4 of his starts have been against probable playoff teams. I can guarantee those teams took him serious. In addition, he has now faced Oakland twice so they should have knowledge of him.
You may want to adjust your expectations for Max Stassi (who has a .568 OPS over the last 10 games). You can't let one great month get you too excited. Jason Castro is a catcher with an OPS over .800 as the only consistent offensive threat the team has and was a legit all-star.
He was this year in the minors though. I certainly think he has the ability, but he's been pitching to contact. Very similar to what Bud Norris was doing this year, except Cosart has better velocity, and has done an amazing job keeping the ball low.
He's a catcher...he's not a great catcher by any stretch. There are times I'm not sure he isn't playing out of position. What Cosart has done in a limited sample size is already more impressive to me than the entire body of work I've seen from Castro. Just my opinion. Difficult to grade pitchers vs. catchers, though.
I think we are realizing how spoiled we were with Ausmus. In 2006, in 138 games he had ONE passed ball and he was catching guys with amazing stuff (Clemens, Lidge, Oswalt).
I was thinking the same thing too recently. Ausmus spoiled me with where he set up behind the plate and how he framed the catch for the umpire. Just perfect.
And now Castro is spoiling us with his hitting ability though which is weird since he is our only complete hitter. Can't wait to see Castro with some talent around him and guys with some ability to work some walks. Castro will be an absolute luxury even if he provides mediocre defense. Looking forward to having above average offense and defense at CF, SS, and C someday.
The talent is real..... He does not get as many K's as one would like, but teams are having a really hard time squaring up on him. Having said that, he is throwing way too many pitches and his walk to strikeout ratio is simply not sustainable. If he can improve his command and control he can be very effective. He reminds me of Daryl Kile early in his career.
Teams will learn to be more patient against him, get him into deeper counts so they can dictate what he throws, get his pitch count up and make him walk people...... but there is no adjusting to the late movement he has on his pitches, players just don't typically get good solid contact on him.
Do you think Oswalt was in the same tier as Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez? 2nd tier aces absolutely get Cy Young votes (lots of non-aces have received Cy Young votes). They rarely win Cy Youngs. Every voter gets 5 votes for each league. Meaning at a minimum 10 different guys will receive Cy Young Votes. A 2nd tier ace is still a legitimate ace. Roy Oswalt had 4 first place votes in his entire career and a total of 75 points.
Shane Reynolds was a non-ace (He has received a Cy Young Vote). Bud Norris isn't an ace. Wandy Rodriguez isn't an ace. These guys might have been the staff ace, but weren't regarded as aces.
If your criteria for first tier ace is "future HOFer", then I think everyone is in agreement. Roy O was in a tier similar to Roy Halladay, Johan Santana, and Bartolo Colon, or a more recent Cliff Lee. All guys who were unquestioned staff aces (doesn't really matter to me that they happened to win Cy Youngs too). He finished in the top 5 in the Cy Young award 5 times in a 6 year span -- that's the equivalent of a top 1/3rd #1 starter for half a decade. The thing that prevented Roy from being in the next tier of greats is sustained greatness into his 30s. When he fell off, he fell off quickly, unlike a guy like Halladay.
Perhaps the discussion would be more clear if, instead of using the terms "ace" and "2nd tier ace", people just used "HOF-type Ace" vs "ace". I think y'all are just argung semantics over a term juicy essentially made up to describe Oswalt in comparison to the superstar types.
Roy never had those amazing years some other guys had either (which is why he didn't win a Cy Young). I'd definitely consider Oswalt comparable to Lee. I'd say Roy was a top 5 pitcher in baseball at his best. Though there are 30 staff aces in baseball, maybe 10-15 guys are typically considered league aces. A guy I think belongs in the HOF that I'd compare to Oswalt is Mike Mussina. A guy that won a Cy Young: Brandon Webb. Anyway, my comments were meant to be that I see Cosart as capable of being a great pitcher, but not being the best in the business so to speak.
