A Call to Arms

Written by: Brandon Wahl on 18th March 2009

A Call to Arms | read this item

They called upon Jason Schmidt, who could not answer the bell. They gazed to Eric Milton, who got looked up by the Colorado Rockies on Sunday. They turned to Claudio Vargas who did the unthinkable. Shawn Estes has been outright awful. Poor Eric Stults can’t seem to put the pieces together. And now it comes out that the bright spot in last year’s NLCS loss to the Phillies might not even make the team. From Tony Jackson…

Then, this morning, Joe talked about McDonald, although it was tough to discern from what he said whether James has a good chance or not much chance at all.
“I’m not saying he will be our number-five starter, but first off, the kid has to make the club,” Torre said. “Am I questioning his ability? No. But the thing I have to answer is, will he get enough work here to have it make sense?”

The above quote from Joe Torre can be taken two ways- either he is trying to light a fire under the rear end of James McDonald, or he’s crying for the Dodgers to sign Pedro Martinez. In fact, a recent quote from Torre makes it seem he’d welcome Martinez to the team…

“He’s a tough competitor, the best at one time in this game,” Torre said. “He may not have the velocity he had, but he has the know-how. He certainly throws hard enough to keep hitters off balance. I share Ned’s comment about curiosity, his experience and the fact that he’s been a winner and started in the organization.”

Look at the names mentioned above again. Jason Schmidt. Eric Milton. Claudio Vargas. Shawn Estes. Now look at this one- Pedro Martinez. There are a 5.5 million reasons (that have been covered elsewhere, I’m too lazy) not to sign Pedro Martinez, but there are 4 reasons above that make his signing a no-brainer.

As early as six days ago I was opposed to bringing Pedro Martinez back to Los Angeles. It’s not panic time yet; however, if the starting rotation contenders don’t turn it around soon it might be time to roll the dice. Besides, we need someone to keep this guy happy.

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