Mike Adams Demoted

The much highly debated roster move has been made in anticipation of Ben Sheets' return from the DL today. There wasn't one single player on the 25-man roster that deserved to be either released or sent down to Nashville. There was no way Doug Melvin would have gotten rid of a position player to add yet another pitcher, so they were all safe, especially after Branyan got into the game last night and struckout as a pinch hitter. That left the pitching staff. The real candidates to either be DFA'd or sent down were Gary Glover, Tommy Phelps, Mike Adams, and even Wes Obermueller to a certain extent.

Mike Adams was the odd man out unfortunately. He was the "chosen one" most likely because he had options left and would not be claimed on waivers like Glover and Phelps would most likely have been. Adams has not been seeing regular time on the mound this year at all since he was demoted from the closer's role. This way, he can focus on getting his regular innings of work and being able to regain his velocity that he had lost from last year. Even though he was hitting 94 in his last outing, his most successful of the season, he has been tinkering around by throwing too many sliders which has caused him to lose some ticks on his fastball. And for whatever reason, Yost has been hard on Adams about keeping his pitch count down per inning as well. Hopefully Frank Kremblas and his coaching staff can help Mike iron these issues out.

I wouldn't exactly call them problems, since Adams has an ERA of only 2.75! But it is such a nice problem to have to send down a a pitcher that has performed basically as well as one can in order to bring back your staff ace. Not too many, if any, teams will have a player of Adams' caliber waiting in the wings at Triple-A.