The news out of the Dodgers’ camp is that their hot pitching prospect, Clayton Kershaw, has been really impressive so far this spring and has been promoted to the major league camp. This is great news, especially when you hear things like this from Matt Kemp:
I wish you could see a video of what I saw from center field. He throws that curveball so hard and it snaps 12 to six like you’ve never seen.
Joe Torre says the plan right now is for Kershaw to not be in the rotation to start the season, but he left the door open for the kid to pitch his way into it. I understand the concept of not “rushing” a young player, but if he’s good enough to have the Dodger major leaguers “raving” about his stuff, why not put him out there? It seems like slotting him into the five slot in the rotation is the perfect way to break him into the bigs. Not much pressure, and you can have another arm (Loaiza?) ready to take his turn and thus skip a few starts, preventing overwork early in his career. A rotation of:
- Penny
- Lowe
- Billingsley
- Kuroda
- Kershaw
looks pretty good to go along withe the Dodgers’ core of young hitters. That way you can write Schmidt off as the bad investment that it was, and stop worrying about whether he can come back or not.
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