Advice - too many starters, too few spots for 5/18/10

[jiggadb]

I'm in the awesome position of having too many quality starters up today (May 18th). Six starters, five positions. Who would you leave off?

Each of them has a favorable matchup. I'm inclined to bench Kuroda, but he's got the best matchup since Huston has such a miserable OPS against right handed pitchers (http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/sta ... order/true).

WWYD?

Chris Carpenter vs. Was (home)
Felix Hernandez vs. Oak (away)
Mat Latos vs. SF (home)
Zack Greinke vs. Bal (away)
David Price vs. Cle (home)
Hiroki Kuroda vs. Hou (home)

[djfoss73]

id say at first glance its latos or price...hernandez and carpenter are pretty much 100% worth starting whenever possible, especially at oak and vs was, greinke you gotta throw at baltimore, and while kuroda might be the obvious choice to sit you're right about houston. however id take a look at houston's last couple weeks--lance berkman and hunter pence at least are starting to hit, so be careful about assuming that the low OPS will continue there. price is a good W candidate with the rays offense, latos has been dominant 2 starts in a row (and is up against the same team he one-hit last time, and this time he's at home), and with houston starting to hit a little bit and kuroda's frequent control issues potentially adding some free runners id say thats the matchup that most strikes me as a dangerous one.

[jiggadb]

Thanks for the great analysis!

I left Price in, and so far, so good for him: 5IP, 4H, 2BB, 5 K, 0 ER.

I was hoping the KC/BAL game would get rained out so I could move Greinke, but that is looking increasingly unlikely.

Guess I'll stick with keeping Kuroda out for now. My only extra thought is that I don't like Greinke's win chances since he gets so little offense.

[jiggadb]

Final line: 33IP, 2 W, 27 K, 2.18 ERA, 1.24 WHIP.

Should have put Kuroda in for Hernandez, but who would have thought Hernandez was going to give up 13 H+BB to Oakland? In hindsight, Kuroda had a better chance of getting a W with the Dodgers offense backing him than Hernandez did with the Seattle offense backing him.