Archive for the “2011 MLB Draft” Category

With the 2012 MLB draft less than a week away, it is time to take a closer look at another player that has been mocked the Cardinals direction.  In his latest mock draft, Jim Callis of Baseball America has the Cardinals selecting Richie Shaffer – 3B – Clemson with the 19th selection.  (He has the Cardinals taking high school arm Lucas Sims at 23, who was have looked at previously.)  Let’s take a look at Shaffer after the jump.

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With 5 days to go until the signing deadline, here are the Cardinals unsigned picks and a line or two about each.

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As has been hinted for a few weeks, the Cardinals today officially signed 3rd rounder CJ McElroy and assigned him to the GCL Cardinals to start his career.

(H/T – MLBDraft on Twitter and BJRains)

C.J. McElroy was taken by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 3rd round of the 2011 draft.  Billed as a projectable, highly athletic center fielder, C.J. was a two-sport star in both baseball and football coming out of high school.  The speedy outfielder was taken one round later than Charlie Tilson, another highly athletic center fielder, while the Cardinals try to add depth and talent to an area that has been lacking since Colby Rasmus graduated to the major leagues.

Reports have come out recently that McElroy has decided to forego his commitment to Houston to try to work out a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals.  All indications are that he will be signed before the August 15th deadline and will join Zack Cox, Kolten Wong, Matt Adams, and Oscar Taveras as a resurgence in the amount of depth that the Cardinals have added in impactful position players.

Chad Abernathy, who coached C.J. in both baseball and football at Clear Creek High School, has been kind enough to answer some questions about him.

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I’m happy to pass along a really well written and comprehensive scouting report about the Cardinals 6th round pick from the 2011 draft, Adam Ehrlich. He’s currently playing for the Gulf Coast League Cardinals where’s he’s compiled an OPS over .800 in limited at bats.

The report that follows is courtesy of Jesse Behr, a  former writer for Baseball Prospectus. You can follow him on twitter @jj_behr or read more of his writings here.  Jesse’s writeup follows.

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This week the Cardinals have made a few moves I’ll talk about in short after the jump.

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In case you missed it, Kolten Wong signed on the dotted line this weekend and the details are almost exactly in line with the initial report out of Honolulu.

KW Signs

KW at the game Sunday

Short season baseball is full of new draftees, very young players and players coming up through Latin America. It’s an odd mix of older, often low upside players, and very young, very raw high upside players. The level of competition in a league is highly inconsistent from year to year (and from game to game for that matter).

We recap two of the Cardinals’ short season affiliates in Batavia and Johnson City but have not typically covered the Gulf Coast, Venezuelan or Domincan Leagues with any degree of regularity. If you want to take at the short season statistics from time to time, make sure and check in on these 5 players (in no particular order).

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I linked to this post yesterday from a Hawaii based news channel and the links to our post started their way around the internet.  Afterwards, Derrick Goold threw some lukewarm water on it saying that there wasn’t an official agreement in place.

I clicked through to the Hawaii report earlier today and noticed some oddities. First of all, the report originally said

KITV4 Sports has learned that Wong will receive a $1.5 million signing bonus.

but now reads with a more nebulous

KITV4 Sports has learned that Wong will receive a signing bonus between $1 million and $1.5 million.

The title of the post changed from a definitive “signs” to a less definitive “agrees”.  All of this is just a small blip on the radar, if an admittedly frustrating one for me personally. The reporting isn’t mine but I do feel somewhat at fault for latching onto a (likely) premature report out of Hawaii.

The reality is that this will be a quick sign for the Cardinals barring something unforeseen. They want to get Wong into the system in a hurry and avoid a layoff like Zach Cox had. It’s best for both sides. Wong will likely sign at or near slot value — maybe a little over — but there’s no indication that he won’t sign.  Official word, confirmed by a local scribe or the Cardinals themselves, probably isn’t far off (a week or two at most is my speculation) but this time I’ll wait for the ink to dry.

Honolulu gets the scoop.

(h/t Ghostrider520)