Yankees I Hate #23: Sergio Mitre

Mitre has the distinction of being the lowest-ranked (ie least hated) Yankee who was on the team last year. Why? Well, for starters, he was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for Andro (the steroidlike substance famously abused by Mark McGwire in the epic 1998 home run chase with Sammy Sosa). Mitre appeared in 12 games in '09, making nine starts, and was a not-particularly-passable fifth starter who got left off the postseason roster. He returns for 2010 in relief duty, primarily so he can use up pointless innings. He pitched reasonably well in his only appearance so far this year, giving up a run on two hits in 2 1/3 innings, while the Yankees were losing by 5 runs to the Rays. Everyone in America is basically fine with this.

Reasons to like him:

You don't run across that many Mexican-Americans in the majors, even though the league has a large Hispanic population. So that's nice. He also was the very welcome spot starter whose arrival coincided the decline of Chien-Ming Wang, a Yankee I was just getting started on really not liking at all. You don't want to wish ill on a man's livelihood, but when you're a baseball fan you also kind of do. Anyway I was extremely not looking forward to 200 innings of Wang's weird give-up-a-hit-and-then-get-a-double-play tactics frustrating the hell out of me. So, sure, welcome aboard, Sergio.

Reasons to hate him:

Well, he did take steroids. But so did everyone. And he took them while he was trying to recover from famously difficult surgery--a Tommy John operation on his shoulder. It is slightly hinky that he served his 50 game suspension while still on the disabled list from Tommy John surgery. But that's Bud Selig's fault as much as anyone's, for having such a porous anti-drug policy.

Honestly? That's about all I can think of. This is not a player most Sox fans really think about.

Overall hate rating:

2 out of 10. I mean, who has time? The Red Sox are 4-9, and I have bigger fish to fry.