And you kinda need to be one or the other out of the pen. As you say Doc, he starts off a bit wild, overthrows a little, searches for the feel on his curve... and all of a sudden there are two guys on and we're sweating another white-knuckle close.
If that's the first inning... well heck, Felix does that all the time. If you're gonna get to Felix you have to do it in the first 2 innings otherwise he'll destroy you once he finds his rhythm. Wilhelmsen never gets the chance to find his.
They bullpenned Wilhelmsen originally because a) nobody knew what was left in his arm, so no need to blow out a guy throwing 97 by making him try to go 200 innings, b) he didn't have a third pitch which caused him to struggle in starts where he couldn't throw the curve for strikes and c) we needed a bullpenner NOW.
We still need bullpenners, but we have other options. What we really need are as many productive pitchers as we can get, and TW has stopped being productive in the pen. I agree with you, I don't think it's a role he's best suited for, but we don't know whether he'll be any better in the rotation. If nothing else, though, he'll get to throw a lot more curves and changeups in the rotation, get a better feel for them. And maybe realize that it's not how hard he throws the fastball, but where he throws it.
A lesson Capps could use as well.
~G
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