Igawa Removed from Yanks’ 40-man Roster
Looks like Kei Igawa was pushed off the Yankee’s 40-man roster after the team acquired Damaso Marte and Xavier Nady. He cleared waivers unclaimed.
Nikkan Sports has a quote from Igawa:
“I was told by my agent that this increases my chance of playing for a different team. I have absolutely no interest in going back to Japan. I want to deal with this in the minors and seize my opportunity to reach the Majors in America.”
I hope the Yankees do find a way to move Igawa to a different team. It seems clear that he’ll never thrive in NYC, but if he had a chance to move to an NL team in a good pitcher’s park, he might do alright.
27/07/2008 at 12:50 am Permalink
I agree. I think he would have been moved already if not for his wild contract. I’d like to see him in LA or SD…but I doubt anyone is going to throw him into the middle of a division race. Maybe next year.
27/07/2008 at 9:26 pm Permalink
Actually, if a team was reasonably confident that he could go out and give them 180 innings or so of 4.50 ERA ball, his $4MM/year salary wouldn’t be too out of whack.
28/07/2008 at 11:33 am Permalink
Actually if he could produce at anywhere near those levels Patrick, he’d be a bargain. What did a journeyman like Carlos Silva get last off-season, 10 mill per year? What I do find a bit surprising is that the Yankees actually went so far as to bring in Sidney Ponson to “help” there rotation. Why not promote Igawa and at least try and showcase him at this stage. He can’t be any worse than Ponson, can he? The Yankees are still trying to recoup some of that huge posting fee I believe and would be just better off writing that off as a lesson learnt and move on.
28/07/2008 at 10:10 pm Permalink
Ponson was decent for the Rangers before getting cut due to clubhouse issues. Silva got something like 4 years / $44M, but to me that makes Silva overpaid rather than Igawa a potential bargain. The posting fee is a sunk cost, I think they’d be happy to just have his salary off the books.