Cal Eldred

Health and the long ball are Eldred's enemies but he continues to show flashes of brilliance as a formerly retired starter turned middle reliever. A rough first half of 2004 in which he posted a 5.28 ERA and allowed eight of his 11 home runs was followed with a streak of 17 2/3 innings with only one earned run allowed. He walked just 11 batters, his best walks-per-nine-innings-pitched ratio since he went 11-2 with a 1.79 ERA for Milwaukee. He gets a lot of movement on his low-90s fastball, but needs it to move a little more out of the way to remain effective.

He had more value in 2003 than anyone could have hoped, and goes into 2004 as alternate closer No. 1 in case Jason Isringhausen has more problems. There's precious little reason to think he can do better than he did last year, and a fair chance that he implodes. Kiko Calero, Jimmy Journell and maybe even Rhett Parrott are better gambles, if you have to have a Redbird reliever.