Between a rock and a Harden place

Peaved

Let's pretend you are a general manager of a professional baseball team. You have two choices:

1. You will have a normal pitching staff. Starters might pitch 200 innings or 100. You have your highs and lows with the starters and bullpen.

2. Or, your starters will never allow a run, but they only pitch five innings. That's it. No more. No less. No matter who starts, they go for five innings and don't allow a run. That means your bullpen for 162 games will need to pitch four innings every night and they are prone to runs and the usual ups and downs from each individual reliever.

Which would you choose?

I'd go with No. 2. The problem with starters, many times, isn't that they don't give you eight innings every night, but that they're inconsistent. With option No. 2, you know that your starter will not give up a run. It'll give you an ensured five innings to build a lead. With luck, your bullpen holds together. I'd definitely keep an extra reliever in the bullpen.

I thought of that watching Rich Harden fart through five scoreless innings before giving up a three-run homer in the sixth, his last inning. Harden got the win along with the rest of the team over the Chicago White Sox, 6-5.

Harden did his damndest to lose this one, but it didn't take. By far, it was still his best start of the season.

He allowed five walks, hit two other batters and allowed four hits. How do you get out of that mess?

Induce three double plays and catch Juan Pierre stealing. He constantly threw first-pitch balls and allowed guys on with no outs. Still, he worked out of innings and actually had a decent pitch count throughout.

Umm, we'll take it.

Notes:
1. Nine walks for the Rangers. Seven come from hitters 4-7.

2. What I love about Elvis Andrus? Ninth inning. 6-3 game. Two out. Andrus up. He works an eight-pitch at-bat into a walk for their sluggers. Steals a base. He didn't score. But still.
6.
3. A set of ballsy clutch hits from David Murphy in the last week. The Rangers need to do something with him. He's not a guy that can come in once a week and spell someone in the outfield. He needs consistent at-bats to be effective.

4. If you'd told me in March that Chris Ray's numbers would be significantly better than Neftali Feliz', I would have assumed we'd be in trouble. Ray scares the pants off of me despite his numbers.

5. I would expect the White Sox expected more from Jake Peavy when they made that trade.