Wang’s Wife Delivers, Can He?

June 17, 2009   ·   Paul Raymond   ·   Jump to comments

Tonight’s the night for New York Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang, or was yesterday the night? All depends how you look at things. Last night, Wang became a father of a baby boy. His first child with his wife Chia-Ling. Tonight, Wang faces the Washington Nationals with his job on the line.

First, I’ll say congratulations to Mr. Wang. Only thing I’d have to question is where’d you get the name man? His son’s name is Justin Jesse. Not sure how two parents with the names Chien-Ming and Chia-Ling come up with that. Maybe they just plan on staying in the states after he retires, who knows.

But back to something bigger in my mind. Remember I’m a Yankee fan so this is more important. Will he perform tonight and keep his job? Manager Joe Girardi has already said he must show a big turnaround tonight.

“It’s not so much the numbers, but the numbers are important, obviously,” Girardi said. “You have to be able to make big pitches. You can give up a lot of hits that aren’t bullets that change the complexion of the game, so we’re going to look at numbers, we’re going to look at his pitches, his strikes – we’re going to look at all of it before we run and make a decision too quickly.”

I agree to an extent, you do have to look at everything. A pitcher could give up 8 hits in a game but yet pitch a shutout. A pitcher could give up 6 runs but only 1 earned due to an error. So yea numbers can be deceiving.

Since coming back to the rotation on June 4th, Wang has given up 9 runs in 7 and 1/3 inning, 13 hits, 2 homers, 4 walks and 8 strikeouts. The sad part is this has been an improvement number wise on his early season struggles. What’s even sadder is I’m calling the early season numbers a struggle compared to now.

So once again numbers are deceiving. The numbers would say he’s pitching better but still not good. Any Yankee fan will tell you that’s not the case thou, there’s no improvement. He may have more velocity but if he’s not throwing that hard sinker where it needs to go, he’s worthless. And you know what? He still doesn’t have that command.

He had it when he was in the bullpen, he had it for about an inning on June 4th but now its gone. He’s back to just throwing up meatballs. If that happens tonight against the Nationals there can be no excuses. You have to write him off as a lost cause and banish him to the pen for more work.

I’ve been a Wang supporter for years. Even during his two 19 win seasons there were many fans who didn’t think he was the real deal, including my father. But I defended him how couldn’t you with his numbers and the way he worked in and out of jams?

I’ve been hoping he works out of his current troubles as it would be better for the Yankees and their hopes for a 27th World Championship. But its getting tremendously harder to defend him, so much I’ve given up.

I’ll be at work tonight during the game. My cellphone will be open, game tracker on all night, hoping that he shows up. Hoping that the birth of his son relieves some stress and gives him some motivation. But if he gets hit around again, I’m done!!! I will officially join the fans who say get rid of this bum.

So Wang it’s all up to you. Your wife just delivered your boy so congratulations, can you deliver on the mound? You can obviously hit one strike zone, can you find the more important one tonight?

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