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.
Braves could use him
Extremely debatable
Better than Dickey
They have a fetish for ex-mets pitchers
Mets reunion again?
Lets see, the Mets have 19 pitches in-camp of very good to excellent quality and they dont know what to do with all of them.. Jon Niese is awful? terrrible? a bit-of-a failure. And you think the Mets are going for him again? What kind-of weed are you smoking?.
Stay away!!!!
How does one “flash” a mid-80’s fastball?
He opens his raincoat and shows them that he’s got nothing there…
You take the fastball and sit it down in front of you and lift up your shirt
NYM – in addition to Wheeler/Lugo/Gsellman, Rafael Montero over a Niese reunion. (Montero’s showing flashes again, despite a small sample.)
Maybe even Gilmartin.
That’s all on the 40 man who I could see. Maybe Gorzellany or Goeddel too, before a Niese reunion. NY got in his head.
He’s a game over .500 for his career and he was bad last year when the Mets really could of used him. Unless he can revive himself in the minors and get called up for a pitching starved team to eat innings, this probably the end for him.