Add new comment

This is very good news. I liked Camp...and he'll do fine elsewhere I'm sure...but I was actually rooting pertty hard to use the bullpen as a soft-landing-locale for prospects. Think about this:
Rightn now we have Hernandez/Vargas/?/?/? with five guys fighting for those three ?. All five look OK to good and solid. We don't know which ones will be the best long term in and what roles. Maybe the Ewok is better in the pen where he can throw harder? Maybe Beavan humps it up to 96 when he's in the pen? We just don't know...and ST is too short this year.
Which means...the only logical course of action is to simply carry 8 starters and hope some of them do well in the pen in the short term...use a rotation that varies as much as is necessary...and trade the ones we don't need when the real bullpen arms arrive.
My opening rotation would be Hernandez/Vargas/Millwood/Ramirez/Iwakuma or Noesi...and my opening bullpen would be League/Wilhelmson/Sherrill/Kelley/Furbush/Beavan/Noesi or Iwakuma. That scares me a lot less (in terms of volatility) than soe of the pre-season bullpen projections.