Right now on prosportsdaily, I'm in a huge argument as to how good the Braves starting pitching has been relative to other teams' staffs 1-5. Lots of people claim it goes to the Giants for the sheer fact that they have Lincecum and Cain; however, I decided to do a little research. I used FIP because it's a much better indicator of a pitcher's true talent level than ERA because it measures only things he controls (BB's, K's, HR's). Basically if you put a league average defense behind a pitcher, his ERA should be approximately equal to his FIP, iirc. The Braves simply put have had absolutely dominant pitching and this just reinforces that notion.

Vazquez- 2.79

Jurrjens- 3.61

Hanson- 3.98

Lowe- 3.73

Kawakami- 4.43

That averages out to 3.71, which is a ridiculously low number. The Giants whose starting staff is universally praised stand at 3.86. The thing that stands out is that most of the guys are performing in line with their FIP or ahead of it except for Derek Lowe. I think the key there is putting Kelly back at second base and praying Chipper improves defensively (not likely), he is the most adversely affected by the poor defense we've gotten at 2nd and 3rd base this year. However since Jurrjens is also a groundball pitcher, why is he outperforming his FIP so far? It also speaks volumes as to how good potentially this staff could be next year. We figure to greatly improve the OF defense with the arrival of Heyward in RF and the shift of Church/Diaz to LF and possibly the IF defense if KJ returns to 2B and I think Escobar will improve upon his defensive numbers next year. As long as Chipper doesn't keep declining defensively to the point of being historically bad we could be a decent defensive team and in turn make our pitching that much better. Just thought I'd share

From mlbtraderumors.com

"The agent for Yadel Marti, Yasser Gomez and Juan Yasser tells ESPN.com's Jorge Arangure Jr. that the three Cubans have all been declared free agents. Marti and Gomez defected in December and a few weeks later their agent, Jaime Torres, said his clients were big-league ready. Now the bidding can begin...

Torres tells Arangure Jr. (via Twitter) that three NL teams and two AL teams have expressed interest in signing Gomez and Marti for the stretch run. As Arangure Jr. points out, potential suitors would have to activate either player by the end of the month for them to be playoff-eligible. Apparently Marti could boost any team's rotation."

There are three NL teams interested in Marti and Gomez and I think we make sense as one of the possibilites, at least for Marti. Gomez would certainly help in the OF this year but beyond that he might not have a spot, though I wouldn't mind delaying Schafer's rise to the majors by a year. Marti could either help in the bullpen or take over for Kawakami who seems to be fading down the stretch as the innings pile on. I think the Dodgers definitely make sense as one of the teams after Marti but beyond that the picture gets fuzzy. We have the need and we're one one of the few NL teams with a Cuban regular (Yunel Escobar) so I certainly see a potential match. The question comes down to cost though, how much do these two figure to sign for?