Tiger Geist

Its official, our starting rotation has the worst ERA in baseball.  I guess that isn’t much of a surprise.  Its upsetting that we’ve traded away so much pitching in the last few years (for Sheffield, Renteria, Cabrera), but we have so much money invested in our pitchers that its not likely we’d be able to eat all of those contracts.

At what point does pitching coach Chuck Hernandez get some heat?  Isn’t he the guy who is supposed to make these guys better?  If not, what does he do?  Do we think the pitchers are actually the worst starting five in baseball, or should we bestow some blame on coaching?

Jeremy Bonderman is a big question mark to me.  This is a guy who was supposed to make big strides this year, yet he doesn’t seem like a power pitcher anymore.  Thats a disappointment from a guy who is 25 years old.  He can’t seem to develop any other pitch besides his fastball and slider;  thats a concern.  Todd Jones learned to throw a cut fastball at age 37, but Bonderman can’t learn to throw anything new at a young age?  Jeremy doesn’t seem like a very good athlete - he can’t field well and can’t hit (1 for 25 — though having never gone to college might help explain).  With two solid pitches, maybe they have to start looking to turn him into a relief pitcher.  Maybe that will help ‘push’ him into another pitch.