Not the best group to compare the experiment to considering three are hurt, the others was actually a starter from the outset (Greinke & Bills), but especially since you left out the posterboy for it, Johan Santana.

I actually have no problem with the reliever-to-starter maturation process.

I thought you didn’t help your case by mentioning that group *without* including Johan. Liriano obviously got hurt, too, but he could be thrown into the group.

It is way, way too soon to evaluate who is going to end up having the better career.

The Tim Lincecum fanboys are right there with Red Sox fans and A’s fans as the most annoying people on the internet.

Just contemplate if the Mariners braintrust had made the right draft choice, they would never had made the Bedard trade. This team might be 20 games better at this point, and have a young nucleus instead of this sorryass group. I’ve lost all interest and did so some time ago. They are the laughing stock of MLB. The FO couldn’t manage a little league team.

Tim Linsecum

It was so set up. Everybody could see it. It was a natural for Tim to pitch here. It was karma.

Tim Linsecum

The Mariners should resign from the American League and disband. I’d bet our esteemed management team wouldn’t be working in baseball anytime soon. Neither would most of the players.

The day they passed on Tim Linsecum is the day this franchise regressed into the black hole.

I hear he may not be ready to sign yet. Plus, his agent is Scott Boras, so that could be trouble.

Churchill was thinking it might be nice if he failed to sign, and the Ms got the compensatory draft pick for next years deeper draft

Pitching at AAA is different from pitching in the Majors, so give him a couple of ML starts just to get his feet wet and see what he needs to work on (if anything). The caveat is that before doing this, the management should pull him aside and tell him up front, “Kid, we don’t care how this goes. This is spring training for you. We aren’t sending you down or giving up on you if you give up 11 runs and don’t make it out of the third inning. Just do your best, and we’ll come back and talk about how to make you better.”

Fundamentally, all I am saying is that I don’t believe there is really that significant a risk in having him start a game or two in the Big Leagues once he’s done his work in AAA. I also happen to believe that getting Big League starting experience will likely be very good for him; I believe that in this case the benefits far outweigh the risks.