Archive for September, 2011

The Arizona Fall League is set to begin in a little more than a week on Tuesday October 4th.  The Cardinals currently have 7 players listed to head to Arizona to play on the Peoria Javelinas.  The teams will play for 7 weeks finishing up in mid-November.  Cardinal players currently on the roster include:

• RHP Keith Bulter (QC/PB)
• RHP David Kopp (SPR/MEM)
• LHP Tyler Lyons (PB)
• LHP Justin Wright ( GCL/QC/PB)
• 1B Matt Adams (SPR)
• SS Ryan Jackson (SPR)
• OF Oscar Taveras (QC)

We’ll continue to cover the players daily performance though afternoon posting may be diminished as we wind down at Future Redbirds. Once the league is over, I expect FR will go dormant till December when we’ll roll out our top 20 prospects list.  During this time we’re also working on some articles for other endeavors that we’ll share details about as the works are published.

Alternately titled, “How Sweep It Is” or some sort of Mary Poppins allusion that I can’t quite put my finger on right now.

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I’m going through my inbox -

• Paul Swaney writes at Stadium Journey about … yep, stadiums. Yesterday he posed his review of Modern Woodmen Park and if you click through the ‘MILB’ link at the top you’ll find reviews for Palm Beach’s Dean Complex and the Muckdog’s digs in New York.  Paul has yet to review Memphis’ Autozone Park (the best complex in the organization in my opinion) and Springfield’s Hammons Field (the most accessible complex for the fans in my opinion).
• Craig Wieczorkiewicz writes about his trips throughout Low-A Midwest League. Currently, the site is featuring posts on the Quad Cities River Bandits MWL championship.
• This is a fun video recapping the River Bandits including a proposal, homeruns and fielding hijinks. Worth a watch.

James has been really great about sending some Springfield  photos to me via e-mail this year, which I’ve featured a couple times here previously. I look forward to seeing more next year especially on the new Future Redbirds facebook page.  A couple of my personal favorites from the last batch: Read the rest of this entry »

This one is a little more cut and dry than the pitchers.  Let’s go over the top 3 hitters at each club by wOBA.  (100 PA required)

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Quad Cities 6, Lansing 3

• Kolten Wong was 2-for-3 with a walk.
• Oscar Taveras went 2-for-3 with a double and a walk.
• Geoff Klein was 2-for-4 with a solo homerun in the 6th inning.
• Trevor Rosenthal was again impressive striking out 7 in 6 innings of work. He walked 2 and allowed 3 runs on 5 hits.
• Drew Benes, Aidan Lucas and Dean Kiekhefer each pitched a scoreless inning to close out the remainder of the game.

With this win, the Quad Cities’ River Bandits swept the championship series and took home the Midwest League Championship.

MiLB Story
Quad Cities’ Times Story

Congrats to the 2011 MWL Champion River Bandits.

I’ve been absent lately – the day job gets busy during August & September – but that should change soon. In the meantime, the Quad Cities will play for the sweep tonight as they send ace Trevor Rosenthal to the mound.  Rosie’s last start was a 9 inning complete game to shut out Kane County in the Division Championship.

Good luck to the River Bandits as they aim to bring home the organizations second trophy this year!

Since this is Quad Cities week as the team is up 1-0 already in the Midwest League Championship Series, let’s rank some pitchers.  If you were handed a prospect ballot, how would you rank RiverBandits’ starting rotation:

RHP Boone Whiting
LHP Anthony Ferrara
RHP Trevor Rosenthal
RHP Zach Russell
LHP Ryan Copeland

Quad Cities continued their late game heroics to pull out victory in game 1. Details are as follow.

On to the DFR! Read the rest of this entry »

The Midwest League Championship starts today and Derrick Goold has the drop on the pitching match-ups.

Game 1, Wednesday in Lansing:
LHP Sean Nolin (LAN) vs. RHP Boone Whiting (QC)
Game 2, Thursday in Lansing:
LHP Justin Nicolino (LAN) vs. LHP Anthony Ferrara (QC)
Game 3, Saturday in Davenport, Iowa:
RHP Trevor Rosenthal (QC) vs. RHP Marcus Walden (LAN)
Game 4, Sunday in Davenport, Iowa:
RHP Zach Russell (QC) vs. LHP Egan Smith (LAN)
Game 5, Monday in Davenport, Iowa:
LHP Ryan Copeland (QC) vs. RHP Aaron Sanchez (LAN)

Hit the link for dgoold’s short paragraph on each pitcher for the QC.

The River Bandits won game two of the Western Division Championship series on a three run, walk off home run by Nick Longmire. That makes for a sweep of the series and the team will move on to play either Lansing or Fort Wayne in a best of five championship series.

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