After 17 straight winning seasons, I've finally found myself in a fire sale. I've just traded one of my two best SP for a couple of good prospects. I need to call up a 5th SP from AAA; I have no interest in tanking, although obviously short-term my rotation will be worse. The two choices are a 21-year-old in his first season of AAA, who is still improving, although he's good enough to get by at the ML level, and a 29-year-old journeyman who isn't as good as the youngster, and will be stretched as a 5th starter in the majors, but who is reasonable enough that he's better than tanking.

The Pitching IQ for the pitching coaches at the two levels are ML: 89, AAA: 76.

Should I hold the young guy back until next season, to get an extra year of eligibility for him, or should I promote him, where he'll get better coaching and will pitch better than the journeyman?

Keep Swindell down.  Let him get his 20 games in AAA next year then bump him up.  Sanchez is terrible...but he is your only hope because you have no MLB reliever who can go more tha 50 pitches and you have a bunch of AAA guys more terrible than Sanchez.

Can't believe you didn't have a long reliever in the majors who can throw 70 pitches.

Thanks, Moe. The clincher/facepalm was that Sanchez was on the 40-man, so he got promoted.

I've used crap long relievers for many years. I've had great SP, including one guy who has 100+ complete games. I've rarely needed a long man, just put one on the roster for mop up, and filled the rest of the bullpen with short relievers. Worked OK for 17 seasons ... not so much this time :-).

Yah, 17 winning seasons in a row is pretty cool.

I always find that there's a cheap 80 pitch guy out there, usually late in the FA cycle, and often a grizzled vet. 

Postscript: Sanchez, the crappy AAAA-at-best guy I promoted to fill the spot, got the first start of his ML career at age 29. 7 IP, 1 H, 1BB, 6K, Win. I guess I saved him for the right spot :-).

You just krapped on the karma god.