Pittsburgh Pirates Promote Starling Marte to MLB Roster

The Pittsburgh Pirates will recall outfield prospect Startling Marte from Triple-A Indianaplois, According to Dejean Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

CONFIRMED through #Pirates source who just talked to Marte: He WILL meet team in Houston. He’s in the majors.

— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) July 25, 2012

Baseball America rated Marte the 73rd best prospect in all of baseball before the start of this season, saying he was "good enough defensively to spur talk of pushing Andrew McCutchen to a corner." According to Rob Biertempfel's article on triblive.com, Marte will bat leadoff Thursday and will play one of the corner outfield positions.

The 23-year-old Dominican was hitting .286/.348/.500 with 12 home runs, 61 RBI and 21 stolen bases in Triple-A. This spring, the 6-2 180-pound right-hander turned heads by hitting .520 (13-for-25) with three home runs and a pair of stolen bases over parts of 12 games.

Here's what manager Clint Hurdle told Biertempfel about Marte:

"Some young players might grab the mindset of, ‘There’s a lot going on here and I don’t want to mess up.’ My expectations are for Marte to fear nothing, respect everything, prepare and focus. Go play like you’re 6 years old and you’re in the backyard."

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Will Marte stick as a starter in Pittsburgh for the rest of the season?

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