2011 Rosters
Posted on April 5th, 2011 by azruavatar in Memphis Redbirds, Palm Beach Cardinals, Quad Cities River Bandits, Springfield CardinalsThe clubs completed their minor league Jupiter games and spent yesterday traveling to their respective homes. All four full season leagues start this week and, as always, we’ll be bringing you daily updates recapping the games and player highlights.
- Daryl Jones makes his way to Memphis. This strikes me as something akin to social promotion after an underwhelming 2010. At 23, he’s still surprisingly young given his time in the system.
- Blake King, Adam Reifer, Eduardo Sanchez, Fernando Salas, Francisco Samuel — that is a potentially dominant bullpen.
- Anyone want to bet who catches more games – Bryan Anderson or Tony Cruz? I’ll take Cruz.
- Outside of Adron Chambers (and a bounceback year from Daryl Jones) the Memphis outfield is composed of players who are unlikely to have any substantive major league career.
- Deryk Hooker and Scott Schneider will make the jump after half a season in Palm Beach. The pitching squad as a whole is very young for AA.
- Steve Hill seems blocked in AA currently by Anderson and Cruz.
- Huge jump in competition for Matt Adams. Will be interesting to see how he fares against much better offspeed stuff compared to what he saw in Quad Cities.
- Can Tommy Pham repeat his 2010 success in Springfield?
- A rather weak pitching squad overall but some very good prospect arms among the rotation: Maikel Cleto, Joe Kelly, Shelby Miller & John Gast.
- The roster includes 3 players listed at both 2B and 3 listed at 3B. Look for Zach Cox to get the lion’s share of time at third base.
- A heavily Latin American outfield including Edgar Lara (DR), Ryde Rodriguez (Cuba) and Raniel Rosario (DR). Defensively, it’s not a compelling outfield (D’Marcus Ingram is the only true CF for me) but offensively they have the potential to hit a lot of homeruns.
- Justin Swagerty, Seth Blair, Trevor Rosenthal & Anthony Ferrara are big names to watch in the starting rotation.
- Boone Whiting came out of nowhere with a tremendous 2010. See if his impressive control sticks around in his first crack at full season pro-ball.
- Four catchers on the roster seems like a heavy timesharing burden.
- An intriguing outfield led by Oscar Taveras and Nick Longmire.
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Whither Matt Carpenter….did i miss something?
These rosters are still being filled in to some extent. They’re not all completely up to date. I haven’t gotten Cardinal rosters via e-mail yet or I’d have posted them directly.
M Carp is for sure in Memphis if that’s your question.
DJ Tools: The Last Hurrah?
That is a wicked Memphis bullpen. I would almost take that over the big club right now
Yeah, to be honest, I don’t even like seeing Jones in Memphis. The guys should have to play their way into opportunity and while I would agree we have been hard on D. Jones, he has not shown he deserves to be Memphis. If he struggles, what to do? Release? Demotion to AA? This is going to be a very interesting year in the minors, where the last draftees of the old regime will begin to be forced out by the new guys
The kid seems to be lacking in confidence, as such, I fully endorse the idea of promoting him to AAA. First off, you get the potential confidence boost in that the organization is having faith in you. Also, it seems to me that the PCL is much more hitter friendly than the Texas League, and will hopefully give him an opportunity to regain his confidence in his hitting. I freely admit I was long a DJ booster, but even I have dropped him out of my personal top 15 prospects, and as such, I would say this is a make or break year for him in this organization.
The Texas league is full of hitter’s parks and is generally considered hitter friendly.
Isn’t pretty much just the Pacific Division that is hitter friendly in the PCL while the entire Texas League is very hitter friendly.
The PCL averages more than half a run a game more than the Texas League. Possible, but probably hard to do without more hitting there also.
Any word on where Matt Scherer is headed?
Matt became a free agent last fall. Not sure who he has hooked up with.
Rosenthal – opening day starter at QC……told ya! You folks in Springfield, the Rosen-Train (to steal one from VolsnCards5) rolls into town next year!
“Outside of Adron Chambers (and a bounceback year from Daryl Jones) the Memphis outfield is composed of players who are unlikely to have any substantive major league career.” There was a time when this could be said of ANY triple-A team; serious major leaguers had a very good chance of bypassing AAA following their AA successes and heading for the Show, or at the minimum, starting their last year in the minors at AA and only advancing to AAA mid-year after abusing AA pitching. Instead, the AAA rosters were packed full of “break glass in case of emergency” guys — there’s a reason why most of the PCL rosters last year had average ages around 27 (Memphis’ was considerably younger, btw). Has that changed?
I wouldn’t say it’s abnormal but with Jay, Craig and Mather for the Cardinals in the last couple years this seems like a lesser outfield. We know with as much certainty as we can have about any prospect that Stavinoha, Robinson & Rapoport are unlikely to have substantive major league careers. Not that they aren’t hard working, talented players . . . . just probably not major league ones.
other guys who seem to be missing (or maybe they got injured / dumped and I missed it??) —
xavier scruggs
andrew brown
scott gorgen
amaury cazana
mark shorey
i’m not suggesting these guys are on carpenter’s level as prospects, i just am wondering what happened to them.
Isn’t Gorgen still rebounding from arm surgery? I thought I remembered something about the improbability of him and his twin brother Matt (Tampa Bay farm hand) being out with the same surgery at the same time.
Well, when they are both professional pitchers, and genetically similar if not identical…probably pretty probable
As I recall, he got back in time to throw a few innings at the end of last season. He didn’t have surgery, I don’t think.
shorey retired
gorgen tj
scruggs AA backup
brown AAA 1st base
cazana – woa -oaha – mexico
The Rosen-train is filling up, but there is still plenty of room. All aboard!
Cazana is back in Mexico
I never understand this.
I agree, there are a lot of Roster players missing from this list. There’s alot of other potential players not discussed here.
Matt Carpenter which I’m sure is with Memphis and did very well. I like Chambers and feel he has potential for the Majors.
Honestly I disagree with what was said about him. Were missing Niko, Casty, Scruggs how about jermaine.
Ingram is properly at Palm. Can’t wait to see Palm beach Miller and Cox will be exciting.
Lot of players have been kept off rosters on purpose, you will see their names show up on the DL.
I do beleive that some of the players on rosters are there for a short period of time and they know it, making a roster may not mean they will make an entire season.
I wish them all lots of luck.