Bedard out until after the All-Star break, rotation fun
Out with the back issue. The M’s will almost certainly DL him — they can make it retroactive to July 5th, eligible to come back off and start against Cleveland, say the 20th (but I’ll get to that)
Meanwhile, it looks like Felix will come back Friday, making the next set of starts:
Batista vs Oakland
Dickey vs Oakland
Felix vs KC (wahahahahaha)
The Bus vs KC
??? (Silva?) vs KC
Then the All-Star break. You can see where necessity created this mess, but I wonder about the decision to start Dickey over Rowland-Smith.
Dickey, as a starter: 30.2 IP, 6.16 ERA, 41 H, 3 HR, 16 BB, 18 K
Dickey, as a reliever: 23 IP, 1.96 ERA, 17 H, 2 HR, 6 BB, 17 K
While RRS, on a really short leash, has at least performed a lot better than Dickey as a starter — and in the rotation the manager doesn’t get to forget he’s there for weeks.
Oakland, v lefties .244/.313/.345
Oakland, v righties .252/.329/.389
Meanwhile, KC:
v lefties .275/.336/.418
v righties .258/.308/.376
Ah. If you can’t get RRS the start against Oakland because he started on the 6th, it makes sense to think about pushing Dickey out there and trying to pick your spots in relief.
The really interesting thing to watch is how they patch this up post-break, if Bedard can come back. They’ll have Felix on long rest to re-start, and then they’ll need at least one start to get to Bedard, with three more spots to fill and not enough good pitchers to do it. And if they manage to deal Washburn off… you see how this gets hairy quickly.
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Time to make Morrow a starter?
Morrow makes for an interesting conundrum. Without him in the back end of games, our chances of holding leads and winning close games goes down. But as it is, that doesn’t happen very often because most of our current crop of pitchers suck horribly, so in that sense it makes sense to move him to the rotation, especially with Mark Lowe having shown the ability in the past to be the same type of shut-down late inning guy, and with Josh Fields coming within the next year.
On the other hand, we have very little real idea what we’ll get from Morrow as a starter, while we know what we have with him as a set-up man/closer. We know what he could be as a starter, but not what he will be.
I know the idea of Morrow being converted to a starter during the season was dismissed as not practical before, but is it more feasible now during yet another lost season?
In other words, is the concern with trying to convert him at the major league level due to him potentially being really bad at it at first (which honestly shouldn’t be a concern at this point as long as his confidence level can handle it) or due to possible injury concerns from trying to “stretch him out” without an offseason to build arm strength and stamina?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. RRS will probably be put back in the pen until they make trades.
Potentially Bedard, The Bus (awesome nickname by the way), and Rhodes will be traded. The latter two most likely.
With the AAA guys coming up and performing well in the pen, losing Rhodes won’t hurt. RRS will be a better lefty option than The Bus anyway.
Most likely:
Felix
Bedard
Silva
Dickey
RRS
And hopefully come August they send Morrow down to get some starts.
Aside from Silva and Batista, the pitching is looking pretty good when healthy.
Now why couldn’t they have thrown RRS and Morrow into starter roles last year so we didn’t get stuck with The Interview and Silva’s fat ass?
Bavasi sucks…
Is it bad that I have to ask which of our very large pitchers is The Bus?
I’m assuming Batista?
Good thing they’ve still got Baek around to pick up some of the slack!
Rotation depth was an obvious time bomb months ago. But with this organization, if it hasn’t happened yet, it is no problem. (hence cutting Baek).
I disagree with the notion that the royal we have no idea what we’d get from Morrow as a starter. I don’t have any idea, but I bet someone with savvy and data (such as Dave) has a pretty good idea what to expect from a starting Morrow.
The one who throws people under the bus. Has nothing to do with girth.
Oh!
4 – If Washburn is dealt, your rotation seems right. The question then becomes whether Bedard a) can stay healthy, or b) gets dealt by the current FO. If Bedard’s gone one way or the other, do you consider cutting a position player, adding another reliever and then playing like a Green/Jimenez start where each tries to go 3-4 innings to create a 6-8 inning “starter”? Or do we do what we did with RRS and just turn Morrow into a SP on the fly?
That’s still more or less my point though. We can make all the statistical extrapolations we want, but all those can do is give you a projection, an expectation. But unless and until Morrow toes the rubber as a starter on a regular basis, we don’t know what will ACTUALLY happen.
We have The King, The Interview, and The Bus…
I vote that Silva henceforth be annointed “The Buffet”…
Imagined if they also signed Colon…he along with Silva and Vidro would make any all-you-can-eat buffet owner go crazy…
10-
I’d assume since the season is over from a win-loss standpoint, Morrow would be sent down to AA or AAA to start, then be brought up at the very end of the year…
The fifth starter, if The Interview is dealt (unlikely), would probably be a AAA guy.
Is Fierabend (SP?) still out with injuries?
Until Morrow takes the mound in relief, you don’t know how well he’ll do there, either.
Well, they could all shoot an ad together for Old Country Buffet. 🙂
I think that Morrow has improved a ton this year and if he can get “strechted” out and refine everything but his dominant fastball that he already has, he should be a very good #3 or average #2.
But with this FO in charge of the kid, you never know…he might be the closer…oh wait, we have JJ, oh wait, we just used our first round pick on a closer…sigh…
12 – No Joking matter … If only Lou was still here there would be no food left.
By the way if anyone caught Lou’s post Harden trade comments there were textbook ‘Lou-isms’.
So jealous Chicago has two of the best Managerial personalities in Baseball.
They’d have to reinforce the floor of the dugout.
What about Burke? After all, the announcers said he had great movement on his fastball.
Man, it’s a good thing we traded Baek.
Trading Baek was a good idea…it just should have happened in the spring when we was putting up better numbers…the Ms sure like to buy high and sell low…
I thought this team loved starting R,L,R,L,R handed pitchers. So they lose Bedard and replace him with a RHP instead of keeping RRS out there.
Your 2008 Seattle Mariners: Even we can’t follow our flawed logic!
I agree that Morrow should be in the rotation, but does it make sense to run his innings total up this year? Why not keep him in the pen for a month, put Rhodes in as the closer, have Morrow pitch 2-3 innings every 3-5 days and wait a while before sending him down? Remember, he pitched in Venezuela last winter, so he’s thrown a lot of pitches over the last year. Its already a lost cause this year anyway, so let him take it easy for a while and then send him down after the trade deadline to gradually get him ready for the rotation either at the start of next year or the break, whenever he’s ready.
I think if they send Morrow down to start in August he’d be fine…I doubt they’d have him play winter ball, so he’d have the whole off-season to recover like a regular starter…
In the event that Washburn does get dealt and the team faces the hairy situation mentioned above, do the M’s have a good option coming out of AAA? Or do they go looking for a scrap heap acquisition to fill in for the rest of the season?
Good call Joe C. If they do want to groom him as a starter I would imagine they send him down to winter ball again. That would mean 2+ years of game action on his arm with no breaks, not exactly how you want to stretch a young guy into your rotation.
Organizational philosophy.
They obviously hate the dictum “It’s better to trade a vet a year too early than…”
26-
I doubt they’d send him to winter ball…getting starts in the minors and then a September call up to the big squad would be enough…
With the season in the tank, does it ultimately matter who the M’s put in the rotation? If you deal Washburn, you can see it as an opportunity to try out various guys as starters, maybe even add a Tacoma guy or two to the 40 man, Feierabend or even Jakubauskas, and give them a chance with RRS and Dickey to show off what they can do.
Just to be clear, I was in no way advocating sending Morrow to Venezuela again. I was saying send him to the minors in a month, but let him take it easy in the bullpen until then. Then get him ready slowly, maybe even shutting him down before the end of the year so he’s rested and ready to go next year.
And you put Rhodes in a position to be showcased for a trade, kind of like they’ve done for Vidro, Sexson, Cairo, Washburn, Bloomquist… whatever that’s worth.
‘Cause, you know, it’s not like he’s been doing that for a year and a half or anything 😉
I’m assuming you mean Fields, however, and that’s a good point. Like Morrow as a starter, we can only make presumptions on how good he’ll be. Big part of why I referenced Lowe as well, because we have seen what he can do in that late-inning role, and it’s impressive.
No, I meant Morrow.
We can only make “presumptions” on how good he’ll be going forward as a reliever.
Actually, I think the implication was that it is pretty silly to not do something because “you don’t know what could happen”.
How else are you going to find out?
That too
I think Fields is going to be a stud…the pen is set even if they trade Rhodes and The Bus…Green, Corcoran, Jimenez, Putz, and Lowe are fine plus there are plenty of arms in the minors…Big Eric O might get another chance too.
It’s the rotation that has been shitty…but upgrading The Bus with RRS and Batista with Dickey is alright.
They need to trade The Bus and Batista…if no takers, release them and let the other guys have a shot…
*sigh*
I didn’t mean that it would be a bad idea. In fact, with what we have in the organization, I’d rather have Morrow in the rotation.
I’m simply trying to give a different viewpoint on the matter. That’s all. Sorry if my opinion was unwelcome…
No one was trying to imply that your opinion was unwelcome.
You were just stating something that was already in evidence, which is that projections aren’t 100% exact, and people pointed that out.
That’s all.
sigh. caller # 1:
“they’ve got a losing culture right now, and they have to do things to change that”
Dealing Washburn off? Did MLB liberalize its rules about making trades to parallel universes?