BEAST FROM THE EAST It was an all-around very successful night for Yankee prospects. The good vibes began at the highest level, AAA Columbus. The starter for tonight's game was Mike Mussina, making his first rehab appearance; the right-hander went 3-2-0-0-0-5-0 (IP-H-R-ER-BB-SO-HR). The most shocking thing about Moose's start, as far as I was concerned, was that the organization let Navarro catch him, more on that later. After Mussina left the game, the regularly scheduled starter entered. I had thought Chien-Ming Wang had been whisked away for the Olympics already, but apparently not. This means one of two things, either Taiwan just doesn't do anything for a little while longer, or perhaps the Yankees were intrigued by how well Wang was doing during his first 3 starts and decided it was better for the organization that they got a longer look at him at AAA. I hope it's the latter. Tonight's game further enhanced Wang's AAA credentials, as he was very good in relief, 6-3-1-1-1-3-0. I had already written off Wang's career as a starter, but his AAA success, 25.1-21-8-8-4-21-3, is giving me food for thought. I would still love to see him in a Yankee bullpen sometime soon though. The Columbus offense, 8 runs and 18 hits, had another great game, and this time Navarro and Cano were involved. Navarro is still hitting in the last spot in the order and managed to go 1 for 3 with a single and a walk. Robinson Cano is moving up the lineup again and tonight was 3 for 5 with 3 singles and a strikeout while hitting out of the seven-hole. Cano has his average up to .294 and Navarro is at .261. Navarro, seems to be on track as all 3 balls he put in play were up the middle. If Jose Contreras was The Big Enigma™, then Ramon Ramirez, the smallish AA Trenton right-hander, should be considered The Little Enigma™. Tonight was yet another outing where he struggled with his consistency and the end result was a line filled with both positives and negatives, 5-3-2-2-5-9-1. Since his injury return Ramirez's totals are now 70.2-70-38-37-21-87-8. The ERA shown by those numbers is rather ghastly (4.71), so I took it upon myself to calculate his DIPS and it came out to a much more comforting 3.16. Based on this I think it'd be a good idea to get Ramirez to AAA and see what he does with a seemingly superior defensive squad as that might be skewing his numbers. For those of you who may think I'm crazy for clearly still having a liking for Ramirez, I present this to you: 11.08. That is Ramirez's K rate since returning from injury and that is just something I won't give up on. Bronson Sardinha showed a sign of life, barely, by going 1 for 4 with a single and a walk. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. In a small step in the direction of making up for the time lost to inclement weather, the Tampa Yankees had a doubleheader today. The first game showcased just what makes Eric Duncan so exciting. In that contest, the Yankee 3B was 3 for 3 with a double, 2 home runs, and a walk. Since moving to the FSL, Duncan has a ridiculous extra base hit percentage of 59.3. That is coming on the heels of a MWL campaign that saw him send 49.3% of hits for extra bases, which is about as ridiculous. On the year, 52% of Duncan's hits have been of the extra base variety. Considering that the big-time power prospects generally have rates in the 40% area and that Duncan has played in severe pitcher's leagues, he easily has the most power potential of anyone in the Yankee system and is, in my opinion, one of the top power prospects in all of minor league baseball. He's also managed to cut down dramatically on his strikeouts while walking more at Tampa. Those things coupled with his recently getting raves for his defense leave me with only one leg to stand on as far as any criticism I want to make about Eric Duncan at this moment. His BA is low. After the first game it was .252, and then he went 0 for 3 in the second game to bring it down to .245. Melky Cabrera had a decent day by going a combined 2 for 7 with 2 singles. Cabrera now holds the honor of being the third place hitter in the Tampa lineup following his power-surge. Rudy Guillen did not play in the second half of the doubleheader, but managed a good game in the first by going 2 for 4 with 2 singles. Danny Borrel, who is still rehabbing, started the first game. Borrell could only manage 1-2-3-3-1-2-1. Steven White started the second game. White had not started in a while, but showed little to no signs of rust as he rattled off a 6-4-1-1-1-3-0 performance. The right-hander now has a 3.44 ERA in 36.2 Tampa innings. Abel Gomez had his first truly poor outing since July 7th's disaster against Peoria, the wild left-hander put up an unsightly line of 5-6-6-6-2-5-2. I was confused as to why the Yankees did not just let Abel pitch last night's completion of the game he had started and only thrown 3 pitches in, but assumed they were going to just skip his turn in the rotation. Clearly, they did not, and I have to wonder whether his performance was affected by his routine being off. The BC hitting duo of Erold Andrus and Hector Made produced non-descript nights. Andrus led off and went 1 for 5 with a single while Made hit second and was 1 for 4 with a single, a walk, and a strikeout. SI's scheduled game was rained out. Phil Hughes made his third start of the year for the GCL Yankees and was dominant. The 18-year-old right-hander went 2-1-0-0-0-4-0. Going into the draft it was said that Hughes was extremely advanced for a prep pitcher and it has shown, as he has not walked a batter in 5 pro innings while striking out 8 and allowing 4 hits. Following Hughes in the game was Christian Garcia. Garcia is much more raw as a pitcher despite being a year older and his results last night were not as impressive as Hughes'. Christian posted a line of 3-4-3-3-2-4-0 as he had his second bad outing in recent days. Despite this, Garcia still has only allowed 20 hits in 29 pro innings. Offensively, Marcos Vechionacci was 1 for 4 with a single. He was also caught stealing for the third time, but still had a better night than Anderson Amador. The toolsiest of the toolsy OF was 0 for 4 with 2 strikeouts. The most encouraging hitting news of the night was the work done by Jon Poterson, though. Poterson was 2 for 3 with a single, a double, a walk, and a strikeout. *** Questions, comments, suggestions to minoryankeeblog@hotmail.com   ¶ 10:19 PM