The St. Louis Cardinals' bullpen has been on a seriously ugly stretch of late, and Friday night's loss to the Philadelphia Phillies was apparently the breaking point for John Mozeliak and company: According to multiple tweets late that night they've called up Chuckie Fick, in the midst of his third extended stint in AAA Memphis, for his MLB debut, with the player being sent down as-yet-unknown.
↵↵↵#Cardinals will promote righty Chuckie Fick from Class AAA for tomorrow's game. (Believe @keithlaw had this first.) Told late tonight.
↵— Derrick Goold (@dgoold) May 26, 2012
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↵Fick is a decidedly odd choice—drafted in the 15th round in 2007, he's floated his way up the minor league ladder without ever pitching especially well; always a little above-average, always with a strikeout rate low enough to alarm given the way his walk rate has trended up. 26 years old, he throws a sinker that comes up in the high 80s or low 90s and a slider, according to this 2008 interview on Future Redbirds. Also, if this is his Twitter account, he's a cat of some kind.
↵Much stranger things have happened in the bullpen than Chuckie Fick becoming a solid Major League reliever, but for the Cardinals I don't quite understand this move; they already pushed triple-digit-throwing Maikel Cleto into the bullpen at Memphis, where he's been excellent, and Jess Todd and Adam Reifer both seem ahead of Fick on the depth chart, at least from a fielding-independent standpoint.
↵In any case: Welcome to the big leagues, Chuckie Fick. If you get through two consecutive games without giving up an earned run the fans at Busch Stadium are going to try to get you made closer.
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