I’m still floating on cloud three billion after #10.
Let’s take a look at the possible bullpen of 2007, shall we?
We all know that Tony likes to carry 12 pitchers on his squad, so that means we have seven spots to fill in the bullpen. I would assume that our long reliever spot(s) will not involve a whole lot of money spent, so my guess is that Thompson and/or Hancock will be in the mix once again in 2007.
As for middle relief, I don’t believe that anyone will offer Randy Flores ridiculous money, and we have Looper locked up, so, hello middle relievers. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t mind seeing Looper in a different uniform next year, because for the money we are paying him to do a mediocre job, we could find a quality 2B or a couple of utility guys. If on the off chance this happens, I guess we have a small hole in our bullpen - would we take another gamble and try further to reinvent the enigma that is Jorge Sosa?
Our setup men, Kinney and Johnson, both look like locks to come back next year.
Our closer is still up in the air.
If Wainwright moves to the rotation, it is because Izzy is healthy. Fine.
If Wainwright remains the closer it means one of two things:
1. Izzy is not healthy - if this is the case, we have to assume that he will eventually come back during the season. If he does, the question becomes, who closes? I think Wainwright’s success in the role will go a long way in determining the answer to that question. However, I don’t know how keen I am of paying our setup guy 8 million bucks. If we were to move Wainwright to make room for Izzy, where would he go? He could go to the rotation if someone is struggling, but it’s hard to make the transition from closer to starter mid-season. He could go to the setup role, but that seems like a waste of his talent. I guess we just better hope that Izzy is healthy at the start of the season.
2. It is easier to find a starting pitcher on the FA market than it is a legit bullpen pitcher. If this is the case, I’m fine with Wainwright in the bullpen for another year, but then the issue of wasting his talent comes up again if he’s in the setup role instead of the closer’s role.
This position in the bullpen appears to me to be the only real question mark, and I think that there are much worse problems that could occur with a team’s bullpen.
This bullpen looks to be the least of our current concerns right now. If someone said that to me in September, I would’ve punched them in the face in hopes it would knock some sense into them. OK, maybe I wouldn’t have gone that far, but I would’ve definitely laughed sarcastically.
Next time, we’ll address the offense and what we can expect to see for the 2007 version of the Cardinals. We may also throw in what we’d like to see.
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