San Diego Padres: Andy Green Explains Pitching Staff Shake Up

The San Diego Padres’ decision-makers knew that the situation would not fix itself, so they took to shaking up the team’s pitching staff with hopes of turning things around.

As we noted yesterday, the San Diego Padres made the decision to move Bryan Mitchell into a relief role with the team after his poor start to the season in the rotation (6.47 earned-run average in 32 innings this season).

In an article from Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune, Padres’ manager Andy Green spoke about the team’s decision to move Mitchell out of the rotation,

“Probably the best path to him being great as a starter with the Padres is to take a step back, go to the bullpen and dominate in a different role.”

That statement, even in its brevity, says a whole lot to this writer. We are all aware that Mitchell 1) wants to be a starting pitcher, as he’s made as much clear in the past and even in the days leading up to his demotion, and 2) that he has no minor-league options left.

At this point, Green has no choice but to speak about building Mitchell back into a starting pitcher through him excelling out of the bullpen.

That’s because the only other option for the team if he doesn’t show them something in his new role, would be to designate him for assignment.

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The Mitchell Conundrum

The San Diego Padres took on Chase Headley‘s overpriced, underperforming contract in exchange for a promising, yet streaky, Jabari Blash just to bring Mitchell on board.

To simply move on from him would not just leave a bad taste in the organization and the fans’ mouths, it would be admitting failure.

It’s not like the Padres were going to win a World Series this season, but using Blash as a trade chip in another, more effective deal could have made at least some difference.

Again to Acee, Green continued,

“The message to him was, ‘Earn it back’. It wasn’t, ‘You’re in the bullpen for the rest of your career with the San Diego Padres.’

It was, ‘Go out there and throw one good inning and go dominate that inning. Then after you dominate that inning, go dominate two innings. Go after this progressively and then you’ll feel like you have earned the right to be in this rotation.’…”

That seems like a really nice, hopefully, very motivating, way of saying, “shape up or ship out”.

San Diego Padres made another couple of moves

The team announced that Jordan Lyles will start on Thursday at home against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Lyles, 27, has a 3.66 earned-run average in 19.2 innings pitched this season with a sparkling 1.07 WHIP.  Hopefully, his success out of the bullpen translates into his first chance at starting this season.

The Padres also optioned Kasuhisa Makita (6.75 earned-run average in 16 innings with an almost-unbelievable 57 ERA+) to Triple-A El Paso and have recalled Matt Strahm, who pitched two innings in last night’s loss, allowing two hits, three bases-on-balls, and three earned runs.

Next: Padres Lose, But Wheels Keep Turning

Hopefully, he’ll show more of the promise that he exhibited for the San Diego Padres in Spring Training very soon.