TMS wrote:VDesai wrote:TMS wrote:where Jeter bats in the order is the least of our problems... we need a reliable setup man in the bullpen & another reliable starter if we want any chance of repeating this season... if Hughes goes back to the pen that solves 1 problem but opens up another.
Joba has really been excellent for the last month and a half or so. He might have hs mojo back for that role. And Wood has obviously done well. I hope Logan is up for the task because he's gonna need to get all the tough outs Marte got last year when Marte was randomly lights out. The weird thing is last year the setup guys who were so great in the regular seasons weren't all that great in the playoffs, while a guy like Marte was huge. Sometimes your just lucky.
Whats gonna kill us is if Pettitte doesn't get healthy. We are 1 deep in the rotation right now and everyone else is an unknown variable.
i think Hughes will be our setup man in the postseason because of his innings cap... if Andy doesn't come back healthy we are in a serious bind w/no one other than CC a reliable starter right now other than maybe the kid Nova... our offense is going to have to carry us this postseason because we are not nearly what we were last year in our pitching.
Andy coming back will be key. I agree 100%..If he can't make it back we're in a little trouble...As for Hughes, they're already skipping his next start in favor of Mosley with this innings cap in mind, so maybe they're just saving him for the post-season..I said it in the beginning of the season -- I wanted them to finally straighten out the whole Hughes/Joba situation once and for all and it looked like they did, but now who knows. He very well may be going back to the pen for the post-season..I'm leaning toward what Bonn talked about though -- the pen's been fine--starting pitching is definitely the greater concern...Look at AJ's last start against the Birds -- Joe went to the well 1 inning too many with this guy and he coughed the game right up after we battled back a second time to tie it up. You can make an argument that if he had removed AJ in the tie game there the pen could've held it down giving our offense a chance to come back eventually and take that game...I feel Hughes serves us MUCH BETTER as a starter. He hasn't been the same in this second half but all in all, he's still probably our 2nd best SP behind CC, not counting Andy...Yanking Hughes outta the starting rotation is a gamble esp. in such a tight pennant race..I guess they feel that even if we lost the division we're still in, having more than a leg up on Boston and Chicago at this point for the wild card..If that's their reasoning, I don't care for it at all to be honest...First off, if they skip the remainder of Phil's regular season starts and he resumes starting in the post-season, he won't be going into those important games in any kind of a groove -- he might be rusty and out of sync...Not to mention I wanna win this division now..We didn't come all this way to settle for a wild card berth..They may have mis-calculated this a little bit -- if they were gonna skip Phil over to conserve innings, they should've done it already and had him fresh and ready to go right now..This business should've been over and done with already earlier this summer. It's really not something we should be thinking about right now..
I know it won't go down like this but as of right now if putting ourselves in the best position to win games is the goal, my post-season rotation without Andy would be CC, Hughes, AJ (I might actually flip flop Hughes and AJ and have Phil start the first road game) and then Nova if needed (I actually might prefer Nova over AJ to be quite honest -- you know that won't happen though).
If Andy's healthy and pitching effective obviously we're in much better shape: CC, Andy, Phil, AJ and Nova if needed. Let's hope this is the case...
No way I'm entrusting a post-season start to Javy Vasquez and his 86 MPH BP fastball against one of these top AL teams. That's just asking for disaster. He just hasn't earned it..Dude won't be back next year anyway so I'm not worried about hurting his feelings. All he'll have to do is look in the mirror at what kind of season he had for us. This kid Nova's very much in the mix for a post-season start though on a need basis. I've seen enough already in his limited time to know he's quality.
9/9/2010 8:49 AM
