augustine wrote:If you are being serious (I'm still not sure you honestly think Mills could be in our top 5), you should look at Tampa's starting rotation to see what is required to win in the AL East, and then take a look at Mills. I'm pretty sure you will realize that Mills does not belong here. Maybe not though.
As long as Jamie Moyer is in the league, you can justify Mills being around. And while Moyer is much more the exception than the rule, even in his hey day he would get absolutely rocked sometimes.
It used to be that many teams had "crafty lefties" starting for them. That position isn't particularly common anymore (even the guys who are considered "crafty" can hit 91 on the gun). You will still occasionally see these guy in bullpens but rarely starting. I think that may be to Mills' advantage. The less guys see players like you (where all pitches thrown feel offspeed), the less quickly they'll be able to adapt to you.
It's kind of like how about 15 years ago, a bunch of knuckleballers were in the league and it seemed like none of them were particularly successful. Over a few years, you saw a lot of them get weeded out and a few years later, you pretty much had only Wakefield and he was experiencing great success. Now you have 2 knuckleballers (I can only think of wakefield and dickey) and they're doing ok. I don't think knuckleballers can improve all that much. I have a feeling that it's the hitters' ability to adjust that determines their effectiveness. Now that each league only gets to see 1 knuckleballer per year, they're probably not as well equipped to hit the knuckler as when 3-4 guys used to command similar stuff.
I'm not convinced Mills is a major league pitcher (in fact, I'd but the odds at 5:1 against him playing 5+ years), but I'm not ready to write him off because he has sub-standard velocity. His curveball is pretty decent and like any Jay, he'll probably have a plus change-up. I think I want to see more before making any kind of definitive predictions regarding his future.
