Igawa and his $20 million contract sent to Class A Posted by The Star-Ledger May 07, 2007 4:39PM Categories: Sports The Yankees have optioned lefty Kei Igawa (2-1, 7.63 ERA) to Class A Tampa. Darrell Rasner will stay in the rotation and presumably pitch Friday at Seattle. Rasner (1-1, 2.75 ERA) was originally scheduled to go back to the minors today to make room on the roster for Matt DeSalvo, tonight's starter. But after Rasner pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings Sunday, the Yankees changed course. The Yankees spent $46 million to acquire Igawa -- a $26 million posting fee to get exclusive rights to negotiate with him and then a five-year, $20 million contract. Igawa seemed to turn a corner April 28 when he pitched six scoreless innings in relief after starter Jeff Karstens suffered a fracture in his leg from a liner on the first pitch of the game. But Igawa was rocked Friday by Seattle, giving up eight runs on nine hits (three homers) over four innings
A is a good spot for him because it's Tampa. He will get the best instruction there to try and figure out his problems.
Maybe, the one good game he had was when he came in in relief. He pitched 6 innings of 2 hit ball. Oh, and that was against Boston. Maybe it was the lineup.
This is good. Rasner deserves to stay, and Igawa needs the time to settle down. This works out very well, and I'm actually quite surprised the Yankees made this move. Rasner was all but gone before his performance yesterday. Good work by the team on this one. Perhaps management, from top to bottom, has finally straightened out their heads.
And maybe it's because somebody new is running the team. It certainly wasn't Cashman making decisions the last few days. He pretty much said that yesterday.
FOR SURE. I was one of the few who would of loved for Igawa to start the season in Triple A. But with the money dished out, their would of been way too much scrutiny to start him there considering the money he was making... I don't mind because i'll probably see one of his starts here, but he definitely needs to get straightened out.
That's because like most of what he says, it was probably made up. On topic, I'm kind of surprised he was sent all the way down to A. I would have thought AAA or maybe some sort of instructional thing in Tampa like they have done with other struggling pitchers in the past. Going to A is a shocker to me.
It was either El Duque, Contreras or Irabu, I forget which one, but one of them started out in the minors for a couple starts. Maybe it'll get Igawa's head back on and he'll be able to contribute.
They sent him to A, because it is in tampa, so he can work with the instructors there as you mentioned, but also pitch in games, which he seems to need.
He made a point of saying that it was George, Hank and Hal Steinbrenner that made the Clemens decision during that post game press conference.
