Some transactions last night, Jeff Cirillo and Matt Wise were activated from the DL, and Wes Obermueller was recalled from Nashville.
Though I have not seen official word yet, the safe assumption is that Obermueller will start tomorrow in Ben Sheets' spot in the rotation. I think he deserves another shot and his work at triple-A shows it.
From mlb.com
"I got back to throwing every pitch with confidence and conviction," Obermueller said. "I threw a lot of changeups down there -- a lot more than I threw here. I think three-fourths of my strikeouts were on changeups. That was a pitch that I think could help me."
I'm rooting for him. He's an athlete with greater upside than the average 28 year old part-time big league player. He can pitch, he just needs to do it every outing.
Which brings me to something I've been thinking about. With hitters it's pretty simple to identify streaks- cold streaks, hot streaks, lucky streaks- you just look at the numbers. With pitchers, if they hit a "cold streak" they are doomed. Three bad outings in a row can get you sent down or released in a hurry. They are short, have a huge impact, and are difficult to predict.
For managers this has to be terribly frustrating, you've got a guy who's pitched a couple great games and you send him back out there and he implodes, and implodes again. Which pitcher are you going to get each night? You don't know. It's a gamble you don't want to take. So while consistency is nice in hitters, it seems essential in pitchers. So I was going to do a little study on pitching consistency, and thought I'd kick it off with a poll. Help us out, have a vote. Click read more.
the poll below