This afternoon, Cleveland Indians youngster Fausto Carmona shut out the Twins on a four-hitter. He did everything right, inducing groundball after groundball, thus garnering some pretty impressive post-game praise from Torii Hunter. Carmona is now 5-1. And he has shown a lot of reason to believe it will continue.

In the ninth inning today, well over one hundred pitches for the afternoon, he still hit ninety-seven on the radar gun. He showed competitiveness and desire when Eric Wedge came to the mound to talk to him after a one out single. Whatever he said convinced Wedge to just turn around and head back to the dugout, leaving closer Joe Borowski standing warm in the bullpen.

Carmona is exactly the kind of player who makes fantasy fun, particularly with the prevalance of strategies involving acquiring mostly cheap, young, high upside pitchers who throw hard. So what should you do if you have him? Trading him just might be the best thing to do.

Don't get me wrong; I think the future may well be very bright for Carmona. He's big and strong, with the perfect build for a pitcher. He throws hard and he throws strikes.

But there are reasons for concern. For one thing, he threw over one hundred and twenty pitches today. That won't be the norm, but even doing it once can cause problems for anyone, let alone a young arm. So don't be at all surprised if the next start for him isn't nearly as good.

Second, Carmona, despite the radar gun readings, doesn't strike a lot of hitters out. Even today, at the top of his game, he only punched out four hitters. His strikeout rate and strikeout-to-walk ratio suggests that he won't keep up at his current pace.

Finally, there is the little problem of Jake Westbrook's return from the disabled list. When that happens, the Indians have six legitimate major league starters. Jeremy Sowers has struggled enough that he looks like the odd man out right now, but he should have another three starts to right the ship before Westbrook gets back. If there isn't a clear weak link at that point, Carmona's relative inexperience and his success in the setup role last Spring could work against him. 

For all of these reasons, it's probably time to call up the person in your league who loves to stockpile as much young talent as possible and see if you can get a vet for Carmona. He'll be good, but he won't stay this good.