Jesse Litsch: Perfectly Adequate

Image courtesy of Daylife via Reuters Pictures

Pink, round, efficient: from the mind of Joanna at Hum and Chuck, they’re three infamous adjectives that aptly describe what Jesse Litsch is all about.

Let’s add one more (along with a adverb) to that list: perfectly adequate.

As I was liveblogging the game yesterday, I noticed some folks on Twitter were very quick to turn on Jesse Litsch after he gave up that home run to Jacoby Ellsbury. Down by three runs, they were ready to put him out to pasture.

The boxscore didn’t tell the entire story as Litsch’s outing was much better than the statistics indicate. His only big mistake was that pitch to Jacoby Ellsbury, as aside from that I’d say yesterday’s game was a perfectly adequate game from Litsch.

Obviously there will be some shuffling to do once Brandon Morrow comes off the disabled list this week, but I can’t see Jesse Litsch being bumped from the starting rotation.

And compared to other fifth starters around the league, I’d say he stacks up fairly well. I’d put my money on Jesse Litsch before Daiskuke Matsuzaka or Freddy Garcia any day. The other two are just too unpredictable, but with Litsch you pretty much know what you’re going to get.

Litsch will give you 5-6 innings, will rack up a couple of strikeouts and hopefully not let things get too carried away so he can hand things over to the bullpen.

When Jesse Litsch takes the mound, I’m not expecting him to bowl over the competition. I’m just hoping he can keep his teammates in the game long enough to put up some runs.

After watching Litsch pitch for almost three seasons, we pretty much know what to expect when he takes the mound. To me, that’s perfectly adequate; and perfectly adequate is perfectly fine in my books.