August position player/pitcher of the month
Posted on September 4th, 2008 by erik in Brett Wallace, Daryl Jones, David Freese, FR pitcher of the month, FR player of the month, Jason Motte, Richard CastilloThere was some dispute as to who was the player of the month. Both Wallace, David Freese, Josh Phelps and Daryl Jones all had outstanding months. In the end, I think we all were happy to see Daryl take home the “Futchee” for the last month of the minor league season.
Jones hit .319/.441/.549 in 91 at-bats in August. He hit five home runs and stole five bases in six chances. He struck out 23 times but walked 19 times, showing some excellent plate discipline. For his all around efforts this season Jones will get plenty of Top 100 consideration, a vast improvement from going getting cut from the Cardinals Top 30 in Baseball America’s last Handbook. Jones is no longer tantalizing us with his tools, he’s flashing them on the ball diamond.
2. Brett Wallace – I personally voted Wally for the top spot, but he did have somewhat of an uneven month. Through 71 plate appearances for the Quad Cities Wallace had a power outage, hitting .306/.394/.387. But once promoted to Springfield, he went on an absolute tear, hitting .400/.471/.711. He did hit the ball on the ground a lot – 69%, but when he did hit the ball in the air, it usually went a long way. 27.3% of the balls he hit in the air cleared the fence.
3. David Freese – After a hot July, Freese showed no signs of slowing, hitting .349/.410/.632 for the month of August with seven homers.
As with the hitters, neither of us could decide who was in the top spot for the pitcher of the month. According to our system, Nick Additon is our pitcher of the month. Additon had a 3.21 ERA in 14 innings for QC with 24.1% K/PA rate and a 5.2% BB/PA rate. He had a 0.50 ERA with a 13/5 K/BB ratio over 18 innings and held batters to a .167 average.
2. T- Jason Motte and Richard Castillo – Motte held PCL hitters to a .163 average and struck out 22 of the 47 batters he faced, just showing utter dominance. Seeing him pitch yesterday all I have to say is wow…beware the goatee. Castillo posted a 1.99 ERA with a 23.2% K/PA ratio and a 4.5 K/BB rate. Pretty nice to see a converted catcher and an 18 year old pitcher both have terrific months.



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Erik, gotta say I love the tie in with the baseball cards. I am a long time cardinal fan with a rekindled love of cards, and actually bought the DJ card pictured for buck or two on ebay last year. Thanks for all the great work, keep it up!
Fine choices! It’ll be very interesting next Spring to see how many of the young starters who had success in their limited FSL time this year (Diapoules, Garceau [bad K/BB, but awfully hard to hit], Castillo, and of course Additon) are aggressively assigned to AA to begin the ’09 season.
For pitchers, probably the biggest jump in the Redbird system is from the pitcher-friendly park & league of Palm Beach to very tough Springfield environment. (Might Mulligan begin in AA next year?)
Thanks, guys, for all the great work you did this year with the site! I’m sure I’m not the only reader who’d like to say gracias in a tangible way–is there an address where I could send a modest $$ to support the future of Future Redbirds?
Thanks again.