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McCarthy..is he really "insurance" for Duque et al


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A lot of sporttalk around town has assumed that McCarthy is some sort of automatic insurance policy for Duque should he go down to injury. I'm not so sure. I'm not convinced that one 5 1/3 start at Wrigley in which he didn't really get touched up is a good barometer...especially when in his next outing he got pretty roughed up by Texas.

 

Admittedly, I didn't see the Texas game...but aren't some people being a little overly optimistic as to what he can do at this level?

 

If Duque goes down again (a probable thing with his injury history) and McCarthy gets called up and maybe roughed up again...where do we go from there?

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QUOTE(Hideaway Lights @ Jun 9, 2005 -> 09:26 AM)
A lot of sporttalk around town has assumed that McCarthy is some sort of automatic insurance policy for Duque should he go down to injury. I'm not so sure. I'm not convinced that one 5 1/3 start at Wrigley in which he didn't really get touched up is a good barometer...especially when in his next outing he got pretty roughed up by Texas.

 

Admittedly, I didn't see the Texas game...but aren't some people being a little overly optimistic as to what he can do at this level?

 

If Duque goes down again (a probable thing with his injury history) and McCarthy gets called up and maybe roughed up again...where do we go from there?

 

We do exactly what we've been doing...we give BMac another shot until El Duque comes back.

 

BMac is right now by far the best pitcher in the high levels of our organization...maybe the best pitching prospect in our organization (I'll leave it to the futuresox folks to debate him vs. Gio).

 

The reality is, he's shown that he can get big league hitters out. He dominated during spring training, and he wasn't that bad against the Cubs. Almost every pitcher is going to have some growing pains - look at Ervin Santana, he was terrible in his first start against Cleveland and lights out against us in his next start.

 

I don't think I'm being optimistic when I say that i don't expect BMac to come in and win the Cy Young award this year. I expect BMac to be able to come in to replace an injured starter and give us 5 or 6 innings without giving up 10 runs.

 

If he comes up, his job is to make sure the Bullpen doesn't end up pitching the entire game, like it had to do several times last year when Schoenweis went down and the rookies we brought up were being pulled after 2 innings.

 

I think that in his first year he can give us a chance to win in 50% of his starts. He has good enough stuff for that. The others, especially if he has to face a good offensive team...yeah he'll get roughed around occasionally. But as long as our bullpen doesn't have to work 8 innings every 5th day, I consider him a valid solution.

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Plus, during Spring Training there was really only one team that gave BMac problems, and that was Texas. I thought it was unfair that the Sox ran bmac out against a team as hot as Texas, but what are you gonna do? Those guys can hit anything.

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