Albaladejo Doing Work in AAA

Over the past three years, Jonathan Albaladejo has seen a lot of split time between the Yankees' minor league teams and the big league team. Between 2008 and 2009, Albaladejo threw 47.0 innings in the minors and 48.0 innings with the Yankees. Albaladejo did not especially distinguish himself in that timespan, with a FIP north of 4.50 in the majors and a better but unspectacular FIP under 4 in the minors. 2010 has been a different story, however. Except for a stretch in July after the Andy Pettitte injury, Albaladejo has spent his time this season with the Yanks' AAA squad in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. While pitching there, Albaladejo has been making the case to get back onto the Yankees' 25-man roster.

Albaladejo has been mowing down hitters all year. In 51.0 innings, Albaladejo has a sparkling K/9 of 11.47, while maintaining respectable BB/9 of 2.65. This all translates into a gorgeous 2.18 FIP. Minor League Splits' Major League Equivalent projects that Albaladejo would have racked up a 3.27 FIP in the majors. These numbers have not been enough to compel the Yankees to keep Albaladejo on the major league roster for an extended period of time, however.

You can appreciate why the Yankees are skeptical. Albaladejo has never pitched this well in his career, the sample size this year is not that large, and his stuff is not indicative of a great reliever. Albaladejo's fastball is not terribly intimidating; in his brief stint with the big league club earlier this year, Pitch F/X measured Albaladejo's average fastball speed at 91.6 MPH. Albaladejo also throws a curveball and a slider, but he comes with the fastball nearly 70% of the time; it's his number one option.

I'm not necessarily advocating that the Yankees put Albaladejo in the big league bullpen, but it's tough to ignore a 5.26 K/BB ratio. It's easy to understand why Albaladejo is still in AAA; he doesn't wow scouts and he has never put up numbers this strong. Having said that, I think he's still a better option than some of the lesser parts of the Yanks' relief corps, like Chad Gaudin. In any case, it's almost an injustice that Albaladejo is still not in the majors after the way he's been carving up AAA hitters.