Interesting Yankees Fact

[$500 Million]

Unless I'm missing someone from the olden days, in their 114 years the 27 time World Champion New York Yankees have only produced FOUR yes...FOUR starting pitchers from their farm system (or whatever it was called before farm systems) that have gone on to become legit stud starters.

Lefty Grove
Whitey Ford
Ron Guidry
Andy Pettitte

It's amazing that they've managed to have the success they've had, even before free agency. Don't bet on any of their SP prospects, odds are you'll be disappointed.

 

[Chewbaccer]

Unless I'm missing someone from the olden days, in their 114 years the 27 time World Champion New York Yankees have only produced FOUR yes...FOUR starting pitchers from their farm system (or whatever it was called before farm systems) that have gone on to become legit stud starters.

Lefty Grove
Whitey Ford
Ron Guidry
Andy Pettitte

It's amazing that they've managed to have the success they've had, even before free agency. Don't bet on any of their SP prospects, odds are you'll be disappointed.

That is a bit surprising.

Ian Kennedy, Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain were supposed to be the next big things, but only Phil Hughes ever had any real success with the Yankees, and that was a very brief stretch.

 

[Chewbaccer]

Unless I'm missing someone from the olden days, in their 114 years the 27 time World Champion New York Yankees have only produced FOUR yes...FOUR starting pitchers from their farm system (or whatever it was called before farm systems) that have gone on to become legit stud starters.

Lefty Grove
Whitey Ford
Ron Guidry
Andy Pettitte

It's amazing that they've managed to have the success they've had, even before free agency. Don't bet on any of their SP prospects, odds are you'll be disappointed.

But I'm assuming you mean Lefty Gomez instead of Lefty Grove.

 

[JohnU]

Well, generally ... as I recall my Yankees history ... there were a lot of good-to-very good pitchers for them who had the benefit of playing for very good teams. But they were also one of the franchises who could dangle some cheap money at the Athletics or the Browns or the Senators and pluck away a pitcher because the A's and the Senators were always in need of cash. The Browns just were.

I never read any of the history of the front office to know if they had much of an overall strategy but when you can consistently find a Hall of Fame center fielder or a straight-to-the-Hall catcher every 6 years, you can really build an offense that easily depends on pretty good, but not great, pitching.

A Sparky Lyle will do just fine with that sort of franchise.

 

[$500 Million]

But I'm assuming you mean Lefty Gomez instead of Lefty Grove.

Yes, thank you.

 

[tducey]

That's interesting. Got to think that'll change now that their farm system has been beefed up.

 

[obxyankeefan]

Spud Chandler and Vic Raschi both had short careers, but other than that I would rate them with Guidry and Pettitte.


Another one that doesn't get much credit because he pitched during the downswing period of late 60s - early 70s is Mel Stottlemyre.

 

[Chewbaccer]

Spud Chandler and Vic Raschi both had short careers, but other than that I would rate them with Guidry and Pettitte.


Another one that doesn't get much credit because he pitched during the downswing period of late 60s - early 70s is Mel Stottlemyre.

Spud Chandler played for Georgia. Definitely include him.

 

[StanMarsh51]

That is a bit surprising.

Ian Kennedy, Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain were supposed to be the next big things, but only Phil Hughes ever had any real success with the Yankees, and that was a very brief stretch.

Not only that, but the lowest rated prospect of the bunch (Kennedy) has gone on to have the best career so far.

 

[MilkSpiller22]

Unless I'm missing someone from the olden days, in their 114 years the 27 time World Champion New York Yankees have only produced FOUR yes...FOUR starting pitchers from their farm system (or whatever it was called before farm systems) that have gone on to become legit stud starters.

Lefty Grove
Whitey Ford
Ron Guidry
Andy Pettitte

It's amazing that they've managed to have the success they've had, even before free agency. Don't bet on any of their SP prospects, odds are you'll be disappointed.

Just as interesting as how bad they have been producing stud pitchers... but all 4 of those are lefties...

That is not a coincidence... but it is not surprising they had trouble producing pitchers(but producing only 2 HOFers is shocking)...

Yankee stadium has always been a HR friendly stadium, very hard to evolve when you are naturally going to let up more HRs than the average young one... and since yankee stadium is lefty hitter friendly, righty pitchers are given NO advantage there...

 

[BambinoBear]

I was just talking about this last night with my son. Severino has the potential to be pretty good but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. Betances coming up was projected as a starter before moving to the pen as well as the other 2 killer B's (Andrew Bracman and Manny Banuelos) who did nothing for the club.

 

[JohnU]

The matter going forward is maybe more in our definition of greatness.

In the future, there are likely to be very few Whitey Fords. They just won't happen. It's another chat about who will be a H of F pitcher in the future and what one needs to accomplish to even qualify. Aside from Mariano Rivera and Pettite, who's really great? Mussina, very good ... not great.

Yet despite that, going back to that juggernaut in the late 90s, you don't think of pitchers. You think of Jeter. Not many people can even tell you who pitched for the 1927 Yanks. Anybody can look it up, sure. Yanks teams of the 50s are more well-known because that was when television began to expose the players to the country.

Back as far as Ruth, the Yanks never needed great pitching. They needed guys to show up and pitch well enough to win games. It is a bit strange that they haven't had many truly great ones but there really are not THAT many great pitchers, period ... from any era in baseball. Name me any team with 2 truly great ones. I can think of a couple, but there are a lot who had some really good pitchers who had great years.

Those teams also won pennants when that happened.

 

[soxfan1468927]

The matter going forward is maybe more in our definition of greatness.

In the future, there are likely to be very few Whitey Fords. They just won't happen. It's another chat about who will be a H of F pitcher in the future and what one needs to accomplish to even qualify. Aside from Mariano Rivera and Pettite, who's really great? Mussina, very good ... not great.

Yet despite that, going back to that juggernaut in the late 90s, you don't think of pitchers. You think of Jeter. Not many people can even tell you who pitched for the 1927 Yanks. Anybody can look it up, sure. Yanks teams of the 50s are more well-known because that was when television began to expose the players to the country.

Back as far as Ruth, the Yanks never needed great pitching. They needed guys to show up and pitch well enough to win games. It is a bit strange that they haven't had many truly great ones but there really are not THAT many great pitchers, period ... from any era in baseball. Name me any team with 2 truly great ones. I can think of a couple, but there are a lot who had some really good pitchers who had great years.

Those teams also won pennants when that happened.

Are you saying Pettitte was better than Mussina?

 

[StanMarsh51]

In the future, there are likely to be very few Whitey Fords. They just won't happen. It's another chat about who will be a H of F pitcher in the future and what one needs to accomplish to even qualify. Aside from Mariano Rivera and Pettite, who's really great? Mussina, very good ... not great.

Hate to break it to you, but Mussina was better than Pettitte. Mussina's trending towards the HOF (got 52% of the vote this year and increasing every year), while it seems unlikely that Pettitte will get in.

 

[soxfan1468927]

Funny thing is, if you ranked the 16 franchises that have been around since 1901 by their rotations, the Cardinals and Yankees would both be outside the top 10 on a lot of lists. Yet they are the most successful

 

[black francis]

Mussina > Pettitte

and he didn't use HGH

 

[BambinoBear]

Mussina > Pettitte

and he didn't use HGH

While I agree with all of the above, Moose wasn't home grown talent so not sure why he's being mentioned.

 

[JohnU]

Hate to break it to you, but Mussina was better than Pettitte. Mussina's trending towards the HOF (got 52% of the vote this year and increasing every year), while it seems unlikely that Pettitte will get in.

I don't intend to debate this. If he was better, I will take your word for it. That was NOT the intent of my comment to compare those two pitchers. I think you all walked all over the comment to get to that one particular point, which wasn't really that important to me. Mussina isn't a Yankee farmhand anyhow so if that's all this yielded, you need to reevaluate the premise.

 

[Chewbaccer]

Funny thing is, if you ranked the 16 franchises that have been around since 1901 by their rotations, the Cardinals and Yankees would both be outside the top 10 on a lot of lists. Yet they are the most successful

Yeah, the Braves would probably rank pretty highly in terms of pitching, but of the original 16, they're definitely in the bottom 6 for success.

 

[soxfan1468927]

Yeah, the Braves would probably rank pretty highly in terms of pitching, but of the original 16, they're definitely in the bottom 6 for success.

I would say the Braves are easily number 1.
Maddux
Spahn
Niekro
Glavine
Smoltz

That's 4 1st ballot HOFers (Niekro got in his 5th try)

And that's ignoring one of the best 19th Century pitchers in Kid Nichols.