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=== A Wise Man Sayeth, Dept. ===

Some yoyo, by which I mean DaddyO, drolly noticed that my resort computer gave me more than 40 minutes the other night, for three (edited) posts?  Nada.  That was the Denny's at Rural and Hiway 60 in Phoenix, free Wi-Fi. 

That wasn't the hard part; we got that crib on only the fourth stop.  The hard part is finding a wife who will sit across the table, chin in hand, dozing lightly, while you blog for two hours on baseball.

All y'all's teenage juvenile delinquent friends will tell you, make sure you get a girl who will go to Project X wit you.  Neg-a-tory.  Get you one who, after 20-30 years, will sit in a Denny's with you at 2 a.m. while you blog baseball. 

Eat your hearts out, you saps.

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Now, today's shtick, that's 40 minutes or under.  Say wanna cut haids?!  Uh-HUH!  Race ya anytime Jeffy, Geoffy, you press-box-hot-dog-eatin' Dr. D wannabes.

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=== Oh Joy ===

The Mariners go with my very least favorite 3-5 permutation.  All four kids out.  Mr. WBC out.  Even Charlie Furbush out.  Goodie gumdrops:  four 95-ERA+ pitchers behind Felix... who just topped out at 91.2 mph yesterday. 

:- ) that last part wasn't fair, as we'll confess momentarily.

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Neither is it really fair of me to bust them on Iwakuma.  He's coming off serious arm problems.  To phase him in is reasonable.  No, it's more than reasonable; it's the preferred solution.  No, it's more than the preferred solution; it's CORRECT.  There, that's a label we don't affix to many judgment valuations.  But Iwakuma's arm is made out of paper these days.  It is what it is.

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Neither is it fair for YOU to bust them on Erasmo Ramirez. 

;- )

The twitt-a-sphere harps constantly on the IP limits for rookie pitchers.  140 innings, 140 innings, 140 innings.  It's all Dr. D hears.  The IP-intonations and a continual dripping on a rainy day are alike:  Prov. 33:12.

I don't buy the IP limitations, because I've seen the arguments for it and they are not sound.

But you do, and you therefore support Erasmo's bullpen assignment 100.00 %.  The ONLY way to keep his innings down are to keep him on the 25-man, and to keep him in Seattle.  The Tacoma shtick does not address this false 140-IP construct.

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Blake Beavan is not my kind of pitcher.  I hate pitch-to-contact guys, and I hate the "decelerate the putterhead" yip-like attitude that was seemingly involved in placing three "feel comfortable" guys in the 3-4-5 spots.

But!  Blake Beavan threw a blizzard of quality starts in 2011, using one (1) pitch.  His 77 change curve, and his 82 changeup, were both completely useless.  In fact, the four worst pitches in baseball that I can think of in an office lobby right now:  Noesi's slider, Noesi's curve, Beavan's change, and Beavan's change curve.

Go look it up.  Both of Beavan's offspeed pitches were over -2.00 on the run value meter:  that's over the course of a full 100 major league innings.

What that means, dude, is that his fastball was EXTREMELY effective.  He's a 95 mph guy who cut it down to 91 so that he could pick the gnat off a wildebeest's hide at 100 yards.  And it worked.

He threw 11 quality starts in 15 games (!?), and walked a miniscule 15 batters in 97 innings.  That's Bob Tewksbury-like control.

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Beavan has two (2) obvious plateau leaps available to him, and I'll bet you can guess what would occur in his pitch repertoire, were he to accomplish these leaps.

Bob Tewksbury was a good pitcher, better than Jason Vargas is for example, as were Tewksbury's comps:  Paul Byrd, Bill Swift, the young Ismael Valdes, the young Carl Pavano, anybody with a 1+ BB rate who throws fairly hard and gets away with such few called balls.

Those FanGraphs boys could be looking at a $50-75M six-year net asset with Blake Beavan.  Wonder why they apply the Net Value paradigm in some situations and not in others.  I find Blake Beavan annoying, too, but there's no denying the logic.

I dunno what Zduriencik's endgame is here, if he winds up with ten or twelve 110-ERA+ starters ;- ) but am not against finding out.

BABVA,

Dr D