Unfortunately this has become a thing... we literally ran out of relievers. Pitch counts in the last 2 days: Guduan (irrelevant - see relevant thread) Rodgers 63 (and irrelevant - see relevant thread) Harris 9 Pressly 25 Osuna 25 Rondon 24 James 35 Devenski 46 Valdez was our one long relief guy, but is now a starter. AAA has given up 35 runs in the last 3 games, 43 in the last 4, so slim pickings there outside of Urquidy, who's not quite ready. Ok, so we have Harris available for this weekend... who is our long relief guy? How long will Pressly's and Osuna's regression last? Who is our best bet in the minors? Yes, it'll all work out, but fun to speculate what's going through the FO's minds right now. ps Last night's game was such an epic failure in relief, it was comical. Add in the Keystone Cops routine in the outfield w/ Jake and Uncle Mike, and even Verlander had to smile about it, which was good to see given the total team effort in butchering his win. And yet they still won, just insane.
Monday and Thursday off (after hopefully feasting on Baltimore) come at a really good time. Game plan would be to give Cole a 10 spot tonight, have him go an easy 7 and then Perez clean up the last 2. Good performance from him tonight and a couple laughers against Baltimore would be a good prescription to reset things.
Reliever availability: Fri/Sun: Perez, Harris, Osuna Sat: Devenski, James, Rondon, Pressly Perez can go as many innings as needed tonight. If they need more than 3 relievers Sunday they will run James or Devenski out there to probably get hurt. They have Monday off so everybody should be fresh by Tuesday. Not too worried about Pressly and Osuna yet.