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Right now, the Philadelphia Phillies only have two reliable arms in their starting rotation, Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee. If the team is hoping to win games, then the rest of their rotation has to be able to be counted on, except we don’t know much about the one pitcher general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. seems to have a lot of confidence in.
His name is Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez and he is a Cuban native. His background is pitching for the Cuban National Team in their World Cup in both 2009 and 2011. During that time, Gonzalez had the opportunity to start six times. He won three games and lost one. His ERA turned out to be 2.91, which isn’t bad for six starts, and he had 36 strikeouts, which is always nice to see. It is almost 2014, so that is going to be three years ago. He only pitched a little bit in the past year and a half. How is he not going to be rusty? The Phillies are trusting for him to be an arm in the rotation. That seems all a bit too risky to me.
The front office barely knows anything about Gonzalez, and they are going to trust him to pitch every fifth day? No one really even knows what kind of pitches he can throw except what he said he can throw; Gonzalez said he can throw the usual fastball, changeup, and curveball. The surprise pitch Gonzalez can throw? A knuckleball. We probably won’t know until spring training if he can actually throw it, but if he can, it could be effective.
The Phillies signed Gonzalez for three years and $12 million dollars. He is only 26 years old, which is a prime age, but again, he hasn’t pitched in quite some time. Also, he is not used to pitching on a regular basis. Gonzalez is going to be rusty and is going to have to get used to the game. The Phillies need someone who is going to win games for them. Hopefully Gonzalez can be that guy and not be a waste of a contract. It will be interesting to see if this was too big of a risk to take.
Rebekah is a Philadelphia Phillies writer for www.Rantsports.com. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.
