I admit it, I had no idea who "Linas Kleiza" is so I went ahead and Googled the youndster, to find he's a Toronto Raptor scrub-slash-bench-player. And in the time I took to bother to llok that up and come back, someone had voted for the young man! (That's either a really good and sarcastic nod at "nobody" or and equally-as-clueless-as-I-was nod to "Hey, I've never heard of THIS guy, let's go with him!

Hard to imagine. Hard to beleieve. Anyway, I am now considering starting up the "Who is Linas Kleiza" Google club. Let me know if you're interested in joining up, Bauxites!

I voted Alvarez.  He hasn't been terribly effective, and I am concerned about workload and arm health. 

I was tempted to pick Cecil, but I voted Alvarez as well. Seems like as long as he is a 1-to-2 pitch pitcher, he'd be better suited coming out of the 'pen. Or working on developing pitches in the minors.

For what it's worth, an Alvarez/Cecil tandem would be a good solution but I can't imagine a club moving to this in the middle of a season. 

I think Alvarez needs to work on his stuff, but that leaves too many lefties in the rotation.

that was my though Scott, I'm just not sure how confident i feel having 4 lefties in the rotation. otherwise, I see the argument for Alvarez (and conversely that make Villianueva really safe on this question, doesn't it?)

With his reverse splits, Romero is a bit of an "honorary righty".  Teams usually don't make platoon adjustments against him, which means that it makes sense often to have a lefty first out of the pen with him. 

I'm still not sure how Cecil is doing this, leaving as many balls up as he does. But for now, he's doing it.

I can't say the same about Romero, who is a mess. But the bullpen won't solve anything for him. I can't say the same for Alvarez either, and he'd benefit from more time in the minors.

So, Alvarez is the substitution that makes the biggest difference to our future. Cecil can begin his LOOGY training in 2013.