March 27, 2007
Dozen Hurlers
The Red Sox are going to start Jon Lester at Greenville, SC. And they picked 12 pitchers for the opening day roster.
The Red Sox open the season Monday in Kansas City with Curt Schilling starting. The rest of the rotation is Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield and Julian Tavarez. The bullpen consists of closer Jonathan Papelbon, Brad Donnelly, Joel Pineiro, J.C. Romero, Hideki Okajima, Snyder and Lopez.
That's six pitchers with the first initial J.
Is there a more superfluous and worthless player on anybody's 25-man roster than Javier Lopez? He's the third LOOGY on the team and he can't even get lefties out effectively (.362 OBA against over the last three years). Manny Delcarmen must be pulling his hair out.
Are the Sox crazy sending Delcarmen to Pawtucket? Gotta agree with Phil, there's no use for Lopez on the team when you have a a guy who is going to have a future as an excellent set-up man (Delcarmen) on your Triple-A squad.
And who's Brad Donnelly? Is he related to Brendan?
I don't like this move, but Okajima's not a LOOGY. At least, not right now...so he's more like the team's 2nd LOOGY. And I bet Boston uses Romero against both--mostly lefties, but some right--until he shows he can't handle it.
I'd also point out the extreme left-handedness of the Yanks...and Delcarmen's overall inconsistancy. If he pitches even marginally well in the minors, though, you can bet he'll be back up before long.
Sox have apparently decided to go with all the veterans. The youngsters make a good plan B for whichever vets don't pan out, and in the meantime they get more development time in the minor leagues. I can understand the move from both viewpoints.
My main concern is that the Sox have had trouble integrating young talent for years. I hope that unhappy tradition isn't continuing; they need to start mixing in some youth, especially now that the Yankees are moving in that direction.
I imagine Lopez is going to be sent down as soon as Timlin is back, so it isn't that big of a deal.
I have no problem with not keeping Delcarmen. He'd be the 12th pitcher on the staff and would get sporadic work. Plus his time in the bigs would probably be shortlived as someone has to go down when Timlin comes back. He's better off getting consistant work in Pawtucket.
But I do agree that there's not much of a point in keeping Lopez around. I'm not a big fan of a team going with 12 pitchers. I'd rather the Sox go with 11 pitchers and keep an extra hitter around. They don't have a speedy pinch runner type hanging around in their organization, but that's the type of guy I'd rather see as the team's 25th man.
I'd rather them keep Brian Corey, who threw extremely well all spring yet clearly doesn't have the track record to deserve a permanent spot. He's pretty much the definition of a 12th man out of the bullpen, and could have been a decent one.
As far as J's go, that's not all that impressive. The Twins can play a game with three Jasons (Kubel-DH, Bartlett-SS, Tyner-CF) in the lineup, a Justin (Morneau), a Joe (Mauer), a Jeff (Cirillo-3B), started by Johan Santana, who hands the ball to Jesse Crain, who hands the ball to Juan Rincon, who hands the ball to Joe Nathan to slam the door. 10 J's in one game--the Red Sox could get to 9, but would have to use all 6 of their pitchers in the process.