Cishek Blows Another Save As Marlins Lose to Giants 2-3

[nny]

Haren hasn't pitched 200 innings since 2011.

Phelps has a season and a half worth of starts in the majors already. It's not like Nicolino is being thrown out there.

There is no reason that they can't eat Haren's salary; they aren't even paying it.

I meant "200 ip" as in "durable, 30+ GS" guy. Was bad wordage on my part.

That's fair on Phelps.

We are paying him. The Dodgers aren't paying his salary, we got 10m along with him. It might seem semantics but that is a big difference. If we traded him with the Dodgers paying his salary, nothing leaves are bank. But under these circumstances, this would be money leaving our bank. It was bad spending in the offseason for us.

And I severely doubt we could get a comparable return that the Dodgers got for him. They would only have made a trade with us if they thought nobody else could beat it.

Nick covered why worried about what might happen with a healthy Alvarez and Jose is putting the carriage above the horse.

[Jay]

I meant "200 ip" as in "durable, 30+ GS" guy. Was bad wordage on my part.

That's fair on Phelps.

We are paying him. The Dodgers aren't paying his salary, we got 10m along with him. It might seem semantics but that is a big difference. If we traded him with the Dodgers paying his salary, nothing leaves are bank. But under these circumstances, this would be money leaving our bank. It was bad spending in the offseason for us.

And I severely doubt we could get a comparable return that the Dodgers got for him. They would only have made a trade with us if they thought nobody else could beat it.

Nick covered why worried about what might happen with a healthy Alvarez and Jose is putting the carriage above the horse.

If Jose and Alvarez aren't healthy and themselves; we're not doing much in the postseason even if we manage to sneak in as the second wildcard so the insurance of Haren as plan B for them remaining on the DL is not smart resource management.

You might be right about the return but not shopping him around is dumb. The offseason was also very different. Haren was claiming he wouldn't play for a team outside of SoCal and I'm not big into geography but I'm pretty sure Miami isn't in SoCal. The risk factor for other teams isn't there for other teams. Also other teams value players as much as if not more than money so the here's his whole salary regardless of if he retires doesn't appeal to a lot of teams. Also there are FOs out there still that will fall for Haren's hot start.

[Nick]

Didn't realize how well Phelps was doing. So you remove Koehler from the rotation when Alvarez returns and DFA Masset. Then who do you bump for Jose?

In a perfect world, and everything works out, Alvarez comes back and is the Alvarez from last year, current pitchers continue to pitch the way they are right now, then the answer is Cosart gets the bump, but at that point I would finally agree with Jay that we should shop Haren for some bullpen help or prospects.

[nny]

Also, fun fact on Phelps:

4.04 ERA in his career as a starter, 4.01 FIP
4.24 ERA in his career as a reliever, 4.36 FIP

It's certainly small sample size (only 80 IP as a reliever, 250 as a starter) but his repertoire definitely speaks more towards starter than reliever (slow fastball, several breaking pitches). He definitely should be in the rotation until further notice. You can't blame the Yankees for taking a risk on Eovaldi, but we very well could have ended up with the better SP (All the projection systems actually like him more than Eovaldi).

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In a perfect world, and everything works out, Alvarez comes back and is the Alvarez from last year, current pitchers continue to pitch the way they are right now, then the answer is Cosart gets the bump, but at that point I would finally agree with Jay that we should shop Haren for some bullpen help or prospects.

Yeah, exactly how I feel. Worry about trading Haren when it's time to worry about trading Haren. Way too much can happen between now and Jose potentially being healthy.

[Jay]

Fun fact on Haren:
He's averaged less than 6 innings per start the past 3 seasons.

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Haren's trade value will decrease every day from here on out. More starting pitchers will become available as the season goes on and his performance will become worse. And his replacements give you the same chance to win as him so there is no downside.

[Nick]

Fun fact on Haren:
He's averaged less than 6 innings per start the past 3 seasons.

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Haren's trade value will decrease every day from here on out. More starting pitchers will become available as the season goes on and his performance will become worse. And his replacements give you the same chance to win as him so there is no downside.

Your statement is just false, I don't know any other way to put it. You're not gonna convince me that if Brad Hand took Haren's spot in the rotation right now that he'd give us the same chance to win.

[Jay]

Koehler is going to get crushed tonight. Facing the best offense with a bunch of lefties and he has allowed left handed batters to OPS over 1.000 this year. I don't think he's going to hold his spot in the rotation at this point.

In almost equal sample sizes ~99 IP (he faced slightly more lefties), Koehler got hit harder by right handers last year.

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Your statement is just false, I don't know any other way to put it. You're not gonna convince me that if Brad Hand took Haren's spot in the rotation right now that he'd give us the same chance to win.

Brad Hand isn't the only option to replace Haren. The only reason to think Hand might be a worse option than Haren is his K/9 had a 2.5 difference on his starter/reliever split for last season. And why do you all love Haren so much? No one has given any reason other than his ability to start 30 games a season. But the ability to start 30 games a season comes with the willingness of the club as they make a blind one armed chimp could start 30 games if a club wanted him to,

[nny]

It's not "loving Haren." It was a bad move to acquire him.

But we have him. And our rotation is still in shambles until Jose and Alvarez come back. That's the biggest issue of currently replacing him with a prospect. He's not just "30 GS", an 88 ERA+ (what he's done since 2012) is not bad at all from a #5.

The rotation isn't bad because we have Haren in it. The rotation is bad because we have multiple #5's atm, and Koehler is the one that really needs to be removed when Alvarez comes back.

It's not just replacing Haren with a prospect. Either you're not paying to move Haren and you get nothing in return (so you just deplete SP depth for no reason), or you pay for Haren to get a fringe bench or bullpen guy (so you pay 7.5m or whatever it would be at this point in the season for a fringe guy and to start an unknown who probably isn't going to do any better than Haren but has a better chance of doing worse). That 7.5m is better used on Haren. That's what you're missing.

Yes, he very much should be the next guy out once Koehler is out of the rotation. But that's a if everyone comes back healthy and if everyone stays healthy. That's two huge ifs.

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And Hand has sucked as a starter (4.87 FIP vs 3.53 FIP as a reliever in his career) and really don't think he should see a rotation spot again. And neither Nicolino (2.1 K/BB) or Urena (1.8 K/BB) are lighting the world on fire in AAA. Yeah, I think those two likely would put up the same 85-90 ERA+ as Haren. But that's spending 7.5m to do that.

[Nick]

In almost equal sample sizes ~99 IP (he faced slightly more lefties), Koehler got hit harder by right handers last year.

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Brad Hand isn't the only option to replace Haren. The only reason to think Hand might be a worse option than Haren is his K/9 had a 2.5 difference on his starter/reliever split for last season. And why do you all love Haren so much? No one has given any reason other than his ability to start 30 games a season. But the ability to start 30 games a season comes with the willingness of the club as they make a blind one armed chimp could start 30 games if a club wanted him to,

Take Haren out of the rotation right now, who replaces him? Nicolino? Urena? Those are even more absurd options than Hand. You wanna talk about trading Haren when we have a completely healthy Fernandez and Alvarez, along with the current rotation, fine. Let's wait til we cross that bridge, that's all we're saying.

[thatnewguy]

It would be foolish to replace Haren at this point because of the fact that we don't have the two replacements back in the rotation yet. The fact of the matter is that come June, we can easily move Koehler into the bullpen (especially over Phelps because the peripherals look so much better on him than on Tommy) and we can try and dump Haren. Right now, the rotation is in shambles but people will pay (even if its just in depth) for the perceived quality of the "30 GS, 200 IP, gritty vet" pitcher. And at that point, we won't even need to worry about whether or not Brad Hand has to see significant innings. The question becomes whether or not Mat Latos is actually a good pitcher because I'm not convinced, even after two good starts in a row now. If he crashes and burns, Koehler continues to suck, and Haren falls back to Earth (of which I'm sure at least two will happen), simply adding Jose and Henderson will not cut it.

[HUGG]

The question becomes whether or not Mat Latos is actually a good pitcher because I'm not convinced, even after two good starts in a row now.

The 153 starts from 2009-2014 with a 113 ERA+ not enough? Way more reason to think the slow start was the outlier than the last 2 starts.

[nny]

Not only that, it's not like it's just his past two starts were good.

2.94 ERA, 3.28 FIP since his first start.

There certainly were some starts with a lot of hard hit balls, but he's been getting results for awhile now.

Meanwhile, Disco still has a great ERA but his peripherals keep getting worse and worse (4.07 FIP, 4.55 xFIP on the year).

[Mainge]

According to the broadcast gun (so not reliable but.) he was at 94-95 vs 89-90 in his first start. Velocity seems to be trending up.

He still seems wild-ish.

[Bobbob1313]

Trending up slightly, but not terribly significantly. http://www.brooksbaseball.net/velo.p...ate=01/01/2016

[Erick]

The point is the FO should have never designated $6.6 million to a reliever to begin with. Now do they sell low? I highly doubt it and they'll probably sell just as low if not lower in the offseason.

If that's the point, every front office is stupid.