How many starters do you need? It completely depends. Teams have made deep runs with two quality starters and others have used four or five. In a perfect world you would have four. That allows you to win your first two Regional games, lose your first coming out of the winners bracket and win the deciding game with your fourth starter. If you lose one of your first two games then you can throw your four to get to the deciding game then either bring back your ace on short rest or use a lot of bullpen guys for 2, 3 or 4 innings.

Right now we have two great guys in Rasmussen and Cole, No issues there, After that we have questions, but I’m not worrying. Brooks is done IMO. His mechanics are such a mess that I can’t see him putting them together. His fastball can’t reach the 90’s and he has no idea where his pitches are going. Savage still thinks he can put it together and work his way back to a starter’s role, but I’m taking the approach that anything we get out of him is a bonus. Brewer had a rough opening start control-wise, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed. He only allowed one run and was pulled early. He had a good three inning relief appearance on Wednesday and looked fine today before errors behind him did him in. Grace hasn’t been outstanding, but he’s been solid as a midweek guy. I think Garret Claypool will get a chance as a starter (a move I wish would be made) and both Drummond and Klein are supposed to be over their shoulder woes in the next week or two.

I think one reason we’ve seen our starters besides Rasmussen and Cole not go deep into games is that Savage has so much confidence in his bullpen that the starters aren’t getting much leeway. Bauer has been throwing big innings, but he’s really a starter spending a year in the bullpen. Savage doesn’t really condition guys to be one inning relievers like is so common in MLB (few college coaches do) so most guys in our bullpen are conditioned to go multiple innings.

One thing to keep in mind is how early in the year it is. We’re still a couple weeks away from conference play and while we have some issues to work out, we’re still working in a lot of new guys. We’re starting a freshman behind the plate sometimes, a freshman is our closer, our second baseman never started regularly before and our shortstop is starting regularly for the first time so we have some learning to do. The Pac 10 is down this year so we won’t have to be great to win the conference either. I’m not concerned one bit about our pitching. If we could get solid defense and learn how to accomplish the little things at the plate we’ll go a long ways in the tournament. People keep telling me that Vanderhook did a lot of revamping with the players’ approach to hitting and it won’t click with our guys until midseason so I’m going to be patient for now. For now, I just want to see our defense improve.