Crooked Pitch

With Adam Wainwright’s recent finger sprain, there are rumblings in St. Louis of moving reliever Kyle McClellan to the starting rotation. Wainwright’s injury doesn’t look to be very serious, and he looks to be back as soon as his DL stint is over. That said, with the Cards’ terrible rotation and McClellan’s four solid pitches and starting experience, it may be a move that’s best for the team in the long term.

Kyle is a 24-year-old former starter who suffered through injuries (including two elbow surgeries) in the minors and hasn’t started full-time since 2004. Despite that, he has a terrific starter’s profile, as he mixes in several good pitches with a low-to-mid 90’s fastball, walks very few, and is a dominant ground ball pitcher. Despite logging only 30.2 career innings in AA and jumping from there to the majors, he has been the best pitcher in the Cardinals ‘pen this season.

LaRussa says that if McClellan moves to the rotation, it will be for the long term. That makes him worth picking up in any league that’s remotely deep, if nothing else as a flyer that will help your ratios while you wait. If this does go down, he could be a Duchscherer-level sleeper.

Kyle McClellan’s Stats:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Fantasy Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.