Bartolo

Now that Ervin has been sent to AAA where he will hopefully work his issues out, Bartolo will be trying to avoid the same fate. Is he really in danger of losing his spot to Moseley? Moses has struggled recently, his ERA "exploding" from 2.36 to 3.47 since July 6th, and has not done much work as a starter this year. Thus, he is less likely to be thrown right into the rotation. But, what about everybody's favorite 27 year old, left-handed starting pitching prospect, Jonathan Rouwenhorst? Statistics:

AAA Salt Lake
ERA||W-L||IP||K||BB||HR||WHIP
4.88|9-4|97.2|53|27||12||1.54

First of all, it should be considered that these stats are from the home run happy PCL. Second, try removing his starts on June 5th and July 14th. His numbers look like this:

ERA||W-L||IP||K||BB||HR||WHIP
3.94|9-2|89.0|45|26||09||1.35

Now, Bartolo's stats.

Through May 17th
ERA||W-L||IP||K||BB||HR||WHIP
3.69|5-0|39.0|26|07||04||1.18

Since May 17th
ERA||W-L||IP||K||BB||HR||WHIP
8.67|1-5|45.2|40|19||11||2.01

Bart's stats become terrible as he throws more pitches, eventually reaching an 8.44 ERA, 1.88 WHIP, and .391 AVG against in the 76-90 pitch range.

With no runners on and no outs, Bartolo has an AVG against of .337. So one third of the time the leadoff batter gets a hit? I wonder how that could be a problem.

One final note, as I wrote this Rouwenhorst pitched rather poorly and his ERA rose to a little over 5.00. That's only 3 really bad starts though, I think he deserves to be called up and given a chance to take Bartolo's place.