5th Starter.. Richmond or Mills?

Rich what?? Richmond!!

He wouldn't have been my choice, but I'd rather throw the 29 year old Canadian to the dogs and send 24 year old prospect Brad Mills down to Las Vegas to gamble the season away. Hopefully Richmond will be able to provide Toronto with several steady yet unspectacular starts every 5th day. He's never going to win many games by himself, but hopefully he can keep his team in it and give the Jays offence a chance to do some damage.

Now the question is...

Once Richmond (or Romero or god forbid even Purcey) gets rocked and sent back down to the Minors, who gets the 1st call for a spot start?

Matt Clement? If its early in the season, he might just be the guy as it appears that Cito doesn't want to throw Brett Cecil or Brad Mills right into the fire before they are truly ready.

Brett Cecil? He is probably the most talented of the Jays pitching prospects, but may also be the furthest from being ready. After being selected in '07 as a former closer, Cecil isn't yet stretched out enough to handle the grind of a full major leauge season. He set a career high of 118.2 IP in '08 while splitting time between all three levels, and should be limited to somewhere around 150 IP this year. Monitor his innings in the minors, but expect to see Cecil up with the big club at some point down the stretch, leaving him poised to battle for a spot in what should be a very interesting 2010 Jays rotation.

Brad Mills? Although Mills was the final cut from the Jays starting rotation race, I wouldn't expect him to get the first call for a spot start due to injury or a struggling rotation member. Expect Mills to emerge when Gaston and Co. feel he is ready to grab a permanent rotation spot. After throwing more than half of his innings last year in Low-A ball with the Lansing Lugnuts, Mills is due for healthy number of starts in the minors at whatever level he starts before he is deemed ready for the majors. I expect him to join Clement and Cecil in an interesting AAA-Las Vegas 51's rotation this season. His ETA? I'd say perhaps mid-July, but don't be surprised if he is shut down before the season's end after totalling just 147.1 IP last season.

News Flash: Romero may not be a bust after all!!

According to MLB.com, former first round pick Ricky Romero has claimed one of the two vacant spots in the Blue Jays starting rotation to open the season.

Jays Manager Cito Gaston was quoted as saying that Romero has "pitched himself on the team." After a strong spring start in which Romero limited the Astros to two runs over seven solid innings of work, Romero appears to have leap frogged both Canadian right-hander Scott Richmond, and lefty Brad Mills on the Jays depth chart to open the season.

About a week or so ago, it was learned that Brett Cecil would be returned to minor league camp to prepare for the start of his third pro season, and that Matt Clement, this years annual reclamation project, wouldn't be ready to pitch at the Major League level to open the season. That left Romero, Mills and Richmond battling for the final two spots behind Doc, Listch and Purcey in the Jays rotation. Gaston has been raving about Mills all spring long. "This kid has got some talent, and he seems to be able to handle the ups and downs and the pressure."

With recent news that injured starter Dustin McGowan may not pitch at all in '09 after a setback in his rehab, perhaps the Jays are more inclined to overlook Richmond, the 29 year old rookie and "ace" of Team Canada's staff at the World Baseball Classic, in favour of exposing their top young pitchers to every day life in the big leagues.

If Marcum and McGowan could make complete combacks to be healthy and ready to go for the '09 season, the Jays could potentially be loaded with pitching options, and may actually be best off dealing from a position of strength. The question is, of all these arms, which are the best and who do the Jays foresee sliding in behind Halladay, Marcum and McGowan in 2010. Litsch appears to be a lock as long as he doesn't take any steps back in '09. That leaves David Purcey, Romero, Cecil, Mills, and LHP prospect Marc Rzepczynski to battle for the fifth spot in what could be a filthy Jays rotation.

Don't forget the Jays posted the best staff ERA in baseball in 2008, so 2009 may not be quite the down year people were expecting.

As for Romero, hopefully he will make the best of this opportunity and run away from the critics who pretty much wrote him off as a first round bust. In my own article on January 31st, regarding Baseball America's list of Top 10 Jays prospects, I wrote that Romero "got a bit of a gift even being named to this list. (He can thank his outstanding collegiate career and his #6 overall pick in the 2005 draft... Troy Tulowitzki would have been nice huh?)" Romero was the first pitcher taken off the board in what was a stocked first round in 2005. Sandwiched between Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki, critics of J.P. Ricciardi the last few years had a tough time living with the knowledge that Tulo could have filled the Jays revolving door at SS, but instead were stuck with Romero.

For the sake of J.P.'s job, I hope Romero proves all the haters wrong. After all, he was billed with similar hype to current Rays phenom David Price. OK, that may be a bit of a stretch, but I've been proved wrong thus far.