Archive for March, 2009

Here’s some KLaw chat tidbits:

Perez > Motte for me, but Perez is hurt. Motte’s a one-pitch guy. It’s a good pitch, but man cannot live on fastball alone.

One of the things I intend to do in the next few weeks is go back and look at all my previous comments on Motte. I tend to side with KLaw on this one but I’m pretty sure that’s not the prevailing opinion among fans.

Boozer, Wrigleyville: We all know about Price and Wieters, but who could the NL ROY candidates be? McCutcheon? Rasmus? I’m not a big fan of Maybin.

Keith Law: Maybin, Rasmus, Zimmerman.

Here’s the deal: ignore spring training numbers, look at the talent. He smoked the ball in ST last year, he’s flailing a bit this year. He’s the same uber-talented player. He’ll be good given the chance.

On to John Vuch’s notes from the day.

Read the rest of this entry »

After going through all the e-mails and responding to each one individually, I’m pleased to announce the new staff that will be contributing at the site.  While I don’t have all their admin accounts set up (weekend goal), I didn’t want to hold off on the names for much longer.

Daily Farm Reports:
Azruavatar
Jeff Roman
Hardcore Legend

Columnists:
Erik (FR’s godfather)
The Red Baaron
Dustin Mattison
Alex Fritz
Fewgoodcards
Picklefork

Your expectations for the blog should remain largely unchanged.  DFRs should be accesible by a reasonable time in the morning (8am CDT) and an afternoon column should be posted each weekday as well (2pm CDT).  The caliber of writing should be top notch and our goal is to continue to bring you closer to the Cardinals farm system on a daily basis.  I’m hopeful to have a greater focus on the draft and college baseball this year as well.  Personally, I’m looking forward to working with the new writers and reading their opinions.

Go Cardinals! (and Redbirds and Cardinals and Cardinals and Swing and Muckdogs and all the other mascots I can’t remember).

A big thanks to John Vuch, the Cardinals’ Director of Minor League Operations, for the information about the minor leaguers in spring training. It was an up and down day for the minor leaguers as we have 5 games to recap.

Read the rest of this entry »

I admit it. For someone semi-retired, I’ve been around a lot. Actually, I have had some spare time, although it’s not really been the good sort of spare time. I’ll spare you the details, but things are going to change soon and I won’t be around quite as much. The good news that I’ve got a sneak peak at the cast of writers AZ is bringing on, and it’s a stellar group. I feel like John the Baptist. “I must decrease, they must increase”.  OK, never mind with my weird delusions of grandeur. Anyway, here are some of the highlights of today’s inter-squad action, which started today.

Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest complaint against the Cardinals is their lack of  potential top of the rotation talent. The only Cardinal pitcher that ranked in any of the top 100 has been Chris Perez, a reliever. In fact, most of the arms in the system that are perceived to have big upside are relievers. I used to think this was a big deal, but now I’m starting to wonder if it is being blown out of proportion.

Again I’d like to refer back to Victor Wang’s research on Top 100 prospects to see if this is as big of an issue as it’s made out to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cards ranked #9.

Why They Might Be Better Than This: Despite an overall disappointing season, scouts still love Colby Rasmus; 2008 first-round pick Brett Wallace mashed at Double-A just weeks after signing and looks like a future mid-order lineup force who doesn’t need much more time in the minors; Daryl Jones is just beginning to tap into his athleticism.
Why They Might Be Worse: Rasmus looks as if he’s pressing once again this spring; Wallace isn’t really a third baseman in the end; they have some solid pitching prospects, but none of them look like stud big-league starters.

From Josh Kalk’s Pitch F/X cards.

Kalk also runs similarity scores on his site for each pitcher and interestingly enough, Motte’s most comparable pitcher from 2008 was Grant Balfour. Balfour happened to lead the majors in K/9 with 12.65. Jason Motte led all of the minors in K/9 with 14.85. Both throw fastballs 90% of the time. So you tell me – can he get by with one pitch?

The response was good.  I’m going through e-mails.  I’ll try to contact everyone by Wednesday.

Thanks.

{Update, Azru to self: Don’t post after you’ve been had to go to work on a Saturday.  Especially not when you are requesting help . . . you make everything sound way worse than it actually is. DFRs take time but it’s not like you’re being drawn and quartered.}

As erik announced, I’m going to attempt to keep FR running.  Whether that happens, is going to depend largely on what kind of response I get to this post.

DFR’s are taxing.  The first year erik and I did them, we were each doing 3-4 a week and were totally burnt out by the end of the season.  When we were doing 2-3 a week with roarke last year, it seemed managable.  Each DFR takes about 1 to 1.5 hours to write (if you’re doing it properly).  I’d say a well researched and well written post is an hour long commitment as well, if not more.

So when you decide whether or not you even want to respond to the questions after the break, start by asking if you have at least 5 free hours a week that you can devote to blogging.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, just popping in with a couple of things today. Here is a post idea I wanted to do for a while but just hadn’t found the time until today.

I think as we look at the players in our team’s favorite farm system, sometimes if we are not careful we can get rose-colored glasses when it comes to our outlook of the future of these players. But the truth is, most of these players we find ourselves pulling for simply won’t ever make it.

Read the rest of this entry »