Who will fill in for Zack Greinke?

Well, it’s been a question that everyone has been avoiding all spring while just kind of keeping their fingers crossed, but we have been forced to address it. Who is Milwaukee’s sixth starting pitcher? After Zack Greinke will miss a couple starts due to a cracked rib suffered while playing basketball, the Brewers must find someone to fill at least one, maybe two or three, of his turns in the rotation.

Could it be Mark Rogers' time to shine?

Adding further mystery to this issue is the fact that the two leading candidates to be the sixth starter – Manny Parra (sigh) and Mark Rogers – are both yet to throw a pitch in a spring training game. Parra has been suffering from back tightness, and after performing an MRI and not finding anything wrong, it seems like Parra should be able to pitch as soon as the pain goes away. Of course, no one really knows when that will be. Rogers has been plagued by a stiff shoulder, but he has been making progress – he was scheduled to throw live batting practice today and hopes to appear in a game sometime this week. Given Rogers’ injury history, however, you can be assured that the training staff is not going to hurry the recovery of Milwaukee’s newly proclaimed top prospect just so he can make one start in April.

The real question here is, if both Parra and Rogers are healthy, who would you go with? The answer to this question, to me at least, seems easy. Manny Parra has been awful as a starter the last few years. He has been reasonably good as a relief pitcher, so why not keep him there? Parra pitched in relief for the entirety of the second half of last season, and probably hasn’t been stretching out at all this spring, as his role at the start of this season was pretty clearly defined, at least as far as I can tell, as a reliever exclusively. Certainly, we could have Parra go out there and pitch four or five innings and turn it over to the bullpen, and hope he has a game like this one. Personally, however, I would much rather go with Rogers.