Yet another close vote. Mitchell Boggs beat out Clayton Mortensen by a total of five votes, and Kozma wasn’t all that behind the two pitchers. Because the voting was close between the three, I’m going to move things along in the Reader Top 20 by giving #12 and #13 to Morty and the Koz-Whiz and we’ll now jump to another tier of prospects, if you will.
Despite their lack of proximity to the big leagues or long track record, Niko Vasquez, Lance Lynn, Francisco Samuel and Adam Reifer all made some prospect guru’s top ten because of their upside. Niko arguably had the best pro debut of any high school hitter in the draft and the best debut of any high school Cardinal hitter since Rasmus. Lynn to many is a sure-fire workhorse. Then you have Reifer and Samuel, two relievers with the stuff to close. And in contrast with the hype, you have a player who is all track record in Allen Craig.
I’m really enjoying running through this exercise so far, more so than I thought I would. The choices you have all the way down at 14 are pretty good, so yeah, I’d say I feel pretty good about the system’s depth.
1. Rasmus
2. Wallace
3. Perez
4. Jones
5. Anderson
6. Motte
7. Garcia
8. Todd
9. Freese
10. Jay
11. Boggs
12. Mortensen
13. Kozma
…because then they could draft Bryce Harper in 2011. You can read all about his recent exploits here. 500+ feet from a 15 year old is pretty stinking amazing, even if it’s only BP with a metal bat.
Also at the 2009 High School Power Show Case was left-handed 1B/RF Jem Argenal, whom the Cardinals signed out of Nicaragua back in November when Argenal turned 17. He hit 0 homers with the wood bat, but popped four with an aluminum bat in the Trop, one going 454 feet. I can’t say I know much about him outside of that, but he is a name to keep an eye on in the DSL next season.
It appears the Cardinals have signed right-handed relief pitcher Hyang-Nam Choi. Here’s the low-down:
Choi has had a taste of pro ball in America once before. Just in 2006 he pitched for the Indians AAA team and over 106 innings, he posted a 2.97 FIP with a K/PA rate of 23%. Pretty impressive, yet he didn’t get a call up.
Weird story behind how he was signed. The Cardinals initially signed him for $70, 000 as a free agent but his team, the Lotte Giants, wanted to put him through the posting system. The Cardinals put in the only bid, a whopping 101 bucks.
He’s 37 years old but don’t call him and oldhead. He’s a multiple degree black belt in Taekwondo and will probably take you out.
He’s said to be in excellent shape, but his fastball rarely breaks 87 MPH. He also throws a slider.
He spent last season in relief, where he posted a 3.58 ERA with 9 saves.
You can read more about Choi the East Windup Chronicle, where they also has some links to him in action. Hopefully there’s no relation to Hee Seop. I’m glad the Cards are becoming more active in the Far East, even if it is just minor moves at the moment, although I still think they may have missed the boat by passing on Kenshin Kawakami.
This is becoming a fun little exercise. Last time we had Jess Todd beat out David Freese in a photo finish. Now we just had Jon Jay win a close race, just beating out Clayton Mortensen, Pete Kozma and Mitch Boggs. I wonder if this has to do with the metrics that came out yesterday and revealed that our man Jay has some range. I guess this also speaks to the depth of the system. It’s just a hard system to rank, because after the top few guys, there are so many B, C+ type of guys who are pretty close to the big leagues. While I think there are some guys with higher overall future potential (Reifer, Vasquez), they are pretty far away. While B and C+ guys have relatively high rates of attrition, we have so many that quite a few should stick. That should make things a lot easier in the future to pay that big name free agent, because so many cheap, homegrown players be filling spots.
What the ignorant, loud-mouthed, message board posting side of the fan-base doesn’t realize is that the Cardinals are indeed committed to winning. It’s just not in the “old ignore the farm system and trade every good prospect we can” mode that Jocketty was, as we found out, the market caught up with Jocketty and he was no longer able to spin his magic. If anything, he become the one getting spun. Building from within should allow more leeway in the future, allowing for the best of both worlds.
1. Rasmus
2. Wallace
3. Perez
4. Jones
5. Anderson
6. Motte
7. Garcia
8. Todd
9. Freese
10. Jay
For this next poll, it’s just the three highest vote getters from the last poll. Vote away.
That was the tightest race imaginable, with Todd squeaking by Freese by only three votes. In case you were wondering, to settle a definite winner I put a time limit as to when the poll would close, which was 12:01. I halfway expect someone circumventing the system and voting multiple times in order to screw with my head, but only a complete loser would do something so lame and pointless.
Actually, I can see why both were so close. Both players burst on the scene to post two equally terrific seasons. Todd was BA’s Cardinal pitcher of year, Freese was their Cardinal hitter of the year. Both are close to the majors and both seem to be fan favorites, Freese for his St. Louis roots and Todd because “He Will Destroy Us All” fame. Both are solid prospects that project be contributors at the big league level, but are somewhat limited in ultimate upside.
Jeff Sackmann is using Sean Smith’s Total Zone Rating, which has been shown to correlate well with UZR. Maybe the more statistically inclined azruavatar can come and tell us what he thinks these numbers are worth, I don’t really know for sure. You can take them with a grain of salt.
According to the numbers, the Cards have some defensive stalwarts in the minors-
My first thoughts were “yep, Colby is probably that good” and “there’s no way Jon Jay is that good, is he?”. From what we hear of Kozma, Vasquez and Freese, I’d tend to believe those numbers. Jones is a shocker and it makes the Carl Crawford comparison more apt. If you were wondering about Wallace and Craig, Wallace was a -3 at both the QC and Springfield, that’s just out of 119 total chances he had. Craig was a -3 per 150. Jarrett Hoffpauir – remember him? – was the worst fielder I saw that the Cardinals had, with a – 15/150.
Small side journey – Tommy Pham, a personal favorite cheeseball of mine was a +19 per 150.
Personally, I’d emphasize what the scouting reports say about a player in the minors first, and then you can look at these numbers, Dan Fox’s SFR and BP’s FRAA. What ever happened to Dan Fox, anyway? FRAA is probably the last place you want to look, but until now it’s what has been the most readily available.
#7 was a three horse race between Garcia, Freese and Todd, with Garcia taking the prize.
Following Garcia, things were very close between Freese and Todd , so we’ll do a run off between the two for the #8 spot. Second place gets #9 to speed things along, unless anyone can give me a strong enough objection to do it a different way.
So far your results are looking an awfully lot like ours. Is that the confirmation bias, or are these more obvious then I thought? It should get trickier from here. Consider some of the other top tens. Baseball Digest Daily has compiled all the rankings into one handy spreadsheet, click over to the NL Central and see what I’m talking about.
The first three or four are all about the same, but after that, the rankings diverge greatly. Some players that are top ten prospects on one list don’t make the cut, for example Jess Todd is # 4 on BA’s list and he doesn’t crack Keith Law’s. OTOH, Keith has Niko Vasquez and Francisco Samuel on his list. Kevin Goldstein has Adam Reifer. BA and our list are the only ones to have David Freese. That’s a lot of disparity.
I don’t really have a lot to add that has not already been said about some of the prospects invited up. I will say it’s definitely encouraging to see fewer minor league free agents with each year being invited. A few quick takes of each group by position:
You don’t call up one of your best prospects for just five weeks, no reason to start Wallace’s service time sooner than needed. If anyone is going to fill in for Glaus, it very well might be someone already on the 40. David Freese is a good possibility given that he has little left to prove in AAA at and he’ll be 26 at the end of April.
I’m doing a community project with the good people at Beyond the Boxscore, and when I take away 125 plate appearances and give them to Freese, the Cards still have 88 win talent. If he’s out for much longer than that, it could spell trouble.
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