Pavano Named Yankees Starter

[Murphy]

http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseba...ball-headlines

Sadly, Carl's the best they can do
Wallace Matthews
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March 28, 2007

So does this mean Carl Pavano is all better now?

Does it mean we can disregard the events, or more accurately, the non-events, of the past two years, when he was as useless to the Yankees as a pair of shoulder pads, and embrace him as an important part of the team?

Does it soften the sting of having paid him $17 million for four victories as a Yankee, the last of which came on May 22, 2005?

Or will we all be holding our breath Monday morning, expecting that before a pitch is thrown in the season opener an announcement will be made that Pavano's dog ate his pitching arm, or some such nonsense, and he will once again be unavailable to report for work as scheduled?

Forgive the skepticism but during the past two years, the only guy who has done less for the Yankees pitching staff than Pavano is Brian Cashman, the guy who does the hiring around here. That is why, when the Yankees open the season against the Devil Rays, the baseball will be somewhere it hasn't been in nearly two years: in Pavano's right hand.

During the past 11 seasons, the names of the Yankees' Opening Day starters have been Johnson, Mussina, Clemens, Hernandez, Pet te and Cone.

Pavano? How did he weasel his way in there?

He did it the new-fashioned way, neither through performance nor merit but by attrition. Everybody else is hurt. Pavano, incredibly and probably temporarily, is not. Therefore, he gets the baseball. This is a heck of a way to start a season.

After all, how does a team willing to spend $200 million on ballplayers manage to come up this short on pitching?

The easy answer, of course, is injuries. Pet te, Chien-Ming Wang and Jeff Karstens are all hurt to one degree or another, and incredibly enough, Pavano is (temporarily) healthy. But just being able to stand on your own two feet should hardly be enough to qualify a pitcher to start a Yankees season with so many implications for the future of the franchise, its manager and its GM.

But for that, the Yankees have no one to blame but themselves. They looked at the 2003 Marlins pitching staff, the one that blew them away in the World Series, and decided Pavano, with his 18-8 record, was the one they wanted. Never mind that minus that season, he was a decidedly mediocre 39-50 with an ERA around 5.00. Someone determined he was worth $39.95 million for four years. So far, the best thing you can say about the deal is that it is half over.

And despite his claims of being over the maladies that have sidelined him for most of his Yankees tenure, so far this spring, it was "heavy legs" one day, a "medical emergency" with a girlfriend another. You don't know what it will be next time, but you know there will be a next time.

And it certainly doesn't bode well for the Yankees that on the day after Daisuke Matsuzaka, the crown jewel of the pitching free-agent crop who wound up in Boston, pitches five shutout innings in his final spring start, the most positive thing that can be said about the Yankees' Opening Day starter is that he did nothing to lose the job.

He did nothing to win it, either, but then, he didn't have to. Pavano's six-inning outing against the Twins in yesterday's 4-3 loss at Fort Myers was the kind of so-so effort that would excite no one if it was turned in by anyone other than Pavano. But judged against his recent history, this cons uted a superior effort. Or, at least good enough for the Yankees to send him out again on Monday, for real, and hope he hasn't been pitching in a glass slipper that's about to fall off. A guy could hurt himself that way.

But how many times will we have to watch Pavano with our hearts in our throats before we can believe that he is for real now, that the guy wearing his uniform for the past two seasons was some kind of incredibly unfortunate impostor? How many good outings, or at least better than yesterday's, will he have to make before his teammates, understandably skeptical as well, begin to accept him as a reliable member of the staff?

How long before Joe Torre can pencil his name into the rotation without a shaking hand? How long before Cashman can walk into George Steinbrenner's office, or whoever The Boss is these days, without a prepared alibi for signing him?

The answer, of course, is that nobody knows for sure. Even when healthy, Carl Pavano's status is day-to-day, his next evaluation scheduled for sometime Monday afternoon. If not sooner.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

[K-State Spur]

Interesting. Of the 5 AL East teams, the Yanks will have the worst opening day starter.

Schilling, Halladay, Bedard, and Kazmir are all superior pitchers at this point.

Although, it helps when you have the division's strongest line-up by a decent margin.

[Tippecanoe]

pavano blows