According to Ed Price of Fan House, the Yankees have placed right handed pitcher Chad Gaudin on waivers. There are four scenarios that can happen now and only one involves him pitching with the Yankees in 2010.
What happens now is that the rest of the league can claim Gaudin off of waivers. If a team claims him, the Yankees can let him go to that team or try to work out a trade. If nobody claims him, they can choose to either send him to the minors and pay his full salary, $2.95 million, or they can release him and they would only be responsible for 25 percent of his total salary or about $737,500.
This comes as a little bit of a surprise that the Yankees would waive him at this point, but Gaudin hasn’t been pitching well this spring. Despite the fact that spring stats typically don’t mean much, in this case they probably mean a lot. He’s appeared in four games this spring with an ERA of 8.68 in 9.1 innings.
The reason these numbers are important is because Gaudin has apparently been pitching through an injury of some kind. On March 14 we first reported that Gaudin was feeling fatigued , the previous day he had allowed 3 runs in 3 innings against the Tigers. He hasn’t pitched well since then which has probably lead the Yankees to believe there could be an injury involved. That is speculation on my part, but otherwise it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to waive him at this point.
If the Yankees do decide to trade Gaudin, we’ve heard that the Arizona Diamondbacks may be interested. The Dodgers and Mets could be two other possibilities as trade partners.
This does not mean Sergio Mitre is in the clear though. Alfredo Aceves has pitched well this spring so beyond their top five starters, the Yankees do have depth in the rotation. The Yankees also have starting depth in their minor league system of which a couple may be ready to make emergency starts in the big leagues by June.
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