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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