Piscotty earns first big-league hit as 'experiment' begins
Cardinals rookie Stephen Piscotty might have spent last offseason trying to develop more power at the plate, but he'll take Tuesday's fourth-inning infield single as his first major-league base hit.
Piscotty got the call up from Triple-A Memphis on Tuesday afternoon and made his debut that night in left field and batting ninth in St. Louis' 8-5 win at the Chicago White Sox.
Piscotty, the 36th pick in 2012, has hit .272 with a .475 slugging percentage for Memphis this season, and his 11 home runs already were more than he had last season and in 180 fewer at-bats, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And his slugging percentage has continued to rise each month.
So his power experiment was working in the minor leagues. And it was a risk, an already high batting-average hitter tweaking his swing for more power could produce a lower batting average. That's not an ideal thing either for a player striving to carve out a spot in the big leagues.
The risk “was part of the excitement of it,” Piscotty said told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday. “It’s one thing to be complacent about where you are. I really felt like I had some potential that was untapped. I wanted to see if it was there. I knew I had the ability, but it wasn’t consistent. I wanted to take that risk and hopefully have it pay off."
(h/t St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Photo Credit: Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports
