Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
And what's lost a lot of the time is that you don't NEED 5 aces. Oh sure, they're nice - but they're not vital.
A 'typical' rotation can do the job. If one of your potential aces turns into a true 200 inning, 140+ ERA+ kind of 'hand the ball in game 1' guys, you're fine if you have a solid #2 and even a handful of #4 guys behind them.
If you have 3 dudes w/ genuine ace potential - yeah, maybe one of 'em hits. Cardinals thought they had that with Reyes, Flaherty and Weaver - one of 'em turned into that guy, one of 'em is probably going to wash out and the other fell somewhere in the middle. That's pretty standard.
So if you have a handful of depth guys behind them that can develop and eventually give you 7 quality arms going into any given season who can start games and give you a roughly league average performance? That's good enough.
Rotation depth is just overlooked a lot of the time. Having a couple spare guys you can trust to throw you 6 quality innings is probably more important than having a guy develop into a '#2 starter' instead of a back of the rotation guy. It's a looooooong season and if you can go out there day after day after day without effectively giving away an L (especially in July/August when attrition has invariably set in), you're ahead of most squads.
|
That's the reality of it, and why Dayton keeps drafting pitching. If all of these prospects turned into actual star pitchers we'd be loaded. You're hoping a you're going to get a frontline guy out of this group but it's just as important some of these guys at least turn into #3/4 starters and fill out the pitching staff with solid pitchers. Especially starting pitching, it's so expensive.
They also can be trade chips.