Before the game on Friday against the Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price was asked about Jason Marquis starting on Monday and he had something rather interesting to say:
“I’d probably hold off on answering that question,” Price said. “We have to look at a lot of different things when making a decision. We’re dealing with a veteran player.
Disregarding the strange “we’re dealing with a veteran player” part for now, which is a bit mind numbing, Price went on to talk about how a decision that would be made would have input from Jeff Pico and Walt Jocketty as well. Combine all of it and you can read it a bunch of ways.
Michael Lorenzen has his spot in the rotation locked up for now, according to Price. That leaves two options to step in for Jason Marquis: Raisel Iglesias and Jon Moscot. Iglesias has the built in advantage that he’s already on the roster. You could just flip the roles for Iglesias and Marquis and call it a day. The other option would be to call up Jon Moscot and place him in the rotation – he pitches on the same day as Marquis does – and move Marquis to the bullpen or designate him for assignment.
At first thought, flipping Marquis and Iglesias would seem like the move, but if that were the case, couldn’t Bryan Price just make the move himself without all of the input from Walt Jocketty and Jeff Pico? Obviously he would talk with them about the move, but if that’s the one he wanted to make, couldn’t he have been a little more open about it? That leads me to believe that perhaps he wants Moscot up to take over the spot. That would require Walt Jocketty to step in and make a roster move. It would likely require Walt Jocketty to talk to the owner and say “my bad, but we need you to eat this money on his contract”.
It’s also more likely at this point that Moscot would provide an upgrade to Iglesias. Moscot is ready to handle a full season workload. He’s ready to throw 100 pitches every game. And perhaps more importantly, he outperformed Iglesias when both guys were in Triple-A.
Through seven starts the right handed Pepperdine product has thrown 43.2 innings with a 2.06 ERA, two home runs allowed, just 14 walks and he’s struck out 29 batters. His strikeout rate is down from the past few seasons, but his groundball rate is up. In 2014 his groundball rate was just 38%. This season it’s sitting at 43% and it’s been even better in May.
Perhaps the team will stick with Marquis or go with Iglesias. But the best option may be Moscot who can provide a full season of innings (which Iglesias can’t do), very likely keep you in games (which Marquis hasn’t been able to do) and he’s been showing improvements in generating groundballs this season. The team would still control him for six seasons beyond this point if they were to bring him up, so there is no reason to worry about his service time. He would make the league minimum, so other than eating the money elsewhere on the roster, that’s not a concern.
We will find out on Monday, if not sooner, what the Reds will do when it comes to making a move. The smart choice seems to be on bringing up Moscot for all kinds of different reasons, but that may not happen as soon as some of us would like.