Shelby Miller and Carlos Martinez get starts tonight. Also, do yourself a favor and take a glance at Ryan Copeland’s stats linked below. He’s been quietly dominant for Quad Cities through his first 3 starts after moving in from the bullpen.
Memphis vs. Omaha, 7:05pm: Brian Broderick
Springfield vs. Tulsa, 7:07pm: Shelby Miller
Palm Beach vs. Brevard County, 12:05pm: Carlos Martinez
Quad Cities @ Lake County, 6:00pm: Ryan Copeland
Batavia @ Jamestown, 7:05pm: Jonathan Cornelius
Johnson City @ Princeton, 11:00am: Jose Pasen
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So nice to have two bona-fide blue chippers – and starting pitchers no less – in our system. You’d have to go back a ways to find two highly-rated SPs in our minor league system at the same time. Ankiel/Hutchinson maybe?
I would even go farther back. Maybe Alan Benes/Matt Morris. Honestly, I don’t believe this organization has ever had 2 legit top 10 SP prospects.
Carlos starts in about 2 hours. Like Shanky said, it’s really nice to have these two guys in our system.
I mentioned the other day that, in years past, a guy like Swagerty or Kelly, while both are really good pitchers, would have been the top pitching prospects in our system. I just remember the days of Jimmy Journell and Blake Hawksworth heading our system. Sigh…
BigRob, those two guys were both decent prospects in their day (top 100 BA types)….but I get what you’re saying. This is a night and day situation.
I loved WJ as our GM, but his team did not develop the minor league troops very well.
I had forgotten that Journell was pretty much a consensus Top 100/125 guy in his prime as a prospect, but it’s pretty sad when the only prospect in your system that anybody values highly is seen as a potential closer.
Morris and Benes barely overlapped in the minors. Morris was drafted in 1995, two years after Benes. By the time Morris’ potential was demonstrated, Benes was in the majors to stay, at least until TLR ripped his arm off. (Give TLR this: he hasn’t destroyed any other young pitchers from overwork since then. He screwed up the once, and Benes’ career was tragic as a result, but he did learn from his mistake. The capacity to learn from one’s mistakes is a rare virtue, and full credit to TLR for possessing it.)
“[Jock's] team did not develop the minor league troops very well.” VERY interesting statement, and I think it would be worth while to take a careful look at whether it is true. Jock was “handicapped” for most of his GM tenure, as Mo is now, by the success of the major-league team, which prevented him from having and using a really high draft choice after 1998 (J. D. Drew was 5th choice overall). Because, in a typical year, most of the career value of draftees is concentrated among the very few guys drafted in the top 5 to at most 10 slots, the system really hasn’t had the raw material to work with that, say, Tampa Bay has had.
So how did that team do with the guys they were actually able to draft? That would be a very interesting study to do. At first glance it looks as though player development under the Jocketty regime was “normal” — neither failure to develop guys nor (with the obvious exception of that one 1999 draftee, and he didn’t “develop,” he just had something miraculous happen to him…) an unusually high success rate are obvious among Cardinals farm hands from then. You can’t really look at those draftees and say “that guy should have had a better major-league career than he had” the way you can with Brien Taylor, Bryan Bullington, Matt Bush, etc. So I’m not sure this criticism is well founded — but I’m not sure that it’s not, either.
Grunt makes a lot of very good points. It’s so hard to judge GMs drafting ability when we are constantly drafting late in the first round. I think the reason the Cards have been doing better as of late is that they are more willing to spend money in draft if the right player falls to them than in year past.
I think the Kozma/Porcello controversy really changed their philosophy somewhat. We’ve seen the Cards draft more kids that are asking for above-slot dollars. A couple names that come to mind are Miller, Cox, Jenkins, Austin Wilson, Tilson, and so on. Even if the team doesn’t sign their guy, they at least take the chance by drafting them and hoping the idea of playing with Albert Pujols changes their mind.
High draft picks do not necessarily equate to stars (as the guys you listed prove). Conversely, lower draft picks can be developed into star prospects (Tampa’s top 2 prospects currently being great examples).
I guess my premise was less about development and more about usage. Jocketty used the minors to supply the majors…and it worked brilliantly.
As a FutureRebird fan, I like the fact that Mo seems a bit more inclined to allow homegrown guys make their way up.
Although….I assume Moore and Jennings were both later drafts because of contract demands. Not sure if this is true or not
Jennings was from a little school in a little league. Was kinda a backwater scouting guy; I don’t think he was ever projected to go particularly high. Not sure about Moore but I think he was partially a signability guy and had some injury concerns too.
I agree with you, PJ. The draft is such a crap-shoot that you never know who can be the next superstar.
However, how often do we see guys that scouts think can be a top of the rotation pitcher or a plus hitter and they fall because of bonus demands? So they end up going in the second or third round instead of early-mid first round like their talent would suggest they go.
Obviously Shelby Miller wasn’t the 19th best prospect in the draft in 2009, but because of bonus demands, he fell to us instead of going in the top half of the round. Same could have been said for Austin Wilson if he would have signed. He was not a 12th round talent, but that’s where we drafted him. See what I’m saying? I hope that made some sense :)
High draft picks don’t “equate to” stars, but they bias the chances of developing a star quite significantly. Well over 80% of all players drafted #1 overall since the institution of the modern draft have made it to the Show, compared to about 50-55% for guys drafted 26th to 30th. (That isn’t 26th to 30th _round_, it’s 26th to 30th _overall_, i.e., at the end of the first round — when the Cardinals have typically slotted for the last decade.) They have also had WAR totals per player that are at least five times as high as the ones in those slots. “Most” useful players aren’t drafted #1, of course; only one guy per year gets that accolade. But the probabilities are definitely on the top guy’s side.
I agree with you that it’s good that Mo is letting homegrown guys win their spurs.
I agree that TLR did eventually learn his lesson about overusing young starters but, if I recall correctly, it took him a little longer. I remember a game when Morris was just off a DL stint (2003?) when Tony left him in for 140 pitches or so. I recall Jack and Mike questioning the wisdom of that for a couple of innings with Jack being particularly critical. IIRC Morris got through it okay and didn’t have a relapse but I believe that 140 pitch count to be true.
Looking at Matt’s record it looks like 2000 was the likely year.
as the author mentioned above to check out copeland’s stats, the best in my opinion is the walks to K ratio… 6 walks for 43 strike outs. unreal
Martinez didn’t get out of the 2nd inning. Gave up a run on 2 hits in the first. and 3 more runs on 3 hits and 4 walks in2/3 of an inning in the second.
Rough outing indeed for Carlos. Hopefully he’ll use this as motivation to perform even better next time out. Also have to hope that nothing is physically wrong with him. It’s just so unexpected to see a kid with his talent and stuff to struggle like that.
Here’s hoping Shelby has a good game.
I think with a guy like Martinez, you can expect to see that from time at this point in his development. I’m not concerned with it, the guy isn’t even a full year of US ball into his career.
Agree!! Every start he makes this year with Palm Beach is a great learning experience which will bode well for him next year in Springfield.
Better results. The command wasn’t there as it took him 99 pitches to get through 5.1 IP, with a 5/4 BB/SO.
The story of the night was Sugar, belting a pair, going 5 for 5 and falling a triple short of the cycle. He was picked off first, so if we just subtract that base from one of the homers…
re: Copeland – I think the little nod is good.. and a little ‘huh that’s interesting’ is appropriate.. I was curious about him after a dfr the other day and did a little looking – he is a lefty – then I noticed he was also 5’11″ and 23 in low-a. Still interesting.
well, in fairness, it looks like he was a 2010 draftee. in a system thick with pitching talent, i don’t hold that against him terribly.
he also did very well in appy league, with pitcher of the year honors and a comparable K/BB ratio (48/7) last year. if we make a serviceable LOOGY out of a 32nd rounder, that’s probably a pretty good result.
He was a 2010 32nd rounder who did 4 years of college. hes not gonna throw 98 like martinez but he’s got pin point control and rarely walks guys… for the year now he has 50 Ks with 6 walks. in his college career he only walked 7 people in 4 years too