HOMECOMING: Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who grew up in the Chicago area and played for the Cubs, signs autographs for fans at Wrigley Field yesterday. (UPI)
CHICAGO — If the Yankees decide to add pitching before the trade deadline, there are a couple of arms that could help in the other dugout at Wrigley Field.
Carlos Zambrano is the sexier name, but the Cubs right-hander has a truck load of emotional baggage, not to mention $27.25 million and two years remaining on a contract. And he is only 5-4 with a 4.59 ERA in the NL.
More appealing to the Yankees is 34-year-old Ryan Dempster, who will start against the Bombers today in what amounts to an audition.
Dempster, also a righty, is 5-5 with a 5.90 ERA, but routinely provides innings (at least 200 each of the past three seasons) and will be a free agent following this season, when he is being paid $14 million.
The Yankees expect Phil Hughes (who will make a rehab start tomorrow for the Staten Island Yankees) back at some point, so they would be looking at Dempster (107-107 in his career) as back-of-the-rotation help.
According to several teams, the Yankees ideally would like to add a left-handed starter, but the best of those available is Houston’s Wandy Rodriguez, who has $25.5 million due to him across the next three seasons: $10 million next year; $13 million in 2013 and a $2.5 million buyout if a $13 million club option in 2014 is exercised.
The Yankees prefer players who aren’t signed past this season.
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Former manager Joe Torre was on the field before the game as part of a program to raise awareness for prostate cancer. Torre was diagnosed with the disease in 1999.
Torre, whose right arm was in a sling following rotator cuff surgery, chatted with several Yankees and spent time leaning on the batting cage talking with manager Joe Girardi.
Torre, the executive vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball, will be in Cincinnati for the Yankees-Reds three-game series that opens Monday.
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Lefty hitters were batting a robust .367 (11-for-30) against left-hander Doug Davis, the Cub’s starter yesterday, so Girardi used lefty swinging Brett Gardner in left field. Usually, Girardi plays Andruw Jones, a righty hitter, against lefties.
“I looked at the numbers . . . and I looked at the way Gardy is swinging the bat,” Girardi said.
No doubt playing into the strategy was Jones’ career batting average of .182 (2-for-11) against Davis. That went to 2-for-12 (.167) when Jones was called out on a 2-2 breaking pitch as a pinch hitter leading off the eighth inning.
Gardner went 1-for-3 overall, but against Davis he was hitless in two at-bats and walked.
When the Yankees signed Jones, the plan was for him to play left against lefties while Girardi sat Gardner or Curtis Granderson.
However, Granderson is going too good to remove from the lineup.
“It’s really difficult to get Grandy a day off,” Girardi said before the No. 2 hitter went 0-for-4, fanned three times and was hitless in three at-bats with runners in scoring position.
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Jorge Posada‘s sizzling bat wasn’t in the lineup because the designated hitter isn’t used in interleague games played in NL parks. In Posada’s last 31 at-bats, he had 14 hits (.452) before fanning as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning against Carlos Marmol.
“We’ll take it day by day about what we’re going to do,” Girardi said.
The only way Posada will get in the lineup on this road trip will be for Girardi to rest Mark Teixeira and play Posada at first, but the manager didn’t sound as if he were thinking that way.
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Brian Gordon, who started Thursday against the Rangers and will go again Tuesday in Cincinnati, wasn’t listed in the MLB statistics package yesterday.
Eventually, there is a chance the 32-year-old right-hander will settle into a long-relief role.
“I think so,” Girardi said when asked about Gordon being able to handle that job. “The good thing is that he’s built up and has shown the ability to throw well.”
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Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild admitted it was a bit surreal walking through the “other” door at Wrigley Field.
“They say baseball is a game of routines, right?” he said with a laugh.
From 2002 until last season, Rothschild called Wrigley Field home, serving as the Cubs’ pitching coach for Don Baylor, Dusty Baker, Lou Piniella and, at the end of 2010, Mike Quade. He opted out of his Cubs deal last November to succeed Dave Eiland with the Yankees.
“Whenever you look back at stuff, you remember the good more than the bad,” said Rothschild, who was born in Chicago and was a baseball star for nearby Homewood-Flossmoor High. “The people I met here and the relationship and being at Wrigley Field, it was all great.”
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Yankees club president Randy Levine made a rare visit to the field for batting practice yesterday. He was with Crane Kenney, the Cubs’ president. . . . All of the Yankees on the disabled list except Rafael Soriano are in Tampa. Soriano is slated to join them shortly but for now he is in New York working with a physical therapist as part of treatment for Soriano’s inflamed right elbow. Derek Jeter and Bartolo Colon are in the treatment part of their rehab recovering from a strained right calf and strained left hamstring, respectively. . . . Girardi said he assumed Joba Chamberlain‘s Tommy John surgery Thursday went well because he didn’t hear otherwise.