I see a potential problem with putting Myers back in the rotation. I can't think of a quality starter who switched from the rotation to the bullpen to the rotation all in one season. Both roles require different perpetration and both take different tolls on the arm. If Myers is going to start, he's going to need to spend a few weeks in the minors stretching out his arm. But what effect will that have on his arm? He's clearly been overthrowing the ball in relief, with his fastball in the 93-96 range after consistently sitting in the 90-92 range as a starter. Will he continue to overthrow as a starter? Will he end up on the shelf again in August?

The decision to move Myers to the bully has been debated over and over again. I don't think it was the right move at the time, and I still don't, but by trying to "fix it" now and put him back in the rotation, I think you risk doing more long term damage to his arm. Ease him back in, monitor his workload, and hope to get quality innings out of him for the last 3 months. In the offseason, move him back into the rotation.

As for the 5th spot in the rotation, I still think the best course of action is to use what you have from within, or possibly look to make a deal with a team that is out of the running come mid July.

This is something else, I wanted to write this in the last post, but didn't think about it until I hit submit.

Why not use the 5th spot in the rotation as a "bullpen game" in a sense? Half the guys in our bullpen never pitch anyway. On that day, start with Condrey for 3 innings, then let Yoel pitch 2 innings, throw Rosario out there for 2. At least it will give those guys regular game action.

Put Myers back in.

Some here will recall that I was one of the biggest proponents for trading Lieber in March, as well as one of the biggest defenders of moving Myers to the bullpen in April. I continue to stand by both of those positions.

But circumstances today are very different. The choice now isn't between Myers in the rotation plus Lieber in the bullpen vs. Lieber in the rotation plus Myers in the bullpen. It's Myers in the rotation plus some random guy at the back of the bullpen vs. Myers in the bullpen plus someone with no major league experience in the rotation.

The claim that Myers' arm will be strained by moving back and forth between starting and relieving strikes me as nothing more than wild speculation. We know that high pitch counts cause injuries because there have been studies on that subject. There have not been studies on whether injuries are caused by moving from the rotation to the bullpen or vice versa. People are frankly just making stuff up here. The reason why no one has moved around like this with success is that no one has ever really tried it. There is a sample size of approximately zero. There is no basis for drawing a conclusion either way.

I have an e-mail out. When I get the info, I'll share it.

I think it's kind of just common sense. The reason there is zero sample size is because of how ludicrous the idea really is. You never move a starter to a short reliever to a starter in the same season because of the adverse effect on the arm. Each role requires different preparation and adjustment. Once the arm is adjusted to a certain regiment, you can't just "undo" that and go back to something else.

As I said, I'll post the info when I get it. And if I'm wrong, I'll certainly admit it. However, I think if this little experiment that everyone seems to want does go through, we'll be sitting here lamenting the loss of Myers long term in 2 months.

As of now, I'm just not seeing it. Maybe I have no common sense.

It seems to me that it's common for pitchers to successfully transition from starting to relieving in the middle of a season. It seems to me that it's also common for pitchers to successfully transition from relieving to starting in the middle of a season. Obviously, both of these types of transitions have to be done according to certain procedures. New starters are stretched out gradually. New relievers appear in back-to-back games less frequently at first. But nevertheless, both are done fairly often.

So why can't a guy go through two transitions in the same year, as long as both transitions are done gradually? Is his arm going to lose elasticity, like one of those springs from high school physics class? Of course, if you transitioned a pitcher back and forth from starting to relieving without any adjustment periods in between, then that would be a problem. But that would be a problem even if he only made one transition in a season. The number of transitions seems irrelevant to me.

There's no point in debating it here. If I get anything back, I'll post it, but it won't matter anyway. Put Myers back in the rotation, and we can all complain about that decision when he goes under the knife in August. The bottom line is, you can't point to an example of a guy starting the season as a starting pitcher, being moved to short relief, and then being moved back to the starting rotation. Guys go in the bullpen as long men and mop up relievers, they pitch once a week, not 3 times in 4 days. It's a zero sample data set because no team is dumb enough to try. But that might change...

OK, I can't re-print the info I was given, sorry.

In short, a case like this is unprecedented. Guys have gone from starting to being a long man back to starting, but not in terms of short relief. The idea that Myers might be able to go back to the rotation because he only spent a month in relief is possible, but there are no comparisons to this because it hasn't happened.

I can't say more than that. I understand WHY people think moving Myers back is the right move. In the short term, it might be, but if it causes serious arm trouble, then what will people be saying? I've never been the biggest Brett Myers fan, but I think his arm is too important to mess with at this point. If this were his last year before free agency and you knew he was going to bolt, sure, take a risk if you don't care about the rest of his career. But we have two expensive years left on his deal, and he can be a positive value (a good bit of value) to this team, I'd hate to see that wasted for the sake of winning 5 more games.

I have no doubt Smoltz is right. But Smoltz didn't o from starter to closer to starter in 3 months.

Back in the olden days, starter closed a lot of games.  You can look it up.  Check out startig pitchers records up into the 60s.  You'll see pretty much all of them made a few appearances out of the pen every year.  I remember seeing Chris Short winning his 20th game (1966?) out of the pen.