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Saturday, June 19, 2004

Brenly Does Not Like Good Starting Pitching 

[Time-edited to reflect original posting time.]

Of course, the headline is misleading -- of course Bob Brenly wants good
starting pitching, he just doesn't want Andrew Good starting pitching.
Right-hander Good, who had been listed as tonight's starting pitcher, has
been replaced by rookie rightie Lance Cormier. But it does the reveal the
limitations of press coverage.

Now, I am aware that the press -- center, right, left, whatever -- has its
own biases, intentional or unintentional. That is because the press is
human and humans have biases, of course. And I understand that. That's why
I like the blogging community, because in addition to the professional
reporters we have 5 bloggers with different viewpoints on the D-Backs, plus
another blog at the minor league level. The viewpoints may end up
converging, but at least I'm getting news from maybe a half-dozen sources
instead of 1 or 2.

So I'm a little concerned about the quotation from Brenly in the Republic
this morning:

"I felt terrible because I promised Andy another start and he prepared for
it all week."

Are we to interpret from this that Brenly went back on his word? There is
only the barest of suggestion in the article that the decision had anything
to do with Jose Valverde being placed on the 15-day DL, that Cormier's start
is (from another article) "because he has been starting all year." This
seems to me like a flimsy basis for deciding that he should get the start
after Good was promised a second start.

I'm not saying that Cormier isn't worthy of starting -- he may or may not
be, and certainly had the best stats (traditional and otherwise) of the
Sidewinder staff. But I'm not sure that the article fully outlines Brenly's
thought-making process so we can decide for ourselves whether it was worthy.

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