Archive for February, 2009

Per DG, the Cardinals signed Mitch Harris. He will report after duty, which in the Navy equals five years. Meaning, he will be 28 when he starts his professional career, and I have no earthly idea how he will keep of the rust.

Loved the draft pick when it was made, glad he’s in the fold but I’m not sure how this all is supposed to work.

Baseball America ranked Mitch Harris the 2nd best senior draft prospect of 2008, behind only Josh Fields.

“Hey look, Ma! I wrote a column in a magazine!”

I know the season hasn’t started yet and it’s still probably cold wherever you live, but this is one of my favorite times of year for baseball. It’s not because spring training games have started, although that of course is nice, but no, I love it because all the annual baseball publications hit the shelves:  Baseball Prospectus, THT’s Season Preview, Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook and so on. A guy could go broke with all the good baseball books coming out now. But whatever you do, save $13.00 and get this one.

Maple Street Press put together an all-star cast of bloggers in their 2009 Cardinals Annual, which includes myself. OK, so that in itself isn’t a great reason to buy the book. Check out the full roster:

• Larry Borowsky
• Dan Moore
• Chuck Brownson
• Aaron Schafer (The whole VEB crew)
• Dustin Mattison (The Birdhouse, Whiteyball)
• Brian Gunn (every Cardinal blogger’s hero)
• Will Leitch (Deadspin)
• Dayn Perry (Baseball Prospectus, Foxsports.com)
• Josh Kalk (Pitch F/X guru, THT, from small ball to long ball)
• Jeff Sackmann (Minor League Splits, THT, Brew Crew Ball)
• Vince Gennaro (Author of the book Diamond Dollars)
• Alex Eisenberg (Baseball Intellect, THT)

I just got it in the mail, so I haven’t read it all, but it won’t be long before I will. So far I really enjoyed Josh Kalk’s look at how Duncan was able to coax a career year out of Kyle Lohse, Will Leitch’s entertaining look at Cardinal contracts, Brian Gunn’s look at the tragedy and triumph of Curt Flood, Larry’s interview with Mike Matheny and his look at the “unclutchiness” of Ankiel. Alex Eisenberg’s look at “natural mechanics” would also certainly be of interest to readers of FR, and Aaron, Dustin and I tackle some other prospect-y subjects.

There’s also a great look at some historical topics, stats, scouting reports and the book is loaded with great pictures.

The mag hits the stands Tuesday, or you can order it by mail here. Just to be clear, I don’t get anything extra from plugging the book. I just enjoy good writing, and what you’ll find in here is as good as it gets.

Note to STL-PD editors, Strauss shouldn’t be allowed to talk about prospects.

QUESTION: Starting pitcher Chris Carpenter so far has had no setbacks in camp. However, given his injury history, what would realistically constitute a successful season for Carpenter in 2009?

JOE STRAUSS
The Cardinals’ lack of depth does not allow for grading on a curve. (Mortensen and Todd are projected as major league relievers; Walters and Ottavino are projected for the rotation but not ready, despite the buzz created by some hyperventilating early reports; Boggs is behind due to shoulder stiffness that followed him into camp. The club does not promote Brad Thompson as an alternative.) Anything less than 28 starts by Carpenter represents a serious complication to the season.

Let’s break this down.  “Mortensen and Todd are projected as major league relievers.”  I’ll give him the latter, in some circles including myself, but no one projects Mortensen as a reliever.  He’s always been billed as a starter.  While the mantra of needing to improve his changeup holds true, you won’t find many analysts projecting him as a reliever rather than a backend starter.

“Walters and Ottavino are projected for the rotation.”  If he wanted to knock someone as being projected for the pen, he’d have been far better off going after Mr. Slow Fastball and Ottavino who has been living off his 1st round draft status for a while now.  KLaw has consistently called Ottavino a reliever and there’s plenty of questions about his secondary pitches.  The choice to say these two are projected starters rather than Mortensen is nothing short of baffling.

“despite the buzz created by some hyperventilating early reports”  Read this as the internet geeks are getting itchy.  Strauss has a consistent and derogatory tone toward anyone not of the traditional media venue or part of the in-crowd for baseball.  He’d undoubtedly cite scouts who actually work for MLB teams as his references for these statements but he never takes a pass on trying to kick prospect evaluators.  Heck, the question wasn’t even about prospects.

No one is claiming that Mortensen or Todd are going to jump right in and save the day but Strauss is ever egregious in his hyperbole and slams when it comes to prospects.  He’s not a bad beat writer and I would imagine he’s a decent human being but he has little objectivity when it comes to prospects.

Story, or blurb at least. I quickly find myself turning on all this ballyhooed “classic mechanics” stuff. Kopp and Mortensen were said to be low injury risks, two pitchers blessed with great mechanics. Right.

I’m not an injury expert, but hopefully this doesn’t turn into a TJ situation.

Lots of drama unfolding already this spring. Like most of you, I fully expected Freese to seize the opening day 3B job with Glaus on the DL for the first month of the season or so, but now that scenario is starting to fade away. First we find that Mather was given a big boy number (Lucky 7, which formally was Adam Kennedy’s) and now it’s been revealed Freese is dealing with soreness in his Achilles tendon due to him totaling his car on his way to a fundraiser. Talk about bad timing. But even if Freese was 100%, is he any better than Joe Mather? Seems like a natural 3B would be a better fit, especially considering the season Freese came off of, where he was arguably the system’s most productive player. Let’s take a closer look.

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It’s back, and we have a boxscore.

Colby Rasmus went 2-for-5 with a double off of Anibal Sanchez. He also drew a walk.

Tyler Greene, Jarrett Hoffpauir, Steve Hill, Nick Stavinoha and Allen Craig all had singles.

Francisco Samuel can’t throw strikes. Shaun Garceau wasn’t a whole lot better. Salas struck out four but blew the save.

Oh, yeah.

Apparently after ranking Anderson in their Top 100 last year, BA is suffering a bit of prospect fatigue with Bryan Anderson. They rank him 15th overall. While you can make an argument for the players ranked ahead of him, in some ways I don’t see how Anderson is that far talent wise from Lou Marson.

Colby is the top ranked center fielder, Brett Wallace is the 4th best 3B.  To my surprise David Freese was ranked the 17th best 3B, but I should preface that 3B was rated a weak crop overall.

Daryl Jones was ranked 13th overall as a corner outfielder, Pete Kozma was 14th in a very weak SS crop, and Chris Perez was ranked the third best relief prospect, behind Samardzija and Adam Miller of the Indians, who I though was a starter.

Adam Ottavino (SP), Arquimedes Nieto (SP) and Curt Smith (1B).

Also, Justin Fiske (LHP) was added to the Spring Training Roster.

Chris Perez ranked 91, Wallace 40th, Rasmus 3rd!

Pre-2005 it probably wouldn’t have been much fun to cover the minor league farm system on a daily basis.  Part of the success that we’ve had here at FR, besides the dashing good looks of our avatars and lyrical prose*, is that the minor leaguers have actually gotten good and people enjoy watching teams that don’t suck.  There’s been one glaring change this year to tell us that the farm system is producing top to bottom but where would we hope to see the farm system head next?

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