What to do with Wang...

Much has been made of Chien-Ming Wang's struggles this season. His unsightly 14.34 ERA is definitely cause for concern but if you look at his past few outings, he definitely has been improving.

Now, I know a lot of people are going to argue here and say, "How can he possibly be getting better when he goes 4.2 innings, gives up 7 hits and 5 runs against the Rangers, and THEN goes 2.2 innings, gives up 6 hits and 4 runs against the Red Sox?" Yes, the raw numbers do not look promising but sometimes you have to watch the actual pitches themselves before you draw any conclusions.

Take the Texas game for example. Wang retired 2 of 3 batters in the first inning with strikeouts and had another 1-2-3 inning in the 2nd, retiring the hitters with 2 groundouts and 1 strikeout. That is basically vintage Wang. I watched the game and was extremely impressed with what I saw. The sinker was down and was consistently 92-94 mph and he also had a tight slider. As the game went along, he seemed to lose his control on the sinker and it began to "float" in the zone, instead of bearing down. To me, he lost his good stuff due to the fact that it was his first major league start in about a month so he began to tire a bit.

Now the Boston game. Not as good as the Texas one, but definitely could see signs of the old Wang. The velocity was extremely impressive (94-95 mph). This time though, he couldn't find his arm slot and was consistently out of the strike zone with all of his pitches.

The bottom line here is Wang is NOT pitching the way he pitched for his first few starts back in April. The veloicity is back, and the weakened muscles he had early in the season have definitely healed. The problem now is Wang's consistency and confidence. Any pitcher who has won 19 games 2 years in a row and starts the season with a 34.5o ERA is going to take a hit to his confidence. His work out of the bullpen certainly helped but he needs to do it by making starts. I am by no means saying he needs to make 4 or 5 more bad starts, but Girardi should give him 1 or 2 more and see what happens. Wang WILL get another shot this coming week and we'll see if he can be more consistent. The stuff is there sporadically, you can see it.

Wang will play a role for the Yanks the rest of the season and I believe it will be in the rotation.