On last Tuesday or Wednesday's ROOT Sports broadcast, there was quite a bit of talk about how Andrew Lambo was "forcing Neal Huntington's hand," which I interpreted at the time to mean that we'd be seeing Andrew Lambo in black and gold in relatively short order. It looks like that guess was right, as this news was just tweeted out by the Pirates' official Twitter account:
#Pirates intend to select the contract of OF Andrew Lambo (@lambezzy35) from Triple-A Indy.
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) August 12, 2013
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I wrote some about Lambo's outlook as a Pirate earlier this month, in which both is prodigious power numbers from this year and his strikeouts are discussed. I'm still not sold on him being a cure-all (or even a band-aid) to the Pirates' right field struggles, but it's awfully apparent that Alex Presley should not be on the big end of a Major League corner outfield platoon. It's also hard to justify playing Jose Tabata in a corner spot full-time, too. With the trade deadline passed, that leaves Lambo as the only other option. Given his power surge this year, the fact that it's continued unabated into Triple-A, and that he's still relatively age-appropriate for the Triple-A level, it certainly seems possible that he could at least succeed in a small sample at the end of the season here before the National League adjusts to him. I don't know if I'd necessarily count on that, but it seems like it's worth a shot at this point.
The Pirates will have to remove someone from the 40-man roster to make room for Lambo, though Mike McKenry seems like a good option to be moved to the 60-day disabled list so that no one will have to be designated for assignment. They'll also have to take someone off of the 25-man roster. It seems like Alex Presley is a pretty safe bet for that, though I suppose it could also be Josh Harrison.
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