By: the5allens

the5allens — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:38:35 +0000

nice article Gage, but I have to disagree with your premise. This rotation has had the potential for disaster all along. There was never any legitimate reason for hope from this crew. you write that we had 7 candidates for the rotation – really ? just because there are 7 names written on a list, doesn’t make them candidates for a legit MLB rotation. What serious franchise would have included this cast of characters in their MLB rotation ?

you say that nobody could have expected the pitching to be this bad. I disagree, and I have expected (feared) this all along. The better point to make is, nobody should have expected the pitching to be good. We, as fans, all have to get past the whole “trying really hard to convince ourselves that there is some reason for hope, based on some small strained sampling of decent outings”.

in terms of our “youth movement”, the pitchers are way waay waaay behind the hitters. Montgomery appears to be close (fingers crossed), but he is the only one. Odo is still working his way through the mid-minors, and Lamb has yet to resume pitching, and once he does he is still in the low minors. It seems the organization is uncertain what they have in Adccock and Teaford. And even if any of these guys make the jump, we can’t expect them to be solid right away – it will take a year or two at least.

In short, this team had / has room to add a pair of frontline starters to long term contracts and still not block their “youth movement”. In my humble opinion, Duffy is the only starter on the roster worth saving a spot for. If we could find 4 starters to add to this team right now, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Competitive teams simply don’t carry questionable pitchers, and we have 4. The Braves demoted their prized prospect, Julio Teheran, because he simply wasn’t better right now than their other options. The Nationals demoted John Lannan, their opening day starter of the past 2 years, because he was the 6th best pitcher they had. Either one of these guys would be an improvement over what we have in our rotation right now. we have 4 guys in our rotation who would be lucky to be a #5 starter on a competitive team.

if we look at the big historical picture, what happened to this once proud franchise? economics have hurt us, sure. But we have hurt ourselves also, with a period of poor talent evaluation and poor talent development. We had a black hole in our development process, at a point in time where we couldn’t afford to overcome it. We appear to be on our way to recovery, within the organization. But that same problem remains in the fans today. We have to expect better, and we have to stop buying magic beans. Trusting that Mendoza had become a late bloomer based on some minor league appearances and 2 MLB starts in 2011, that Hochever finally figured out how to be a first-round pitcher based on the second half of 2011, that Chen will continue to defy the odds late into his career, that Paolino is ready to be a strong starting pitcher, that Sanchez could be on the right side of his control problems – its all magic beans.

Baseball is a funny game, where one lucky break can make a huge difference. One, just one, good starting pitcher can make a cascading difference on a team. Maybe the bullpen stays fresher, maybe losing streaks don’t reach 5 games, maybe he leads the team to fight a little harder. It is difficult to overestimate the impact that could be had if we had added just one legit starting pitcher, to match with Duffy and form something to build around. Instead, we all have to keep believing in a sack of magic beans.

Comments on: The Lack of SP Additions

By: the5allens