A number of good points nyfaninlaland. Petco is definitely a factor.

Overall I don’t pay too much attention to ERA for relief pitchers. As they only pitch fractions of innings more and more the number becomes more arbitrary.

Now that said, let’s take a look at Heath Bell. I don’t think people have a good sense of how dominant he was last year.

His ERA+ was 200. That is crazy. ERA+ adjusts a pitchers ERA for effect of the park (I always look at that for pitchers at petco). That was one of the highest ERA+ in all of baseball. An ERA+ of 100 is average – so his ERA (which was 2.00) was twice as good as the average pitcher even taking petco into account.

His WHIP was .96. Again, fantastic. His k/9- 9.8 and he only walked 2.9/9 innings. And hitters could never get the ball in the air off of him – 61% of contact off Bell produced ground ball.

So many of those peripherals have nothing to do with the park.

Bell was not just good – he was utterly dominant and they got him for nothing.

He will definitely start the season in the Scranton rotation.

That probably bumps McCutcheon to Trenton for the first half of the year.

CB & SJ – great stuff, but some other points. It takes a lot of middle relievers until their late 20’s to hit their stride. Towers seems to have noticed this – he’s been a master of picking up guys (Bell, Cameron, Hampson) that have good minors track records but haven’t yet gotten a full shot or were minors FA’s. That may be why he took Gardner in the Rule 5. These are the guys (27-31 in age) that make up a big chunk of mid pens. But lets also not forget that Petco is the most extreme pitchers park in baseball, so everybody looks better there – hell, Seanez has built a couple of contracts off them. The best guys, those that are somewhat consistent year to year, often arrive a little earlier and last longer – the big bucks guys. Linebrink’s now a big bucks guy, and built his career in SD. But if you look closely at his peripherals, and generally at his ERA’s, he really isn’t showing a big decline in performance, just some erosion. Of course, that bandbox in ChiTown ain’t gonna help. But he has shown the kind of consistency over time that tends to earn the big number. Some of the others mentioned have also performed decently, even in less favorable surroundings, like Howry. Actually Hawkins, with an exception of a season or 2, and the Viz also fit this description to an extent.

It seems when we look at pen performance, sometimes we expect too much. We want ERA’s in the 3’s, but that’s not the right standard of performance. Low to mid 4’s can be fine, particularly on an offensive team. So how do we look? Well most of our guys are a bit young – Patterson fits the age mold, but hasn’t pitched above AA yet – so either we’re early on them, they’re gonna be good ones, or we’ll have forgotten them in 2 years. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. We’ve also got a ton of guys at lower levels we’re barely talkin’ about beyond Melancon, so the competion should keep up for a few years.

And SJ, seems to me Marquez hits the AAA rotation before McCutcheon. But both may be in AA if Rasner / Karstens / Phillips are used as rotation insurance rather than long relief. Marquez is young, so it’s okay if he repeats for awhile though he doesn’t deserve such, and McCutcheon had less than 1/2 a season there.

To justify that kind of money, plus what it will take to sign him, one is saying this guy is as good (or better) than Johan Santana, Jake Peavy and CC Sabathia.

Sorry but, there is no way he is that good. Its hype and nothing more.

Of course this is Gammons, who has lost a sense of reality over the past few years, but I believe he actually said Darvish could bring a $100M posting fee. As you know, that is probably absurd but we’ll see what some team is willing to pay if/when he does post.

I wonder how long it is and how much $$ is spent on Japanese pitchers before teams figure out that it’s not a sure thing.

Please no. Absolutely not. Use that money and allocate it to pay over slot in the draft or the international market.

I would not go in deep again in that lame brain posting system for pitching.

No track record.

Is Yu Darvish really better than Dellin Betances, or someone similar?

One ST outing is no indication on Mussina.

Kyle Lohse is not a good pitcher.

If he was any good, with the shortage of pitching in the game, he would have a deal already.

Heart me out. Mussina looks finished from last year, and with Joba/Ian/Phil all on innings control, the Yankees will be hurting for innings come the end of the season. Do we really want to see Igawaa, Karstens, Rasner pitching or spend minor cash to get Lohse? Or even Freddy Garcia.

The Yankees pitching staff is most likely going to get thin at some point this season, especially if Mussina sucks again. Getting a starter like Loshe would not hurt. And what is $5 million.