The Pirates’ final roster decisions are coming quickly with the season less than a week today. Yesterday, they announced that Jeff Locke would get the final spot in the starting rotation, with Vance Worley headed to the bullpen. Today, John Holdzkom was among the players the Pirates demoted to Indianapolis, giving the bullpen more or less its final shape.
Picking Locke over Worley feels like a pretty strange move to me, especially because Clint Hurdle went out of his way to talk about what a hard decision it was to make (he compared it to the decision to start Gerrit Cole over AJ Burnett in Game 5 of the NLDS). A hard decision would be a decision made on merit between two equally deserving candidates, but it’s awfully hard to view this decision that way. Worley was better than Locke last year and better than Locke this spring; the only reason to put him in the bullpen and Locke in the rotation is that the bullpen already has two left-handed arms (Watson, Bastardo), while the rotation only has one (Liriano). It’s difficult to get worked up over fifth starter decisions in March, as the Pirates have said that both guys will get their starts, but this just feels like it’s blatantly the wrong decision to me, and that makes me uneasy.
Holdzkom being demoted is something that I think we’ve mostly seen from a mile away. With Arquimedes Caminero earning his keep this spring and being out of options, that only left one bullpen spot for Holdzkom, Hughes, and Stolmy Pimentel. Holdzkom has three options left and even though his big league appearances last year were memorable, they only amounted to ten innings. Being optioned to Triple-A to start the season after his incredible resurgence sort of feels like putting a footnote on the “And then they lived happily ever after*” to the Holdzkom fairy tale, but the same sort of “This is March, Holdzkom will pitch plenty for the Pirates this year, it’s mostly important that the Pirates keep as much bullpen depth as they can, seriously, didn’t you learn anything by watching them give Bryan Morris away last year,” logic applies to this decision.
I’m getting stressed out over the fifth starter and bullpen spots being made based on options remaining and not talent: baseball season must be close.
* – Until they caught the prince with a kitchen girl
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