Archive for March, 2009

Over at BtB, Harry took an in-depth look at Adam Ottavino thru the lense of Pitch F/x.  Nice to see Ottavino go out and pitch quite well against a talented Venezuelan Team.

Man, you guys are awesome. I never had any idea there would be such an outpouring of support for FR after I announced I was pulling the plug. Since the site means so much to you and us, we won’t just walk away cold, but some changes will be made.

I’ll be hanging out in the background and azruavatar will be filling in my shoes as the administrator/main writer/editor of FR.  I said I’d be willing to hand this baby off to someone I trust, and AZ was my right hand man here at FR for a long time.  I believe he’s tremendously talented and knowledgeable, and I’m happy he offered to assume responsibility for the blog. You guys are in great hands. He will be looking for some help and specific details will be forthcoming regarding openings on the writing staff early next week.

As for myself, I’ll be around here and there, but nowhere near the capacity as before. When I find the time and feel inspired, I’ll write. I’ll just sort of come and go as I please. I believe this arrangement ought to make everyone happy.

It’s been real everyone, but I’ve decided to hang up my cleats here at FR. I’m sad to make such an announcement with a fresh season so close, but that’s why I know I have to go. Writing here and making it worth your time takes several hours a week, even with the great help I have here. With a 2 year old and child # 2 coming in June, as well as other priorities, I know I can’t continue and make it worth your time and mine. I had every intention of writing for another season (that’s why I brought on Dustin), but this final decision literally came at 6am this morning. It’s something I’ve wrestled with  in my heart for a while, and real life got the better of me.

I’ve enjoyed unexpected success with this blog, thanks to you readers and my co-writers. You guys are the greatest. When I started, I didn’t know what I was going to write about, nor did I know a whole lot about the minors, to be honest. My curiosity is what birthed it, fed it and brought it to health. I’ve since been able to form some great relationships, and never even dreamed it would go as far as it went…which probably isn’t really all that far in reality, but it’s still been a great ride.

In the end, I love doing this, maybe too much, but I can’t think just of myself. To be able to write about baseball professionally would just plain kick butt, but it probably isn’t going to happen, reality beckons. I don’t want to be like the Quad-A player who never gets the call. Sometimes that Quad A player may be able to play at a higher level than others because he works his behind off, but the truth is he probably will be more of a natural doing the things his Maker truly made him for, not just what he wants to do or really enjoys.

If it were merely a hobby, that would be one thing, but for me, honestly it can be a borderline obsession. And in order to make it worthwhile, I want to give 110%, which means time. I haven’t been able to completely do that for a while now, and I know I won’t be able to for the duration of another baseball season. I will still be writing once a week or so at Beyond the Boxscore. That I can do. Once a week blogging is probably a whole lot more balanced and would be more like a hobby and not a second part-time job.

In the end, I just wanted to say you all of have been great. Thank you for reading and thank you for all your support. Thanks for putting up with my poor grammar and mistakes at times.  I’ll miss the discussion the most, but I’m sure I’ll be commenting and defending Luhnow’s overrated Faberge’ eggs at VEB every now and then.

I wrote a post at Beyond the Boxscore on NL Central Farm System Values. The Cardinals and Brewers have the best collection of prospects in the division, while the Astros and Cubs are just plain bad.

Per Ben Badler of Baseball America:

In December, the Cardinals landed one of the toolsiest players available since the end of the 2008 international signing period, inking Dominican center fielder Jose Pena to a $350,000 bonus. Pena, who turns 17 on May 26, has a solid physique at around 6-foot-2, 190 pounds, showing a little more room to fill out an already well-developed frame. Pena is an above-average runner with an average arm and has a line-drive swing with gap power from the right side.

I don’t know abut you, but I like hearing this sort of news.

Mini-post.

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I’ll be talking a little NL Central along with the guys at Beyond the Boxscore tomorrow at 1 central time.

Oh, and an hour before that John Sickels and Jeff Erickson will be talking NL and AL Central prospects on Prospect Tuesday’s, part of Rotowire’s coverage on BlogTalkRadio.

Prospect evaluation and ranking can be somewhat of a nebulous task. John Sickels compares it to being a weatherman, we can tell you what we think looks most probable based on a variety of different information we’re given, but if it turns out we’re wrong…hey, what can you do? Even if we can project how a prospect will perform, how exactly do you turn that into a trade value, one that can determine what sort of a gold mine your team is sitting on?

Most recently Baseball America ranked the Cardinal farm system the 8th best in baseball. But what is that really worth? Thankfully with the hard work of others, a clearer picture has been given. Victor Wang has done a great job tackling this subject, and lays out in his chapter in The Hardball Times Annual 2009 the hidden value of these prospects we so closely follow here at FR. I’ll briefly explain his method, with his permission, and then we’ll get into how it applies to the Cardinals.

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Please help me welcome him to the site. I’m thrilled to have him contributing here at FR and I’m sure many of you know him from is work at The Birdhouse and his own blog. Dustin is a great writer and someone who knows the farm system backwards and forwards, so I’d say he will fit here pretty well. He’s pretty busy with his own blogging and contributions at Scout.com, but he will be around about once a week to give us his unique point of view.