Of all the pitchers who appeared in a game for the New York Yankees this year, Allan Winans ranks among the most likely to become an obscure trivia answer someday.
Winans pitched three times for the Yankees during the regular season, including one start when the rotation was becoming frighteningly thin. He allowed 11 runs, nine of them earned, during his 9 1/3 innings of work, and was called up from Triple-A and subsequently optioned back down a total of four times.
Despite his bumpy major league track record, the 30-year-old Winans lasted half of the winter on the Yankees’ 40-man roster, keeping his spot as five other pitchers were non-tendered in November. However, Wednesday brought the news that not only is Winans leaving the Yankees, but his stint in Major League Baseball could be over.
According to the official transactions log on his MLB.com roster page, Winans was released by the Yankees on Wednesday.
It was noteworthy that he was put on release waivers instead of being designated for assignment, and later on Wednesday, the New York Post’s Joel Sherman revealed the logical explanation: Winans is reportedly seeking opportunities to play in Japan. The Nippon Professional Baseball league is generally regarded as the highest competition level available outside of MLB.
Lots of Americans head to NPB in hopes of one day returning to MLB, after learning new skills in a different baseball environment and facing better competition than an average Triple-A team. Yet, for every success story, there are at least a handful of others who either stay for a long stint or fall out of baseball altogether.
But it’s also possible that Winans, who has a 7.48 ERA in 49 1/3 major league innings for the Yankees and Atlanta Braves, simply wants to see another side of the world and continue getting paid to play the game he loves.
