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Dude !

You used a spreadsheet !!! That's "blood brilliant" as Mr. Weasley would say. Can't think of a reason why they shouldn't give it a try. Not one.

What about the concept of starting off the season with Joba and Hughes as one pitcher. Having one start the frst 5 innings and the second guy pitch the next four. They could take turns starting. This would limit their innings early in the season, and maybe even protect the pen. This will also keep the rest of the rotation on regular rest while still allowing Mussina or Kennedy to skip a start to keep their innings down. Injuries I would still handle, at least early in the season with the other young Arms, especially Horne and White.

What about the 2-4 innings you'll need from the bullpen every night, given the baby-the-starters philosophy?

Here's an idea. Use the starters in relief for an inning inbetween starts. Does that undercut the innings limitation? I'm not so sure it works out that way. I've always been a fan of less innings overall and spread them out more.

6 innings a start for 6 starters is 162 innings per starter. That leaves 486 innings for the bullpen. If the starters give you 20 one-inning throwing day appearances by starters that means each starter maxes out at 182 innings. And that also leaves just 366 innings to be distributed to 5 full time relievers. That is 73.2 innings per reliever, which is manageable.

So I'm a fan of each starter getting used to working once every 6 days and making a relief appearance 75% of the time between starts. The animals like Wang and Pettite could make longer starts or more bullpen appearances between starts.

This totally goes against all good conventional baseball thinking. But given what good conventional managers do to pitcher's arms, maybe we need to rethink conventional wisdom. I bet most of the wear and tear comes from throwing each pitch after 70 in the pitch count. Why not spread things out a little?

way too logical, and do you really believe that Girardi has ever seen a spreadsheet?

Would it not be much easier and much more flexible (rain-outs/health/etc) to simply skip some of the kids turns in the rotation, possibly by giving them to your bullpens long-man (aka 6th starter) or calling up some kids to see what they have got?

If you're constantly putting long and inconsistent times between their starts, isn't there a real chance that would have an adverse effect on both their performance and development?

Further, skipping a turn or two in the rotation would give them a long period of time to recover and rejuvenate them for another run of starts.

Makes sense to me.

You're right. Girardi comes out of the Billy Martin and Joe Torre school of working your good horses to death.

Prediction:

The five starters are Pettite/Wang/Mussina/Hughes/Joba. Joba is the fifth starter who skips starts and does some occasional work in the bullpen. Kennedy is in Triple A until Mussina falters.

Well folks, it's official. Hank Steinbrenner has an uncontrolled urge to talk whenever he's asked a question by a media muffin. The guy absolutely cannot say, "no comment". His babbling about Santana, "is it a deal, was there a deal, do I want to make a deal" is pure gold for a How Not to Manage the Media 101 course at the local community college.

Cashman must break out in hives just before he opens the morning paper to see what his newest boss is up to these days.

Mitchell-

It's like someone created a time machine and sent us back 10 years or so. We got so used to press releases from George that we forgot the "good old days" of almost daily rants from the Boss.

Yep, I remember those rants Peter - not fondly. Some of them were downright embarassing. Dad was not subtle in expressing himself or had any ability to curb his impulses.

Hopefully Hank's impulses will be tempered by the need to get his brother's buy-in to most team issues. Time will tell.