Post#18 » by tsherkin » Thu Oct 1, 2009 10:24 pm
Cecil needs a lot more time in the minors. He was brought in the minors as a reliever and doesn't have the stamina to handle being a starter. You saw it night after night; 3 or 4 innings in, he fell apart.
Consider this: Cecil posted a WHIP of over 1.65 and an ERA of 5.30, gave up 1.6 HR/9, posted 3.7 BB/9.
He had 17 starts, during which he got well above league-average run support and in which he lasted less than 5.2 IP on average. That's not good.
In 10 of those starts, he gave up 3+ runs (in 5 of them, 5+ and in 3 of them, 7+), and in those 10 starts, he threw 48.1 IP and allowed 49 earned runs. See where I'm going with this? Over nearly 3/5s of his starts (about 59%), he had an ERA of 9.00.
Brett Cecil was terrible this year. He has loads of promise (and flashed it from time to time), but he needs to build up his stamina, his control and his approach to pitching in the majors, because he was pretty bad this year. He was especially bad in July and August.
Cecil will be something down the road, but he's not even worth it as our 5th starter; frankly, as much as I hate him as a starter, there's nothing that makes Cecil more compelling than Brian Tallet.
Tallet had a 5.32 ERA as well, and an ERA of 5.41 as a starter. Almost no difference, right?
So if we're going to have a crappy 5th starter, between Cecil and Tallet, I'd rather it be Tallet so that Cecil can work in the minors until he's ready.
Granted, I'm overemphasizing ERA here, but my point is that neither of them are very good starters, neither go deep into games, and both give up a lot of runs, so we might as well let the young kid learn the proper way, down in the minors, until his arm is actually ready for the Show.
