Yirmiyahu wrote:

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Sure. But the Sox already having a ton of guys competing for those rotation spots (Bard, Aceves, Miller, Doubront, Wilson, Silva, Cook). Part of the appeal of signing a minor league deal with Boston is the fact that they can offer a legitimate shot to make the team/rotation out of spring training. At some point, the list is going to be so long that other teams are going to represent better opportunities.

I guess my point is that we're not going to be able to sign an infinite number of these non-roster invitees, and I wish some of them had at least a tiny bit of upside.

I understand the thinking here, but the only reason we're saying these guys don't have upside is because they don't have big velocity. Cook especially was an extremely valuable major league starter for a lot of years. What's more, he was one of the most consistent starters in baseball. He had an ERA+ of 113 or better six years in a row. Some of that is park-effect, but this is a guy who threw strikes down in the zone, avoided the home run, and kept teams in games. If we had the age 25-30 Aaron Cook on the team last year, we'd have been in the playoffs without a doubt.

And actually, if you talk to Rockies fans, they'll tell you that stuffwise, Cook is not a zero-upside type of guy at all -- he had stretches where his sinker was unhittable, and then he'd have Lackeyesque games where he couldn't get outs.

The problem is, the guy has been injured now three years in a row, twice going down with freak accidents (once getting a line-drive off his fibula, another time breaking his finger in a screen door). But this is exactly the sort of person you want at Pawtucket. You let him pitch in the minors for a while, and if he actually gets healthy and throwing back in the 89-90 range, you have a real major league starter who can beat good teams. If he never gets right again, what have you lost?

As for Silva, he's sucked a lot more often than Cook, but this is also a guy who's had major league success. Would you take a 5th starter who gives up 9 walks in 188 innings? If Felix Doubront puts up anything like one of Silva's years in the Twins rotation, or even if he puts up a line like Silva's last year with the Cubs (2010, when he went 10-6, had a 4.22 ERA, struck out 6.0 per nine innings, and had a 1.27 WHIP in 113 innings), we'd all be very pleased. Incidentally, Silva also looked pretty good in the Yankees' system last year, and in the last two years has been striking more people out, mainly because he's throwing his fastball less and throwing his slider and change more. Has he figured something out that will allow him to go from being a mediocre-to-bad starter to being an above-average major league innings eater? Who knows? But if it doesn't cost anything to find out, why not try? The only things you're losing are starts for Charlie Haeger and Doug Mathis at Pawtucket.