Last night, I participated in a chat over at New England Sports Country. Here are some questions I answered…
“Why isn’t Devern Hansack in the equation for #5”? His #’s are worthy . . . in AA and Boston 2006, and AAA 2007 (his 3.61ERA. 1.19WHIP, 131SO in 139.2IP was better #’s than Pauley, Lester, Breslow, Martinez, Hansen, Zink, MDC, Lopez, Timlin; and in with Gabbard, Corey, Buckholz.), and Winter League 2007. In 2+ years, his only bad was a 3G, 7.2IP in Boston last year with a 4.7ERA, which isn’t horrible for a rookie. Why is he so far off the radar? Gerry_T
Well, first off, I think that Gerry would agree that Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz are better pitchers than Hansack. Lester has won a deciding World Series game and Buchholz threw a no-hitter in his second ever start. Lester is handed a spot mostly because he’s left-handed, but Buchholz is in the mix for the five spot along with Julian Tavarez and Kyle Snyder. The problem here is merely numbers. Even if Hansack was to blow everyone away and not have the competition be close, where would his roster spot come from? There’s already issues if David Aardsma makes the team. Someone will have to go. Ditto Hansack. Since Hansack is 29, has an option year left and doesn’t have as big a ceiling as Lester and Buchholz, it’s easy to see why he’s not being considered. It’s mostly from a numbers standpoint here, which is also why I feel there is a chance Clay is sent to AAA, because he has an option left. I do expect Hansack to be the first option up for injury replacements, however.
Evan, it was posted on mvn.com that “Manny is a hitting machine. He
