I first read the bracketed word as Cervelli. And I was gonna say, those three lasers last night have him off my Bill Bergen list. And onto my Joel Skinner list.

Speaking of the minor leagues, here’s a great article on Kei Igawa from the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/sports/baseball/kei-igawa-the-lost-yankee.html

[2] Great article. Igawa was the Yankees rebound mistake after losing out on the Dice-BB sweepstakes.

I don’t remember Igawa ever getting the chance to work as a reliever. My memory was he generally got through the lineup once, but never twice.

Igawa never garnered the hatred our other busts have. I hope he gets a chance to see the majors once again, and does well enough to heal what has to be a broken heart.

[3] Igawa always had the stuff to succeed at the ML level. But he couldn’t adjust the way he pitched. He lived up in the zone with an average fastball and decent change. Unfortunately you have to have electric stuff to succeed that way. Had he learned to pitch down in the zone I think he could have been an OK back of the rotation guy.

[2] Yes, as much as I am loathe to pity a $46 million man, the article had me feeling almost sorry for him.  Almost.  How ironic that the much-touted Dice-K has turned out to be somewhat of a bust as well.  But I recall there was quite a bit of acid towards Igawa, especially towards the end.  What a largely ugly time ‘05-‘08 was.   

[4] well-states it.  What’s interesting is how Cashman was pretty blunt about it being a horrendous mistake, and wanting to get rid of him, but ownership shooting that down.  Cashman’s been really hammering “ownership are clods who are getting in the way of my reasonable decisionmaking” lately.