When C.J. Wilson came back from the disabled list and pronounced that he had worked out a hip issue in his delivery we all wanted to believe it. When he went out and pitched the same as he had all season - nibbling with a gutless inability to put away hitters, revealing every pitch in his arsenal to anyone watching, throwing way too many pitches per batter per inning per lifetime - it only added to the team's sudden rash of arm woes.
Tyler Skaggs is out with a strained tendon until September, Joe Thatcher is out a month with a sprained tendon in his ankle and now Mike Morin cut his foot on glass on a Saint Petersburg beach over the weekend.
The rotation is Weaver, Richards, Santiago, Shoemaker, Wilson and the pen sees Huston Street clsoing, Joe Smith in the 8th and Kevin Jepsen in the seventh with Jason Grilli to pitch there if the team is behind or pitch the sixth with a lead. Fernando Salas and Cam Bedrosian are both back and Corey Rasmus is high in the mix as well.
The glaring issue is that there is no situational lefty in the pen. Joe Thatcher, frankly, sucked, but he did so in a small sample size and that Jerry Dipoto traded Zack Borenstein to acquire him is not to be forgotten.
After that the incompetence of CJ and the the ever-present worry about The Weave running out of gas offer us no solutions. We are walking on a tightrope and there doesn't look to be a net. But if you are a pro at doing what you do you needn't worry, you just walk along that rope until you complete that stretch of the performance. It must only seem sketchy because we don't exactly know how long this rope stretches, just that we are up on it.