2011 Baseball America Cardinals Top 10
Posted on January 13th, 2011 by azruavatar in Prospect rankingsI’ll be in meetings all day Friday so this is your BA discussion post. I’ll update it with the link when I have a chance but it will appear here eventually.
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Just read DG’s articles at BA, the main one and the one for subscribers only.
Interesting line:
“The team also added its first headline-grabbing international signing (Carlos Martinez) in recent years.”
Didn’t take long to forget about Roberto De La Cruz! (FWIW, in 2010 RDLC tied for the league lead in home runs, with 7. Doesn’t make up for a .291 OBP his 2nd time through the league, but it shows the Cards weren’t hallucinating when they drafted him for his power potential.)
Something else I came across from last June: Jeff Sackmann said the Cardinals had “probably the best draft of 2010.”
http://www.collegesplits.com/blog/20100617-st-louis-cardinals-2.html
The other funny thing about the Martinez signing comment is that as far as I can remember, the signing didnt grab any headlines until he started blowing batters away in the DSL.
I don’t know about that. I seem to remember a BA columnist — Ben Badler? — mentioning the signing when it happening, and passing on that famous assessment of CM’s fastball, saying it was already one of the best in baseball.
I could be wrong, but I thought we were following CM from his first start in the DSL.
Lou – you are right. Ben Badler said that CM had one of the best Fastballs in baseball when he was signed.
Needless to say, this got our attention.
If Skip is our starting 2B in 2014 than I’m pretty sure this team will have failed on a lot of levels.
Worse yet, a MI of Kozma/Schumaker makes me ill just thinking about it.
But I’m drooling looking at that projected rotation.
I think @DGoold’s write up on front office reorg is a lot of hot air about nothing. How many times has the team reorged its amatuer scouting/drafting/minor league ops in the last 10 years? 4-5 I believe. I see nothing to see that this one is particularly different than any of the others that have met with mixed results at best.
You don’t think aligning the coaching of certain things with how the big league club does this is significant? Or do you think the language is just sunshine and rainbows coming out of the front office to please people?
I believe we’ve heard it before. Certainly didnt need to switch jobs to make it happen in any case (we are talking about the same people for the most part)
The bigger thing is results speak not arranging deck chairs. Every time their is a reorg, people talk about how things will be better. Sometimes they are, some times they aren’t. I just think Goold is making it sounds like this is a definitive cure. No way to know that and to be honest, not much to make us believe it is. It’s not like we are bringing in some new guys with long track records of success.
There is also a possible down side to everyone thinking the same way. It is often good for a young player to hear varying opinions. Can be good or bad.
Didn’t they bring in new people a few years ago? I remember reading several comments from various people concerned with this organizations ability to develop people. And as you mentioned, there have been reorgs before – but there’s allegedly some instructional talent within the organization. I believe I’ve seen positive comments on this site about Derrik May, Dyar Miller, Dennis Martinez and Brent Strom. If there are good people and players still aren’t reaching their potential, where do you make adjustments?
Not saying they shouldn’t keep trying till they get it right. Just saying that Goold making it sound like such a big deal (made it a huge part of the system write up) makes little sense. If he wanted to write something about how system changes had been successful (and thus we were likely to see further success) that would make sense.
We’ve heard it before, but not from Goold. It’s usually Strauss who pushes the “This is significant!” button way too much. Of the Post-Dispatch’s reporters, Goold is more in tune with the Cardinals’ farm system than most people, so I trust he can recognize when the people heading up the development of prospects has changed significantly enough to change the philosophy.
And I don’t see anything in Goold’s write-up that says the moves are a “definitive cure.”
Yeah, Strauss is the Geraldo Rivera of Cardinal beat reporting. Just awful.
as a longtime tony cruz fan, i am struck to see him listed as best defensive catcher, where that was, for a while, the biggest ding against him. i wonder whether the club shares goold’s opinion?
If he is better than Derba, he should be in STL this year.
I was struck by that too. If he is even close to that good he could be a very valuable three position reserve. Having a reserve catcher who can play other postitions gives a manager more options in late inning situations. The current occupant in the dugout hasn’t seemed to care about that but a successor could make good use of it.
Is Derba still in the organization? Even if not there must be some decent defensive catchers in the organization to compare Cruz to.
Derba is still there. I questioned Goold (via twitter) and he confirmed that many in the org consider Cruz better defensively than Derba.
I think Cruz is the best catching prospect in the organization. Luhnow really talked up a unknown guy from Batavia this year though. It wasn’t Perez though.
I keep talking up Juan Castillo but nobody is listening — but they will!!!
He may be the player that Luhnow mentioned on an audio interview with a Batavia beat writer. When everyone wanted to talk abotu Aubry Perez, he was talking about Castillo.
I noticed that they just came to terms with Derba. This puts Cruz in a whole new light. Derba was considered to be defensively almost major league ready when he was drafted. I’ll be following Castillo this year.
Not sure what you mean by coming to terms with Derba. He is under team minor league control. Normally no contract negotiating at that point. Can you explain?
It was just a blurb in the transaction section of my local (Mpls.) sports page that he, some other minor leaguers, and Snell and Batista had “come to terms”. In the case of Derba and the other minor leaguers I assume that it was a routine procedure that for some reason was announced to the press.
Its much tougher to grade Baseball drafts because of the long developmental time.
Looking at this projection, and previous ones, its obvious to see the cardinals are moving in the right direction. I don’t think people realize how bad the drafts were under jockety. People keep bagging on the Kozma pick, but under Jocketty this team had somthing like a near 10 year stretch without developing a #1 pick.
Its tough to actually grade the current regime because Jocketty was here until the 2008 draft. Its just too early still to early yet to completly judge, but its safe to say the regime change made a few years ago was a good one.
Yea, but it was Jocketty’s guy ( Bruce Manno, now with the Braves I think) that was drafting before Luhnow, as I recall. Luhnow sorta operated separately from Jocketty, as they didn’t see eye to eye on things.
Anyone else agree that Oscar Tavares should have been somewhere on this list? As far as upside potential, he’s in the same class as Jenkins and Martinez, which I agree with their rankings, just wish bums like L. Lynn would be left off since he has a very low ceiling. Knock Lynn off and put Tavares in his place and I think it’s a good list.
Am I the only one excited about this guy??
He’s on at #13. Hint: It’s TavErAs, not TavArEs.
thank you for mentioning the spelling error, its been driving me crazy too.
Why use an epithet for Lance Lynn? Nobody is claiming his ceiling is higher than a workhorse, back-of-the-rotation guy, but the probability of reaching that ceiling is higher than for most prospects. I could see him as a 2-3 win player at his peak, and no worse than a replacement-level starter in his non-peak years.
What’s wrong with that?
Nothing wrong with that at all, and I love having guys like that in the system, but I get more excited about possible Allstar type guys than a “back-of-the-rotation” kind of guy. And when it comes to prospect rankings, I think upside is more important than certainty.
And sorry about the wrong spelling, I knew that I was just in a hurry
AND TGIF!!!
There’s a balance between upside and certainty, absolutely, but I think Lance Lynn has enough upside to be in the top ten; a back-end guy may not *seem* exciting but he still pitches 10-15% of the team’s innings.
To me, certainty to be a decent regular (in the rotation or lineup) is huge, and until Taveras either starts dominating his league or reaches AA, I’ll take the certainty. I could see an argument to have Taveras higher than Lynn, but I don’t see how Lynn falls outside the top ten.
Agree. I actually have Taveras at 7 and Lynn at 8. Lynn is on the cusp of the majors and I have a (possibly indefensible) hunch that he may have a somewhat higher ceiling than advertised. He’s definitely a good guy to have in the system but not so exciting.
Taveras has much to prove but he’s been recognized by others outside the organization (BA), has great stats at an age appropriate level and I’ve heard no strong negatives. I think he’s worth a top ten nod.
The other thing that Lynn has is that he’s playing in a higher level of competition (AAA) than Taveras. He had a bad year with a strong finish in his first full season in Memphis, after jumping three levels the season before. Taveras had a great short season in Johnson City, but that’s Rookie League, and while there’s a lot to be excited about, some may want to see what he does at Quad Cities, playing a full season against better competition.
Seems like you could comment on your belief that Lance Lynn will not have the “upside” of Taveras without calling names.
If you have access to the subscribers version of the list you get a scouting report. One thing I have noticed is we have a tendency (more than other teams) to immediately put reliever types as starting pitchers to give them more innings to work on their offerings, control, etc. Then if they seem to perform well in that role and appear to have a chance at having 3 workable pitches and work deep enough into games they stay there until they prove they can’t handle it any longer. In the Top 10 for BA you have 2 of these guys in Swaggerty and Kelly. Then depending on your belief in Blair he could be considered one…but I consider him a starter myself.
I just finished browsing the 2009 Sporting News Yearbook. You can easily project 7 of the Cardinal’s top 10 prospects to be in the majors this year. Rasmus, Motte, Boggs, Freese and Jay should be with Stl. Wallace should open the season on first for Houston and Todd has a good chance with Cleveland. The other 3 were Anderson, Jones and Kozma and Anderson could very easily have been the backup this year. I could find no other team where you could reasonably project more than 5 of their top 10 to stick in the majors this year. The most impressive was probably the Pirates with both McCutchens, Walker, Tabata, and Alvarez.
This is cool….
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_6599b414-20c2-11e0-841d-00127992bc8b.html
These are the players listed in the article.
Pitchers (10) — Seth Blair, Anthony Ferrara, John Gast, Tyrell Jenkins, Carlos Martinez, Scott McGregor, Chase Reid, Trevor Rosenthal, Jordan Swagerty, Justin Wright.
Catchers (3) — Cody Stanley, Luis De La Cruz, Kleininger Teran.
Infielders (3) — Matt Adams, Ryan Jackson, Luis Mateo.
Outfielders (5) — Alex Castellanos, Nick Longmire, Aaron Luna, Tommy Pham, Oscar Taveras.
Surprised that Mulligan or Delgado is not there as pitchers.
Surprised that Reid, Wright, Teran (who is not a catcher as far as I know) Mateo, and Castellanos are there — didn’t realize the org thought that highly of them.
And here is the non roster invitee list for Spring Training.
Pitchers: Miguel Batista, Brandon Dickson, Joe Kelly, Lance Lynn, Shelby Miller, Adam Ottavino, Ian Snell, Kevin Thomas and Raul Valdes.
Catchers: Nick Derba, Steven Hill, Audry Perez and Robert Stock.
Infielders: Matt Carpenter and Donovan Solano.
Outfielders: Amaury Cazana, Shane Robinson and Nick Stavinoha.
Wish Goold woulda elaborated on the “previous prospect camp raised eyebrows” comment. I’m sure Duncan got his panties in a bunch over something.
What, you want real reporting? Better go to another city :)
Wasn’t that the year they emphasized “classic mechanics,” or something like that?
Yeah. I think about the only thing that came out of it was that it continued to screw with Ottavino’s development.
Goold is mentioning something that happened two years ago and was reported on at the time. Obviously, it isn’t common knowledge unless you follow the Cardinals, but then again, what you read there was a free introduction to the top 10, not an in-depth review of the past several years of the Cardinals’ farm system.
May be a little off topic but wasn’t Marty Mason the guy that dealt with mechanical problems while Duncan was the game planner.