Our old friend Kary Booher breaks down the rosters of each of the Hawaiian League rosters.

FORGET ABOUT THE REGULAR SEASON: Cardinals righthander Tyler Herron, a 2005 first-round supplemental pick, was only mediocre in Double-A Springfield after arriving in early May and eventually was demoted back to high Class A Palm Beach. He was a combined 7-7, 4.17 with 102 strikeouts and 40 walks in 138 innings. But he also struggled to pitch beyond the fifth inning in Double-A and doesn’t have the put-away fastball, requiring him to pitch to contact.

X-FACTOR: Cardinals righthander Blake King, a nephew of the late Mickey Mantle, was 3-8, 4.52 in 93.2 innings this year in A-ball. A former juco standout in Oklahoma, King struck out 105 but also walked 85 this season.

One of the nice things about Booher’s hire is I think we’ll be hearing a little bit more about Cardinal prospects.

Non-baseball observation: Tyler and Blake had to have been the trendy name to give your kid if they were born in the mid-eighties. Just looking in the Cards’ system, it seems like there is nearly a dozen Tylers and Blakes. I shouldn’t gripe, I suppose. I once considered myself to be pretty anti-trendy when it came to baby names, and now I have a son named Landon…pretty trendy. I wanted to name him Miles, after the jazz musician, but my wife wasn’t having it. Next time.

Baseball observation: There are some pretty good and intriguing prospects going over to Hawaii. Buster Posey, Yonder Alonso, Jason Castro, Andrew Brackman, (the Yankees 1st rounder from last year, who is coming back from Tommy John), Jeremy Bleich, Roger Kieschnick, Chris Carter (Oakland’s Chris Carter who came over in the Haren deal), Corey Brown, Ryan Kalish, Todd Frazier, Tony Thomas, the list goes on. Should be a pretty competitive league, with Japanese players sprinkled throughout.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Blake King, Tyler Herron, Winter ball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.