Another mixed night on the farm. Jaime Garcia makes another rehab start and Patrick Wisdom turns in the most impressive offensive line of the night in Batavia.
- Kolten Wong was 2-for-6.
- Oscar Taveras was 0-for-3 with a walk.
- Jermaine Curtis was 3-for-4.
- Xavier Scrugss was 2-for-4 with a triple and a walk.
- Audry Perez was 2-for-4 with a walk.
- Springfield tallied 14 hits and 5 walks on their way to the win.
- Jaime Garcia made another rehab start going 6 innings and allowing 5 runs. He didn’t walk anyone and struck out 5 while allowing hits including 1 home run.
- Kevin Siegrist struck out 3 in 2 innings of work.
- Eric Fornataro struck out 1 in a perfect 9th.
- Cody Stanley was 2-for-4.
- Mike O’Neill was 1-for-3 with a walk.
- A rough day at the plate for Palm Beach who recorded just 6 singles and 2 walks. Excepting O’Neill, every Palm Beach batter struck out at least once.
- Ryan Sherriff was battered for 7 hits in 4.2 innings. He allowed 5 runs (4 earned) while walking 1. He struck out 5.
- Michael Wacha again looked good in relief striking out 3 and allowing just 1 hit in 2 innings of work. Wacha has 11 strikeouts in 6 innings at Palm Beach to go with 1 walk.
- Nick Longmire was 2-for-4 with a walk.
- Stephen Piscotty was 2-for-5.
- Anthony Melchionda had just 1 hit in 5 at bats but knocked it out of the park for his 3rd home run.
- Dail Villanueva failed to escape the first inning allowing 4 runs on 2 hits and 4 walks. He recorded just 2 outs.
- Jonathan Cornelius worked 3.1 innings allowing 3 unearned runs on 4 hits. He walked 1 and struck out 4.
- Dixon Llorens struck out 7 in 3 innings of work.
Batavia 7, Mahoning Valley 6 (11 innings)
- Breyvic Valera (2B) was 2-for-5.
- Patrick Wisdom (3B) was 2-for-3 with a pair of doubles and 2 walks.
- David Popkins (RF) was 2-for-5.
- Joe Cuda struggled through the first two innings allowing 6 runs on 7 hits. He struck out 1 and failed to record the last out in the second inning.
- Corey Baker would come in to relieve Cuda and throw 4.1 shutout innings allowing 4 hits and striking out 3.
- Dyllon Nuernberg struck out 6 in 3 innings allowing 1 hit.
- Yunier Castillo picked up the win with a perfect 11th inning striking out 2.
Johnson City 3, Elizabethton 4
- Bruce Caldwell (3B) was 2-for-4 with a double.
- Caldwell’s double was the only extra base hit of the game besides Jeremy Shaffer’s (1B) double. Johnson City tallied 5 singles and 2 walks.
- Thomas Lee allowed 9 hits and 4 runs (3 earned) in 4 innings. He struck out 3.
- Cesar Aguilar pitched 3 shutout innings allowing 3 hits and striking out 1.
Entries (RSS)
The diminutive Dixon Llorens continues to have huge strike out numbers and has recovered nicely at QC after giving up a long ball in his first outing.
I wonder what he throws? He’s listed as 5’10″, 170, so his stuff is going to have to be pretty awesome for him to overcome the institutional prejudice against short righties.
Also, you know it’s a strange night on the farm when almost all the intriguing performances are from relief pitchers.
Went to BA to answer my own question: “low-90s fastball and good, hard slider. Both rate as 50 pitches on the 20-80 scale thanks to his control and bulldog approach.”
BA also says he’s 5’9″.
Are they already rated at 50 with room for growth, or are they projecting him to eventually have a 50 for each? Thanks!
Scouting report on Dixon Llorens at Scout.com.
” The Cardinals waited until the 25th round to choose the draft pick with most interesting name. To find him, the Cardinals went to Miami-Dade Community College, one of the top jucos in Florida. The right-handed pitcher has a solid two-pitch arsenal. Only 5-foot-9, he throws his fastball in the low 90s with good command. Llorens shows good feel for a slider that already grades out as an above average pitch.
He has signed a letter of intent with the reigning two-time NCAA champion South Carolina Gamecocks so he could be a tough sign. “
Interesting. So they lifted BA’s scouting report, and added a sentence about how awesome his juco is. (BA also had the info about his LOI to USC.)
Good question. I think that’s what they project the pitches will become, because if they’re 50 pitches now, why bother with the minor leagues?
Big Jawn Mize, if he’s around, will have the definitive answer.
It means that the scout who saw him on that day saw 50s. Usually kids that are 20ish dont have a lot of projection so the best one would think is that he would develop one of these pitches to a 60 and develop into a better pitcher.
A scout will usually put a projection number only if they think that there will be a lot of projection.
and Breyvic Valera continues flat out “hit” it’s unbelievable how good this kid is at barreling everything right handed and left handed.
Valera is very interesting, but to advance further, he’s going to have to either develop some pop or learn to draw some walks. His capacity for the former is probably limited by his small physique, so it’ll probably have to be the latter. He’s still young; there’s time.
Patrick Wisdom so far has been impressive his line .285/.380/.430/.811 .383 wOBA 141 wRC+ 45-for-158 AB 3 HR 16 RBI 12 doubles has shown his power potential and has hit for a modest AVG. Wisdom is also showing his above average defense at 3B he’s only committed 4 errors in 115 chances that’s a .965 Fld% .
Ryan Jackson now joins Joe Kelly, Matt Carpenter, Matt Adams, and Trevor Rosenthal as the 2009 draftees to either get a cup of coffee in the big leagues or currently still on the active roster so far.
Waiting in the wings: Shelby Miller, Robert Stock, Anthony Garcia, and Keith Butler.
That 2009 draft class could be one of the tops in Cardinal history.
I don’t know if Garcia or Stock deem “waiting in the wings” status yet. I would be very surprised to see either before 2014
But yes….great draft!
Wacha Wacha. Give me more Wacha.
The obsession with walks on this board has reached the point that Oscar Taveras is credited for drawing one but not for hitting a sacrifice fly. Given the regular inability on the parent club to get runners home from third with less than two outs, I’m much more impressed with the latter than with the former.
Taveras polished up his bat quite a bit this season not doing to much at the plate.
“Given the regular inability on the parent club to get runners home from third with less than two outs”
Is there actually a “regular inability” to do this? How do the Cards comapre to other clubs in this respect? What the ML average for getting a runner home from 3rd with less than two outs?
In line with your comment, maybe the authors can tell us for each prospect in the DFR whether they “moved a runner over” during the game (given that the ML team has a such a problem with that). That way we can track slow ground outs to the 2Bman when there’s a runner on second. That will really tell us something about how a prospect executes on the little things. No need to obsess about walks (an actual indicator of ML success)!
The difference between a sacrifice fly and a fly out is something that has nothing to do with Oscar Taveras and everything to do with a teammate having already reached base.
In my mind, there’s a significant difference between driving in that teammate and failing to do so.
Then I take the liberty of asserting that you are impressed by the wrong things.
In a larger sense, however, you may be onto something. It’s all but impossible to judge, without being a regular attendee (read: coach or scout) at games, what progress a prospect is making at “bat control.” That is a skill, and its value extends way beyond the doubtful “value” of summoning a sacrifice fly when needed. Jon Jay is a rich man because he has exceptional bat control. Watch the way he tunes his swing to pull, hit to the opposite field, go up the middle, etc., depending on the batting situation and the pitching matchup. Not many hitters can do that, and if he couldn’t, his baseball skills probably wouldn’t be sufficient to keep him in the majors.
Nor is it a skill limited to punch-and-judy hitters. I once got to a Cardinals game early enough to watch Pujols take batting practice, and rather than flexing his mighty muscles to hit booming drives half way to the mountains (this was at Planet Coors in Denver), he was practicing “hitting behind the runner,” i.e., going to the opposite field. It was an amazing display. I’d say nearly 90% of the balls he hit were line drives that landed in an area of right field no more than 30 feet square and probably smaller than that. If Albert Pujols thinks it’s important to be able to control his bat well enough to do things like that, who am I to argue?
So yes, bat control, of which the nominal (and dubious) ability to hit sacrifice flies is one (minor) component, is a thing we’d like to see our young players develop as an important secondary skill. However, it is still a secondary skill. The primary skills, for which walk rates are an important diagnostic, are the ability to hit strikes hard, lay off of balls, and in a hundredth of a second as a ball starts toward home plate, tell the difference. That’ll trump hitting sac flies any day.
You make a very good argument, but slightly overstate your case. Perhaps I’m overimpressed by the ability to drive in runners from third with less than two outs, to hit the ball deep enough to score run rather than striking out or hitting ground balls to a drawn-in infielder, but ultimately scoring runs is what the game is about and I don’t think this the “wrong thing” to be concerned about. In this light, I recognize that some sacrifice flies are insignificant and some walks are productive, indeed that the ability to draw walks, at least to the extent it requires discipline and judgment rather than the mere lack of command of a pitcher, may well be an “important diagnostic.” I suggest, however, that the “primary skills” that you enumerate in your last paragraph relate as much to hitting sacrifice flies and moving up the runner as they do to drawing walks.
The cards are the 3rd best team in all of baseball in scoring runs. They are better than the yankees. They trail only Boston and Texas in runs scored. And Texas only has a 14 run lead. The cards have done all of this despite not having a DH.
Yet, you seem to think there is an inability to get runners in?
They are third in the NL in scoring pistion batting average, first in OPS with runners on (does colorado even count).
They are 5th in the league in sac flies
I a not seeing a problem. its seems you are one of those fans that is under the impression every baserunner should score.
The reason the cards leave so many baserunners on is that they are the best all of baseball fore getting guys on base.
Interesting statistics, but watching the games on a regular basis leaves a somewhat different impression. The Cardinals are good at scoring runs in bunches, not so good at scoring runs in tight games when they really matter. Hence their truly horrible record in
close and extra-inning games. Admittedly this has something to do with their unreliable bullpen, but it also has much to do with their frequent inability to advance runners in key spots, most notably with runners on third and less than two outs. No one expects them to score all these runs, but one can reasonably hope for their vaunted offense to be better at this than it is..
Hopefully, the important thing is that Garcia pitched 6 innings last night, rather than giving up the 5 runs. Anxious to see if he can go 6 or seven five days from now.
I must say, I’ve been extremely impressed with Patrick Wisdom. I was extremely skeptical of the pick when it was announced, but it looks like he might develop into our own Mike Olt.