Evan Meek's Great First Half

PITTSBURGH, Pa. / July 4, 2010

The Pirates lack an ace starting pitcher, but that doesn't mean they don't have an ace.

This is pointing out the obvious, but Evan Meek has just been unbelievable this season. Fittingly on this day when he was named to the National League All-Star team, Evan pitched a 1-2-3 inning and was the winning pitcher.

The former Rule V pick is now 4-2 with an 0.96 ERA. In 47 innings he's allowed only 29 hits and 11 walks while strikiing out 42. Those hit totals are just absurd. 5.55 hits per nine innings? Plenty of pitchers allow more runs than Meek allows hits. He's also given up only two home runs.

While closers get all the glory, I am more impressed by Evan's stats than I would be if he put up the same numbers while closing. Rather than just facing whoever is up in the ninth, Evan Meek is intentionally brought into the most pivotal situations when the opposing team's best hitters are due up. He's also pitched two innings in ten of his appearances and has come into games as early as the fifth inning and as late as the ninth.

Against the Giants earlier this month, Evan Meek appeared in every game of the series, retiring seven batters on a total of 17 pitches.

The entire league is hitting .175/.229/.253 against him. Basically he has taken a selection of the best hitters in baseball and made them hit like a typical starting pitcher.

I've seen some articles which assume that Evan Meek is only on the All-Star team because of the rule that every team gets a representative. That is absurd. Five NL relief pitchers were selected and Meek is having the best year of them all.

Clearly, a scoreboard video for Evan Meek cannot be far away.