Tuesday 12 August 2008

Guess who's back?

According to bluejays.com, Litsch is back in the Jays starting rotation, Richmond is in the pen, and Parrish was optioned to AAA.

The move to call up Richmond was a mistake from the start, and this series of moves still doesn't fix that mistake. As I pointed out earlier, there were (and are) several options that could have been used to let Richmond play in the Olympics, and at the same time made the Jays a better team. The Jays could have used any of Brian Wolfe, Davis Romero, or even Jesse Litsch, instead of calling up Richmond.

Now Litsch is back in the rotation. I don't like him that much going forwards, but a 4.46 ERA from a 5th starter is not that bad. He wasn't pitching well, but considering his replacement, as well as the other options available, he really didn't deserve a demotion.

So at least he's back with the Jays now. Course, it might be worth looking into his service time, to see if keeping him down for a few weeks may have changed his arbitration/free agency years, but I doubt that's the reason. Hell, I doubt it was even affected much, but I just thought I'd throw it out there.

As for Richmond - he's not going to be used that much, if at all. He'll probably eat some innings when the team is out of it, but beyond that it's pretty obvious he isn't pitching any meaningful innings. I don't know why the team called him up, because he wasn't very good. It'll be interesting to see who gets used in a game first - Frasor or Richmond.

Parrish gets jerked around once again - he has a 109 ERA+, so he's been average at worst. He didn't deserve to get demoted, but he has to be the fall guy since the Jays can't demote Richmond without pissing off the Canadian Olympic team.

I guess I'm sort of happy Litsch is back, if only because Richmond's out of the rotation. But I don't know what inspired them to decide they wanted to see if Richmond could make it as a major leaguer. And in all honesty, would it have killed them to give him a spot start in Sept if they really wanted to see him pitch?

Twitchy.

1 comment:

The Southpaw said...

I admit that I thought alot of the people who railed against JP for ruining Team Canada were just blowhards, but yeah, the move really does look indefensible if Richmond has lost his rotation spot after three starts. Bad, bad optics for Mr. Unpopularity.

In any event, am looking forward to seeing Brett Lawrie catch tonight against China.

JW