A Huge Fans Take on the Carl Pavano Saga

Its hard to look back in retrospect to see if the Yankees shouldve signed Pavano. People who are completely against him now may be the very same people who were pushing to sign him. Though irrelevent now, lets look back at Pavanos two years before becoming a yankee. In 2003, Pavano was a pretty solid pitcher. Posting a 4.30 era and 12 wins, he showed himslelf able to hold his own in the majors. He also pitched over 200 innings that year to only increase his value. Jump to 2004 and you have a pitcher winning 18 games with a 3.00 era. Those are obviously ace numbers including a few strong playoff games. He once again pitched over 200 innings, had a low walk rate, and didnt give up to many home runs. Finally free agency rolls around and the bids begin. The only problem is while people are falling in love with his stats, no teams are really looking at his stuff. Teams like the Yankees werent thinking if his 91 MPH sinking fastball and barely above average off-speed stuff could truely make an impact in the AL East. As it turned out other teams were more caught up in the numbers too, as Boston apparently offered him more then the Yankees. Unfortunately for us Yankee fans, he chose to take less money (if you can even call 10 mill per year "less money") to play for the yankees. The resounding applause of yankee fans were heard not knowing what was in store for the future. Well the middle part of teh story is well-known to Yankees fans as a period of grief and every other fan as a time of jokes. It seemed every fan from Boston who was dieing to get Pavano all of a sudden never wanted him becasue he knew he was gonna suck. Now after a serious of ridiculus injuries and some backlash against him, he is now back supposedly ready to starting earning his money. For this I am happy but the real question is, do we want him back. Yankees seem so reliant on Pavano coming back, thinking he would fill the rotation needs to perfection, but what was forgotten in this fiasco was the cold hard facts. Pavano is nothing more then an adequate 4th or 5th starter in the AL. He sitting at about 90 now and he hasnt thrown many impressive breaking balls all spring. People need to relize that hes not going to come back and be that 18-8 pitcher taht he was for that one year. He is now nothing more then an average starter taht had a big year at the right time. Yankees have the youth in their system to come up and give more effort then Pavano ever has with better stuff then he has/had. Please do not take this as a I hate Pavano letter but take it as fustration as money lost on a player who never seemed to have the drive to play. I hope this is a learning block for teh yankees as they hopefuly wont sign the PAvanos and Jaret Wrights of the world. But in change have their farm system flourish and sign guys based on consistency and work ethic.