Welcome Back, Shawn Kelley

Sure enough, Mark Lowe's back problem appears to bad enough to warrant a trip to the DL, as Salk says that Shawn Kelley is returning from Tacoma. While with Tacoma, Kelley posted a better strikeout rate in his two appearances than Cliff Lee did in his one, which means, jackpot.

I was talking to Matthew about this last night, but basically, while the bullpen is at suboptimal strength with Jesus Colome instead of Kelley, having Lowe get hurt and replacing him with Kelley doesn't really make us any worse, as Kelley is good. So if we were suboptimal yesterday, we're the same level of suboptimal today. Now we just have less depth.

Lowe's been bothered by this back pain off and on over the past few weeks, I believe, but his velocity hasn't suffered, which is interesting. A herniated disc can be scary, but hopefully this isn't too serious, and lasts just long enough for the team to figure out that Colome isn't good.