Jon Garland signing not sexy but essential

where we all only refer to Garland as Velma.

Forgive me if this gets a little long winded…

Until yesterday, we were facing spring training with really only 3 proven starters: CY, Correia, and Richard. CY has a history of injury problems. Richard has been a starter for one full season — and he lost some starts by switching teams (26 starts last year). Correia was very solid for us last year, but that was his only full season as a starter. In 2008 he had 19 starts and 6 relief appearances. Before that, he was primarily a reliever.

When you add it up, the three guys who we consider to be the three anchors of our rotation have a total of 244 starts in 15 seasons. That’s an average of about 16 starts a year. And these are the guys we’re most heavily relying on to give us 33 starts each.

Latos has a grand total of 10 major league starts and has never started a game in AAA. To count on anything more than a good effort from him is probably being naive. I don’t think anyone here would be disappointed if we got 20-25 starts from him this year.

The fifth spot was being left open for competition from guys who have had several chances with limited success (LeBlanc, Stauffer, Gallagher), a guy with almost no MLB experience (Ramos), a guy who probably isn’t starting pitcher caliber (Mujica) and a guy who’s been struggling in AAA (Porreda).

I’m not saying these prospects aren’t going to be good, I’m just saying they aren’t ready yet. I don’t want to see an entire season where, every fifth game, we’re throwing someone out there as a trial.

Let’s say we get an average of 24 starts from each of CY, Richard, Correia, and Latos. I think that 24 is pretty optimistic considering their histories, but let’s just use that number. That’s good for 96 starts, leaving 66 more starts. Would you feel comfortable going into 2010 knowing that our pack of prospects is going to be responsible for starting 66 games? I wouldn’t.

Now let’s say that Garland can get in 28-30 starts. Based on his history, this seems entirely reasonable. Now we’re talking about our prospects getting 36-38 starts. Not only is that a much more manageable number, but it allows us to start the prospects in the minors so that when someone gets hurt or pulled from the rotation, we can plug in the guy who’s pitching the best… not just the guy who performed best in spring training.

And I haven’t even gotten into the effect that a “workhorse” guy like Garland can have on a young pitching staff, nor the fact that he’s only 30-years-old and is going to get to pitch a full season in a pitcher-friendly park and division.

The icing on the cake is that the contract is pretty affordable meaning that he’ll be easy to move if we see an opportunity at the trade deadline, or it will allow us to move CY or Correia.

I just don’t see any downside to this move.