Looks like the remains of Flat Hat are all but gone. Per John Manuel-
Righthander Luis Perdomo, mentioned in our initial preview last week, seems almost certain to get popped.
What a total waste.
update : 11:01am With the first pick, the Nationals take Terrell Young, a hard throwing right-hander with iffy command. Back to Perdomo, your points made in the comments are well noted that Perdomo might not be ready and is likely to be returned. I still am not sure why you would want to risk him not ever returning. For one, he’s all the Cards have to show for Anthony Reyes. Secondly, inferior talent was added to the 40 man roster in order to protect him. It’s not like it’s a huge deal, but it is a still a baffling decision to me. Depending on the team, there is still a decent chance someone keeps him.
update: 11:09am. And Perdomo is gone, taken by the Giants 6th. I would say a non-contender like the Giants have a good chance of stashing him on their roster all season long, don’t you? Waste. Veal is also off the board, going to the Bucs.
update: 11:19am. And the Cardinals don’t select anyone in the major league phase. Meh. I guess they feel Charlie Manning or Ian Ostlund are just as good as any lefty to be had in the Rule 5.
update: 11:29am. In a twist of irony, Ricciardi gets his man…again. Cody Haerther is taken by the Blue Jays in the AAA portion of the Rule 5. Hah. The Cardinals get this guy.
update: 11:34am. Cards pass on the 2nd round of the AAA portion and on the AA portion. I can’t find much on Russell Haltiwanger, but I’m sure they have a hard time fitting his name on his jersey. He’ll be 25 in April, from the Royals organization. He pitched 56.1 innings of relief for the Wilmington Blue Rocks, struck out 6.4 per nine, walked 4.6 per nine and posted a FIP of 4.09. Wilmington is the Royals high A affiliate, a league in which he was repeating. His 5.64 tRA was below league average…ugh. Wangafingers was a 29th rounder of the Reds, later to be traded for Jeff Keppinger.
To wrap up: Good luck, Cody Haerther. I am still baffled by the Scherer over Perdomo decision. We basically traded Reyes for $50K in a feeble epilogue of the Flat Hat saga. I’m glad Mark McCormick is safe and am looking forward to seeing what he can do in the bullpen next year. Runamucker is AAA roster filler, at best. Bah.
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I figured from the git go that it was a “lets find a way to dump him”
I think that there is a pretty good chance that Perdomo gets returned. He is not quite ready for primetime.
I don’t doubt that some team might take a flier on Perdomo, but given his performance in winter ball I wouldn’t expect that he sticks on a major league roster for the entire season. If the guy’s not good enough yet to crack St. Louis’ pitching staff, then where, exactly, is he going to cut it?
He’ll be back…
BJM — depends on the team that chooses him but I’d tend to agree. A non-contender is going to have an easier time stashing him though.
how could we not pick someone
Where are you getting the Rule 5 pick info from?
Really? Just pass entirely? Not a single lefty that might just be worth taking a shot in ST on? Oy.
Is there any downside to picking someone? You can either put them in the minors or receive 25k if they don’t pan out, correct? Does anyone know the cost of picking someone?
Passing in the Rule 5 is all part of the master plan. The Cards don’t need a loogy because we’re signing Fuentes for $30 mil. He’s a two-f’er per Strauss and like minded men of baseball substance. You see he comes in to get you out of a jam in the middle innings when dangerous lefthanded hitters are up then goes to dugout, changes into another uniform and reenters to close out the game for you. We don’t need no stinking cheap loogies! (blue ink)
@ Todd. $50K is the cost to picking someone. There’s not much downside at all, it’s just some teams either want roster flexibility or are full. Or they just don’t find a real need for anyone.
AZ-
Yeah, after seeing that the giants took him there is a decent chance that they could stash him on the bench. I still don’t think it is worth it to any team. Perdomo was a little old for his leagues and losing a year of development is going to sting.
The Giants could put something together and maybe conted in the NL West. Unless the D-backs bounce back I don’t see a strong division.
thanks erik.
Perdomo’s not a great reliever. He’s probably 4 or 5 on the depth chart behind guys like Gregerson, Salas, Samuel, etc. but to lose him and protect a guy like Scherer is basically inexcusable. There’s about a 25% chance (maybe a bit higher) that Perdomo spends 5 years in the majors and about a 2% chance of Scherer spending more than a couple months there. The Cardinals gave away a free middle reliever today.
Wasn’t Haerther taken in the ML portion? That is what the BA recap said at least.
NVM i just looked at it again and saw Haerther at the AAA draft this time
just a question, can’t the giants and toronto also trade for their picks if they want to send them down, or do they have to pass waivers?
I think they can trade for them and then send them down.
“There’s about a 25% chance (maybe a bit higher) that Perdomo spends 5 years in the majors”
Where are you getting these numbers? That sounds way too high for a minor league reliever who didn’t make it to AA until after his 24th birthday.
I agree with everybody here including Greenback. I’m not mourning the possible loss of Perdomo’s career but the decision, like a lot of FO decisions lately, made no sense. I think there are issues with how decisions are being made lately. First our bullpen depth is a strength, then we need a closer. First we need a 2b, then the guy who played himself out of a job for two years running is going to be just fine. First we don’t offer arb to Looper, then we need to sign somebody just like him, probably for three years. We have extraordinary depth in high minor league prospects but apparently no plans to use most of them either on the big team or in trade packages. I think Mo is really pretty smart so I sense that most of this is conflict between Tony’s win now yearnings and LUhnow’s preserve the farm interest causing a perceived state of confusion and paralysis. We should identify the guys we need to keep, let’s say Rasmus and Perez and be testing the rest of our prospects on the market. I do believe that Freese, Todd, Anderson, Mort, Jay, Boggs, Motte and many others have value to other teams but I don’t get the feeling we’re exploring that. The Dispatch guys seem to think that the winter is young and the groundwork has been laid for more deals. I hope, but don’t believe, that they’re right. Khalil Greene is fine but he does not an off season make.
@ BJM No, it was the trip A portion http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/?p=1831
greenback06 – don’t read so much into the age; it’s not as big a deal for relievers. I don’t think age is as big a deal for pitchers at all but that’s a discussion for another day.
Those are purely speculative based on what I’ve seen and what I know about his repertoire. Even if you think it’s too high, the point is the Cardinals protected a lesser player for no reason. Quibble about the specifics but that’s what happened.
Where are you getting the idea that a reliever not making AA until midway through his age-24 season isn’t a big deal for long-term purposes? There have been studies that indicate something along the lines of ‘guile’ does influence minor league pitching performance and it does not translate.
I’m pretty sure you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, and you’re doing it based on some idle speculation about a class of pitchers (24-yo relievers at AA) and further speculation on a couple of individual pitchers you’ve seen a heckuva lot less than the Cardinals have. Evaluating established major league relievers is problematic enough that I can’t see how anybody can get excited about a reliever whose stuff didn’t merit a mention in BA’s 2008 Prospect Handbook, not even BA’s nine RH reliever depth chart for the Indians. I don’t understand the decision to protect Scherer, but that is a red herring because Perdomo is thoroughly fungible.
maybe they really feel tyler johnson will be ready to go at the start
“There have been studies that indicate something along the lines of ‘guile’ does influence minor league pitching performance and it does not translate.”
Where? Not to mention that Perdomo isn’t a pitcher that gets outs based on guile. He lacks the control to do that. He’s got a slider and a fastball that will play at the major league level.
“I don’t understand the decision to protect Scherer, but that is a red herring because Perdomo is thoroughly fungible.”
No it’s really not. They protected a commodity that has no value, and lost a commodity that had some value. The Cardinals either botched today’s draft or they got a worthless receiver a year ago from the Indians.
I’ve seen Scherer pitch both on video and in person — it’s not idle speculation. I’m willing to give the Cardinals the benefit of the doubt at times (I did so when they acquired the Perdomo in the first place) but this isn’t just me making stuff up with no basis.
“Evaluating established major league relievers is problematic enough”
So we want to work with that assumption. . .ok. Instead of having X relievers who project to possibly being middle relivers, we now have X-1.
“I’m pretty sure you’re making a mountain out of a molehill”
The Cardinals made a mistake. I’ve seen nothing to show me that not protecting Perdomo while protecting Scherer isn’t a mistake. It was obvious and predictable (as multiple people stated it before it even happened). Last time I checked, I didn’t suggest we burn down Busch. It was poor decision making by someone and I don’t have a problem calling that out.
To clarify: The Cardinals will have a lot more important decisions to make during the next few months (some regarding prospects, some not). It’s frustrating to watch things like this though.
I for one was shocked we didn’t select anyone. What could it have possibly hurt. I get that the Cards desperately want Fuentes so they decided they didnt need the extra lefty arm, but still.
PS. For gods sake please don’t sign Fuentes. I read today that they would sign him and throw him into the late inning mix. NOOOOO!!!!! If your going to dish out $11MM the guy better be the friggin closer, although there is no reason why a closer deserves that much anyways. Its not worth it.
Here is the thing that annoys me about this, we probably could have kept Reyes and picked Perdomo from the Indians in the Rule 5 and had both of them.
Reyes was a bad burn of an asset. I think though that the conversation of Reyes had become such a cancerous topic between the clubhouse and front office that the team came out ahead with a little office harmony.
“Perdomo seemed to be on everyone’s list; after the draft, multiple teams with picks after this one told me that Perdomo was the guy they wanted. He’s a little undersized and, while neither pitch is overpowering, both his fastball and slider are above average, and with better command he could survive in the big leagues this year in a junk role, with the future potential to pitch in the seventh inning of games.”
– Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus
Cool, so apparently the Cardinals knew that everyone wanted him, and just didn’t care. Awesome.
I kind of wish they would have traded up for the Pirates’ pick or something so we could have gotten Veal. I’d be satisfied if I could just hear that we tried to though.
MLB.com’s top 50 list was released awhile ago but they just released their top 10 fans’ list
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081211&content_id=3714619&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb&partnerId=rss_stl
Rasmus was 10th on the MLB list and 8th on the fan list. There are some very interesting disparities though. Such as Alvarez who cracked the fan top 10 but didn’t even make the MLB top 50. Porcello was 4th on MLB and 13th on the fan list.
It’s almost as if they let Perdomo go just to keep the Reyes debate going. Or maybe it was to stick a proverbial middle finger to Reyes himself. “There. We traded you for nothing. We hate you.”
@ greenback … the way I see it, Perdomo could have come in and been a middle reliever at least as good as good ol’ Kelvin Jiminez in the next year or two. Instead Scherer is added to the 40 man and will probably never (or should never) taste the majors. Holding on to a future mop-up, league minimum $ middle reliever is a better idea than someone who will probably be released.
Alex-
As ridiculous as it is, that really seems like the most likely reason to me.
Aren’t a lot of you making much ado about nothing? Pedermo won’t stick with the giants. The cardinals don’t need a rule 5 lefty in the major league pen, they need a proven vet. Veal would have been interesting, but he was taken long before the cards had a pick. And losing Cody Haerther has absolutely no impact on any team in the entire organization. Am I missing some stud lefty that we passed over?
If only the Giants had a faint hope of contending this year. They might fall in love with Perdomo and trade us one of their young A-ball lefties for him. That’d be fine by me.
@Tom … It’s the Giants, I think he has a good chance of sticking. I actually have no problem with us not taking anyone. Much of this discussion is the decision on not protecting Perdomo vs. Scherer. Mo said: “It really just came down to, that’s one of our strengths, is right-handed relief. We didn’t really feel he was in that elite group that we have, so we felt we’d give him a chance. Plus, we think there’s some development still there.” … So apparently Scherer fits in the elite group of righthanders in our system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Perdomo is going to be a stud reliever, but I think he has a better chance of getting guys out than Scherer.
Plus, it’s the offseason … we need something to fuss about.
If this team really does consider Matt Scherer to be an ‘elite’ arm, I may weep.
Mo said: “It really just came down to, that’s one of our strengths, is right-handed relief. We didn’t really feel he was in that elite group that we have, so we felt we’d give him a chance. Plus, we think there’s some development still there.” …
The most frustrating part of this comment is then why did they trade Reyes for a person at a position of depth in the organization. That’d be the same as trading him for a AAA / AA outfielder.
Why not trade Reyes for a lower level prospect (high A perhaps – not near the service time to be eligible for rule 5) at a different position?
I wonder what kind of offers the Cards would have received if they put Reyes on the market following either the 06 or 07 season. Instead they yo-yo him around and trade him for a player they should have at least stuck on the 40-man roster in 08. Frustrating waste of talent.