Burke Badenhop will make a spot start in Saturday's game against the Cubs.
Badenhop, who declined to comment today, does not plan to appeal his suspension, which he will start serving on Tuesday. That will give him plenty of rest to make a spot start Saturday night against the Cubs.
The initial plan was to recall Big Game Andrew but after his head turning performance on July 24, going 4.2 innings and allowing 6 ER along with 9 walks, the plan changed.
Now enter the conspiracy theorist. Something I plan to fuel.
So here we have it, BGA is a no go and the Marlins need a starter on Saturday. Given there is no one the Marlins would like to call up to spot start the thought was it always going to be the Hopper's.
To answer the question of some of why the Marlins didn't retaliate with Volstad, it is pretty easy. When a starter is suspended for plunking a player he receives a five game suspension, in order to make him miss a start or mess up the rotation. However, when a reliever is suspended for the same action, he only receives a three game suspension. It has to do with relievers, if they are of any quality at all, tend to make more appearances than starters.
So if the Marlins always had planned for Badenhop to make the start he would be logical one to, uh, "yank" the ball. Three days, no problem. They never intended to use him in long relief during that time anyway.
For this theory to have credence it would require Fredi, Tosca and Wiley to put some thought into it. And I'm sure they are quite capable of doing that. Whether they did or not is another story and maybe they didn't. But it is an interesting coincidence that the one who accidently "yanked" the ball was the only one who didn't matter if he did.