Spot Starter

As I watched the Sox slowly break open a lead against the Storefront Indian and reliever Todd Williams yesterday, wasting enough offensive opportunities in the process to make the 2 - 1 final score seem closer than it should have been (by touchdowns), I was contemplating the continued presence of Kason Gabbard in this spring's starting rotation. First, some stats:

Over four starts this March, Gabbard's pitched ten innings, giving up five hits, three earned runs and four walks, while striking out seven. By way of comparison, he pitched twice as many innings as a starter in 2006, giving up more than four times as many hits, about twice as many earned runs, more than triple the number of walks but only striking out five more. Extrapolating his current performance to the same amount of time as he started last year, Gabbard's already doing better than last year in almost all of these categories - as a starter.

As we all know, though, the Sox have an embarrassment of starting pitchers right now, so I have a couple of theories as to why Gabbard continues to start games:

1. Tito is using Spring Training to give Gabbard some major league experience when the games don't count before sending him back to Pawtucket for the year. Kason is 24, so keeping him in AAA for another year wouldn't seem to hurt his development at all. This theory seems like the most logical to me - Jon Lester would probably do the same thing right now if he wasn't rehabbing his arm - but it's also the least amount of pure speculative fun.
   
2. The Sox are pitching Gabbard against major league hitters because they're looking to dangle him as trade bait for a closer if one of the off-season acquisitions/closer by committee doesn't work out. The closer debate continues to fascinate me, especially since DC pointed out that the Sox may be the only team in the past 6 years that won a World Series with their Opening Day closer. If this theory turns out to be more than just a conspiracy pipe dream, I don't see it coming true until the trading deadline.
3. Gabbard is pitching some of Schilling's starts against AL East teams (like Baltimore) because of Schilling's policy of never tipping his hat in Spring Training. The MASN guys were all over Schilling for that idea, by the way, but I can see Schilling's point - if you've got a few pitches based on deception, why give your opposition any more face time than necessary?

Whatever the reason, I'd say that if we see Kason Gabbard in a Boston uniform this season, we're probably looking at a second coming of 2006.