Our second baseman for some time

From Pete Wickham's report for MLB.com:

Powering up: Second baseman Jose Castillo hit his sixth homer in only 95 games with the Pirates on Friday. Over his last 10 games, he's had three homers and seven extra base hits, while hitting .394 and raising his season average to .250.

"I've worked very hard at hitting with more power," the 22-year-old from Venezuela said of his sessions with hitting coach Gerald Perry. "He has my feet wider so I can move more into the ball. And I've opened my stance more. It's helping me to see the pitches better."

"We knew what he could do in the field, and to be honest, I wasn't expecting a lot of hitting this year," McClendon said. "I think we've got our second baseman for some time."

Brian O'Neill was all over this improvement last week. For a while there it looked like Jose wouldn't hit enough to justify bringing him back as the starter next year. Now Mac's saying, "I think we've got our second baseman for some time." That must be gratifying for Mac since he was the one, if I remember what I read correctly, who lobbied for Castillo starting the season with the team last March.

Regular readers know that I'm a fan of the Monday morning 21-day stats. It provides a consistent way to measure recent performance. In the last three weeks, Castillo's hit .286 / .339 / .551 playing in all but one game. That's 14-for-49 with six extra-base hits, three homers, eight runs, ten RBI, five walks and ten strikeouts. He's not going to win an MVP award hitting like that but that's plenty good for a bottom-of-the-order good-fielding second baseman. Give him another year and maybe he'll score from second on that single by Jason Kendall, too.