Tuesday, March 25, 2014

A Time for General Managerial-Restraint

Yesterday, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported that the Braves are considering signing the recently available Scott Baker and/or Erik Bedard.  Notably, Rosenthal tweeted this rumor after the Braves had already sunk precious resources into the epitome of mediocrity that is Aaron Harang. 

I’m not going to debate my fellow contributor about the merits of the Harang signing.  I will concede that Harang starting the fourth game of the season is a preferable outcome to Dan Uggla, Phil Niekro, or Kasim Reed pitching the fourth game of the season.  Whether I would have signed Harang instead of seeing what I had with Schlosser, or even, and I know this is a wild idea, Freddy Garcia, is beside the point.
At this point, I just hope that Frank Wren has the self-restraint to avoid throwing dollars at other veteran arms that sported plus-5 ERAs.  For every scrap heap success story like John Burkett, Paul Byrd, or even Freddy Garcia (see Game 4, 2013 NLDS), there is a Buddy Carlyle, Mike Hampton, or, and I shudder as I type this, Kenshin Kawakami.  In short, the Braves have already gone over budget obtaining emergency starting pitching.  To spend more money on pitchers who will, at best, be mediocre, hardly seems like a sound strategy.

Consider the case for Erik Bedard.  Admittedly, Bedard posted strong numbers coming back from injury in 2011.  However, since then, Bedard’s regression to the mean has been readily observable.  In 2012, Bedard had an ERA of 5.01, and a WHIP of 1.47.  Bedard’s numbers in Houston last year were arguably worse.  Although his ERA of 4.59 was somewhat better, Bedard WHIP jumped to 1.483, his K-BB ratio declined to 1.84, and he allowed a career-high 1.1 HR/9 innings.  Even if a jump to the NL East might result in somewhat better numbers, I am not certain that those numbers would be that far superior to those that could be put up by a Gus Schlosser.


Frank Wren has demonstrated that he is a tinkerer.  Given a deficiency in the roster, Wren will make seven moves to fix it.  Unfortnately, neither the resources nor the available talent are there for Wren to make any meaningful improvement to the rotation at this point.  Here’s hoping that these limitations will force the GM to allow all of us to see just what the Braves young pitchers are capable of.  Worst case, I’m sure the mayor will be happy to throw out the first, second, and third pitches—at least until 2017. 

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