Monday, July 05, 2010
By Dejan Kovacevic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pirates/
Peter Diana / Post-Gazette
Evan Meek picked up the win in relief against Phillies a couple hours after being selected for National League All-Star team for first time.
Evan Meek, All-Star.
No matter how many times he heard it Sunday, the Pirates' best reliever apparently would not let it fully penetrate. Not when manager John Russell summoned him into the office at noon to tell him he will represent Pittsburgh at Major League Baseball's 81st All-Star Game, July 13 in Anaheim, Calif. Not when he called his parents in Seattle and heard them "crying with joy," as he recalled. Not even when he stood on the grass at PNC Park and was feted by the standing, cheering crowd just before the game against Philadelphia.
"I'm surprised, I really am," Meek said. "It's a tremendous honor. I'm still kind of taking it all in."
He had at least three good reasons to be taken aback:
1. Few positions in professional sports offer a lower profile than pitching in middle relief for the last-place Pirates.
But such was Meek's dominance -- best seen in the lowest ERA in the majors at 0.98 -- that Philadelphia's Charlie Manuel, who witnessed Meek tear through the Phillies for two innings Thursday night, made him a manager's selection.
Did that outing have any influence?
"In some ways, it did," Manuel said after Meek pitched another scoreless inning to beat the Phillies, 8-5, Sunday. "But, if you look at his numbers and experience and things like that and what he's done, I think that definitely wasn't a hard pick at all."
Meek also had 42 strikeouts, 11 walks and a .178 opponents' batting average in a staff-high 37 appearances.
2. Middle relievers tend to get ignored in favor of starters and closers in All-Star selections.
The National League team has only Meek and Cincinnati's Arthur Rhodes in that category. And the Pirates never previously had a middle reliever chosen since the save became an official statistic in 1969. One has to go back to Mace Brown in 1938 for their last true middle-man All-Star.
But, as Russell had been stressing in openly lobbying for Meek over the past week, his usage of Meek made him akin to a roving closer, entering in jams and often staying an extra inning.
"It's great," Russell said of Meek's selection. "Like I said before, I thought he should be a shoo-in, to have that kind of ERA at this point."
3. Andrew McCutchen.
Nearly every publication forecasting All-Stars had the Pirates' center fielder as their lone representative, and most made not even a fleeting mention of Meek.
At the time of the selection, McCutchen was batting.299 with seven home runs and 24 RBIs, as well as 16 doubles, four triples, 20 steals in 26 attempts and a .379 on-base percentage that was best among the league's center fielders.
"I'm very, very excited for Evan," Russell said. "On the same note, I'm very disappointed for Andrew. I thought he was a deserving candidate."
"Cutch is very deserving," Meek said.
McCutchen appeared to shrug it off.
Asked if he was disappointed: "Nope. Not at all. I am perfectly fine. I'm happy for Evan. Clearly, he had the numbers to go. It was going to be me or him, and I'm happy for him."
Did he get his hopes up a little?
"I mean, yeah, it was good to think about, but things didn't go that way."
McCutchen still might go: If Atlanta's Jason Heyward, the superb rookie outfielder voted into the starting lineup, is unable to play -- he currently is on the disabled list because of a badly bruised thumb-- Manuel will name a replacement.
Meek, 27, took quite the circuitous path to becoming an All-Star.
He showed a golden arm as a youngster in his native Washington state, but some ill-advised tinkering with mechanics in his earliest days in the Minnesota system led to epic wildness and to the Twins releasing him. Meek overcame that and was the Pirates' Rule 5 draft pick in late 2007 -- general manager Neal Huntington's first major-league acquisition -- but nerves and more wildness had him last in the Pittsburgh bullpen only a month.
Huntington sent cash to Tampa Bay to retain Meek's rights and assign him to the minors, wher Kyle Stark, director of player development, mapped out a way for Meek to work his way back up from Class AA. He spent most of 2009 with the Pirates and finally entrenched himself.
"There were a lot of development people along the way, some good instruction, but the credit obviously goes to Evan," Huntington said. "He's battled through a lot, and he's very deserving of this."
This past spring, as Meek described emotionally Sunday, he also benefited from the tutelage of veteran relievers Octavio Dotel, Joel Hanrahan and Brendan Donnelly.
"Those guys taught me how to just let it go, to just trust my stuff and pitch," Meek said. "I can't tell you how much it's meant to me to have them here."
Dotel, the Pirates' closer with 19 saves now, has pushed Meek the hardest.
"I'm so proud of him," Dotel said. "I can't even tell you how much."
"We're all excited for Evan," Hanrahan said. "I saw this in him last year, and now everybody knows. He had the stuff, and all he needed to do was go out there and be confident, pound the strike zone. That's the biggest difference now. He's saying, 'OK, here's 96 with cut, see what you can do with it.' "
Meek said he hoped his selection brought notice to more pitchers in his role.
"I know a lot of attention gets paid to starters and closers, but there are a lot of good relief pitchers in setup roles who are a big part of their team," Meek said.
The Pirates had two All-Stars last year, with Freddy Sanchez and Zach Duke, but have been represented by one player in 14 of the past 17 All-Star Games. Duke also impressed Manuel with a strong showing in Philadelphia just before Manuel selected him.
Two former Pirates also were named All-Stars: Matt Capps, the 22-save closer for the Washington Nationals, and Jose Bautista, the 21-home run outfielder of the Toronto Blue Jays. Each was selected for the first time, each by way of the player ballots.
Capps was released by the Pirates because of a contract difference this past winter, and Bautista was traded two years ago for third-string catcher Robinzon Diaz, since released.
Dejan Kovacevic: dkovacevic@post-gazette.com.
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