The Analytical Yankee Fan

Alan Horne: Power 93-96mph four-seam fastball, plus power curve, effective slider and change-up.

Daniel McCutchen: Fastball sits 92-94, and he offers a solid curveball and split-fingered fastball combination. Plus control is one of his major strengths.

Ross Ohlendorf: His sinking fastball has been clocked from 96-98 regularly after being switched to the bullpen. His slider is now a plus pitch, and a splitter in the works looks very promising.

Jonathan Albaladejo: Mid-90’s four seam fastball, with some late life through the strikezone, and awicked slider. He commands them both very well.

Jose Veras: Mid-to-upper 90’s fastball, with a lot of late movement through the strikezone. Also, a very good slider which he’s gotten a lot of strikeouts on, in the minors. Has had control problems in the past, but during this past winter, in winterball, he showed plus command and was the Yankees most dominating pitcher.

Edwar Ramirez: 88-92mph four-seam fastball, which he needs to learn how to control, a change-up ranked 80 on the 20-80 scale(basically his change is as good as Joba’s slider), and an average slider he has to learn how to locate. Last season, he lead the entire Yankee organization, from A-ball to the bigs, in strikeouts(over 15K’s every 9 innings pitched). This off-season, he worked closely with Pedro Martinez–hopefully it pays off. Edwar could be a monster.

Kevin Whelan: “Whelan possess a low-to-mid 90s fastball, but his real weapon is a devastating splitter. I’m not sure if it can be described as plus-plus, but its certainly what propels his amazing strikeout capability. His control is just plain bad - he showed signs of improvement in the middle of the season, but regressed toward the end. Still, Whelan is one of the hardest minor league pitchers in the game to get a hit off of.” <—This scouting report on Whelan is relatively old, and since then his control has improved drastically. With a little more tinkering, this guy could possibly be a dominating closer in the American League

David Robertson: 92-95mph four-seamer with some late life to it, a power slider, and a cutter that sits 90-92. He commands them all excellently. He posted a .88 ERA last season(wow) at Chaleston, and is expected to start the year at Trenton and to fly through the Yankee organization.

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POSSIBLE MID-SEASON CALL-UPS

Mark Melancon: Throws a low-to-mid-90’s four seam fastball, with some late life to it, throws a “buggs bunny” two-seamer at the same speed as his four-seamer–the pitch is supposed to be absolutely insane. It was one of the minor league catchers–Montero, I think–that said his two-seamer breaks as much as a curveball. He also throws a DEVASTATING power curve. Commands all of his pitches extremely well.

Humberto Sanchez: “He throws an incredibly heavy 92-95 mph fastball. This heavy fastball will break bats, miss bats, and pound the ball in to the ground. He backs it up with an above average curveball and average changeup.”

J.B Cox: Cox throws a two-seamer in the 91-92 range, and compliments it with a plus slider at 85 MPH. His third pitch is a “major league quality” change-up, that he’ll throw to give batters a different look. Cox controls every pitch he throws with pinpoint accuracy, that is rated at plus plus, and is his best attribute.

Add to this guys like Kei Igawa, Brian Bruney, Chris Britton, Heath Phillips, Chase Wright and Traber. We do NOT need to keep Joba, quite possibly our best starter, in the bullpen the rest of his career, when we have this much depth and high-end potential.

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You know, I have a Myspace, and I’m a member of a few Yankee groups– sometimes my fellow fans can get on my nerves. We finally stack our farm system with all of these high-end arms, and all I hear is “Let’s trade for Nathan”, or “We need to get K-Rod at the start of next season”, or “Yes! Sabathia is going to be a free agent, we have to sign him!!!1111!!!1111!!!111!!!1111one!!!eleven!!!!111!!!!”.

Jesus, just two seasons ago, all you people were talking about how we have to stop trading our chips away and stop handing out these insane contracts, because it wasn’t winning us championships. Now all you want to do is trade all of our chips away for guys like Santana, Bedard, or Nathan…and throw insane amounts of money at Fransisco Rodriguez and CC Sabathia….*Whistles in amazement*