I think it's a bad move, partially the victim of timing and the upcoming schedule. On the one hand, while I have no faith in Kingham, given the depth right now, his start gained him at least another start or two, especially since the other option is to bury him in the bullpen or DFA him. When you look at the upcoming opponents, things could stay rough for Keller, although he really looked sharp once he got the nerves out of his system. That's why, on the other hand, I basically lean towards this being a horrible decision. Now Keller has to make a second debut if and when he comes back, and I think we all already know what we have with Kingham and Brault, so the likelihood of us moaning about this decision in a week and a half is very high.
We really need a good, settling start from Lyles tonight. We absolutely can't afford to lose 3/4 in this series, and tomorrow looks like a likely loss. Get this win in steady fashion and hope you can take one more on the way out of town tomorrow to bring some momentum into the Milwaukee series.
I don't really mind Marte taking that gamble there. Certainly a TOOTBLAN, but with two outs, maybe this pitcher gets a little antsy and Bell can easily knock him in. Sims is reportedly a guy with fairly ok stuff but has not had good results at all.