Yankees Rotation (now featuring Joba Chamberlain)

The biggest improvement clearly came in the way of the two hottest pitching free agents around, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.  Sabathia is a clear ace, immediately he will be the top of the rotation and if he doesn't win 20 games i'd be shocked.  Anytime a pitcher gets signed for so many years there is cause for concern, but CC has shown thusfar he is capable of a heavy workload.  Burnett worries me a bit,  his three good years in his career were two contract years and an arbitration year.  Hopefully his humility is genuine and his former tutor Roy Halladay taught him the true zen of pitching.  

The signing of CC shows that Brian Cashman and the Yankees did have a plan when they didn't pull the trigger on a Johan Santana trade.  I'm not saying CC is Johan, but he is as close as it gets with plenty of upside.

Joba moves to a solid rotation spot which to me isn't even an argument anymore.  You want a guy with this kind of talent pitching 200 innings as opposed to being an 8th inning guy and only pitching 70, it's a no brainer.  More outs...less runs scored...more wins, end of story.  Plus the bullpen is pretty solid and doesn't need Joba.  Mo is still automatic, and Veras, Bruney and Ramirez should shake out the late innings.  Dave Robertson showed a ton of promise and youngster Phil Coke may see some innings sooner rather than later.

The rotation how I see it....

1. CC Sabathia

2. Chien-Ming Wang

3. AJ Burnett

4. Joba Chamberlain

5. Pettite/Hughes/Kennedy

The rotation is built strong, and will compete for the best in baseball.  The thing to look at here is that 1-3 and 1-4 we match up with anyone, so the curse of first round eliminations may be behind us.  This is a very strong playoff type rotation that also has the depth to make it through a 162 game season.

The question mark comes at the 5th spot.  As of now Andy Pettitte hasn't accepted the Yankees offer and all indications are that the Yanks are ready to move on.  This leaves the 5th spot up for grabs, it should be a nice competition in spring training between Kennedy and Hughes, and Dan Giese, who showed he could pitch in the big leagues in spot starts last season.  No matter what, we can't do worse than we did last year with Kennedy and Hughes so odds are one will emerge as a 10 game winner.  My money is still on Hughes, but we'll see how it shakes out.