I'm so sorry

[ruben safir]

Yankees Release Jon Niese

12:37pm: Niese will take 24 to 48 hours to see if any other teams are
interested in his services, per Sherman, but he’s “leaning toward”
re-upping with the Yankees. Niese would then begin the year in extended
spring training, where he’d work to increase the mid-80s fastball
velocity he has flashed this spring (Twitter links).

10:42am: The Yankees have released left-hander Jon Niese, per a team
announcement.

Niese worked almost exclusively from the rotation with the Mets and
Pirates from 2008-16, an 1,189-inning span in which he logged 197 starts
in 211 appearances and posted a 4.07 ERA, 6.92 K/9, 2.78 BB/9 and a 50.1
percent ground-ball rate. However, he totaled a career-high nine relief
appearances between New York and Pittsburgh last year, when he endured
the worst season of his career, and then had to settle for a minor
league pact with the Yankees in February. That came toward the end of a
quiet offseason for the soft-tossing Niese, who paired a bloated ERA
(5.50) with a sky-high home run-to-fly ball ratio (22.1 percent) in 121
innings in 2016.

Although the Bombers are lacking experience in the rotation after
Masahiro Tanaka, CC Sabathia and Michael Pineda, they didn’t consider
Niese for a starting role. Instead, they gave him an opportunity to make
their roster as a reliever, which he wasn’t able to accomplish. The
Yankeees are open to keeping Niese in their system, tweets the New York
Post’s Joel Sherman, who adds that there’s a “strong possibility” that
he’ll head to their minor league camp to build up his arm strength.