Author Archive

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around this, so I will try and be objective as I can. My initial reaction is Mozeliak got totally fleeced on this deal, to put it nicely, but let’s take a look.

First the prospect: Nick Greenwood is 22 years old, left-handed and has a 6 K/9 in the Midwest League. He was a 14th round pick in last year’s draft. He did not make Baseball America’s Top 30 Padres list last season, for what it’s worth, and it’s unlikely he rates very highly in our system either by seasons end. He has fringe stuff, save for a decent change-up, but he has good command. He’s a C grade pitcher, arms of his ilk are a dime a dozen.

So forget the player coming over providing much of anything. What this really signals is a huge vote of confidence for a couple of former Future Redbirds:  Jon Jay, and I’d throw Allen Craig in there as well. Mozeliak has to feel that Jay and Craig can match Ryan Ludwick’s production for the rest of the season. Jay has been a man on fire so far and LaRussa no longer has to take away at-bats from Colby Rasmus (good news!) or Ludwick.

Now obviously, the Cardinals know Jay cannot sustain hitting like a mad man for the rest of the season. He has a crazy .446 BABIP this season, so he’s due for some regression. What does it take to replace Ludwick? ZiPS projects Luddy to post a .363 wOBA the rest of the season. Assuming a couple runs of defense and 250 plate appearances, that’s about a win of production (1.3 WAR, to be exact) of production to fill. Can a Jon Jay/Allen Craig platoon match that? I don’t have the projections in front of me, but I doubt it. Considering Craig hits lefties, and Jay continues some semblance of good-hitting, a .340-.345 wOBA seems completely reasonable. That’s about a 5 run gap left to fill.

Well, Westbrook fills that gap. Westbrook projects around a 4.45 FIP for the rest of the season. Over 50 innings that equals 6 runs.  Suppan is a replacement level pitcher, so Westbrook is 6 runs better than Suppan. The Cardinals barely improved, if at all, but here’s where salary comes to play.

Westbrook’s salary will be covered by Cleveland. Ludwick is due around $2 mil the rest of the season, if not a little more, and he’s going into his last year of arbitration next year. He would probably make $8 or so mil in arbitration. If the team deemed that pricetag too high, he’d be non-tendered (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) and  the Cardinals get no compensation. So this is some sort of compensation now.

The Cardinals, at least on paper, didn’t get a lot worse I guess…and they get some salary relief next year from Ludwick to help try and re-up the Mang.  I think they’re maybe better in the long run, and about the same in the short run, just so long as Westbrook doesn’t crap the bed and Jay/Craig play as about expected.  Is that hoping for too much?

I’m afraid this is some sort of misguided endorsement of Jon Jay (from the front office that brought you: Kyle Lohse was flukily good for one year, so let’s re-sign him!) and Dave Duncan (Westbrook + Duncan = teh awesome FTW!). To me it makes more sense to hold on to Ludwick, get San Diego out of this deal and work directly with the Indians, and then shop Ludwick in the winter time if you find his price-tag too constrictive.

Maybe there’s something that will still happen today with the middle infield before 3pm that helps me understand this more, because I get the deal…except I really don’t get it.

Jeff is still honeymooning, so you get the godfather. Take the DFR, leave the cannoli.
Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff is on assignment in Hawaii for the next three weeks. Assignment as in on his honeymoon. So you get the FR godfather. Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon Jeff to do a service for me. But, until that day – accept this justice as a gift on um, … Jeff’s wedding day… And I hope that their first child be a masculine child. OK, I’ll stop with The Godfather quotes now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Around this time last year some of us were bemoaning the departure of some of our favorite Fabergé eggs. Chris Perez and then later Jess Todd went to Cleveland for Mark DeRosa. Matt Holliday was acquired for the man we affectionately dubbed the Walrus, as well as Clayton Mortensen and Shane Peterson. That was four of our top ten prospects going into the 2009 season, and Peterson was in most publications’ top 15-20.

I wasn’t a big fan of either trade at the moment they happened, but I gradually sobered up from my prospect fanboyism and realized that the deals, in themselves, were perfectly justifiable even if it meant putting a pretty big dent in the farm system. So far, Luhnow has done a pretty good job re-stocking the system with some potential, assuming the tops picks of the draft sign and the Carlos Matias signing is OK’d.

I thought it would be fun just to check in with some of the players and see how they’re doing for their new clubs. This isn’t to pronounce a winner or a loser in the trade, just a status update.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eduardo Sanchez and Shelby Miller are the Cardinal players selected to this year’s Futures Game.  My two gripes about the Futures game: I don’t like the World versus US format, and I don’t like how every team has to have two players in the WBC. It leads to some watered down teams and I think it would behoove the MLB to showcase the best overall prospects and not try to be fair to every team or represent several different countries.

Boxscores aggregated  daily, XXL version with the Appy having their Opening Night tonight. Onward DFR! Feels good to be sharing the best of the boxscores again as I sub in for Jeff.

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it, College Splits has a glowing review for the Cardinals draft. They also gave us all sorts of nerdy split data to nerd around with. As with the college hitters, here’s a few advanced stats for college pitchers.

Read the rest of this entry »

All stats are schedule and park adjusted and come courtesy of College Splits. 

Earlier in the week I posted some of these advanced stats for the picks taken on day one and two of the draft, now here’s day three, plus I added in a few new stats – walk-to-strikeout ratio, batting average of balls in play and speed score. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, the last four columns are advanced.  The stats come courtesy of college splits. All I did was add the ISO, BB% and K%. College Splits is what would happen if Rivals College Baseball or Baseball America had a lovechild with FanGraphs. If you care about the draft or college baseball at all, and haven’t bookmarked College Splits already, well, shame on you. These numbers are adjusted for park and strength of schedule.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the top ranked high school outfielders in the draft, Wilson is strongly committed to Stanford, so there’s a .0001% chance he signs, which is why he fell so far. But as Lloyd Christmas once asked “so you’re saying there’s a chance”? I applaud the Cardinals for drafting him.

If Zack Cox does play hard ball, they could always offer Cox’s big bonus to Wilson. Maybe he’ll bite.

Scouting report

Sorry for the delayed reaction. I have Microsoft Security Essentials, and occasionally it decides it needs to update without my consent. I had a bazillion things running in the background, and it caused my computer to grind down to a halt.

Anyway, in my opinion this has been a great night for Jeff Luhnow and company. After getting the best pure hitter in the draft, the Cardinals were able to draft two very good arms with some upside in Blair and Jenkins.

Read the rest of this entry »