Zach Miner

 Jon Morosi tweeted that the Royals view Zach Miner as a potential starter. Signed to a minor league contract, and recovering from Tommy John surgery, Miner could optimistically be seen as the next Bruce Chen. Seems unlikely in my opinion but remember I didn't exactly think the Chen experiment would be a success. So who knows.

It's a mostly harmless acquisition and Miner has been productive in his limited major league career. Assuming he does indeed get a shot at being starter number five let's see how he stacks up with the rest of the rotation.

Player	W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	ERA+	WHIP	H/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB	WAR
Hochevar	19	32	5.60	69	65	387.2	78	1.457	10.0	3.1	6.0	1.93	-0.5
Davies	42	56	5.49	138	131	706.2	79	1.603	10.1	4.3	6.3	1.45	-1.5
Mazzaro	10	17	4.72	41	35	213.2	91	1.573	10.4	3.7	5.8	1.55	0.0
O'Sullivan	8	8	5.65	31	24	135.1	76	1.456	10.0	3.1	4.8	1.53	-0.2
Miner	25	20	4.24	157	35	357.0	107	1.457	9.5	3.7	5.5	1.50	2.9

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com

Well look who leads in the rotation in ERA+ and WAR? It's a little deceiving of course, Miner does have a rather pronounced split - 4.85 ERA as a starter compared to 3.60 as a reliever. He appears to be ideally suited to a long relief/spot starter role, if he's healthy enough to actually make the roster. It's a low risk move and if he should find himself in the rotation I'm willing to bet he puts up better numbers than Davies and SOS.

This move does leave me with one question though, why are they willing to give Miner a shot at the rotation and not Robinson Tejeda?