Thursday, April 8, 2010

Opening Night & Starting Pitchers

Lots of good links at the Bulls website. Take a look. To my great surprise, an article in the News & Observer. Also, looks like long-time Herald-Sun sports writer Mike Potter will be working over at Indy Week. Suggest all the links be checked out.

In another item, looks like Matt Joyce will be back with the Durham Bulls for a while. No telling what will happen with him once his rehab is done.

So, while we wait for tonight’s game, let’s start going through the roster.

Starting with, what else, the starters. Opinions, additions, comments, etc. most welcome.

Jeremy Hellickson, RHP, 23
Basics, RaysProspects, stats, more stats
Jeremy’s coming off a terrific year. Great things are expected.

Carlos Hernandez, LHP, 30
Basics, stats, more stats
What more can you ask for than 112 innings and a 3.29 ERA from a 29 year old left hander coming off surgeries and injuries? Will this be the year he makes it back to the big time? I hope so, but only after winning a bunch of games for the Bulls.

Brian Baker, RHP, 27
Basics, stats, more stats
Coming to Durham off a decent year with the Biscuits, Baker has been pretty much off the radar. Looks like he was converted from a starter to a reliever while with Montgomery last year. At 27 it’s time for him to make his mark. Have to say that he looked pretty good last Saturday.

Heath Rollins, RHP, 25
Basics, RaysProspects, stats, more stats
Also a decent year with the Biscuits, and he lent a hand in our championship run last year with a relief appearance and two starts, one no-decisions and a win. He had 22 starts with the Biscuits and six relief appearances. So I don’t know which role he’ll be in this year. RaysProspects seems to think he will be a reliever.

Heath Phillips, LHP, 28
Basics, stats, more stats
I gotta be honest and say that I don’t remember much about Heath from his stint with the Bulls in 2008. I’ve got some stats that show that he started a couple of games, but mostly pitched in relief.


Jason Cromer, LHP, 29
Basics, stats, more stats
Since the President of the Jason Cromer Fan Club is a close associate of WDBB, we will be inviting him to make some comments once Jason comes off the DL. For some of his previous comments, do a search on the blog or click on Cromer on the cloud.

3 comments:

  1. RaysProspects posted this on Twitter a bit ago:

    "Durham starting rotation: Hellickson, Phillips, Bennett, Hernandez, Vasquez. Don't know the order after Hellickson."

    Really surprised to see Bennett on this list. Maybe Tampa Bay just wants to get him as many innings as possible? I can't imagine they see him as a starter in their future.

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  2. Don't understand either Vasquez or Bennett, but I guess that's why the Rays front office gets the big bucks. Maybe Neil Solondz will run it down for us if we can figure out the 620/gameday etc. I guess after the first five days we'll know.

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  3. Vasquez makes a little more sense to me, since he seems to have more of a history as a starter. Don't really know much else about him. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how the rotation plays out. If they leave us with 5 actual starters, I guess I can't complain too much.

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