Pedro Martinez struck out 11 batters in 6 innings of work today pitching for the Phillies' Double-A team as part of his rehabilitation course before joining the big-league team, hopefully sometime soon. His performance has been up and down so far as he works out the kinks from being out of action all year, but this last game pretty much says to me that he's close being back to form.
When he returns to the majors, it's going to present a problem for the Phillies coaches because they will have too many starting pitchers. That's a nice problem to have heading into the final months of the season, but it's a problem nonetheless. Cole Hamels, newly acquired Cliff Lee, and workhorse Joe Blanton clearly belong in the starting rotation. Of the remaining pitchers, including Pedro, it's hard to say who should start and who should head to the bullpen. If the Phillies are smart, they'll make Pedro earn his way into the rotation instead of handing him a spot.
J.A. Happ is the youngest, and he did start the season in the bullpen. But he's also been money as a starter this season. Tonight, he pitched a complete game shutout against Colorado and struck out 10 batters. He was highly coveted by Toronto at the trade deadline when the Phillies were trying to acquire Roy Halladay, but the Phillies were rightfully reluctant to let go of such a talented young player who is already major-league ready. This is the kind of guy you want in your pitching lineup heading into the playoffs, and it would be hard to send him to the bullpen.
Rodrigo Lopez is a recent acquisition who has filled in as the fifth starter since Brett Myers went down, and the Phils won three of his four starts, which is probably more than they were expecting out of him. But he's already out of the picture, sent to the bullpen when Cliff Lee arrived.
Jamie Moyer is a 23-year veteran who was an integral part of the Phillies' playoff run last year, but this year has struggled quite a bit to recapture last season's magic. You'd say he's the most deserving of a demotion, except that he isn't a bullpen type of pitcher. He throws in the low 80s and doesn't overwhelm anyone, and really makes his living outsmarting batters the second and third time he faces them in a game. There's also the issue of respect for his experience and age (he turns 47 this year), but that's less important in my opinion; as a team player, which he definitely is, Moyer should be willing to do whatever is best for the Phillies, even if it means going to the bullpen. The more important issue is that he wouldn't be very effective there.
And that leaves Pedro Martinez, one of the greatest pitchers in history and certainly of our time. Pedro pitched the 2006 season in typically dominant form, but injured his hip toward the end of the season. Probably due to poor compensatory mechanics, he subsequently injured his lower leg and his rotator cuff too, ending his season in 2006 and preventing him from pitching most of 2007 as well. He returned at the end of 2007 and had several excellent starts which boded well for the next year.
Unfortunately for Pedro, he injured himself at the beginning of the 2008 season and lost about 2 months, and when he returned his velocity just wasn't there and he was ineffective. He wasn't re-signed in the offseason, and no other teams wanted to take a chance on him either. He pitched one solid game for his country in the World Baseball Classic, but still no takers. So he has sat out the entire 2009 season without a job, until the Phillies called last month and signed him to a teenie weenie million dollar contract to pitch the rest of this season.
Pedro has said he's a team player and he just wants to be back in the bigs, and that he wouldn't mind being a "backup", whatever that means. But when you've had as great a career as Pedro, and you're as fiery a competitor as he is, you don't come out of involuntary retirement to pitch out of the bullpen, even if your new team is the defending World Series champion Phillies.
There's an additional factor to consider in this decision, and that's the lefty-righty situation. The candidates for the starting pitching jobs are four lefties and two righties. The two right-handers are Blanton, who is definitely staying in the rotation, and Pedro. You'd like to have three lefties and two righties for balance, but that would mean either Moyer or Happ would have to go to the 'pen. If Pedro goes to the 'pen, that would be four left-handed starting pitchers.
Normally, having four left-handers in your starting rotation might not be too big of a problem, but in this specific case it might be. It seems that the Dodgers, whom the Phillies are likely to face if they want to get back to the World Series, feast on left-handed pitching this year. Both Moyer, who is aging, and Happ, who is inexperienced, might get victimized by that situation in the playoffs. That would seem to point toward sending one of them to the bullpen and letting Pedro be the fifth starter.
The right thing to do is to make Pedro earn his spot in the rotation by outpitching Jamie Moyer. If he can't, he should do his "backup" thing like he said at the beginning. If he does, then the best thing for the team is to marginalize an aging and increasingly ineffective Moyer by putting him in long relief with occasional spot starting to keep him active. His best days are behind him, and maybe his biggest contribution to the team at this point will be his experience, which he can do by mentoring the younger pitchers like Happ and Hamels.
It will be interesting to see how the Phillies work this problem out. I haven't read anything that indicates which way they are leaning, but I'm betting they start Pedro in the bullpen and slowly work him into the starting rotation while pushing Happ into a relief role by the playoffs. It might not happen instantaneously, but I see that happening. They won't send Moyer to the bullpen, and the Phillies didn't pick up Pedro from unemployment just to pitch in relief. Happ will probably just have to pay his dues as the youngest pitcher, knowing that he's going to be a big part of the Phillies' future.
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