Detweiler is a step up over Vasquez.

Duke looked excellent out of the pen in September for the team. 2 runs in 13 2/3 innings. Small sample size yes, but they’re not asking him to make 33 starts in 2013. They’re asking him to do mop-up duty. You don’t need a stud as your 7th man out of the bullpen.

Yes; ERA+ in this day and age is a very standard statistic to use to neutralize ERA and get a quick gauge of a pitcher. If you don’t like ERA+, then tell me a statistic that shows how for some reason Detwiler was not an effective starter in the Major Leagues last year.

I’m glad scouts are raving about Vazquez. It sounds to me like he’s “winning” the off-season. The talent level in the Puerto Rican winter league is AAA at best; our own Yunesky Maya destroyed a winter league two off-seasons ago and he is barely adequate in AAA. You show an amazing amount of trust in a guy who just up and quit the game, who hasn’t pitched against major leaguers in a year, and who was slightly better than league average in 2011 but god-awful in 2010. I guess we’ll see.

This is entirely a moot argument, by the way, since some team out there besides the Nats is almost certain to give him a MLB contract while the reporting seems to indicate that the Nats won’t give him anything else besides a minor league deal with an out. He’ll get his shot presumably pitching for some last place team with dire rotation needs (Cleveland? Colorado? Miami? Houston?) and then we’ll see how effective he really is.

Here’s a question; how come the Yankees aren’t all-in on him, if he’s looking so good? Aren’t the Yankees in a pretty precarious situation from the starting pitching stand point? You’ve got Sabathia coming off injury, you’ve got two guys either 40 or nearing it, you’ve got a guy coming off major arm surgery in Pineda and youv’e got a couple of inconsistent younger arms. Why aren’t the yankees full in on Vazquez? Oh i remember; because he was worse than useless for them in 2010. How do you reconcile his performance in NY in 2010 versus your stellar opinion of him now? You think he’s magically become the 2nd coming of Roger Clemens after taking a year off of pitching professionally?

Plus, the off-season isn’t over yet. The team has signed a number of lefty relievers to minor league deals, which is exactly what they did with Michael Gonzalez last season and he pitched very effectively for us as well. You don’t need to spend millions of dollars on a matchup lefty; you just need to find the hot arm.

Putting Detwiler in the bullpen would be a ridiculous waste of the potential he showed last year, just to adhere to some old-fashioned notion that you HAVE TO HAVE another lefty in the bullpen.

Your inability to recognize well-worn statistics and mathematical evidence when you make your arguments really hurts your credibility.

Just for reference, here’s your initial ridiculous argument for this, and the subsequent one. In the first section, your “proof” is an opinion from “scanning the box scores” of Detwiler’s starts to arrive at an opinion that he’s a 5-inning pitcher. He also mentions Detwiler’s ERA at AAA in 2011. I dunno; I;m pretty sure I’d trust MLB numbers in 2012 versus AAA numbers in 2011 as “proof” that Detwiler was an effective starter.

Just a couple of “statistics” on this issue. I know statistics are a tough concept for you to use when stating an opinion about things. In 27 starts last year Detwiler threw 151 innings, for an average of 5.59 Innings/start. Jackson, the “known innings eater” in your parlance, threw 189 2/3 innings in 31 starts for 6.11 innings/start. The difference on average between someone who throws 6.11 and 5.59 innings per stat is .52 of an inning, or exactly between 1 and 2 more outs per outing.

I love how one or two more outs per outing is the difference between “weak 5 inning pitcher” and “innings eater.”

In the latter article, you lists a bunch of pitchers that you “think are better” than Detwiler. I love how your “proof” involves your opinion on “how good” a pitcher is, versus something concrete and quantitative. Like a statistic. Like a statistic that most other recognized baseball pundits use rather often as a nice gauge of how a pitcher fares compared to the rest of the league on a year to year basis, park and league adjusted (the ERA+ figure). You list Lincecum as being “better” than Detwiler; well not in 2012 he wasn’t. In fact, Lincecum was pretty much the worst (or close to it) pitcher statistically in every category in 2012. All things being equal, if you only knew of 2012’s performance for those two guys nobody would prefer Lincecum to Detwiler in 2013.

Maybe that’s the rub. Maybe you just doesn’t believe that 2012 was a season indicative of what Detwiler is capable of. I wasn’t for a long time. However i’m a believer now; he finally got a chance, he finally was given an entire major league season to show what he can do, and he delivered.

I believe that what a player did last year (if there wasn’t some other alternative reason for doing so, like an injury) is a pretty good indicator of what he’s going to do this season. Morse hit 30 homers in 2011; I can’t see why he isn’t capable of repeating that feat again if he stays healthy. If you think Lincecum’s 2012 was just an aberration and that he’s going to return to his Cy Young form in 2013 like nothing happened … well, that’s one way to go.