Time to close out the off season thread and begin anew with the start of spring training.
After undergoing reconstructive elbow surgery on Aug. 24, 2007, Brackman spent the next regular season recovering. Price and others zoomed by.
“I see all my friends who got drafted the same class as me, like David Price, and I see how good they’re doing and how they get to play,” Brackman said. “It makes me want to get back so much quicker. It’s frustrating sitting on the couch. It was hard to watch last year.”
“I spoke to a lot of the scouts who saw him in Hawaii,” said Damon Oppenheimer, the Yankees’ vice president for amateur scouting, “and when he was good, they said he was dominating and has the potential to be really special.”
Manager Joe Girardi was watching, and he said Brackman impressed him with the way he made adjustments during the session. If he made a mistake, Girardi said, Brackman fixed it on the next pitch. That was no accident.
“The standards we have and try to keep with the Yankees are a little bit higher,” Oppenheimer said. “When there’s a potential for impact, we might have to take a little bit more of a risk to get the type of player who can play in New York.”
“Every day that I throw here, I’m getting my feel back for every one of my pitches,” Brackman said. “I’ve just got to throw more. I need innings. Hawaii was mainly just to go out to see if my arm was going to stand up. And now I realize I need to spend more time setting up hitters, just being around the game. I know how to play; it’s just doing it, and that’s going to take experience.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/sp...1&ref=baseball
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