Lambo Leap: Long Wait Over For Pirates Andrew Lambo

The Pirates have called up

after clubbing 31 home runs in the minor leagues this season.

The Pittsburgh Pirates head into the series with St. Louis today with Andrew Lambo on the roster.  The biggest question is what is the next move?  Who will leave the roster?  It appears Alex Presley will  be the answer to that question.

Assuming Marte is healthy enough to return to action against the Cardinals, Lambo

will

won’t be starting in right field.

Well, should start in RF.    Clint Hurdle sometimes pulls a surprise lineup out of his ass.

.  Tabata gets the start in RF based on a 6-for-12 sss against Adam Wainwright.

The Pittsburgh Pirates without Marte are not nearly as potent.  Sorry, Andrew Lambo isn’t going to provide 4.0 WAR like Marte Partay has this season.  Tabata is just .3 WAR.  It’s quite a reduction in production when Marte is on the bench (but we don’t have to worry about that tonight.)

The struggles for Lambo have been well documented.  Back in 2011, Lambo was outhit by Alex Presley and John Bowker in Indianapolis.  After not being able to ‘make adjustments’ as Kyle Stark said, the Pirates bit the bullet and sent him back to AA.  After 185 at-bats at AAA,  Lambo had put together a .184/.257/.292 line while Presley and Bowker hit the hell out of the ball.

Give the Pirates credit.  Well, a little bit.

Somehow, they fixed him.  Or with some tough love, Lambo fixed himself.  The Pirates didn’t even protect him in the Rule 5 Draft.  He could be doing this for any team in the league, but every other team in baseball didn’t see it coming.

That had to hurt the ego a bit.

Staring at Lambo’s power numbers are nice, the guy has put together one hell of a season.  But that swing of his still worries me.  I can’t help but remember how pumped up I was to see him in spring training ever year since he came over from L.A.

I was always cursed by Lambo.  We would snap a ton of pictures during his at-bats in Bradenton and  even Altoona.  We are still waiting to get one of him crushing a ball.  I always thought his bat speed wasn’t even close when we would see him  on our usually early trips to spring training.

But even when he was crushing balls for Altoona while walking up to ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ from Frank Sinatra, the same thing happened–tons of pictures, never caught a bomb of his on film.

But we were in the ballpark when he hit one.  Too bad we were taking a piss.  Now we’re going to have another opportunity and I won’t be heading to the bathroom during any Andrew Lambo at-bats.

So what does he do tonight?  Let me know in the comments or when you say I told you so tonight, I won’t believe you.

By the way….Greatest walk up music ever?