We tried that last season and it didn’t work, use three or four relievers any given game and one will blow up. I would note that the top five fWAR pitchers last year averaged over seven innings per start. James Shields averaged nearly eight. Paulino, Francis, and Chen were six inning pitchers, Hoch 6.2 or so, Duffy five innings. Throwing strikes with command will help that.

“Why can’t Holland or Coleman be the fireman to come in when they need 4-7 outs?”

Agree on that, no reason that the hot hand should be pulled until he falters. I’ld rather see Holland do the fireman in the 8th with runners on, then pitch the 9th when he’s warm and knows what he’s got.

True, but neither will Holland nor Gonzales. What will put them over the top is the new position players; Giavotella, Hosmer, Moose, and Perez. Chen has been productive and eats some innings, Francis less so.

“Maybe no one will, but neither strikeout enough to be more than a filler type pitcher.”

Duffy strikes out lots of people and that didn’t help. More important than K’s is net K’s, strikeouts minus walks, and average innings per start. Rather than K/9 I prefer strikeouts per game, K/G, for starters. Strikeouts take lots of pitches. Master Chen can get outs without as many K’s. Francis can’t. What we need are starters who can finish the 7th and get us to Holland and Soria. Nine strikeouts through five innings doesn’t really help. A worry I have with Sanchez is that his history shows a six inning or less pitcher, likely a result of high K’s and BB’s. He would likely be a better pitcher taking a little stuff off and getting the hitters to put the ball in play. With his movement they would have a hard time squaring the ball, so a few more outs with a few less pitches could make him a seven inning starter.

“Lucky” is the word so-called advanced metrics uses to explain performance that its stats can’t. Master Chen throws six pitches from three arm angles and is difficult to square up. When the new fielding fx data becomes public knowledge, we’ll see that not all ground balls or line drives are created equal and we’ll finally be able to stop talking about luck.

Francis had a pretty decent year last year, but is not likely to duplicate it. He does not strikeout ANYONE, but also gives up very few walks. If he comes back fully healthy from shoulder surgery, with a couple of mph added to his FB, he could be very effective. Chen has also been very “lucky” according to his BABIP against and FIP. Maybe he is the type of pitcher that will always outperform his peripherals.

Again, there are alot of ifs in this rotation. Adding one more arm whether it’s back of the rotation filler (Chen or Francis) or bringing in a live arm on a few year contract (E.Jackson, Shields, Gonzalez, etc.), would be a great idea. I would hate to see the top Royals prospects playing for another organization, but they are just prospects and haven’t proven anything.

Myers is terrying the cover off the ball in AFL, but everyone does. Monty, Dwyer, Odorizzi all had their ups and downs last year. Hopefully they figure it out, and are in KC by the end of 2012. You need 5 starters in a rotation (or 6 if you have Davies), so you need about 10-12 GOOD options.

Already have one in Sanchez. Irresponsible, to me, is trading Monty or Myers for anyone short of Justin Verlander. Once you get past the top ten or fifteen pitchers, there’s nothing special about the second level. I see no use in doing a reverse Greinke to pick up three or four more wins a year.

Been little standing, pat or otherwise. Hoch is the only starter left from the beginning of the season and Paulino and Sanchez look to be upgrades over Davies and Francis, so that should be worth five to ten wins right there. The competition for the remaining slots is much more intense than last SP, so there has been a lot of forward movement in that regard. The team, as-is, is a .500 ball club that will only get better.