In baseball, a good player puts a poor performance out of mind as soon as the game’s over. Obviously Cole McCurry did something a little different between starts, going from a dreadful performance down in Kannapolis (8 earned runs in 2 1/3 innings) to a gem against Greensboro in the space of one week. On Monday Cole dominated the Grasshoppers, allowing just two hits in seven innings of shutout ball while striking out ten.
Another of the many lower-round draft picks that dot this year’s Shorebird roster (in this case, the 43rd round), the 22 year old lefty still managed to skip a level at the tail end of last season. While he pitched in the lowest rookie level for the Orioles’ entry in the Gulf Coast League for most of 2007, he made two appearances with Delmarva at the end of the season and was relatively impressive, finishing 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in 10 innings of work.
Although his 2008 numbers aren’t great as a whole (a 1-4 record and 5.75 ERA in 40 2/3 innings pitched), toss out the bad start in Kannapolis and the earned run average falls to a more respectable 4.26 mark. Another good indicator of his ability is having 39 strikeouts against just 9 walks, making his WHIP 1.30. He does have a surprisingly high number of hits given up (44) for being a good strikeout pitcher and also a tendency to give up a lot of fly ball outs.
So did this young man from Tennessee Wesleyan College find something to assist him in keeping the pitches down and off the opposing hitters’ bats with his dominating performance earlier this week? It’ll be something to keep an eye on as the season progresses.
