Archive for March, 2010

Derrick Goold has the full list.

There’s a couple real surprises on that list for me. Andres Rosales was just 22 and had posted some nice strikeout rates but was undone by poor command in recent seasons. Justin Fiske was damaged goods in an organization with too many upper minors pitchers right now.

The rest of the players simply weren’t performing up to par to keep their roster spots. This is likely the first of several waves of releases from minor league camp.

Hi everyone! Great to see you all again. First and foremost, I just want to say it is an honor and a privilege to be bringing the DFRs to you all again this year.

Before we get to the Vuch report for today, I was reading Matt Leach’s blog today, something dawned on me… our boys are all grownzed up! Let’s take a quick look at the HPGF (and former HPGF) still vying for spots with the big club.
Jaime Garcia, Adam Ottavino, David Freese, Joe Mather, Tyler Greene, Nick Stavinoha and of course Colby Fire Burning are all mentioned as solid candidates for the team.
According to Leach, Jay, Stavioha and Ottavino look to be the best candidates to continue to appear in the DFR early in the year, but nothing is set in stone right now. But, that’s a nice graduation rate for the kids either way.

Let’s get to the DFR with information provided by John Vuch after the jump, so let’s jump!

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pleased to tell you that Jeff Roman and Hardcore Legend are going to be back this year to bring you DFRs on Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, respectively. It’s a huge undertaking to compile these during the regular season on a daily basis but it’s a task we undertake with love — or the robotic equivalent of that emotion. So a preemptive thank you to the both of them.

Pitching troubles continue to plague the system this spring as the teams go 1-and-4.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals’ minor league pitchers are taking a while to get started this spring. The clubs all fall to bad pitching though the Springfield offense shows some life.

Tommy Pham didn’t talk to you today. You hope he’s just hanging out with his other friends.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Pham has been asking your friends about you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today we get our first dose of minor league games against OTHER teams! Huzzah! The org goes 3-2 on the day.

Tommy Pham winks in your general direction.

Read the rest of this entry »

The wait is over. Courtesy of the Cardinals’ Director of Minor League Operations, John Vuch, we’ll be bringing you the Spring Training minor league box scores. The most interesting things to glean from these box scores is, in my opinion, what players are playing for what clubs. It should give us our first insight into some of their eventual assignments.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 24 hours we had 197 legit ballots, a great turnout. (I deleted 16 ballots. Those were sent consecutively, with Allen Craig getting nothing but 1′s and Pete Kozma getting nothing but 5′s. Coincidently, this was right after I tweeted on some of the early returns. To whoever you are, you smell).

I’ve closed the balloting, here are the averages for each hitting prospect. Remember, everything but offense was factored in the poll. This is how confident you are that these players will hit enough to be at least major league average during their team-controlled years.

• Aaron Luna – 2.3
• Adron Chambers – 2.2
• Allen Craig – 4
• Bryan Anderson – 2.4 (ouch)
• Dan Descalsco – 2.8
• Daryl Jones – 3.2
• David Freese – 3.6
• Jon Jay – 3.4
• Mark Hamilton – 2.5
• Pete Kozma – 2.4
• Robert Stock – 3.4
• Ryan Jackson – 2.4
• Shane Robinson – 2.1
• Steve Hill – 2.4
• Tommy Pham – 1.7
• Tyler Greene – 2.6
• Tyler Henley – 2.8

So as a community we like Allen Craig’s chances the best to be at least an average big-leaguer. This could spell bad news for the Thudwick Fan Club, but good news for the payroll come 2011.

We also felt pretty good about David Freese’s chances to be our 3B for the foreseeable future, which represents a darn good return on the charred remains of Jimmy “be still my heart” Edmonds.

Jon Jay is such a good defender that he doesn’t really have to hit a lot to be a valuable player, I think of him as David DeJesus light. His trouble, along with Daryl  Jones, (who we also feel pretty good about), is that they have no place to play with this team.  Maybe they can win out over Craig for the open spot in RF coming 2011, but I think their throwing arms could be enough of a deterrent to the club to do nothing more than use them as 4th OFers, or package them in a trade.

Robert Stock was the one surprise of the group, it seems the community has generally a fuzzy feeling about him. Is this because of his Appy League performance, or a result of the offensive threshold being so low for catchers, or both? The good news is Stock comes with a back-up plan, but we’re thinking he might not need it.

Tommy Pham on the other hand might want to start thinking about a Sergio Santos career-path, because we’re not feeling so hot about his chances, even after a resurgent second half. He still could go all Daryl Jones 2008 on us all yet, but no one is holding their breath.

I’m a little surprised Tyler Greene didn’t do as well. I guess his 2009 season flew under the radar more than I expected. His offensive floor to be a 2-WAR player is just a .326 wOBA. I know it was one year, but a .390 wOBA in Triple-A from a player who has long-tantalized with TOOLZ. I think I gave him a 3, so I can’t complain, but I think Greene might surprise us. He has been an errors machine this spring, so maybe that’s what is fresh on everyone’s mind.

Anyway, here’s the sheet I used to derive what the player’s wOBA would need to be for 2-WAR for your perusal. Many thanks to Bryan Smith, who was discussing these ideas and others with Marc and I as the FanGraphs team was hashing out their Top 100. (95% credit goes to Marc for the top 100)

I’m sorry that we skipped the FR Reader rankings this year. That was lame of me. In order to make it up to you, the reader, I thought we’d try something a little different. This idea was inspired by Bryan Smith’s article at FanGraphs and some of the cool stuff he does. (Bryan is very smart).

Please click on this poll and enter your input on some of our hitting prospects. This poll is designed to seehow confident Future Redbirds readers are on a prospect’s ability to be an average big leaguer during their first six full seasons. The wOBA presented for each prospect is the minimum based on their defensive position and skill for them to be a 2 WAR player, or a major league average regular. DO NOT CONSIDER IF THE PLAYER IS CURRENTLY BLOCKED. And remember, this is what you think the player is capable of averaging during their first six major league seasons, or in other words, when they are under team control.

For those of you not hip to wOBA, well, get with it. wOBA is the new and improved OPS. Instead of just combining slugging and on-base percentage, wOBA takes the run values of offensive events and then scales it to a rate that is scaled to on-base percentage. You can read up on wOBA here and here and here.

To give you some frame of reference, Albert Pujols had a .449 wOBA last year. NL average is about .335. To give you further frames of reference, Nate McLouth had a .350 wOBA last year. Billy Butler had a .369. Ryan Sweeney had a .330. Cristian Guzman had a .301. Adam LaRoche had a .357. Orlando Hudson had a .342. Got it? Good.

Again, the reason why I picked the wOBA for each prospect is based on the minimum requirement based on their position and defensive skill to be at least two wins above replacement player, or in other words, an average player. For their position, I took the position they currently play, or what Baseball America pegged them for, as in the case of Steve Hill. (Catcher was a nice idea, at least). Their defensive skill is hidden, but it comes from their CHONE projected defensive runs above average. If a projection wasn’t available, I just went with their scouting report and fudged a number. This explains a bit why Ryan Jackson’s offensive threshold is so low.

You can skip any player if you’re not quite sure, but try and answer as many as possible. It’s on a scale of 1-5, 1 being not confident at all, while 5 would be that you feel very confident the player will hit for that minimum batting requirement on average during their first six seasons in the majors.

Thanks for your input.

Poll away.  <——–Um, yeah. Go here.

A question recently posed to me has led to some further questions.  As we entered 2009, the depth in the outfield was lauded as one of the real strengths for the team.  With Rick Ankiel, Chris Duncan, Ryan Ludwick and upcomer Colby Rasmus.  It was hard to envision a scenario in which we didn’t have a productive fly catching crew.

Read the rest of this entry »