Starting five to make most of spring training starts

Merkin:

All it would take is one brief look at a sheet of paper located in the coaches’ office at Camelback Ranch for Don Cooper to lay out the full Cactus League work schedule for his starting five.

The group of Mark Buehrle, Jake Peavy, Gavin Floyd, John Danks and Freddy Garcia is so crucial to the team’s success that they will stay as close to on schedule as humanly possible.

“I really could tell you the whole Spring Training, if nobody gets hurt,” said Cooper, sitting in his golf cart and watching workouts on Thursday. “We have some split-squad games, and we might have some ‘B’ games. You never know. Maybe Charlie Leesman or [Daniel] Hudson or [Carlos] Torres or [Daniel] Cabrera will get a start there, in those situations.

“Otherwise, our starting pitchers will be doing all the starting.” …