Friday, February 08, 2008
On Starting Pitching: An Object Lesson
In recent years the Red Sox have enjoyed an embarrassment of riches that one never could have envisioned prior to 2003 or so: More starting pitchers entering most seasons than slots for those pitchers. But let recent bad news bring to mind one of my baseball mantras: There is no such thing as too much starting pitching. There is no such thing as too much starting pitching. Guys get injured, become ineffective, get injured, and sometimes get injured. Better to enter a season with seven legitimate starters and worry about how to find them innings than to worry about finding enough starters to fill those innings. The innings are going to be there. The starters are the X factor.
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3 comments:
Remember when people used to put up blog entries here other than DCat. Those were fun times.
These are the days where it stinks to be a small or mid-market team with high-quality/star starting pitcher that they have either brought up through their system or developed from a very early stage (ex. Twins with Santana and Indians with Sabathia). I really would like to see a bit more profits sharing between the big markets and the smaller markets.
- Don
Don --
While I agree somewhat, there are a few problems. When the big market teams tried to mandate that any luxury tax money must be put into player salaries the small market teams balked. they wanted to take that money but not be forced to address the very issue that got them the money in the first place.
But beyond that, a lot of "small" markets are not all that small. How does Oakland get to claim small market status? The Bay area is a huge area, and oakland is considered in the San Francisco-San Jose tv market. It's the 6th largest market in the US. Houston tried to claim that it's small market, for goodness sake, and Houston is one of the biggest metro areas in America.
Once we define "small market" and what that means and why it is of necessity a handicap, then we can have a conversation. Or argue for a hard salary cap, but also a hard salary floor. The owner of the Twins is one of the richest men in the world. If he chooses not to pay his players, that's his problem.
dcat
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