If they are going with Happ, I wonder what finally got them to that point.  I know he has pitched pretty well this spring, but I’m thinking it might have more  to do more with long-term thinking where Happ is concerned.  I mean, we drafted him and brought him up through our system.  Since we have invested years in him, and he shows promise, I’m sure we’re looking to get a return on that with several years of production.

There is no long-term thinking when it comes to Park.  He was brought in on a one-year contract as a fall back option in case nobody we had was ready to take the 5th spot.  When you look at it that way, Park was in a tough spot all along.  Even though he has thrown well this spring, several things worked against him.  1) His injury history + 2) The fact that recently his role has been as a reliever, thus causing concern over whether he can go deep in games as a starter and consistently give us innings = 3) Concern that asking him to give us innings could lead to more injury problems.  Add all that in with the fact that he is at the back end of his career and is only here for one year and you can see that he had a pretty decent hill to climb.

Gotta figure Park will be very disappointed if he does not get the 5th spot.  Hopefully he will deal with it well and become a solid contributor out of the pen, just like Durbin did.

Now that the pitching appears to be falling into place, all that’s left is to see who, if anyone (Jenkins, Stairs, Kendrick), gets moved in a deal to get another right-handed bat for the bench before the season starts, which is one week from today!