I think you have too much faith in Lester at 34 now, to continue being that no.1 guy...
Quintana and Hendricks are still question marks on what were gonna get from them...
I dont want to just be good enough to contend for a division and like last year have to look to add someone at the deadline to help do that...
I wanna see them add Darvish or another TOR type starter now and start the season being good enough to win the World Series....
I both agree and disagree.
I agree that, without a TOR starter to fill the Arrieta void, we do not have as dominant a starting pitching staff as we have had in the past few years. And face it, guys, we've been doing it with pitching. The offense has been nice but inconsistent. Those WS rings are from the pitching staff more than anything else.
But -- you can say *any* pitcher out there is a question mark before the season starts. Kershaw? Bad back, you never know how many starts he'll take, or whether he'll be healthy for the post-season. Scherzer? Been on the DL several times the past two seasons. Same with Strasburg. Matt Harvey went from Dark Knight to Bad Joke in less than half a season. Chapman is getting hit pretty hard these days, 103 mph or not....
Darvish is not a perfect answer.
No one is. Unless you've got a working time machine or crystal ball, you cannot predict what will happen in the upcoming season. And injuries play a big part of that.
So, maybe Lester gets a tick more mediocre this coming year, as SABREmetrics would predict. But they also predict Quintana will start into his most productive years, as will Hendricks. Maybe Morrow can't close? Then perhaps, again as SABREmetrics would predict, it's the right time for CJ to break through to his highest performance levels.
Maybe we end up picking up lance Lynn, because Cobb, Arrieta and Darvish all sign with other teams 1-2-3, and Lynn puts in a fluke Arrieta-type year and we ride *him* as the TOR donkey that gets us back to the WS.
Maybe the agents call a strike over no one paying 32-year-old pitchers $30 million a year until they turn 40, and we don't play *any* baseball in 2018 over a strike that turns into a lock-out that turns into a Supreme Court challenge to the anti-trust exemption. Such a Spring Training strike could well drive such a thing.
So, yeah -- best thing that could happen would be that the Big Three pitchers will all sign for 4- and 5-year deals, we get things moving along, and the agents cancel their orders for their 12th through 18th yachts. In other words, maybe some sense will prevail....
But -- don't hold your breath.