It appears Jeff Inman is taking Duke Welker's place as the reliever on the Curve roster with great stuff and confusing stats, as Welker has been promoted to Class AAA. Like Inman, Welker has a great fastball (Welker's is probably better than Inman's) and a good ground-ball rate, but he's never really had the strikeout rate to match. This year he has 19 strikeouts in 23.1 innings for the Curve.

Welker is on the 40-man roster, and there's been some speculation about the possibility of him coming off. I didn't think that was very likely before, given that the Pirates have a fair amount of chaff on the 40-man (heck, there's chaff on the 25-man roster), and given that when the Bucs put a reliever on the 40-man roster without there being obvious stats to back it up, there's usually a good reason why (see the examples of Ronald Belisario and Chris Leroux).