Pirates Make Up Injury, Send Morton to the DL

I'm normally not a news reporter on here, but this is too good to pass up.

The Pirates have put Charlie Morton on the DL with "elbow inflammation". Morton just came off a start and afterwards said he "felt fine". There's no way he's actually hurt right now, they just said this to get him out of the rotation for a bit as Jeff Karstens is on his way back from his injury.

Now that Morton is on the DL, he'll be able to make rehab starts in the minor leagues and work on what he needs to work on. They couldn't straight demote him because he's out of options, so this was the only way to get him innings without hurting the major league club. He'll sit a week or two out and then he'll start making rehab starts. Hopefully he'll figure some stuff out and be ready to be an effective major league starter.

My guess is that the Pirates go with a four man rotation until Karstens is ready. They had an off day yesterday and another one Monday, so they can afford to go with the four man rotation until the weekend. After that, Karstens should be read to come back. I don't think they'll need to make another move, they should get by with what they have now.

The rotation right now looks like this:

Friday: Correia
Saturday: Bedard
Sunday: McDonald
Monday: off
Tuesday: Burnett (with five days rest)
Wednesday: Correia
Thursday: Bedard
Friday: McDonald
Saturday: Karstens

Jeff should be ready for that Saturday start, if he's not they can have Brad Lincoln or Jeff Locke make the start.