Well, that was a disaster.  As was stated in the game thread, Wellemeyer was hardly helped out by the errors in the field there,  but then again, errors really don't matter when you allow 3 HR in three innings pitched.  The whole game seemed like the team had conceded defeat sometime around the bottom of the second.  Players seemed lost at the plate with RISP, Encarnación had that horrible, horrible dropped ball in the first, and perhaps most inexplicably, Tony let Wellemeyer bat for himself to lead off the bottom of the third, but started the fourth inning with Wells on the mound, despite a six run deficit.

Meanwhile, Kip Wells in the bullpen continues to not take s*it from anyone.  People might be inclined to attribute his success to an attack on the strike zone.  There might be some truth to that.  I went back and did some research into Kip Wells' starts that lasted five innings or more, and I discovered that even his pattern for success when throwing strikes is remarkably inconsistent.  This is most exemplified in this game and his next game, where he went, in both outings, 6+ innings, throwing 103 pitches, 65 of them for strikes.  He also walked one batter in each game, while striking out four in the first, and three in the second.  In the first game, this also included him allowing 1 ER.  In the second game, however, he imploded for five ER.

This isn't to say that Kip getting strikes isn't a necessary condition of his success:  in games where he's thrown only about half of his pitches for strikes, (i.e., check out his 14 June start)he has invariably gotten shelled, but there has to be some hidden indicator of where things come unglued.  I am inclined to think that the secret lies in his stuff.  When his breaking ball is breaking like it was last night,a nd his sinker is sinking, and he can throw a strike when he wants to with his fastball, it forces hitters to chase junk in the dirt.  This, in turn, makes all of his pitches better, and keeps hitters stuck in pitchers' counts.  Anyway, it certainly seemed to me as if Wells' stuff was better last night than it has been, or at least, more convincingly located when it was out of the zone.

Anyway, last night makes things seem to me as if Wellemeyer is practically volunteering to lose his rotation spot to Carp.  Wells is at least making the case that he's going to get to stick with the big club as soon as the million guys on the DL come back.