A Look at the Rook

In the midst of cranking out one of my rare evening posts, I thought I'd get everyone up to speed on how rookie phenom Drew McCutchen is looking through his first three weeks in the Bigs. I must say, so not bad. Check out his baseballreference.com link and you will see some interesting numbers. Despite a very meager strikeout/walk ratio and some relatively low power numbers, the rest of the picture is pretty darn good. 5 triples in 19 starts?! Really? That translates to, oh, about, 40 three baggers over a full season! Amazingly, Mac already leads the NL in that category, thus either saying something about his fleet feet or the disappearance of triples in modern baseball.

More interesting are his production numbers. With 15 RBI's in 19 starts, he once again is projecting out to around 120 ribbies over a full season. In the National League, 70 RBI's in a season is more than acceptable for a leadoff guy, and anything over 85 or so is pretty good. Again, I realize that we have only seen Drew Mac for three weeks, but the fact that he's knocking in runs at this regularity is refreshing.




lets hope Mac hits better than he shaves

What's even more refreshing is this faint scent of hope lingering above the PNC Park bleacher section these days. Dare I dream, but at this point next season, the Buccos order could start like this: McCutchen, Sanchez, Doumit, and Alvarez. Beyond that depends on the long term situation of the Bros LaRoche and whether the Bucs' front office is going to pull the plug on projects Steve Pearce and Neil Walker. Who knows, at least it will be a younger and harder hitting team to not go see.