The Contreras Conundrum

[Cubano]

I completely disagree. Unless Contreras has some sort of injury or is going through an undsiclosed dead-arm (July is the typical time a pitcher would go through a regular season dead-arm) than there is absolutely no reason to be optimistic. His velocity is down and he's turned into a one pitch pitcher (the forkball). The problem is the forkball is an inconsistent pitch by nature and as such he can't rely on it because all a hitter would have to do is lay off the fork ball and sit on his mediocre fastball (the difference between his FB and change is miniscule with the decreased velocity on his fastball, which means not only does his fastball have zero velocity/movement but his change-up isn't deceptive so thats terrible).

 

Bottom line, given the dearth of pitching on the trade market you could probably dupe some team into taking Contreras (you may not get anything in return, but you could move him). I would take the approach that moving him is best for the squad and than look at targeting someone like Bedard or even just a serviceable 5 who is a FA or a fair contract and just take him and go with that as the 5th (and try to use Richard as a 6th starter down the stretch to help rest the younger arms). The problem is the Sox probably won't take this approach since they probably still feel Contreras could be a serviceable 5th.

 

The reality is though, him being a serviceable fifth is unlikely and on top of that, when he proves he isn't, he will be untradeable in the off-season and thus the Sox will be stuck with his albatross contract for a final year. Trading Jose would be a gutsy move (1st place teams don't typically trade starters) but it would be the right move.

 

The only other option to move is putting him on the DL to give him rest and just have him work on throwing regime set aside to increase velocity and get his arm fresh again. Let Richard or Egbert pitch during that period and if they are doing great, you put Jose in the pen/on the block and if they don't do good you bring Jose back into the rotation and hope the break helped him regain some of his velocity.

 

No team is going to eat Contreras's contract.

 

[elrockinMT]

I would have liked to seen Garland signed rather than Contreras also. But, the "experts" said they were convinced Garland had about peaked. Well, maybe Jose has tanked. I guess they didn't see that. I hope Jose can snap out of this rut.

Edited July 15, 2008 by elrockinMT

[greg775]

I also hope Jose snaps out of his rut.

But as of right now ... is anybody looking forward to Jose's next outing?

His recent outings have been so ugly.