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Some interesting **** has gone on/is going on, so I figured I'd throw this up. Lester threw a no hitter last night, as you may have heard.

Masterson looked great tonight. His slider was underrated by some of the reports I've read, that's a damn good pitch. He's going to just kill right handed batters with that filthy sinker, the slider and that delivery. Needs to work on the changeup clearly, as I don't recall him throwing a single changeup.

Papelbon's slider was nasty tonight and if he can bring a slider like that to the mound consistently, look out league.

Colon makes his Red Sox debut tomorrow. Should be interesting.

Yeah, probably the most interesting series of the season so far and we didn't make a thread about it until the first two games were done.

Masterson to AAA. Can't wait to see them unleash him out of the bullpen later in the year; unhittable against righties. Hopefully longterm he's still viewed as a starter, because dude is a horse. But, yeah, he definitely needs to work on a change to effectively keep lefties off balance. But even still, with his sinker, I don't think it's even that necessary. I have visions of 98-pitch complete games with this guy.

I think it all depends on who will develop a better change quicker, Masterson or Bowden. Masterson may get sucked into the bullpen a la Papelbon and may never leave. One of the two is destined for the pen and the other will be the #5 starter (hard-ons commence). Wakefield may play into that as well. If Wakefield sticks around for another season, Masterson is going to be too ready to stay at AAA in 2009 so he'll be shuttled off to the pen. If Wakefield retires this off-season, Masterson would be a perfect #5 with Bowden at AAA filling in as the #6 starter. I am so excited that we this dilemma. Screw you Tampa for having a better young pitching core than us, unless you include Beckett in that grouping. How fun is watching the next decade of baseball in the AL East going to be? mahalo
~Chach~

Colon has looked damn good through 5. They have hit maybe 1 ball hard all night and even calling Gathright's double down the line "hard hit" might be a stretch. He's hit 95 and 96 on many occasions tonight, he's hitting his corners and sitting 92+ with his 4 seamer and 89-90 with the 2 seamer. Just been unlucky with all these bloopers/seeing eye singles and that he's had no run support, but I'm very encouraged with his outing.

Right on cue, he gets some run support as 'Tek ties it up.

Yeah, I liked Colons performance. Obviously he wasn't going to throw a no-no, or have a great game like masterson did. But he had a nice solid performance. Good to watch.

Nice outing from Colon last night. Now the question becomes who goes to the pen when Clay is ready go again? Perhaps a trade for Wily Mo Pena?

sunshinekids99 wrote:Nice outing from Colon last night. Now the question becomes who goes to the pen when Clay is ready go again? Perhaps a trade for Wily Mo Pena?

or package one with Julio Lugo to get rid of him

6 man rotation. Get it done. Beckett stays on the five man rotation and everyone else goes to a 6 day rotation. Daisuke is awesome when he gets more than normal rest and everyone after Beckett is essentially equal all things considered.

Starting tomorrow:

Wakefield
Beckett
Lester
Colon
Buchholz
Matsuzaka
Beckett
Wakefield
Lester
Colon
Buchholz
Beckett

And so on. I see no downside except Cash would have to catch more non-Wakefield games.

Is there any real downside to this? You have to carry one extra pitcher or alternatively go with one fewer reliever; that's about it, right? Not one of the 2-6 guys is substantially inferior. They're all incredibly different pitchers with varying upsides and downsides, but I can't say one is worse than the other 4. All I know is that Buchholz is on an innings cap, Wakefield is 40, Colon hasn't pitched a full season in like 3 years, Lester has never gone more than 154 innings, and look at Matsuzaka:

4 days rest: 17 G, 104 IP, 5.02 ERA
5 days rest: 17 G, 103.1 IP, 3.83 ERA
6+ days rest: 8 G, 51.2 IP, 1.92 ERA

There is something there. He pitched his entire career on a six day rotation in Japan.

Of course, someone will always be injured so this is all pointless.

Bleeding Green wrote:
Of course, someone will always be injured so this is all pointless.

Is it? Theoretically they could still get away with a six-man, even with a 15-day stint throwing a monkey wrench in things. Say a starter misses four starts (15-days + minor league rehab): that