The Pirates just tweeted that it will be Vance Worley and not Deolis Guerra that will be designated for assignment to make room for Joe Blanton tonight. Since I spent most of my time assuming the Pirates were going to use Blanton in the Guerra role and that Guerra was the most likely to be DFA to make room for Blanton, let’s take a few seconds and consider what’s going on with this move.
My hunch is that this tweet from @Ugarles is the best assessment of the situation: what the Pirates did here was pick up Blanton and then roll the dice that Worley will make his way through waivers and then accept his assignment to Indianapolis, because accepting that assignment is worth $900,000 to him over the remainder of this season. If this happens, the Pirates have suddenly lengthened their rotation depth a bit without disturbing the current make-up of the team too much, as Worley is generally the last guy out of the bullpen these days.
Look at it this way: with the way the Pirates were currently constructed before this move, there was a chance that they could be completely screwed by the late scratch of a starter if Vance Worley had pitched recently and the Indy rotation hadn’t turned its way to Radhames Liz. Assuming that Worley gets through waivers, they get a bit more flexibility, because they’d double the number of potential AAA spot starters. The fact that Blanton isn’t as good as Worley isn’t hugely here; the two of them are close enough that it won’t make much of a difference in their relief appearances (you could argue from Blanton’s peripherals this year that he might make a better reliever, but that’s not really a clear argument given Blanton’s history), and the flexibility of an extra emergency starter gives depth that could potentially make up for that small difference in the current bullpen. The biggest risk the Pirates are taking here is that Worley is claimed by someone, or that he refuses his assignment. If that happens, the depth problem remains and all the Pirates did was swap out their sixth starter for a different (albeit, a potentially worse) one.
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