The George native was selected in the 2007 MLB Draft by San Francisco. He has participated in 11 full major league seasons with the Giants, Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Dodgers, Braves, and Texas Rangers. With 1,312 plate appearances, he has a career slash line of.248/.294/.386 with 30 home runs and 145 runs batted in.
It’s hardly shocking that Culberson is attempting to succeed as a pitcher. In eight games where he has been in mop-up situations, he has pitched 7 1/3 innings with an ERA of 1.23 and no decisions. Although he only had one strikeout, his fastball had a velocity of 93.7 mph.
Culberson announced in January that he was converting to a pitcher after playing in just one game for the Braves the previous season. However, a story by David O’Brien of The Athletic from February 22 states that Culberson pitched in high school and understood the odds were against him to make the big league bullpen after not pitching consistently for 17 years.
When he was in Triple-A in August, the decision was made. His playing time as a utility was limited, so he told Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos that he wanted to try his hand at pitching. Since he was at home, he particularly wanted to do it with the Braves.
O’Brien reports that the general manager approved the initiative and placed Culberson on the development list, where he worked on his mechanics and arm conditioning for little more than six weeks in August and September. After he made three relief appearances for Gwinnett at the close of the season, the Braves were impressed enough with him to sign him to a minor-league contract in January, this time as a pitcher.
“I always told myself that if at any point it came to (that) and I had a chance to pitch, I was going to do it,” Culberson stated.”I realized it would be difficult to go back once I made the switch. I’ve always expressed how much I’d like to be two-sided. And it seems like you have to be a pitcher first these days in baseball in order to be a two-way player. Being a two-way player, I’m not really sure what the Braves think of me, but I did bring my bats and extra gloves in case, as I felt like it was a little strange to only bring my pitcher’s glove.
“But no, I’ve been focusing on pitching only.”
Culberson brought a four-seam fastball and cutter into camp and worked on a slider that turned into a curveball but with Atlanta having one of the best rosters in baseball, the experiment with his hometown team came to a disappointing end on Thursday.
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