Archive for April, 2009

This is our first installment of  ‘Guess the Future Redbird’. I’ll start out with something easy.

As the first month of action draws to a close, we have a few shake ups in the farm due to movements towards the big club.
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Matt Baker, following in Kary Booher’s excellent Springfield Sports blogging shoes, has all the details of the minor league fall out from Brendan Ryan/Khalil Greene’s injuries:

• Pete Kozma from Palm Beach to Springfield
• Donovan Solano from Springfield to Memphis
• Kyle Mura to the DL
• Trey Hearne from bullpen to rotation
• Marco Gonzalez demoted from Memphis to Springfield
• Fernando Salas off the DL(?)

NOTICE:The Future Redbirds Literary Club will only be meeting on Wednesday’s from this date further. Refreshments will still be provided before and after the sessions.

On these grounds I rest the matter And as no offer hath yet been made to refute the doctrine contained in the former editions of this pamphlet it is a negative proof that either the doctrine cannot be refuted or that the party in favour of it are too numerous to be opposed Wherefore instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity let each of us hold out to his neighbour the hearty hand of friendship and unite in drawing a line which like an act of oblivion shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct and let none other be heard among us than those of a good citizen an open and resolute friend and a virtuous supporter of the Rights of Mankind and of the Free and Independent States of America.

Ever wonder why every pitcher gets a write up in the DFR but only a select number of hitters do? I mean, if a hitter is good, he gets written up…if he’s bad, he is ignored (unless he’s awful). But the pitcher’s get full exposure.

With MIF’ers dropping like flies on the big league club, we turn to a farm system that was without the presence of the Memphis club.
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Hammons Field is a great ballpark and I fully intend on spending a weekend there again this year.  Hopefully, the club is still playing as well then as they are now.  The offense that is . . . because the pitching has some issues.

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Set the Niko & Kozma (working together!) days since an “accident” counter to 1.  Maybe this counter will have the reverse effect of the Rasmus Watch from a few years back and actually bring some good luck.

Set your phasers to stun, the system went 3-1 with Palm Beach playing bonus baseball.  So, bring your Wookie, its the DFR!

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Taking a step back and talking about the status of each club.  Today: Memphis Redbirds.

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The Cardinals picked up Evan Maclane from the AAA squad for the Arizona Dimonbacks. He will help out at Memphis in the starting rotation. He’s not what I would call a prospect, but he will help the innings crunch at Memphis. Maybe Kat Maekawa won’t have to start any more. Here’s an old scouting report on Maclane from when he was in the Mets organization.

Evan throws 4 pitches; Fastball, Slider, Changeup and Curveball. His best pitch is his Changeup. It usually sits in the upper 70‘s and is his out pitch. His curveball has improved since entering the pro ranks and is now also an out pitch for him. Generally it gets into the mid-70‘s. He uses his fastball at many different speeds but consistently gets it into the upper 80‘s. He uses this pitch to show hitters and set up his breaking pitches. With added speed it could become more of an out pitch and less of a show pitch. The 2004 season saw Maclane develop a slider which reaches 80-82mph.

I guess the added speed didn’t come around. Overall, he’s a soft-tossing lefty who looks like he topped out at AAA.

At the beginning of the year, I was lauding the Memphis Redbirds’ all homegrown rotation, but the injuries at the big club has split up that rotation.

All four teams were in action and a double dip for Quad Cities.

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Here we are with the second installment of the wrap.  This is a very interesting draft to say the least as a lot of the top prospects haven’t put up the kind of seasons you would expect from top draft prospects.  Needless to say, this will be a year where teams will have to rely more on pure scouting than sabermetrics.  It could also mean a lean to more high school players in the first round.

We will be coming out with an update on our top draft prospects soon, but for now you will have to be content with checking the status updates inside.

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And the first pitcher called up to Springfield is. . . a starter? Ryan Kulik is set to join the Springfield Cardinals in the next few days to replace Justin Fiske who was lost to a stress reaction for the next 3-6 weeks. Technically, Eddie Degerman was activated to replace Kenny Maiques (extended spring training) but I believe this is the first Palm Beach callup of the year.

Steve Hill keeps hitting and Trey Hearne tosses a gem as Springfield prevents a goose egg from the farm system.

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A trio of News-Leader links for the DFR:

• Justin Fiske is out for 3-6 weeks. A stress reaction in his pitching arm.
• Brad Furnish discusses his recent bout with Steve Blass syndrome.

“The ball just wasn’t going where I wanted it to,” Furnish said today at Hammons Field. “I really tried to do some stuff to correct it, and by the time I got it fixed, I already put us in a hole.”

Furnish struggled to throw strikes. Only 47 of his 97 pitches were strikes. He fell behind in the count 3-0 five times and threw first-pitch strikes to only 10 of the 24 batters he faced.

• This might be my favorite article in a while. I love the sombrero gag and then the article ends with one of my favorite occurences in baseball: the manager getting tossed from the game. “Yer outta heer.”

Palm Beach takes a close loss in a night filled with some close wins.

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