Carlos Martinez pitches in Quad Cities and several impressive offensive nights (Alex Castellanos, Nick Longmire) make for today’s DFR.
- Mark Hamilton, returned to Memphis after Brian Tallet was activated to the St. Louis roster, went 3-f0r-3 with a pair of doubles and a walk.
- Andrew Brown was 1-for-4 with his 5th HR of the year.
- Daryl Jones was 1-for-3 with a walk.
- Adam Ottavino tossed 6 innings allowing 4 runs on 7 hits. He walked just 1 while striking out 6. Unfortunately he got bit by the HR bug as he allowed 3 homeruns on the night.
- He wasn’t the only Redbird pitcher with that problem as Chuckie Fick would allow a HR and 3 runs without retiring a batter.
- Victor Marte struggled taking the blown save as he allowed two solo HRs.
- Alex Castellanos had a big night going 4-for-4 with a double and a walk.
- Audry Perez went 2-for-4 with a double.
- Kevin Thomas had his best start of the year tossing 6 innings of 1 run (unearned) baseball. He struck out 7, allowed just 2 hits and didn’t walk a batter.
- Blake King struggled again allowing 4 hits and 2 walks while retiring just two batters.
- Zach Cox and Rainel Rosario went 2-for-3 with a walk. Cox is now hitting for an impressive .335 average but he’s not walking much (8 BBs in 155 ABs) and his ISO is just over .100. He’s still above average offensively relative to the Florida State League but we haven’t quite seen the output expected from what was hailed as the most advanced college bat in the 2010 draft.
- Justin Smith dropped to 0-and-5 as he allowed 2 runs over 5.2 innings. With 3 walks and 5 hits, there were plenty of baserunners on during his outing. He struck out 5.
- Keith Butler, making his High-A debut, pitched 1.1 scoreless innings striking out 2.
- Nick Longmire had an impressive night going 2-for-3 with a walk and a homerun.
- Cody Stanley was 1-for-3 with a double.
- Patrick Elkins was 2-for-3 with a walk and triple.
- Greg Garcia was 2-for-3 with a walk and double.
- Carlos Martinez got the start and what a start it was. He allowed just 3 hits in 5 innings while striking out 9.
- Boone Whiting struck out 3 in 3 innings allowing 1 run on 3 hits.
- Hector Corpas continued to struggle allowing 3 runs on 1 walk and 2 hits as he tried to close out the game.
- StL Post-Dispatch scribe Derrick Goold was at Modern Woodman Park to brush up on Martinez prior to his May 26th start in St. Louis. Here’s a couple of Derrick’s comments:
@dgoold: Martinez strikes out the side in the first inning vs. Cedar Rapids. Runs high pitch count, throwing easy velocity, froze one hitter on curve
@dgoold: 12 pitch fourth inning for Carlos Martinez. Ks two more. Has eight strikeouts. Three hits allowed. QC leads, 5-0. HR by Longmire.
@dgoold: Four different guns clocked Martinez at 100 mph in the first inning on two pitches. Range from 94 to 99. Sat at 97 consistently.
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Does anyone know if next Thursday’s QC game at Busch will be televised? I have to work that night and can’t go in person.
I have zero idea, but try this…. Pretend to be getting sick on Wed and it’s basically a free pass to call in on Thurs….. that’s how I used to do it
I don’t think it will be. They want people to come out to the park not watch it on TV.
After only two seasons of college, Cox is hitting for high average in a league where it is hard to slug. He is off to an impressive start and could get a promotion to Springfield by June.
False, as highly as he was drafted/ranked/etc, he should be slugging much higher…. he might get promoted, but not because he’s in a non slugging league….. it will be because he has a ML contract and they need to push him. The whole “hitters league” “pitchers leauge” thing is a bunch of crap, if you get the contract he got and drafted where he was drafted and the “most polished college bat” he should be hitting and slugging anywhere he’s placed.
I know you don’t like Cox because of the contract, but extending that disrespect to the widely accepted idea that specific baseball parks are more conducive to boost or deflate SLG percentage is a fallacy in itself.
Many scouting reports at the time of Cox’s drafting questioned Cox’s power. The praise about his bat was his bat speed and his ability to make contact and hit line-drives to all fields (Law mentioned that after his bad strikeout total in his sophomore year, he shortened his swing). I don’t recall a scouting report that put him up as a power hitting prospect ala Wallace, but that he was the best pure hitter in the draft.
Brett Wallace had 3 seasons at Arizona State while Cox only had two at Arkansas. To jump in at Palm Beach and hit well for average is good. Wallace began his first full season at PB, but got experience in the Quad Cities. Brett is now an everyday player in the majors. Cox will be at AA later this summer.
A year ago, some doubted Matt Carpenter since he only had 1 HR for Palm Beach. Matt moved up and hit 11 more.
slugging .629 in the month of may.
I don’t understand the frustration with Cox. I don’t think he was the one who declared him the best college bat in the draft. Draft analysts did. Draft analysts are frequently wrong, and they may have been wrong about Cox’s present ability. That shouldn’t be held against Cox. Neither should his contract. We would all have done the same thing.
Once the players are in the system, their origin becomes much less important. Maybe Cox is disappointing, but he is far froma flop. He is still a decent hitter in Palm Beach in his first sifnificant year. He had a decent AFL after a rocky start. If he had been drafted in the 4th round, we’d be in love with him.
Obviousloy the hype and the contract make Cox a somewhat polarizing figure, but that stuff is done. Further, those investements and risks are the cost of going after high ceiling talent. It is unreasonable to resent a safe, cheap pick like Kozma but also resent a pricey pick like Cox. In the draft, you win some and lose some. Once they are in teh system, they should be judged for their performance. That is the real indicator of how good they are.The draft analysts only know so much and are wrong a lot.
Actually I just read an interview (it may not have been a recent one) where he was asked about the insistance on a major league contract and he did refer to himself as the best college bat in the draft.
His contract is an issue, you don’t judge players soley on how they perform you have to judge them against what there expectactions are. Cox was drafted with the expectation that he was the best non Bryce Harper bat in the draft. Until recently he has dissappointed. He set out about 3 days and came back on a tear. Maybe he was working on his swing. He’s on fire right now so I hope it continues. I do think we should move him to 2b. His skillset plays great at 2b but not at 3b.
There absolutely are differences in leagues. To say that “the whole ‘hitters league’ and ‘pitchers league’ thing is a bunch of crap” is absolute nonsense. There’s a big difference between, for example, the Florida State League and the California League. To say there isn’t is absolutely confounding.
Point with Cox is his league does repress homeruns but he had only 3 doubles until a week ago. With such huge staidums and a line drive hitter you would think you would hit a gap a few more times. It looks like he’s comign around though because hes on fire the last 10 days or so. But his league is no excuse for the lack of doubles so far.
If you look at Cox’s brief pro career, you’ll notice that he has needed time to adjust to each level. Happened in the Arizona winter league, and now it’s happening in A+.
Also, during his big season last year at Arkansas, Cox had 14 doubles in 238 ABs. The amount of his doubles is pretty much where it has been. While expectations do influence what we want to see out of prospects, they should tempered by what the player has actually done so far.
(Also, he has 3 doubles in the last 10 games, since May 12. He now has a total of 7 doubles, so he must have had at least 4 doubles before that)
It’s not the park size that is the problem in many FSL stadiums but the winds. In PB the wind blows in from RF knocking many balls down. That is why RH hitters tend not to be affected as much at PB as LH hitters.
Great to see Martinez bounce back so nicely. I hope he’s enjoying himself in QC.
Goold has an article about Martinez’s game yesterday: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_34d37556-83c6-11e0-9a8b-001a4bcf6878.html
About his secondary pitches:
“Martinez got more use from his secondary stuff during Friday’s start because he had to. The second batter of the game worked him for a nine-pitch at-bat. Martinez started off with fastballs, and he was helped by the hitters willingness to foul off fastballs outside of the zone. But to finish off the at-bat, which Martinez controlled at 0-2, the righty had to go to his off-speed stuff. Martinez froze one hitter with his curveball, and later in the start he became more deft with his changeup. That is a developing pitch that he doesn’t quite have the feel for yet.”
Can’t wait to see Martinez next Thurs! I knew he had a mid-90s FB but it sounds like yesterday he was consistently sitting in the upper 90s and 4 different guns confirmed it. But probably the thing I want to see the most next week is his command, movement and secondary pitches. CAN’T WAIT!
I recorded a Matt Adams at-bat on video that I may post soon. I may wait over the next few games to try to take some more, because I had to record it in 3 or 4 different clips.
I know this is a bit premature, but if Martinez continues having performances like this its going to be niggling at the back of my mind all season… could we see Martinez take a significant role in the big leagues next year? He’s awfully young, but pitchers like Felix Hernandez have done it in the past. Granted, he’s a very special case and few pitchers had as good a grasp as he did on his arsenal of pitches at such a young age, but guys with great control of an 80 fastball like Carlos Martinez are just as special. I’m not sure where the secondary stuff is at for Martinez, but reports from the last game made it sound like his curveball is a pretty good pitch, with the changeup getting little use so far.
The Cardinals are not very aggressive with their prospects so it seems like this would be unlikely, but if Martinez dominates A ball, moves to AA later this year, and continues dominating, you’d have to think the MLB would be a distinct possibility next season, right?
Only way Martinez is there that early is if we convert him to closer and if that happens i woul dbe really disspointed it. Not need to rush him especially with the guys we have under contract for a few years.
Martinez has a lot of raw ability, but he’s still working on his secondary pitches. Goold mentions in his article that the expectation is that he’ll probably be at Quad Cities all season, and I think that’s pretty accurate. His developmental track probably will be as slow as Shelby Miller’s.
If MArtinez is in STL next year my guess would be that the big club is in trouble. That means they will have had a significant number of injuries and/or a significant number of players totally tank. I dont even think it is a given that Miller will see STL next year (though I do expect it the second half of the year).
My hope is that Miller and CMart get called up in June of 2013…. Then they won’t be FA till after 2020 correct?
It’s way too early to panic on cox. He could be a very developed bat, yet still need to adjust to high A ball. let’s look again after the all star break.
The low power numbers for Cox don’t concern me, but the low number of walks does. He’s playing in the Florida State League, which is tough for anyone to slug in, and seems to be driving the ball with much more authority since getting off to a very slow start. The lack of walks, though, does worry me, as he has consistently been praised in the past for having a mature, polished approach at the plate. I haven’t gone back and looked at his college numbers, so maybe he’s always been a little less of an on-base player than just a high-average hitter, but unless my memory betrays me his plate discipline was supposed to be a strong suit.
I looked a bit ago, and he had only two seasons at Arkansas before being drafted. I think the mature approach came from his incredible improvement between his sophomore and junior years, when he dropped his strikeout rate a ton and hit for a much higher average. His walk rate at Arkansas wasn’t great, but it was a respectable 10% and 14% in his two seasons, which is obviously better than what he’s doing now.
I think his unusually bad walk rate this season may have been caused by his offensive struggles at the plate. Now that he’s hitting, he seems to be walking more; he’s probably becoming more patient at the plate now that he’s adjusting a bit. Still, it bears watching.
i hear you, though he had fine walk numbers in winter league – another small sample size. i just think that when you’re talking about 8 walks (5%) v. 16 walks (10%), i think you give him a couple more months to stabilize. it’s absolutely worth watching, though, and would be troublesome if it continues.
Cox was drafted as a sophmore…..his improvement was between the freshman and sophomore year.
I would say that a .403 avg 3 hr 5 2nb and a 1.068 ops in May are pretty good numbers.
But the problem with Zack Cox, and this goes along with Matt Carpenter, is that they’re bats really aren’t of value at third. Neither one project with much power, even gap power for doubles, so if he’s not a great defensive third baseman, and he isn’t much more a singles and doubles hitter, how much value does he have? If his upside is something that of Placido Polanco at third, that really isn’t all that valuable IMO. Move him over to 2B, and the values goes up considerably.
Not sure this is true.
According to the current (widely accepted) positional adjustments, both positions (2B and 3B) are worth about 2 runs above average. Ergo, the two positions are of pretty much equal value. Cox should only move to 2B if we have a real organisational need there (possible) or if his defensive skillset plays better there (which I don’t believe it especially does). He won’t get “more valuable” by moving across the diamond if his defense is average at both spots.
Saying that anyone without great power has no value in their bat at third is pretty questionable. Matt carpenter has a long track record of getting on-base like a madman. If he comes up and gets on at a .370 or .380 clip, I’d be very happy, even if the power’s lacking.
In fact, that’s basically what david freese had been doing, and I really miss his bat right now.
Nobody mentioned (other than the DFR) the great game by Kevin Thomas. Looks like he is getting back on track. Never seen him pitch but I’m convinced that if he can get consistent with his sinker he could be a major league starter. When he is on he is dominant. What little gets hit gets hit on the ground.
Palonco has been worth over 40 WAR. There is plenty of value there