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Regardless of whether he becomes the first Jewish member of the New York Yankees in more than 30 years this month, pitcher Jason Hirsh is out to prove that despite a rash of injuries, he can still be a valuable part of a Major League Baseball roster.

After a broken leg prevented Hirsh from taking part in the Colorado Rockies' 2007 run to the World Series, he battled rotator cuff soreness in his right shoulder for most of 2008 and struggled at the start of this season with a 6-7 record and 6.66 earned run average at Triple-A Colorado Springs in the minor leagues.

But since the Rockies traded the 6-foot-8, 250-pound right-hander to the Yankees at the end of July, Hirsh has rebounded nicely by going 4-0 with a 1.37 ERA in his first five starts for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. As Major League rosters can expand from 25 to 40 players in September, the Yankees might consider promoting Hirsh to add starting pitching depth.

More than 2 million Jews live in the New York metropolitan area, but a Jewish player hasn't appeared for the Yankees since left-handed pitcher Ken Holtzman in 1978. Two more Jews, outfielder Elliot Maddox (a New Jersey native) and Ron Blomberg (the first designated hitter in baseball history), saw their last action for the Yankees in 1976.

"It would definitely be kind of a cool prospect to be a Jewish ballplayer in a town like that with such a large Jewish population," Hirsh said in a phone interview with The Jewish State.

Hirsh, 27, said he has a grandmother and great uncle who grew up in Philadelphia and then worked in New York City, and both were fans of his trade to New York. Born in Santa Monica, Calif., Hirsh went to a Catholic high school and California Lutheran University because that's where he had the best opportunities to play baseball.

Now, Hirsh said he attends High Holiday services and does his best to celebrate Hanukkah each year.

"I do claim Jewish heritage and I'm very proud of that," he said.

At St. Francis High School in La Cañada, Calif., Hirsh studied biblical Jewish history by default because the curriculum included the Old Testament.

"I learned a lot, going to those places, about religion in general," Hirsh said of his time at Christian schools.

Picked by the Houston Astros in the second round of the 2003 draft, Hirsh breezed through the minor leagues as Texas League Pitcher of the Year at the Double-A level in 2005 and Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Year at Triple-A in 2006.

In his Major League debut for the Astros in 2006, Hirsh went 3-4 with a 6.05 ERA in nine starts. Traded to the Rockies that offseason, he was 5-7 with a 4.81 ERA in 2007 while dealing with the notoriously hitter-friendly environment of Coors Field. But after a sprained ankle already sidelined him for July, Hirsh lost the rest of his season to a broken right fibula in his leg when he was hit by a line drive Aug. 7.

Despite suffering the leg injury in the first inning, Hirsh went on to pitch six innings and allow just two earned runs in that start, a display of toughness that earned him praise from Howard Megdal in "The Baseball Talmud," a recently published book that includes position-by-position rankings for every Jew who has appeared in the Major Leagues.

"A quality start is tough enough to come by, let alone from a pitcher with a fracture," Megdal writes.

The Boston Red Sox swept the Rockies in that season's World Series, which Hirsh was forced to miss. A strained muscle in Hirsh's right rotator cuff landed him on the disabled list again to start 2008, and he went 4-4 with a 5.80 ERA in 18 games (17 starts) for Triple-A Colorado Springs before compiling an 8.31 ERA in four games for the Rockies when he got called up in September.

Before the slew of injuries, Hirsh said he never broke a bone before in his life.

"A lot of adversity has hit me the last year-and-a-half or so," Hirsh said.

When Hirsh was traded to the Yankees July 29, manager Joe Girardi said he was acquired to provide the team with another option in the back end of the starting pitching rotation. Hirsh said he is now 100-percent healthy, putting more conviction into what he throws, and benefiting from a change of scenery that has allowed him to escape pitching in the altitude of Colorado.

"It would be a tremendous victory for me in terms of where I've come this season," Hirsh said of the possibly of returning to the Major Leagues this month.

In "The Baseball Talmud," Hirsh stands 8th among the 13 Jewish right-handed starting pitchers in Megdal's rankings. However, Hirsh's appealing combination of strikeout ability and control means that he "has the talent to blow the other right-handed Jewish starters away," Megdal writes.

The Yankees currently own baseball's best record. Whether Hirsh is called up to be the team's emergency No. 5 starter, in the best-case scenario sticks on the roster to experience the postseason run he missed out on in Colorado, or in the worst-case scenario gets passed on for a late-season promotion, he said the rest of his year will be about auditioning for whichever organization he pitches for in 2010.

"I'm not really focusing on anything more than my next start," Hirsh said.

And no matter what this month holds for Hirsh, he has something to look forward to -- his wife is due to give birth in November.

"If [a Major League promotion or a playoff run] is not in the chips, then I'll go home and prepare to be a dad," he said.