Who Is Shawn Chacon?

He Used To Close For The Rockies
He now has a 4-2 record with a 3.08 ERA with the Yankees.
Here's a good article about Shawn Chacon.
Probably in the best move since the trade for David Justice in 2000, the Yankees acquired a solid rotation guy. The best part was that nobody thought the trade would be this good or important:

"Todd Greene told me, 'Man, it's going to be the best experience you ever have in baseball,' " Chacon said. " 'It's all about winning there. It's literally like a business and the business is winning.' "

Chacon learned that directly from shortstop Derek Jeter. A few days before Chacon beat the Blue Jays, he remembers chatting with Jeter. The Yankees have been on the heels of the Red Sox, their rival, and Chacon said Jeter mentioned how tough it can be when you're 3 1/2 games behind in New York.

"I mentioned that we're tied for first in the wild card," Chacon said. "He's like, 'We don't play for the wild card around here.' I kind of laughed, but he was serious. He's right. It's the mind-set to have."

When told Chacon, who will be 28 in December, made the equivalent of a rookie mistake, Jeter, who came up through the Yankees organization, chuckled and said, "Sometimes people on the outside looking in don't really know how it is here. You get here and realize it's a whole other situation. It was sort of a matter-of-fact kind of thing I told him."

That perspective was a revelation to Chacon, who was drafted by the Rockies from Greeley Central High School in 1996 and had been in their organization his entire career.

"In Colorado, we knew how to play hard," Chacon said. "We knew how to keep ourselves in the game, keep the games close. We just didn't figure out how to win on a regular basis. That was the toughest thing, not knowing every day when you go to the field.

"As a whole group, I think that's how the team felt. 'Well, what's going to happen today?' As opposed to coming over here, it's like, 'There's no doubt we're going to win today.' "

Talk about a 'Welcome to the Yankee Universe' conversation to have with Captain Crunch himself. I don't know how he resisted asking for an autograph or something. :)
"Hey Jetes, that's great. Can I get an autograph by the way?"
There's also this interesting insight from Chacon:

What Chacon said he started to learn in 2003 before he was injured and what was reinforced through the travail of last year was a pitching truism.

"If I can throw my curveball and changeup in fastball counts, it's going to help me so much, especially when I have runners in scoring position because major-league hitters are aggressive, especially when there's runners on base," Chacon said.

And of course, the odds are more favorable now for Chacon when he's in those situations but not pitching in mile-high altitude

"It's just easier to have confidence in your stuff," he said. "You know what it's going to do. The biggest success for me since I've been here is being able to throw my curveball over the plate (on the first pitch) for strike one. When you see the depth of the breaking ball, the swings hitters put on them, it's completely different. You could get those results in Colorado, but it has to be perfect."

If Chacon still were in Colorado, he would be finishing the season with an organization already taking a hard look at 2006. The Yankees' stakes are exponentially higher - slugging it out with the Red Sox for the division title and figuring in the wild-card mix - and Chacon can't help but feel he has been set free by the Rockies, including owners Charlie and Dick Monfort.

"That's no disrespect to Colorado or anything," Chacon said. "Growing up in Colorado, playing high school, and then playing pro ball, and then going back and playing in the major leagues there, it's almost like living at Mom's house all the time. But I'm using that in the sense of baseball - I'm always there being watched.

"So now I feel like I've actually graduated to the point where it's not because I'm a homegrown kid that I was in the major leagues. I think that's what some people thought sometimes. But now, I don't have the Monforts backing me. There's not any excuses. I'm on my own out here, and I sink or swim by myself."

So it turns out Shawn Chacon was every bit the best pitcher the Rockies system produced. Outside observers just couldn't tell how good he was because of the thin air and the way they moved him around from starter to closer and back again. I feel sorry for the Rockies who found and developed this guy but felt they had to trade him because they didn't have a future with him. Instead they bought 2 raw arms from the Yankee farm system and they might never make a contribution at the big league level. My vague guess is that the Rockies are going to have to move to flatter ground to compete if they ended up trading Chacon for all of its infrastructural reasons. This has got to hurt.