Tyrone Biggums said:Paxton Crawford aka the next Greg Maddux gets zero love?
Eduardo looked really good and hit his spots. Slider looked hittible at times but overall an excellent performance. Question is who goes when Masterson is back? Masterson Wright or Kelly? Pick one and let one go to the pen and one go to AAA. My guess is Masterson gets his spot back, Wright goes to the pen and Kelly works out some issues in AAA.
Nice call with Paxton.
More seriously. We are going to have to juggle a lot of unknowns. In terms of effectiveness, Masterson's the wild card. Rotation or Bullpen? The path isn't clear. Either way, Kelly has more upside than Masterson, and we control him longer. So Kelly should have preference in terms of a long-term plan. (Just so long as we don't discourage future FAs by how we handle Masterson.)
My guess would be that Kelley stays for 2-3 more starts, then is bullpenned to low leverage spots. Masterson goes back to the rotation, since he could be a passible starter and is not an obvious bullpen upgrade. Eduardo sticks around as insurance. Wright gets demoted, then called up as needed. Or Eduardo/Wright are flipped in that role. I'd guess it would depend on each one's makeup - would one be particularly damaged by bobbling up and down, or is one especially suited to it?
I'd be hesitant to cut Masterson or send Kelly to AAA as Eduardo may not be up for a full season of work anyway. If Wright were rubber armed, I'd keep him as starter-implosion insurance.
It may be that the long man in the pen ought to be one of our "legitimate" starters who would be ready to cover for the more problematic starters and perhaps take a turn to extend the rotation.