A glance at MLBTR's Free Agent Tracker confirms the commonly-held belief that there's just not much starting pitching remaining on the free agent market. If we assume that Andy Pettitte is only an option for the Yankees and keep in mind that Jamie Moyer will miss the upcoming season, the list shrinks even more. At this point, only four free agent starters could be considered dependable options for a rotation (2010 innings totals in parentheses):
- Rodrigo Lopez (200)
- Kevin Millwood (190 2/3)
- Dave Bush (174 1/3)
- Jeremy Bonderman (171)
- Freddy Garcia (157)
Only two of those pitchers finished the season with an ERA below 5.00 and Garcia (4.64 ERA) and Bush (4.54 ERA) both posted marks above 4.50. The alternatives to those starters pitched less in 2010 and many of the free agents below dealt with injuries last year:
- Todd Wellemeyer (58 2/3)
- Brian Moehler (56 2/3)
- Doug Davis (38 1/3)
- Justin Duchscherer (28)
- John Maine (39 2/3)
Teams looking to sign free agent starters are probably not impressed with the options remaining. But clubs looking to trade starters could take advantage of the shallow free agent pool and send their arms elsewhere for salary relief and a prospect or two. The Phillies (Joe Blanton) Tigers (Armando Galarraga) and Braves (Kenshin Kawakami) would all deal pitchers for the right return, so it wouldn't be a surprise to see one or two more trades for starters before the season begins.
Trade for Carlos Silva!
Holy crap these guys stink!
Actually the majority are still solid starters.
What??? Lmao solid starters if you put them in single A maybe…
What are you talking about? Only one of those guys has a career ERA above 5. #4 and #5 starter material. They aren’t great… but I wouldn’t go so far as to say “Holy crap these guys stink!”.
They do stink at this point of their careers. Most of them are old and washed up on that list. Freddy Garcia USED to be good. I saw a few Rodrigo Lopez games last year and he did not look like a solid starter. Obviously I was kidding about the single A thing though, I think they might make it in double AA.
Ollie Perez is available for trade…. Pretty sure the Mets will just take some concession items in return.
Yanks will give you a bag of balls and two obstructed view seats to game 1 of the Yanks/Mets series at The Stadium.
The question here is, how much salary would the Mets have to eat?
The Mets should also pick up a chunk of his salary.
What does it mean that Rodrigo Lopez pitched 200 innings last season? Maybe he is durable, but that says a lot about the state of the DBacks pitching staff that he made so many starts. Regardless, you can do worse as a 5th starter/minor league call up guy.
I think a lot of teams should start signing sixth starters because it seems like they get killed with the revolving door whenever their fifth starter gets hurt. Any of these guys would be good depth signings, aside from Wellemeyer and Moehler who are awful.
this.
Dave Bush can dominate but goes through bad stretches. I think he makes sense for a team with little money to spend but a good pitching coach / manager to get the most out of him.
Cardinals (Dave Duncan), Red Sox (Curt Young), or Blue Jays (John Farrell is the skipper there now)?
Dave Bush is actually pretty consistent. He had 18 quality starts last year, a pretty solid total.
He has 2 major flaws. One is that his occasional bad starts can be really, really bad and you’ll have zero chance to win. The other is his propensity to be going along fine and with no warning and nobody up in the pen, he’ll give up one or two quick home runs and you can go from up a run or two to down a run or two real quick.
I think some of the guys left will undoubtedly have to take minor league deals but with opt out clauses so that if they are not called up by a certain date, they can become FA. That’s not a bad situation for the pitcher.
With the recent re-signing of Pavano, the Twins also have a surplus of pitching. Look for the Twins to deal Slowey–maybe for Joba?
Liriano
Pavano
Duensing
Baker
Slowey
Blackburn.