Alex Dickerson Heating Up

With their third pick in the 2011 draft, the Pirates took first baseman Alex Dickerson. They signed him quickly and got him to State College where he played 41 games. In those games he hit .313/.393/.493 with three homers and 20 extra base hits. That got people mighty excited about him and earned him a promotion to Bradenton for the 2012 season.

April wasn't kind to Dickerson this year, as he hit just .256/.319/.349 with two homers. That was a discouraging site as the Pirates failed to get much offensive production at any of the upper levels of their system.

Things got a bit better in May as Dickerson hit .281/.363/.365, however he didn't hit any home runs. He slowly started to figure things out near the end of the month and has had a monstrous month of June.

This month, Dickerson is hitting .375/.437/.578 with two homers, five doubles, and a triple. All of that in 17 games. For the year, Dickerson is hitting .297/.367/.415 with four homers, two triples, 13 doubles, and 43 RBI. He seems to be figuring it out and looks to be a good hope for the future.

The Pirates don't have a lot in terms of power hitting prospects, and not much in terms of first base prospects either, so Dickerson is extremely important to this club's future. He and Josh Bell seem to be our only hopes to see some home grown home run hitters in Pittsburgh in the next few years. The start to his year was disappointing, but this month of June has him close to a promotion to AA.