Trekgeekscott
Posts: 38827
Joined: 7/16/2007
From: United Federation of Planets
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Phil Riewer quote:
ORIGINAL: twinsfan quote:
ORIGINAL: TJSweens quote:
ORIGINAL: Phil Riewer quote:
ORIGINAL: TJSweens quote:
ORIGINAL: Mister Ed Gray needs to be re-signed He should be He won't be I am worried that he will count on Ober, Varland, and Paddock as options... I'm worried that they already loving Varland coming out of the pen. The Twins love moving their starting prospects to the bullpen. Right now next year's top 3 projects to Lopez, Ryan, Ober. It wouldn't surprise me if they resigned Maeda to a team friendly deal. It's called Trevor May syndrome. Varland sees the writing on the wall, so he's trying to get out ahead of it. It's a no-win situation for him. He can purposely suck out of the bullpen in hopes that it gets him back to being a starting pitcher. But that hurts the team. Or he can be lights-out in the bullpen and the Twins will never move him back into a starting role because why fix something that ain't broke? It's exactly what happened to Trevor May. He was our best starting pitcher for about a 3-month stretch back in whatever the year was when he last started games. Then someone returned from injury, and as we were nearing an end-of-the-season push for a playoff spot, they moved May into a high-leverage bullpen role. He continued to pitch well, even better, and before you know it - BOOM!...you're a reliever for the rest of your career. Luckily for May, it turned out OK overall because it was in an era when teams were valuing relievers just as much as starters...right off the heels of the Royals method of bullpen dominance. So Trevor May signed a pretty significant contract with the Mets. Things are swinging back the other way right now, and bullpen arms are not getting the big contracts compared to what starting pitchers are getting. They are messing with Varland's livelihood. He has tried to make the Twins promise that he will go back to being a starter after this season. The problem is there is no such thing as a promise with a professional baseball organization unless it's in writing. I don't think this will be in writing. It's probably not legal to put it in writing. I totally disagree....May only has his fastball and it was way better out of the bullpen. His breaking ball and changeup where barely average and they tried to make him a starter and he only pitched slightly over 100 innings. Physically he couldn't be a starter. Varland has a cut fastball that looks very good.....which would put him at 2 pitches. I don't think they are giving up on Varland as a Starting pitcher yet. I think they are just trying to get some better pitching out of their bullpen for the stretch drive. They have Plenty of starters right now (some can go bye bye anytime imho, Dallas Kuechel) So they are trying to use some of the more talented young pitchers in the bullpen role for now. Varland seems to be taking to it well.
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"The same people who voted for him because "he says what he means" are arguing he didn't mean what he said."
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