By all accounts, Gavin Floyd will be heading north with the big club in about a week, servicing as a full-time starting pitcher.
The opening was created by an arm injury to Vicente Padilla, who was just recently able to resume preparation for the regular season. Padilla is expected to be able to re-join the rotation in mid- to late-April. At that point, there is a distinct possibility that the Phillies will have six able bodied starters for only five spots.
This possibility, should it come to fruition, will present an interesting dilemma for the Phillies leadership. The question in mid- to late-April could be, "We have six starters, who gets bumped and to where do we bump them?"
Jon Lieber and Randy Wolf have established their careers to the point that neither can pitch themselves out of the rotation after just a few starts, which would leave Corey Lidle, Gavin Floyd, and Brett Myers as candidates to be bumped from the rotation.
Now, lets make this exercise a little more interesting. Lets say that Floyd pitches extremely well in the three or four starts he will get before Padilla's return. How would that influence the decision? Would Myers be sent to the pen or triple-A? Would Lidle be sent to the bullpen? Those are possibilities, unless of course, those two pitchers are pitching with success as well, in which case the decision gets even more interesting.
If one is fully recognizant of the realities of major-league pitching (with just a small dash of Phillies phan pessimism thrown in for good measure), it is actually more likely that this will not be a decision the Phillies will have to make. In reality, another member of the rotation could be injured as Padilla returns, or on the other hand, Lidle, Floyd, or Myers could end up pitching themselves out of the rotation.
But no matter how you look at it, deciding on which five starters to keep in the rotation would be a nice problem to have in April.
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Meanwhile...
...While the Phillies rotation is essentially set to start the season, the batting order is not. Pat Burrell, right-handed batter, is having a great spring and could slide into the cleanup spot, which would then separate Bobby Abreu and Jim Thome, both left-handed batters. This would balance the lineup better and make it less susceptible to LOOGY's (left-handed one out guys, in other words, a left-handed relief pitcher brought in for just one or sometimes two left-handed batters).
...Several weeks ago, Baseball Musings debuted a few graphs that described the fielding range of several big-league-ers, essentially sharing with us something he was tinkering with in his garage, so to speak. Over the weekend, Mr. Pinto took it a notch -- make that a huge leap -- forward by presenting graphs for every player in 2004. Interested in comparing the defense of Placido Polanco, Chase Utley, and David Bell for the best combination? Then go here, here, and here.
...Phormer Phillies blogger Bill Liming makes a guest appearance on The Hardball Times today in order to answer "five questions" about the Phillies in 2005, the website's format for previewing all major-league teams. He's not optimistic.
...Several weeks ago, I profiled Dan Meyer, one of the young guns recently acquired to transform the Oakland A's rotation. Hopefully, there is not some sort of Balls, Sticks, & Stuff "curse" at work, because he hasn't had a very good spring training and will likely begin the season in triple-A with hopes of returning to the A's midseason.
...According to Jim Salisbury, the Phillies brass is telling other organizations' brass that the team needs to win now. The article is mainly an interview with Dallas Green, which, will do this team no good in the Philly media. I'm thinking of creating my own "Now Is the Time" t-shirt. It will say, "Now is the Time..." on the front and on the back, "...for Past Phillies to Shut-Up". Statements such as these from Green and others from Larry F. Bowa do the team no good whatsoever.
