If Millwood can stay healthy (hell, maybe by now he can’t anymore… I don’t know…) You’d be looking at Sheets (if he, too, can stay healthy), Padilla, Millwood, McCarthy, and Hurley/Feldman. If McCarthy gets his shit together this offseason, that’s should be a significant upgrade from this year.

It shouldn’t stop there though. This team needs bullpen help too…. starting with a situational lefty. Where are you, Ron Mahay!!!!!!!

You can only sign two Type A FAs in one offseason

I think that’s more a series of unfortunate events than a reflection on the training staff. Sheets could conceivably win a shitload of games in Texas based on the run support he could receive… although the defense leaves something to be desired. With the right moves, this team could be a playoff contender, which is attractive to free agents. You’re not talking about the Pirates or Nationals here. The team is a pretty close knit group, which is also a plus.

Has had great pitchers over the last 14 years and it is know as Hotlanta. Helling and Sele weren’t great pitchers but they some how pitched well here as did Rogers.

I think Millwood’s age and conditioning has more to do with his performance than anything else. The heat didn’t seem to bother Kenny Rigers.

it’s well documented he was lax in the offseason training before 2007 (to put it VERY nicely) and he’s getting long in the tooth. You can’t say no free agent pitcher is going to come here just because the hellish heat destroyed a pitcher on the backside of his career. Generally, the failure of Ranger pitching is related directly to talent, not to temperature or a stadium.

thats a pretty big obstacle.
some pitchers actually do suck. at least on the relative terms of major league baseball.

if we were just a league average pitching staff that didn’t have to start him out of necessity, mendoza would be so buried among prospects….

Although I think he should be in the bullpen, not the rotation.

But then again, who else are we gonna start up here? With Hurley and Millwood on the DL, we don’t really have any other options for the rotation at this point, unless you swap Mendoza for Nippert. Which sounds like a fun idea, but based on the Nippert I saw yesterday that’s not much of an improvement.

Isn’t the same sinker we saw in relief vs the Astros, and also another appearance….

Sometimes the sinker looks great, but in his last two really bad starts, I could see he was doomed because the sinker didn’t look like the same sinker at all.