doug

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2271587

Johnson went 8-13 last season for the Detroit Tigers. The 32-year-old
right-hander had a 4.55 ERA in 33 starts and a career-high 210 innings.

He is 52-86 during his nine-year career, which also included stints
with losing teams in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Tampa Bay.

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doug

This one doesn't make sense! The only positive for him is he has never
pitched on a winning team. Maybe he was THE reason his other teams were
losers! Everything I've heard is that Jeremy Sowers is ready for that
5th starting slot! Let's hope so!

doug

Yeah, I'm kind of hoping that Johnson is our backup plan so we don't
have to throw a rookie into the rotation if he's not ready. At first,
I wasn't too worried looking at his ERA and win-loss record. Here's a
link to his career stats:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=5885

His K to BB record is 736 ro 451 and he gave up 162 HR's in 215 games.
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doug

barry

if he pitches like he did in 2005, johnson is not going to give us a
fitfh starters numbers; last year his ground ball to fly ball ratio
was second only to jake westrook. with him now able to throw his two
seam fastball for strikes, with our defensive infield i'd be very
surprised if he doesn't win at least 10 games, which is more than
millwood won - plus he gives us 200+ innings pitched.

assuming that sabathia becomes our ace, that probably puts westbrook
#2 (so we don't pitch 2 lefties in a row) followed by lee & byrd &
then johnson, we now have a starting five most teams would be glad to
have. and if somebody gets hurt, we have jason davis & fausto carmona
as our 6th-7th starters.

to me the big question is how well wickman will do next year.

Lets hope for a lot of BIG leads going into the 9th!