Up in the middle of the night, I caught Chris Carlin on WFAN 660 going off his rocker at 5:00 am over the idea that the Yankees and Red Sox going after A.J. Burnett. Why? Look to his stats:
- He has never won even 13 games in his career. Other than last year.
- He is a perpetual disabled list player.
- He is his 2007 Jays season: “Burnett was the only pitcher to make all his starts through the first two months of the season. In that period, Burnett posted a 3.98 ERA, throwing 71.0 innings. Unfortunately, Burnett missed 48 games during two stints on the disabled list, finishing the season 10-8 with an ERA of 3.75.”
- His stats as a Jays pitcher peak against the Yankees and the Sox meaning that if the Yanks take him his estimated ERA based on past performance should go up almost half a run.
- Otherwise high ERA compared to wins.
I would add he sucks. That is entirely subjective, of course, but – by that I mean he is no iron man. Not the man to pass the ball to. The never-won-a-big-game pitcher. Not only does he suck, I think he is a suck, a sook and also sucky and perhaps sookey – all quite different characteristics. In a way, he is the utterly complete Jays player: skilled, not committed, looking past the job, a specialist in underachieving and, you know, sucktastic. Happy to be proven wrong. If he is a Sox and plays well like Julian Tavarez did once, I will eat my words.
But I hope the Sox are just winding up the Yankees and inflating the price that might be paid by pretending they are in the market. I wouldn’t mind a return of Derek Lowe, however. That would be interesting.
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