Zell's Pinstriped Blog, A New York Yankees Fan Blog

Earlier this week we wrote an article about the Yankees’ hitting coaches since 1996. In baseball, you can’t hit if there isn’t anyone pitching to you, so, now we take a look at the Yankees pitching coaches since 1996…

Mel Stottlemyre

Stottlemyre did a bang up job with what he was given at first, 4 years he had a staff ERA of 4.50+ which isn’t great by any stretch of imagination, but the other 6 were upper 3’s-very low 4’s which any team in the American League would take in a heart beat. For the most part he was consistent and that generally is a quality one looks for. Unless, they are consistently bad. Considering his pitching staff was in the AL with PED fueled hitters, I’d say he did decently. He left the team after the 2005 season for what was termed ‘Personal Disagreements’ with George Steinbrenner. Grade: B+

Ron Guidry

Unfortunately for Louisiana Lightning, Lightning didn’t strike here for him like on the mound. He became the fall guy for a pitching staff in 2007 that underachieved and thus was not brought back when Torre hit the bricks. In 07, after Pettitte and Wang went a combined 34-16 with an ERA of 3.87, the rest of the pitching staff to include a 44 year old Roger Clemens and a 38 year old Mike Mussina was anything but awe inspiring. However, Guidry did return to the Yankees as a Spring Training Instructor the following year. Grade: C

Dave Eiland

Under Eiland, the previously mentioned Mussina, now 39, had his only 20 win season with a 3.37 ERA. During Eiland’s first year, he presided over Joba’s transition to the starting rotation for 12 games. Chamberlain pitched well with a record of 3-1, 2.75 ERA in 65.1 innings pitched. His first year didn’t go as terrible as it could have considering 50 games were started by the foursome of Sidney Ponson, Darrell Rasner, Ian Kennedy and Carl Pavano. 2009, obviously was a better year (sans the Chien-Ming Wang experiment) with CC Sabathia and a healthy AJ Burnett leading the rotation. With Phil Hughes ‘falling’ into the setup role, it was almost as if it solved most of Eiland’s issues.  Grade: C+ (However, if the Yankees pitchers have a few good seasons, it will easily be upgraded to a B or higher.)