Fixing The Rotation With Brandon McCarthy

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Here ya go, Mr. Friedman, start building a rotation that already includes 3 top 30 starters, one of which is the best starter in the game, another that owns the best pitched season of the century thus far, and the other one that is about as good as Madison Bumgarner, and just as cheap. It’s safe to say that Friedman stepped into one of the best jobs available at this point in terms of starting pitching. I mean as much dung as I gave Dan Haren, he’s been good for some stretches. But despite all of this, there are problems the Zach Lee regression, the Matt Magill implosion, the Stephen Fife injury, the Ross Stripling injury, the Red Patterson awfullness, the failed trades of Kevin Correia and Roberto Hernandez, plus the fact that Dan Haren is a good 5th starter, and a less good 4th starter.

There should be an upgrade there needs to be an upgrade, that upgrade should be Brandon McCarthy

Given the news that Mark Saxon sent out regarding the pursuit, or lack thereof of top arms such as James Shields or Max Scherzer proving that the team really values it’s first round picks. Judging by the Saxon post i’d bank on the Dodgers not seriously pursuing Jon Lester only because of the fact that Lester could easily see Greinke type money because he doesn’t have a qualifying offer attached to him, that and it seems that the Dodgers are pretty open to cutting payroll leads me to think that Lester is going to be a bit too expensive for the Dodgers (that sentence…).

You don’t want Justin Masterson on a “rebuild value deal”, you don’t want to pay Brett Anderson to get hurt, you don’t want to count on Chad Billingsley considering he hasn’t thrown a where we didn’t think he was just going to blow since just after Adrian Gonzalez became a Dodger, you don’t want Chris Capuano/Aaron Harang part deux. I mean just take a look at the options. The list of above average starters that are strong bets to provide sure value to a team are essentially James Shields, Jon Lester, Max Scherzer, and Brandon McCarthy (and even then McCarthy’s health is iffy).

So one look at McCarthy’s free agent profile gives us a pretty good idea of what he’ll cost (here’s one from pinstripe alley), he’s a starter with a strong xFIP for what it’s worth of 2.87, he’s had trouble with run prevention the past couple of season that could have something to do with the ballpark he played in (Chase Field is really quite annoying), he reached 200 innings for the first time in his career, and is a good back end starter at worst, and a high end mid rotation starter at his best.

Not considering the trade options, which is something that will surely be explored, it’s pretty clear that Brandon McCarthy fits the team needs this offseason, he’s a groundball pitcher who doesn’t walk anybody and has experienced the highest strikeout rate of his career this past offseason. Take into account that he’s probably the best current MLB player who’s active on twitter, i’d say that McCarthy is a strong candidate to be pitching at Dodger stadium next season. Anywhere from a 3-4 year deal falling in the 36-60 million dollar range would be worthwhile gamble considering that the team is so dead set on not losing draft picks.