Farrell said that if they brought up Kelly for Koji that they'd have to send him down on Friday to make room for Tazawa. Not sure the logic there.
For now, they're just looking for a bridge to get to Taz returning on Friday.
Is there someone else that can be sent down to make room for Taz? Because if not then I totally understand the logic. Ideally, Joe Kelly gets the call up and he sticks and you stop yo-yoing him around where as a guy like Noe Ramirez can expect to ride the shuttle back and forth between Pawtucket and Fenway.
I think it's pretty simple. Kelly will have to prove he's a better reliever than Hembree or Ross or Layne (or even Buccholz) before he sniffs the major league bullpen. The Sox know that Ramirez isn't better than any of those guys so they don't care if they yank him up and down.
The only other pitchers with options are Ross, Hembree and Barnes. Ross and Barnes are arguably your top set-up guys for Ziegler right now, so not really expendable. And Hembree has been solid as well so they probably aren't keen to option him out either. They just need a warm body to bridge the gap from Koji's injury to Tazawa being ready.
That's what I'm saying. I don't understand why he would need to go down. If there is not someone else that can go down then you don't bring him up. Let him stay in AAA and get some confidence. I think they are looking for a taker for Buchholz before bringing him up anyways.
Then it sounds like you do get the logic.
Tazawa is definitely absolutely coming back Friday and not before.
It's the Farrell Effect. You attach Farrell's name to anything and it gets questioned and second guessed and triple checked.
Not a rebuilding team, but kind of affluent and their home park is big, why not the team in town? Would the Giants consider kicking the tires on Buch and sic their super pitching coach on him? Look what they've done with Lopez, Casilla, Kontos, Romo, Affeldt, Shark (schizophrenic, this year, actually) and many more that could be named. Or, just Shanghai Righetti and jettison Willis (fantasy, but no chance). No, I agree with you, I think a few teams might be interested in Buchholz because of his sometime successes, and the Sox have had some phone calls about him.
I don't think so, no. They're in a tightening pennant race against a team that's likely much better than it has shown. They might trade for Buchholz in the offseason if he shows something with the Braves or the Angels, but they aren't acquiring him for the second half. You'd rather have Suarez make those starts.
They were a bit more desperate for a starter at the time. And while Peavy was 1-9, he was still pitching far better than Buchholz has shown this season (a 4.72 ERA/4.80 FIP compared to Buchholz's 5.91/6.03).
That's a good point, but they needed to make a high-risk gamble on an SP for postseason in 2014, because of Matt Cain's implosion and Hudson's mortality. This year they have Bumgarner, Cueto, Shark/Peavy/Suarez. No one wants to face that top two in a seven game series; if one of the bottom three is pitching well come October, that's quite formidable.
Don't forget Cain as well, who is being activated from the DL to make the start tonight.
I didn't: I really like Matt Cain — fun pitcher to watch, seems like a great guy — but I don't have high hopes that he'll outperform Suarez.
I don't disagree about Suarez, but Cain returning gives them six possible starters and they've got a fairly solid pen. There's no fit for Buchholz even if they wanted to try to "fix" him.
This strikes me as a situation ripe for a multi-team deal. We need a team that meets two criteria: (1) might be willing to take a cheap flyer on Buchholz; (2) has a more or less useful reliever to offer. The list of teams that meet both criteria might be prohibitively short, but there might be several teams that would meet one or the other. Trade Buchholz for some lottery tickets, then flip those lottery tickets as part of a package for a bullpen arm. (I don't share your confidence that Buchholz has enough value to fetch a useful reliever by himself, either directly or via a multi-team deal; but he might fetch enough value to ensure that whatever else we have to give up won't hurt too much.)
For the record, I mean a decent sixth/seventh inning guy. I was hoping to upgrade Layne's roster spot.
Yeah, that's what I meant too. I don't think Clay even fetches that at this point. Or the price of that.
Yes...threads about Farrell are typically a couple of posts too long before they get out of hand but that's in keeping with his management style.
