Given he wasn’t throwing again until after the roster expansion, Tyler Lyons has been optioned down to Memphis and Fernando Salas has come up to add an arm to the pen. There’s no indication this will change Lyons’ position as part of the rotation, however. EDIT: Click here for comment with more discussion.
OK, rules are that players that get sent down have to stay down for 10 days. That rule isn’t waived by the 40-man expansion. There are exceptions: 1) if someone goes on the DL or 2) if the minor league team’s season (including playoffs) ends before 10 days is up.
As my Twitter discussion with Jon Doble and Bill Ivie (@JonDoble and @poisonwilliam respectively, give them a follow) played out, it does look like, with the off day on the schedule on Thursday, the Cards could get by without a fifth starter until Tuesday of next week. Assuming Memphis doesn’t make the playoffs (which is a reasonable, though not a given, conclusion), Lyons could still make the start without any issue. That just means the next few games would look like this:
Tonight: Kelly
Wednesday: Wainwright
Thursday: Off
Friday: Miller
Saturday: Lynn
Sunday: Kelly
Monday: Wainwright
Tuesday: Lyons
Wainwright would get the Reds in back to back starts and you’d have a very young slew of pitchers facing the Pirates, but neither of those things was going to change if you kept a regular run through the staff. This would most likely be what the Cards are planning to do given Lyons’ demotion.
Being that Pittsburgh just added Marlon Byrd (right handed) and John Buck (right handed), Lyons’s left-handedness against the club might not have had the value it had before, prompting the move and the juggling of the rotation. Or it might not have had anything to do with it.
I really should have just turned this into a post, huh?