Archive for December, 2011

In the minor league portion of the draft the Cardinals selected Shooter Hunt from Minnesota and Barrett Browning from Anaheim.

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A few links for your morning reading:

• Baseball Instinct’s Shelby Miller Scouting Report (from June) – The change in groundball rate when he moved to Springfield was not happenstance but a very concerted effort on the part of the coaching staff and Shelby to keep the ball down in the zone. The four seam fastball up and out of the zone is still a swing and miss offering but groundballs are king in St. Louis.
• Prep Baseball Report & Lance Jeffries (h/t nmstar) – The Cardinals really got into drafting speedy outfielders this year.
• Baseball Instinct’s Zach Cox Scouting Report – I think the differences between Matt Carpenter and Cox on prospect lists is quite interesting and almost entirely a function of draft position.

There’s not much to be found about Erik Komatsu, the former Nationals’ outfielder selected by the Cardinals in the Rule 5 draft. He’s 24 years old (DOB 10/1/1987), left-handed at the plate and in the field, average height (5’10″) and weighs 185 lbs.  He was traded from the Brewers to the Nationals last year for Jerry Hariston Jr. after Richie Weeks was injured.

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I’ll write more extensively on this later but the short version is that it isn’t the end of the world. This will be overshadowed by the departure of Albert Pujols but it’s a big deal as anyone visiting this site knows.

The Cardinals selected Eric Komatsu in the major league portion of the rule 5 draft from the Washington Nationals.

The Cardinals lost several players in the minor league portion of the draft:

• Domnit Bolivar, IF (to Milwaukee)
• Charles Cutler, C (to Pittsburgh)
• Javier Avendano, RHP (to Toronto) [weird selection]

The Cardinals added:

• Barret Browning, LHP (from Los Angeles) [Ha! Take that LA!]
• Shooter Hunt, RHP (from Minnesota)

More details to come.

(Full Rule 5 draft results available at Baseball America)

I’m just getting around to Baseball Instinct’s post on Carlos Martinez. Even if you don’t want to read the post (you should though) go check out the 11 minute video.  I love the curveball in on the hands of the hitter at 4:50.  There’s not a lot about Martinez’s mechanics that I don’t like — I don’t have the same concerns about his plant leg and the relationship to the arm as the Baseball Instinct guys do.  I think the comments about his arm coming back and him stopping it “unnaturally” are appropriate though it’s unclear to me how much undue stress that’s really causing on the arm.

Martinez is undersized for what you’d consider an average MLB pitcher and if anything that’s my biggest concern.  His mechanics are so good that it helps mitigate those worries.  The only other nitpick I’d have is that the follow through on his leg kick doesn’t leave him in a great spot to field the ball. There’s also a couple of pitches were he slips in the video because of the kick. That really is small peanuts in the grand scheme of a pitching prospect though.

I had Martinez as the fourth best prospect on the list last year behind Shelby Miller, Zach Cox and an very high opinion of Matt Carpenter. Some of that was his lack of any stateside pitching prior to 2011. It’s hard to see Carlos Martinez not outranking everyone not named Miller on a 2012 FR prospect list, which Jeff and I are currently at work on.

Link

There’s one prospect on that list that may surprise you. Generally it’s a solid list though you can nick pick some rankings based on your personal perspectives.