Didn't really want to post this after the Aki news, but otherwise it'll become out of date, I quickly touch on two subjects after the break.
Carl Crawford slumping? While his BA has swayed below .250, Crawford is notorious for increasing his numbers heading into May, a career April BA of .266 is .02 points lower than his career May BA. Sitting at a line of .247/.318/.455 I'm encouraged by the numbers, obviously the batting average is a little on the low side, but as I stated I think he'll pick that slack up, his OBP is .071 points higher than his BA, which is phenomenal for C.C., in fact last year's .043 point difference was the highest of his career. Finally his slugging is only .027 points lower than his career high, so while Crawford hasn't been getting an extremely high amount of hits he has been showing that power potential, and with three homers through 19 games I wouldn't put a potential 30 homerun season past Carl this year.
The other point I had to make was this; I think myself, amongst others, have been thinking about this rotation situation the wrong way. I believe I've stated before the plan in my mind was let Fossum and Seo absorb as much interest as possible and trade them in June while allowing two of the Durham starters to join in. Well, I've changed that line of thinking. Depending on Edwin Jackson's performance, and let's optimistically assume he'll stick, I think we're going to need three new starters by the end of the summer to go along with Kazmir and Jackson. What about James Shields? Well the bullpen needs some help (what else is new for us and 24 other teams) and to me, Shields would be a great option for relief. He's got two decent pitches and one really good change, and where has his problems as a starter laid? When he gets to the 50-75 pitch mark, sure he's had some issues with the first 25 pitches, but really that's when James falls apart and thus far this year out of his 14 ER, 11 have came in the 6th / 7th inning, when he's well into the, you guessed it, 50-75 pitch mark. Moving Shields to a relief role would solve his issues as well as ours nearly instantly, and who knows, perhaps he becomes a very fine set up man, or `gasp', closer.