I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to baseball in the last couple of years, but starters with Meche’s level of performance aren’t getting $2m.

And to his years back — what the are you talking about? If you’re sympathetic to Meche because he was weak and run down in the second half of 2004, doesn’t that bolster my argument that they shouldn’t have run him out there in the rotation all year long without a break? Doesn’t agreeing with me that it took him a very long time to recover mean that even now, ensuring that he has a light workload make sense?

I guess I don’t understand why anyone would argue in favor of putting a player in a role where they’re not suited: would we want Ibanez playing shortstop if it meant he would be much less effective defensively and would break down?

That Meche is paid a lot and is deep into his service time doesn’t matter so much to me. If the team can find a way to make him an effective contributor, they should do so.

And one of the reasons I want to see Meche in a role like that is that it’s a good chance to get him a lot of work within the limits of his healthy and stamina. The hope would be that at some point in the future, he’d be able to consistently throw more pitches more effectively and you could start him.

Also… this is a whole can of trouble, but do teams have a moral obligation to protect the health of their players in the same way that any other employer does? The injury risk of players, especially pitchers, is unpredictable and depends as much on mechanics, the player’s body, and chance as it does straight pitch counts. And yet the Mariners really ran Meche through the gauntlet after he came back from his second surgery after he made the team. Would a slower timetable have helped? Does a team owe it to their players to be cautious in their rehabs?

We’re never going to know if Meche would have been better off if he’d been on a shorter leash when he came back. I suspect no — almost no one’s ever come back from labrum surgery like Meche has, and unlike Tommy John surgery, we just don’t know what the timetables for slow and fast recoveries are. That’s bad for Meche, of course.

As to who would start, though — if Meche stinks as a starter but would make a good swingman, and your choice to replace him in the rotation is someone who might also stink in the rotation, well… you’re not giving up much.

I’m not personally ready to give up on Meche as a starter, mind you; but sooner or later the time could come. And only when we’re ready to contend does the question “who is there that’s better?” become relevant (in my view).

Thanks for the laugh. Remind me how Meche is putting up better numbers than Madritsch. Let me just put this in perspective, in madritsch’s last start, he gets hit for 4 in the 6th. Somehow, inexplicably, melvin leaves him in for the 7th inning. What does he do?

1-2-3 inning with 2 strikeouts. And his pitch count was over 100. The chances meche will give you that extra inning, that he’ll still have something in the tank late in the game and still have the confidence to strike out two guys after getting roughed up a bit, is somewhere around 0.

It would be nice to go out and buy some veteran pitching but lets face it we need some offense. I would like to see them move Ibanez to 1st Winn to right and either go get a CF or move Ichiro to Center and get somebody who can hit & has an arm in right. Maybe Reed can be trade bait or a 4th outfielder. Then we’ve got to go get a 3rd baseman who can hit 25-30 HR @year. I like Dent & think he deserves a shot at DH but the guy needs to spend more time in the weight room and less time in the buffee line. He’s 20-30 lbs over weight his feet move at first base like they are glued to the ground. You take that excess flab off that big frame and he would move better & his knee problems would go away. I think if they got two all-star caliber players you could roll the dice with the pitching see what develops in the first half of the year and go from there. It’s not a world seris plan but I think it’s something the Mariners can afford and might work.