Melancon expecting to get the call soon

by anaconda on Jun 6, 2008 4:16 AM EDT in Minors Comment 3 comments

Tyler Kepner penned an excellent piece in today's NY Times featuring Trenton Thunder reliever, Mark Melancon, who is widely speculated to be the eventual successor to Mariano Rivera once the greatest closer of all-time decides to hang up his cleats for the last time.

Barring any setbacks, Melancon is almost assured of getting called up to the majors at some point this season to help the struggling Yankee bullpen - probably sooner rather than later - as a result of his very fast progression through the ranks in High-A Tampa and Double-A Trenton while recovering from TJ surgery.

By design, Melancon has logged quite a few innings already (43.0 IP) in order to build his arm strength and I would imagine the organization has a cap on his innings for the 2008 season just as they do for all of their prized youngsters. I think it's just a matter of weeks before he gets the call to the majors.

Personally, I can't wait to see what this kid can do against major league hitters.

His overall 2008 stats can be viewed here.

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Quite an article

He took a college overload during his rehab. And we got names for the intangibles the Yankees look for: preparation, competitiveness, leadership and commitment to growth.
He certainly should be in this year’s mix- but Joba didn’t debut until August 7th. I see no reason to expect “me-Lance-in” to beat that timetable.

"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."

by jscape2000 on Jun 6, 2008 9:15 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Depends on his innings

One detail the article mentioned is that he seems to be averaging just 10 pitches per inning in recent outings as evidenced by his 32-pitch outing the other night and I think he threw roughly 35 – 40 pitches in two other outings in which he logged 4.0 IP and 3.2 IP, respectively.

Obviously, a 10-pitch inning with is different from a 20-25 pitch inning so his cap for the season might be a bit skewed.

I’d love to know his cap for the season, but the powers that be certainly ain’t gonna make that public. Nonetheless, Melancon has already surpassed 40.0 IP and I can’t imagine his cap is more than 70-80 IP.

I would think that Cashman and Contreras would really like to see him log 20 IP+ with the big club, so they are either going to tone down his innings a bit or make their decisions based on pitch counts instead.

Inquiring minds want to know.

by anaconda on Jun 6, 2008 10:16 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The Melancon video

is from two years ago when he saved the title game for the Staten Island Yankees.

He is a dominant guy who throw strikes. Was at the game in the video above and saw him several times thus far in Trenton.

I still think JB Cox is first up to the Bronx. When you close out a College World Series title game, you will have no jitters in the 8th inning on the mound at Yankee Stadium in front of 50,000 plus.

Check out this piece on the future of the Yankee bullpen:

http://www.dugoutcentral.com/blog/?p=1475

by thejobarules on Jun 6, 2008 10:40 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs