried to ship Igawa back to Japan?

Kyle Kendrick’s experience aside, a trade back to Japan for Igawa would be fairly unprecedented. Japanese League players — Alfonso Soriano and Hideo Nomo, I’m looking at you — have “retired” in Japan so that they could sign MLB free agent contracts, but never in the history of the game has an American team traded a player back to his home country.

At this point, it’s clear that the Yanks have just about slammed the book on the Kei Igawa Era. He has never been an effective Major Leaguer, and he’s not a part of any of the Yanks’ long- or short-term plans. He’s owed just $11 million over the next two and a half seasons, a paltry sum by Yankee standards. So why not just release him?

Well, the Yanks don’t want to let him go because they’re afraid that some other team will pick him up for the league minimum and catch lightening in a bottle. By now, though, considering that the Yanks have even explored sending him back to Japan, it’s clear that Igawa is nothing more than a warm body to fill space at AAA. He’s probably going to end his brief American career as the highest-paid AAA starter ever, but that’s better than watching him get shelled in the Bronx.

As expected the Yanks dispatched Kei Igawa to Scranton today to make way for Ian Kennedy on the Big League roster. I’ll be back in a bit with the game thread, but I have to wonder if this it for Kei in New York. Baring some catastrophic injury, is there anything that would put him next on the Yankees starting pitching depth charts? With Jeff Karstens working his way back from injury and various young arms on the rise, Kei shouldn’t see anymore New York innings.

With Ian Kennedy on the way down, all signs are point to a Kei Igawa start in Detroit next weekend. Considering that Kennedy claims he’s making progress, I’d rather just see Ian make his next start at the Big League level. For what it’s worth, Igawa is 3-3 with a 3.86 ERA in 39.2 AAA innings. He’s walked just 12 and has 40 strike outs, but he’s still getting more outs in the air than on the ground. Igawa’s never had much of a problem getting MiLB hitters out, but his stuff hasn’t translated into Big League success at all yet.

The guys over at Saber Scouting made a trip to Triple-A Scranton’s season opener to take a look at the Kei-man, and figured out what’s wrong with him: A whole lot. It makes sense that it’s not just one big problem with Igawa, it’s a bunch of smaller problems building on each other. Surprisingly, they say there’s a lot to like about Igawa, and that whoever scouted and recommended him wasn’t completely wrong. Check it out.

PS: If you watch the video, make sure you turn the volume down. You’ll thank me.

How do you solve an enigma like Kei Igawa?

For better or worse, the Yankees and Kei Igawa are seemingly stuck with each other. As we know all too well, the Yanks doled out $46 million to bring him States-side, and he’s been a disappointment ever since.

Yesterday, Igawa made his spring debut against non-college hitters. We know how disastrous his last outing was; he gave up four runs on one hit, a grand slam off the bat of a college kid with two at-bats total over the last two years. He walked hitters, hit one and threw a wild pitch. While it was just February, the outing simply added another bad chapter to long tale of Kei Igawa.

So facing the Blue Jays on Tuesday, Igawa had a chance to raise his own stock, and he responded with two perfect innings, and as RAB favorite - I say that sarcastically - George King notes, the fight for a roster spot continues.

While King’s article is chock full ‘o the typical Spring Training hype and hyperbole, Tyler Kepner of The Times wrote a piece more critical of Kei Igawa and the Yanks’ scouting of the Japanese import. Relying on the words of Hideki Matsui and Brian Cashman, Kepner creates a portrait of competing opinions.

“In Japan, he had pretty good velocity and he was the type of pitcher that usually threw fastballs and changeups to strike out hitters,” Hideki Matsui said through an interpreter. “In Japan, you don’t see that many pitchers throw changeups, as opposed to here, where a lot of pitchers throw changeups. And in Japan, his fastball was pretty fast. But when you compare it to pitchers here, it’s not as fast.”

Igawa also tried to throw too many pitches high in the strike zone, where umpires in Japan are more likely to call strikes. But General Manager Brian Cashman said Igawa’s problem was more about command.

“If I felt that our evaluations were improper, then I would think that he’s failed, and I’m not ready to concede that yet,” Cashman said. “It took José Contreras some time to adjust, and although he possesses a different ability, he led the White Sox to a world championship.

“All I can tell you is Igawa was the strikeout leader in Japan — and not just for one year — and those guys are contact hitters over there. Swing-and-miss is still a big part of his game. You can’t deny that; just look at his statistics.”

So what then is the real story? Based on Matsui’s words, Igawa thrived in Japan because his style of pitching was better suited for the NPL. Brian Cashman, on the other hand, would have you believe that the Yanks were getting a top-flight pitcher.

After a year of watching Igawa bounce back and forth from Scranton to New York and get bounced around by Big League pitching, I am tempted to side with Hideki Matsui. Igawa’s stuff was always up. He lived on a change-up in Japan, and in the U.S., that’s just not good enough.

Maybe one year isn’t enough of a sample to determine whether or not Igawa is a big bust, but as I read more about Kei Igawa the pitcher and the way the Yankees approached this signing, I can’t help but think that the Yanks’ international scouts dropped the ball on this one. It happens sometimes, and for the good of the team, the Yanks should be prepared to cut their losses. Now and then, Igawa has a good outing, but the bad ones are always just around the corner.

Just think, the Giants paid $80M more than they had to for this kind of production. Yikes.

I know it’s one inning on the first day of Spring Training. I know that pitchers use Spring Training to hone their pitchers and refine their mechanics. But here goes: Kei Igawa entered today’s Yankee game against the University of South Florida in the sixth inning of a game in which USF had manage just one base runner. Igawa gave up two walks, hit a batter, threw a wild pitch and surrendered a Grand Slam. Why the Yanks declined to trade him when they could, I have yet to understand.

Meanwhile, here’s the first boxscore of the season. Soak it up; it’s a good one. The Big Three went a combined five innings, allowing one hit and striking out six. Jorge wasted his one triple of the year on a Spring Training game against a college team, and A-Rod drove in three runs. Baseball is back.