Where is Homer's Fastball?

[M2]

Bailey's become the poster boy for why you shouldn't rush pitchers. He doesn't have the stuff right now to do the job and that's been obviously throughout 2007 and 2008.

My take is the kid threw so many curves in youth that his arm is in shock. He always relied on that pitch even when he was in high school. Now his heater is losing velocity and lacks movement and he can't snap the curve as well as he used to. That's what happens when you abuse a growing body. The minor league annals are full of kids who came in throwing smoke at 18, but lost that ability in their 20s.

Perhaps Bailey can still be a good pitcher, but the Reds need to stop treating him like a phenom. He is not a phenom. That's not going to happen. The real question is whether he can be a good pitcher in two, three, maybe four years. That would mean the Reds need to send him to the minors and not call him up again until roughly 2010. Give him time to recover some of what he's lost or at least learn to work with what he's got.

I doubt they have that sort of patience, which means they'll probably trade him and Bailey will get to prove himself a stop or three down the line.

[Sea Ray]

I don't know M2, Bailey's rep wasn't that he was throwing a lot of curveballs, it was that he had so much success blowing people away with his FB that he didn't throw other pitches enough to develop them. I don't have a good answer for why he's lost velocity. It's either an injury or a mechanical thing. I do know the majors is not the place for a pitcher who's throwing like he is

[REDREAD]

Bailey's become the poster boy for why you shouldn't rush pitchers. He doesn't have the stuff right now to do the job and that's been obviously throughout 2007 and 2008.

Yes, you made a very compelling arguement about this when they called Bailey up. Good call.

The sad thing is that there really wasn't a "need" to rush him. Belisle could've been called back up to fill in for Fogg. IMO, this was a mistake by Walt.
Someone else brought up the point that maybe Walt has already decided Homer is as good as he's going to get. After some further thought, what would it hurt Homer to just spend this year and next in AAA, and then re-evaluated him. His recent AAA numbers made it pretty clear that he wasn't going to do that well at the ML level..

If nothing else, we've reminded all the other teams how the former #1 pitching prospect has slipped. At worse, we are damaging him every time we run him out there.

I really don't think Homer learned much from that beating he took last night.

I doubt they have that sort of patience, which means they'll probably trade him and Bailey will get to prove himself a stop or three down the line.

And they trade him for pennies on the dollar for what he could've been worth in 2005-2006.