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Giants Looking for a Friday Starter?

From Baggs:

The other impact (of the rain delay): The Giants won't have a fully rested starter for Friday's homestand opener against the San Diego Padres. They could try a bullpen game or they could make a roster move. They'll likely have a better idea after they see how the pitching goes the rest of this road trip.

Lincecum on short rest! Who's with me?

It seems like a roster move would be a good idea, except the Giants are perilously low on pitchers with starting experience on the 40-man roster, especially with Eric Surkamp and Dan Runzler on the DL. So if they make a roster move, it would be to get a bullpen arm like Steve Edelfsen up, but what would be the corresponding move? Probably to send Dan Otero down, which makes it all a moot point.

If they want to add someone to the 40-man -- like Travis Blackley, who apparently figured out how to throw strikes back in Australia -- it'd be pretty easy to make room by switching Brian Wilson to the 60-day DL. And Blackley is interesting to me:

Year Age Tm ERA IP HR BB SO
2007 24 Fresno 4.66 162.1 21 68 121
2008 25 Lehigh Valley 5.41 123.0 15 59 87
2009 26 Reno 4.85 111.1 11 38 101
2010 27 4 Teams 4.61 52.2 4 34 45
2012 29 Fresno 0.55 16.1 1 2 14
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 4/22/2012.


Don't pay attention to the ERA in Reno, a place that plays like a drunk, angry Coors Field. It looks like Blackley figured out something with his control that year before losing his notes the next year. It sure would be awesome if he could vogelsong his way back to being an interesting pitcher. Small sample size and all, but I trust the Giants to find interesting arms, and they saw something they liked about Blackley in the Aussie League.