Impressive Igawa?
I don’t know about other Yankees fans, but from the day the Yankees signed Igawa I expected nothing but bad news. For some reason I just had a bad feeling about Igawa. It was most likely the fact that it just seemed like an impulse move by the Yankees to match the Red Sox move of signing Daisuke Matsuzaka. The signing was just a response to the signing made by a division rival, and those moves never turn out well. Anyway, as every Yankees fan knows Igawa has been nothing short of abysmal in the majors since tha Yankees signed him in December of 2006 post a career 6.66 ERA. However, Igawa has had much more success in the Yankees minors posting a career ERA of 3.73 and setting the SWB franchise record for most wins (he now has 29 wins in SWB). It’s great that Igawa has had success in the minors, but the Yankees aren’t paying him millions of dollars to be a “quadruple A” player.
Our Tyler Lakin wrote a quick post a week ago about the possibility of the Yankees testing Igawa out as a left-handed specialist. His thoughts on the situation were pretty clear cut; “no thanks”. I happen to agree with Tyler, but I do have to admit that Igawa did look rather impressive today in his first spring training appearance of the season. Today Igawa came on in the 4th inning (he decided to wear his cleats this time rather than the tennis shoes inthe picture) after Joba Chamberlain got himself into a jam and Kevin Whelan did nothing but make it worse. With the bases loaded and only 1 out in the 4th inning Igawa came on and struck out Zobrist, then retired Upton to end the inning without any further damage. Igawa came back out to the mound for the 5th inning and set down the side in order striking Ruggiano out to end the inning. Of the 5 batters that Igawa faced 2 of them were righties, 2 switch hitters, and just 1 lefty.
Igawa’s line: 1.2 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 0 BB, 2 SO
What are Kei Igawa’s chances of making the opening day roster? Do you think he is a lost cause and a career “quadruple A” pitcher, or does he have a chance to salvage his career?
Photo courtesy of Zimbio.com
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today was such a small sample size. If he can keep doing that then great. It’s just so hard to be optimistic when we have seen how bad he can really get.