Felix will stay on regular rest following off day
Apr 30, 2011, 1:47 PM
For your planning purposes Bedard, Pineda and Vargas will pitch in the series against the Rangers in that order. Then the rotation gets shuffled again because of the off day. Once again Felix will stay on regular rest and pitch the opener against the White Sox on Friday.
It seems like we have seen more juggling of the rotation so far this season than we have the past two years combined. I spoke to pitching coach Carl Willis about why he and Eric Wedge have elected to do this.
“There are a couple of main factors of the equation that you look at and that’s Felix and Pineda. Felix really likes to go on his regular day, we try the best we can to do that. We always have the option to give him the extra day when the off day allows us if he has thrown a lot of pitches in the previous start. With Michael any time we can utilize the off day to give him one or two extra days we will do that.”
Right now the tendency is to not do that too much because Willis likes the way Pineda has settled into his routine. As for Felix, for years he has complained about being over-strong after days off. It didn’t seem to affect him too much last year but it is in his head. For now he will pitch on regular rest.
“Next time through we will keep everyone in their turn and they will all have an extra days rest with with the exception of Felix. Fister will get two extra days off, Felix will jump in front of him.”
Willis went on to say that the extra days are more of a benefit than inconvenience.
“It is something we can use to our advantage going forward. I have played it forward to our next day off where Jason Vargas is the guy who gets a couple of extra days. All of them at some point and time can use that extra rest because it is a long season.”
News and notes…The Red Sox have made an adjustment to their rotation as they will send Tim Wakefield to the mound tomorrow instead of Clay Buchholz who I am told is a bit under the weather…David Aardsma threw 2/3s of an inning last night for the Rainiers allowing just one hit and striking out one…Jack Zduriencik is on this trip and has been very busy making stops to check out draft prospects before the games yesterday and today with Tom McNamara…
