No disagreement from me really, but I interpret their approach to Falter as more roster management than anything else. IMO the root of the problem is the same reason why we now have to include the caveat that German could work his way into the mix once he's built up, which is that Nutting is/was too cheap to sign another legitimate starter.
Sign Lugo or Flaherty or Lorenzen and you don't really need to worry about whether or not its prudent to keep Falter around. As it stands, I think they think that he'd be claimed if they DFA him, so they'll try to at least scrape some innings out of him in whatever this piggyback strategy ends up looking like.
I'm not willing to just throw my hands up about the lack of true payroll investment in SP, but obviously it's just yelling into the void. Given the constraint, I guess I am willing to go along with the current plan, especially because a less crowded pen makes it even more viable. In some sense, it might be best to just have Ortiz starting games and Falter as a regular mop up/long reliever. But since he's on the team, I'm ok chucking spring results out the window and seeing it through. I won't hold my breath, but there's a way that drawing up a Falter opener / Ortiz bulk / back to slower LHP in Fleming / end game closer plan could steal some games.
Anyways, they are only playing this game with Falter because they forced themselves into this corner. On talent, it might make some sense to just catapult him off the roster now, but then if Jones really ends up stumbling, or Ortiz can't get any consistent control, the depth gets burned up much faster. The only thing I am hoping (though again not holding my breath) is that they won't be precious about the roster spot if the results still aren't there after a few weeks into the season and you get some health from the injured RPs as well as data from Priester's AAA starts and presumably stretched out and ready to go Lauer or German.
Final thought: Skenes is still the enigma to me. I think starting him in AAA is a sign that they might not play quite as many games as expected. It's possible that Skenes could have some ups and downs which buys them more runway, but I think playing the super two game would have been a lot easier if they started him in Altoona. Then there are real and imaginary "benchmarks" he needs to get to in order to go to AAA, and then you can rinse and repeat and all of a sudden you are into the month of June. It depends on a few factors, but I do think they have set it up to where they can promote him in late May or so if the opportunity is there. It wouldn't shock me if they use the all star break and some other thinly veiled excuses to sort of reverse engineer a 7th year of control for Jones. If you option him under the guise of preserving his innings, it wouldn't be that hard to figure it out for 2-3 weeks, but that's getting way too far ahead of myself.
