FanPost

Go With 14 Position Players and Only 11 Pitchers for the 1st Month?

I have been thinking about the bench and the dilemma of too many players to “choose” from. Do we carry a 3rd catcher? Do we keep Rodriguez? How much weight to give to Marte’s and Bowker’s ST performances?

One approach to delay making a decision is to only carry 11 pitchers but carry 14 position players for the 1st month. The risk is that the SP has a history of not going deep into games, so cutting back on the bullpen is a gamble. Also we have issues with which pitchers have options left.

But assuming we could go with 14 position players, what would we do? Well we have 10 spots “committed” (Snyder, Doumit, Overbay, Walker, Cedeno, Alvarez, Tabata, McCutchen, Diaz, and Jones), leaving 4 spots open. It looks like the team wants a 3rd catcher, if we can add Jaramillo we are down to 3 spots. We “need” 2 guys to backup SS, 2B, and 3B. One will probably be Ciraciao, so we are down to 2 spots. So we come down to selecting 2 players from Bowkers, Marte, and Rodriguez (I am assuming that Pearce gets send down because he has an option and can get playing time at 3B in AAA).

If we keep both Marte and Rodriguez, then Bowkers is waivered. If we keep Bowkers and Rodriguez, we lose a better backup at 3B in Marte. If we keep Marte and Bowkers, we may lose Rodriguez unless we can swing a deal for him.

Another consideration is playing time for all of these bench players. There is already a platoon in RF and at catcher. The rest of the positions have regulars who will play most games.

I don’t have an answer to all this. I am glad I don’t have to decide because it seems we won’t be able to keep all of these players.

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