MVN: Most Valuable Network

As the Arizona Fall League and Hawaiian Winter Baseball League march on, I'm taking periodic looks at the participants rather than daily updates. My first look was at the position players in the AFL and now I'm peeking in on the pitchers.

Luis Marte

Luis Marte is kind of the typical Arizona Fall League assignment for the Tigers. He's a promising starter who missed a number of starts and innings to injury and can therefore go there, get some work against top competition, and still not tax his arm too much.

After his first couple starts, when he gave up eight hits and six earned runs in four combined innings, I was starting to wonder if the rehab route for his elbow wasn't going to cut it. That may still turn out to be the case, but his most recent start gives reason for hope. He struck out eight in four innings without walking anybody, while giving up just one earned run on four hits. That's more like the Luis Marte we hoped we'd be seeing when he earned his promotion to Erie this past season.

Casey Fien

A lot of people wondered why Casey Fien didn't get the call up to Detroit this past season when they were regularly trotting out guys like Casey Fossum and Gary Glover in high leverage situations. The likely answer is they didn't want to add him to the 40-man for a little time in a wasted season, but so far his time in the AFL is making it look like he could have handled the assignment.

He's pitched in five games to this point, racking up 7.2 innings of work. Over that time, he's struck out nine, walked nobody and allowed just four hits. If he stays on this path, we'll have all the more reason to expect him to be in the mix for one of the open spots in the Tigers' 2009 bullpen.

Rudy Darrow

Darrow has worked his way into five games as well and he's avoided giving up a run in four of them. The sole exception was a game on October 9th when he gave up a couple runs on three hits and two walks. Overall, he's given up five hits and four walks in 6.1 innings while striking out seven.

The other two walks came in his most recent outing on the 23rd. In his defense, it was his first time taking the mound in nearly a week so maybe he had to shake loose some cobwebs.

Zach Simons

Simons has had the toughest time of the Tiger relievers, but nearly all the damage was done in his first outing. On October 9th, he was roughed up for four hits and four runs - including two home runs - in two innings of work. Since then, he's thrown one inning four times and given up no runs on one hit and two walks while striking out a couple.

Summary

It would be nice if Marte could show his most recent start was more like what we should expect from him. His struggles since sitting out with the elbow injury - both at Erie and now in the AFL - are concerning. As for the relievers, I'm not going to put too much stock in AFL results for relief pitchers. It's such a small sample it's hard to get a feel for what the numbers mean without having seen them play.

As long as nobody gets hammered every time they take the mound, I doubt anybody will hurt their stock too much. That said, Fien is continuing to show he can be very effective against this high level of competition and if he stays on this path I would expect a lot of ink about him during spring training.