Pitching depth

One annual story we get to follow is, "Who will grab the fifth starter's job?" This one bores me since most every team uses eight to ten starters over the course of a season. A run through the yearly stats shows the Pirates have been giving five or more starts to eight or nine guys. Six or more will get ten starts.

The Pirates have lined up, in no particular order, Zach Duke, Oliver Perez, Paul Maholm, and Kip Wells. They'll have the first crack at twenty-five starts. Only two to four will manage that many.

Just as no four players will combine to produce the 2800 plate appearances the team will enjoy at 1B, RF, CF, and LF, so will no four pitchers combine for anything even close to 162 starts.

Even March rotations comprised of "proven veteran" starters rarely produce more than two to four twenty-five game starters. So it's no knock on our top four to speculate that more than half the 2006 games will be started, in all likelihood, by other pitchers.

The competition for the fifth starter's job will tell us a lot about April, but maybe not so much about August and September. No one shed any tears if your boy loses out on the fifth starter's job. If he's any good at pitching, the odds are good that he'll still have plenty of opportunities to become a mainstay in the rotation.

People are talking about Jeff Weaver. Since the Pirates have (in no particular order) Ryan Vogelsong, Ian Snell, Sean Burnett, John Van Benschoten, Tom Gorzelanny,and Victor Santos worth a look, and even perhaps Bryan Bullington and Brandon Duckworth, they are pretty stocked. All of these guys are unproven, but so is the rotation. The Pirates can line them up, let them take turns, and reward the ones who pitch well with more turns in the rotation. We didn't add Manny Ramirez in the offseason. We're still relying heavily on unproven position players. I don't see much need for "proven starters."