I don’t really know what to think when I read this quote from the Cardinals’ Dyar Miller:
”I think it was time for Anthony to move on and try a different pasture,” said Miller, now the Cardinals’ minor league pitching coordinator. ”He’s pitched some great games here for the Redbirds. I don’t know what he needs to do at the next level to get over the hump. Maybe he can figure it out with a different organization, hopefully.”
You can interpret that in a variety of ways. Everything from Anthony needed out of the organization to Reyes simply wasn’t going to convert to the next level. At the end of the day, regardless how you feel about Reyes and the whole saga, the Cardinals converted what was once their top pitching prospect in the system into a AA reliever who might be a decent setup man in the bigs. That’s a failure on the part of the organization to leverage their assets, plain and simple.
That has to have been the longest pair of series for the big league club all season. I know I’m emotionally drained after watching those 7 games — I can’t even begin to imagine how they feel. The farm system did well tonight going 4-for-1 with Palm Beach off.
- Brian Barden was 3-for-5 with a double.
- Nick Stavinoha was 2-for-4 with a double and a triple.
- Josh Phelps was 2-for-4 with a double.
- David Freese was 2-for-3 with a double, HR and a walk. I never really got on the Freese bandwagon (it seemed mutually exclusive with the Craig bandwagon) but he’s been destroying the ball this month. His OPS by month for April through July: .846, .687, .852, 1.100 — whatever he’s doing this month is working for a slash line of .375/.425/.675.
- Clayton Mortensen was superb over 7 innings. He struck out 8 while walking just one for 2 ER. Not as many groundouts as usual but still a tremendous effort. I think he’s going to need to spend at least half of 2009 at Memphis but we’ll see what the org does with him.
- Matthew Scherer threw a perfect 9th striking out 1.
- Jon Jay was 2-for-3 with a double.
- Isaias Garcia was 3-for-5 with a HR.
- Brandon Yarbrough was 2-for-4 with a HR.
- Tyler Herron has not fared well in AA. He allowed 11 hits in 4 innings for 7 ER. He struck out 4 and walked none but still a disappointing start. He and Ottavino have seen their stock take a pretty significant hit this season (albeit for different reasons).
- Luis Perdomo made his Springfield debut pitching a scoreless 8th striking out 1.
Palm Beach was off.
- Adron Chambers was 1-for-5 with a HR.
- Pete Kozma flashed a little pop going 3-for-4 with a HR. His HR was a game tying effort to lead off the 9th.
- Brett Wallace was 0-for-3 with a walk.
- Tommy Pham was 1-for-3 with a walk.
- Nick Additon went 6 innings allowing 2 unearned runs and striking out 3.
- Pete Parise picked up his 11th save striking out 2 in the 9th.
- Frederick Parejo was 2-for-5.
- Charles Cutler was 2-for-4.
- Jermaine Curtis was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
- Zachary Pitts went 5 innings striking out 4 and walking 2. He allowed 3 hits and 1 ER.
- Arquimedes Nieto allowed 2 ER over 3 innings. He took the blown save on the 2 run HR.
- Adam Reifer had a messy hold. He walked 3 and allowed a hit for 2 ER. Not a good showing in terms of command and he had to be pulled with 1 out left in the game.
- Joey Hage was 2-for-5.
- Curt Smith was 2-for-5 with a double.
- Alex Castellanos was 2-for-5.
- Randy Santos had a nice outing striking out 6 over 4 innings. He walked 3 and allowed 1 hit.
- Adam Veres allowed 2 unearned runs over 3 innings while striking out 4 and walking 1.
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Good for Mortensen. I was a little worried about the lack of K’s and the recent amount of homeruns he’s allowed.
Kozma has been on fire lately. He’s had a ton of doubles, nice to see him get a homer.
pete is starting to get right where most of us expected him to be at the end of the season. .280-.290 batting average, pretty strong strikeout:walk numbers, slugging around .400, and stealing some bases. he likely will never be a star, but he is on pace to be a very solid regular shortstop.
Great site, became a must read for me… Anyway, this stood out to me in your article about Reyes / Miller:
”He’s a hard worker, a good kid. He’s real professional. He’s not the kind of guy that’s going to bad mouth the Cardinals and say that he was treated unfairly. He’s a real professional. I enjoyed working with him and I wish him well — except when we play him in the World Series.”
This part: “He’s not the kind of guy that’s going to bad mouth the Cardinals and say that he was treated unfairly.” – you could easily interpret as even though he was treated unfairly, he’s a pro and he’s not going to make a big deal out of it as he leaves town.
I remember reading the article about Reyes where he was talking about his relationship with Duncan earlier this year, it sounded like Reyes was defending the organization, but mentioned in response to a question that he hadn’t spoken to Duncan in a while (this was right after he was sent down). Which at the time seemed really odd, he was with the big club and hadn’t spoken to the pitching coach????
I think Reyes was treated unfairly, don’t know why, don’t really care. But it’s a shame nonetheless. If they didn’t like his style or whatever, at least they should’ve traded him when his value was higher. (I know, hindsight’s 20/20 and all). Players like Thompson, Reyes, C. Duncan, etc. would’ve done better as trade bait two years ago, than their current versions.
Addition continues to be impressive. I hope he see’s some time in Palm Beach this year. Kozma has really come around. I know when I talked with him at the beginning of June he was really feeling the season length but I knew he get out of it eventually. Hopefully he continues it and gets close to 300 again.
agreed azrua….
i’m really disappointed to see what has happened between reyes & the cardinal organization. i wish reyes the best & hope he can get it together with the indians & prove larussa & duncan wrong.
with this trade it tells you alot of what other organizations see in our farm system, which seems to be not to highly. or else it’s just a desperation to get reyes out finally. if anybody has noticed the trade talks for fuentes have calmed & mozeliak plans to stand pat for the moment. is he standing pat or are other teams really not interested in what the cardinals have to offer?
I think we need to remember the lesson we have learend with Duncan and Reyes and apply that to the prospects we have right now. We can’t become to attached to these guys just because our ranking at BA has improved. We need to hold on to our top guys and sell the rest as high as possible. The ultimate goal is to have a good big league club. Hanging on to AAAA players to make our farm system look better does nothing for that goal.
Not sure how you can call it “a failure to leverage assets”, when the goal never was to trade him at all. Yes, his worth was likely higher a year or two ago, but it’s never been sky high, b/c he’s never been consistently successful at the ML level.
I think the River Bandits announcer said yesterday that Kozma has 32 multiple hit games this season.
Perhaps the Reyes Saga should be a cautionary tale to all those who are overvaluing the Cardinals prospects. Sure, maybe the organization messed Reyes up and he could have been good, but during the Jocketty hay-day Reyes types were often spun off to aquire prooven Major Leaguers and often worked out well. Bud Smith? Jose Jimenez? They were traded when they still had good value and hadn’t shown that limited success in the bigs was a fluke. It seems that this time the Cards held on the Reyes and he turned into a pumpkin.
*Dan Haren seems to be the only case where this strategy didn’t work out. Of course it is easier to remember the one glaring failure than the many not as glaring successes.
Perhaps Dan Haren, Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright are reminders that some prospects do work out and when they do they provide good production for very little money.
Look at the contract Haren is signed to: 4 years, 12.65 million with a 6.75 mil club option in 2010. Or the one Wainwright signed: 4 years, 15 million with 2 club options of 9 mil and 12 mil.
If the Cardinals can get Colby Rasmus, Chris Perez and Jaime Garcia to reach their potential and they can get them signed to one of those deals that buys them out of their first year or two of free agency, then there is going to be extra money lying around in a couple of years.
While on the River Bandits site yesterday, they made mention of a play Pham pulled off in the ninth. In an Albert-esqe play, Pham raced home from second while the defense was sleeping. Those are the type of plays, while dangerous, are great motivation for a slumping team. Too bad the big club doesn’t have more of that…
Dan-
Perhaps it is a cautionary tale for overvaluing prospects. Perhaps, though, it’s a cautionary tale on the dangers of ignoring what’s best for the player in favour of a dogmatic approach to some facet of the game.
Let’s remember, here, that it isn’t as if the Cardinals just loved Reyes, while everybody else ignored him. Baseball America rated him as the ~35th best prospect in the game coming into the 2006 season, so obviously someone beyond just the Cardinals thought he had a pretty great chance of turning into something worthwhile.
Now, if you’re talking about simply overvaluing prospects in general, when they should, in reality, all be moved for proven commodities in order to avoid ever having one of them fail at the big league level, then that’s an entirely separate point.
i’m not saying all prospects should be moved for proven commodities. i’m just pointing out that given how often prospects fail to meet their “potential” i think that they are over-valued by a lot of fans.
also, regarding Reyes being highly ranked by Baseball America, i’m sure you could find numerous other prospects on that list that didn’t work out either. sometimes prospects just don’t live up to the hype.
In today’s game you HAVE to overvalue prospects unless your chosen team has a payroll like the Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs. Contracts are getting so ridiculous that you have to try and grow your own talent instead of relying on winning bidding wars for high priced vets in the free agent market.
Regarding Reyes, Yes he was our top pitching prospect but I don’t think he was ever a “can’t Miss” prospect. To my knowledge he was never ranked as a top pitchign prospect, Just OUR top prospect in a minor league system that was not very good a couple years ago. I had high hopes for him like most but I may have overvauled him, at least we could get a possible good MLB reliever for him since he was not going to produce for the STL cardinals.
It looks like Blake Hawksworth has been activated from the DL and it looks like Boggs is getting sent down today. What is Memphis going to do with all of there starters.
SoonerfanTU — each player is an asset. The Cardinals watched one of their assets peak and then within about 6-8 months his value was next to nothing. We can argue the reason that happened endlessly but you can’t argue that the loss of stature for Reyes was a missed opportunity. If you think that only major league players are valuable . . . well I can’t say much more than you are simply wrong. That’s not how major league clubs treat their prospects. Being a consistent major league player may raise your value but it’s hardly the definition of value.
Cwag — that’s not accurate. He was widely regarded as a top prospect and someone with front of the rotation potential. This wasn’t a Cardinals’ koolaid overvaluing of Reyes.
Some people saw Reyes as a top pitching prospect who was ruined by the Cardinals organization. Others see Reyes as an overrated pitching prospect (due to a thin system) with trainwreck mechanics who simply couldn’t make the jump to the majors. In the end, everybody can make assumptions and judgments, but there’s no definite answer. Otherwise, everyone on that 2005 top prospect list would have made it to the majors by now.
Maybe he’ll turn it around. Maybe he’s simply a AAAA guy. He’s not a Cardinal anymore, and honestly, that’s all that really matters.
I’ve followed the Reyes debacle since it’s beginning and I don’t recall many people over-rating him. Sure there were those who gave him too much credit when he was our best prospect, but even then his ceiling was only as a middle-rotation guy. In hindsight, the problem wasn’t that Reyes never became a star, but that the organization obviously didn’t capitalize on what he did have to offer, whatever that may have been.
The obvious answer now would be that Reyes should have been traded when his value was high, but some of the reason he wasn’t was likely because the system depleted of pitching prospects, and at a time when they were sorely needed. So, it’s hard to place to much blame on the Cardinals organization, since they may not have won at all in 2006 without him. At the same time, however, that doesn’t excuse them from not getting more value out of him while he was in the organization: he obviously has the talent to pitch at the highest level (anyone who thinks different need just remember his performance in the World Series), but the organization failed to utilize that talent, for reasons that are subject to much debate, whatever they may be.