This Interview Was Done Prior to Opening Day

We love Doug Melvin for his free-wheeling Canadian-ness (and his work rescuing our team from the land of 100 loss seasons).

But this was laughable to me - it's an example of those things that he says every once in a while that just don't make sense. From a Q & A with MLB.com:

1. In your view, what are the strengths of this team and its vulnerabilities?

The strength is that we can run five starting pitchers out there. I look around at other teams, and there is a lot of competition for fourth and fifth starters. We don't have that, and we have five guys who are all capable of pitching and winning in the big leagues.

Then, the other big strength is that we have a lineup of eight regular players who are back from last year. I guess you can say there is a question about whether Billy Hall is going to be a regular everyday guy [at third base], but all of the other positions are guys capable of playing 140-150 games. There's no platooning, there's no competition at those positions. It's not like there's a rookie breaking into any position, or a rookie breaking into our rotation, for that matter.

It then goes on to talk about the bullpen as a weakness.

If I were answering the strength part of that question in Doug Melvin's shoes, I would have said that the strength of our team is that we can pound the living hell out of the ball and have the best pair of young, middle of the order hitters in baseball.

I would not have said that the strength of the team is the starting pitching.

But then again I'm not Canadian.