2013 Jays Starting Rotation Discussion Thread

[Ado05]

Dickey/Morrow/Buehrle/Johnson/Romero will be the rotation to start.

Thoughts?

Just goes to show how good Morrow really is.

[SweetStroke]

I think most posters are on the same wavelength here....

Dickey
Morrow/Johnson
Buehrle/Romero
Johnson/Morrow
Romero/Buehrle

I would offer a few more opinions as to why I would do it like this....

Dickey
Morrow
Buehrle
Johnson
Romero

I would put Morrow after Dickey because of the knuckleball/flamethrower thing.
I heard on The Fan that the Mets played .700 ball the day after Dickey threw and they were playing the same team.
Putting Morrow there could artificially increase his numbers and keeps their opposition with the 'right handed pitcher' lineup. If you follow Dickey with any of the lefties, you lose that knuckleball/flamethrower thing because the lineups would change more.

The big key to putting Morrow after Dickey is to help retain Johnson after his contract expires.
If you put Johnson after Dickey, and the knuckleball/flamethrower thing is true, it artificially inflates the numbers of a soon to be free agent pitcher that you want to retain, therefore increasing his market value.
Having him throw after a soft tossing lefty is still good for Johnson and the team for those same reasons.

Putting Romero in the five slot is a confidence rebuilding project. They can approach Ricky at the beginning of the year and tell him as the fifth starter, the Jays only expect 6-10 wins from him. Anything else is a bonus. We all know that he's a competitor, and this might be the best motivator for him. Low external pressure from the club for him to succeed, but huge internal pressure from himself to prove he's better than a fifth starter.

The other aspect of this rotation is the obvious righty/lefty splits which keep teams from having the same lineup against them for a whole series.

This rotation is also good to avoid bullpen fatigue. Dickey and Buehrle are the only two true 'innings eaters' in
the rotation and keeping them apart minimizes the chances of stretching the bullpen out. The only spot you may run into trouble is the Johnson/Romero part. You still have Happ as the long reliever and can Band-Aid another game if you need to if you have back to back starts where Johnson/Romero don't make it out of the 4th or 5th inning.

The best part of all is the low external/high internal pressure approach for everyone. If you plan on 12-15 wins from Dickey/Morrow, 8-12 wins from Johnson/Buehrle, and 6-10 from Romero, that's 64 wins at most and 46 at least from your starting rotation. (I don't think they got 46 out of their starting rotation last year. Maybe a stats type poster could verify that for us.) Anything more than that is a bonus. That's the low external pressure part. The same as the Romero scenario above, the internal pressure of a former Cy Young winner, an up and coming stud, a stud in a contract year, and a steady veteran would hopefully propel them to 2-3 wins higher than the above team expectations. That's another 15 wins from the starting rotation, 79 total. That easily gets them in the playoff picture even if the bullpen is an absolute mess next year.
This is of course best case scenario, but you get the idea. Injuries obviously change everything.

Thanks for reading my novel.

I WIN THE INTERNETS!!!

[dballislife]

dickey morrow buehrle jj romero...perfectly balanced with talent, R L combination, power and finesse, from top to bottom...good job

[LittleOzzy]

Former ace Ricky Romero faces challenges as fifth starter

Amid all of the hype of the Toronto Blue Jays’ offseason moves, Ricky Romero could quietly prove to be an important component in the newly formed starting rotation. Deep talent on the mound and lots of power at the plate means the Jays should enjoy more than their fair share of wins this season. The Jays’ former ace, Romero, will round out an impressive starting five if he can move past last year’s forgettable season, avoid further injury and adapt to his new role out of the top slot.

After bursting onto the big league scene in 2009 with an impressive 13-9 record, Ricky Romero showed a lot of promise in a struggling Blue Jays organization. In 2010, Romero went 14-9 and pitched over 200 innings. He pitched second in the rotation behind the sure hand of Shaun Marcum. It was 2011, however, that proved to be Romero’s breakout season. Romero went 15-11 in the ever-difficult AL East and delivered a stunning 2.92 ERA, 1.138 WHIP. Romero posted a 6.2 WAR and was selected along with Jose Bautista, who was coming off of his own well-documented breakout year, to represent the Jays at the All-Star game in Arizona.

But in 2012, the wheels fell off.

The 2012 Blue Jays starting rotation had a dismal year. Brandon Morrow had a decent first half of the season and was promptly sidelined with a strained oblique, before returning briefly at the end of the season. Kyle Drabek felt a pop in his elbow and was sidelined for Tommy John surgery. Rookie starter Drew Hutchison also underwent Tommy John surgery, and both he and Drabek remain questionable for 2013. Henderson Alvarez was out for a while after getting hit by a ball. Dustin McGowan didn’t pitch at all in 2012 due to shoulder clean-up and lingering plantar fasciitis. Brett Cecil struggled to find his rhythm after losing over 30 pounds in the offseason. Cecil bounced between Toronto and triple-A Las Vegas while trying to get his arm back.

That’s just a list of the starters; the Jays had injury problems elsewhere, too – Sergio Santos, Luis Perez, Bautista, Brett Lawrie, J.P. Arencibia, Colby Rasmus and Adam Lind all spent time on the DL during a 2012 season that got progressively more discouraging every week.

By the end of the 2012 season, the Jays’ starting rotation was a hashed together mix of J.A. Happ, Aaron Laffey, Carlos Villanueva, and Chad Jenkins.

The one man who managed to stay healthy through it all was Ricky Romero, but even a perpetual strikeout man like Romero couldn’t keep it together. Romero went 9-14 for the first losing season in his career, and recorded a high ERA of 5.77. He threw only 124 strikeouts for the season, the lowest of his career, and 105 walks, the highest of his career. Romero posted a WAR of -1.7 in 2012.While he managed to stay off the DL, there seemed to be points where we all wished he would take a week off and regroup. The added pressure of being a healthy starter and the ace of the ball club surely didn’t help Romero throughout the

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