Crooked Pitch

Today’s pitch count is 15.

1. Closer by committee situations are never good in terms of fantasy baseball. That’s not stopping Tampa Bay from utilizing the strategy while Troy Percival is injured. Last night J.P. Howell got his second save of the year and R.J. Anderson wrote a post yesterday stating that Howell has some pretty exciting numbers. Better numbers in some regards then Papelbon and Rivera, to name a few.
2. You don’t see this very often. Both pitchers in last night’s Cincinnati versus St. Louis game pitched a complete game. Aaron Harang took the loss giving up three earned and striking out four. Chris Carpenter won his fourth game and has an ERA of 0.71 in six starts this season. He’s struck out 31 batters in 38 innings of work and only walked five.
3. David Wright stole his 13th base yesterday and is looking like he’s going wild on the base paths like he did in 2007 when he swiped 34. Unfortunately, he’s only jacked three home runs in the Mets’ new Grand Canyon like ballpark. Wright’s HR/F ratio of 5.8% is miserably low and show rise bringing his home run total up soon. But don’t look for him to approach 30 homers this season. With a hit rate of 44.4% I’m not even sure that his .326 batting average is safe. When his hit rate normalizes back towards his normal 34.7% we might see a huge drop in his average. Consider yourself warned.
4. Andrew McCutchen had a nice major league debut yesterday. He went 2-for-4 scoring three times and stealing a base. He’s owned in 13% of Yahoo! leagues right now but that number is sure to rise shortly. He’s NL-only worthy right now and you may consider taking a mixed-league flier on him too, especially in keeper leagues.

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I’ve been catching up on my baseball podcasts over the past couple of days and wanted to share with you a quick note from one of my favorite shows. It has to do with Pittsburgh Pirates top prospect Andrew McCutchen.

McCutchen almost made the Pirates “big club” out of Spring Training ‘08. Instead, he played the entire season in Triple-A Indianapolis hitting .283/.372/.398 with 26 doubles, nine home runs, 50 RBI, and 34 stolen bases. Many feel that McCutchen is ready for baseball in Pittsburgh on a full time basis, and some feel that he has nothing more to learn at Triple-A so whether it’s as a full-time starter or bench player, breaking camp with the Pirates is a certainty.

In a podcast recently with Baseball Prospectus Radio, Pirates Director of Player Development Kyle Stark proclaimed that McCutchen would either be an everyday starter in Pittsburgh or he would be back in Triple-A. There will be no middle ground.

“When he goes to the big leagues, it’s gonna be for good”

“If he doesn’t earn a starting job out of Spring Training, then he’ll probably start the year at Triple-A”

Those of you that play in very deep fantasy leagues or leagues that use Minor League players probably already have McCutchen stashed. But in mock drafts some of you are actually drafting him. He has an ADP of 330.88, which is well outside a 23 round draft but proves that he’s getting some looks from speculators.

Now that you know that Spring Training is an all or nothing proposition for McCutchen we’ll have to see mock drafting him is curtailed.