To Echo the Grail Knight: The Yankees Chose...Poorly

You'll have to forgive this short little rant. Why bother having a competition if the person who wins it doesn't get the job? Bartolo Colon clearly won the competition for the fifth starter spot for the New York Yankees. But it was announced today that Freddie Garcia got the job. While there is a great understanding that a lot is on the line for the New York Yankees, there is no understanding of making the safe choice. The Yankees deemed Garcia a safer bet since he pitched regularly last year and Colon did not pitch in the majors at all.

At least Colon won himself a job and will join the bullpen. But he was all stretched out to start and that will all be wasted in spot duty as a long reliever. Colon was brilliant this spring and while the Fan has said all along that spring statistics matter little if at all, you had to like the way Colon was throwing. He was economical and threw nothing but strikes. But they weren't empty strikes. He had good velocity and control of all of his pitches.

Freddie Garcia, meanwhile, throws meatballs and a lotta sauce. He'll have to use his extensive knowledge of the game and the craft of pitching to beguile batters to have any kind of success at all. This Fan has little hope of that happening with much success very often.

Colon won the job. There was supposed to be competition. He won that competition and yet will not reap the reward of that achievement. Sometimes when you play it safe, you can be real sorry. The guy who lost the competition will win the job based on what? That he pitched in 2010? In a vastly inferior division? Attaboy!

No, this is the wrong result. It's not only unfair, it's unwise. You can't be worried all the time about players breaking. What teams have to do when a game here or there will determine the entire outcome of the season, is to put your best out there on any given day for as long as they can play and if they break, they break. Garcia is not the right choice. It's a bad idea. Colon was the right choice.

To paraphrase the Grail Knight in the Indiana Jones movie, the Yankees chose...poorly.