The Cardinals have released hard-throwing reliever Francisco Samuel per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
#Cardinals have released hard-throwing righty Francisco Samuel. The reliever reached Class AAA; had velocity, lacked command.#stlcards
More after the jump.
With a career BB/9 of 8.6, Samuel was never going to go places until he figured out how to throw strikes reliably and after 6 seasons, the 25 year old has been released. Samuel also got a lot of strikeouts, which intrigued a lot of people with his 11.4 K/9, but without the ability to throw strikes, he never was going to see the majors.
Baseball America summed it up in a few simple words in their response to Goold’s tweet:
Always threw hard, had little idea where it was going.
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Was he on the 40?
Yes, I believe he was.
No, he’d been on it at one point but was removed last September.
Thanks Cario! I had forgotten about when they took him off in Sept. Sounds like that was a harbinger of this move.
BJ Rains tweets that Luhnow and Astros to “take a look” at Samuel. Between Cincy and now the Astros, any ex-Cards reliever should feel comfortable he’ll have a home.
Keep in mind at this point that he most likely is making between 30-40K (due to years of service and past 40 man roster) and that may have been a factor. The AAA roster is pretty loaded, I would imagine they can only support so much in salary.
He’ll get picked up somewhere, they released him early enough. But he has to work harder at getting better. :)