What to Watch for? Nick Blackburn version.
One thing to watch for when Nick Blackburn takes the mound tonight against Luke Hochevar and the Kansas City Royas is how often he uses his cutter. When he first came up to the Twins in a September call up, he used the pitch and it was quite good. In recent years, he has gone away from the cutter. I'm not optimistic about Blackburn, but reportedly he and Bobby Cuellar did work on getting him to use the cutter more frequently. He had the success in AAA. Could incorporation of that pitch into his repertoire help him become at least bearable to watch? We shall see.