Archive for the “Brett Wallace” Category

As noted during Saturday’s broadcast, Brett Wallace has been promoted to AAA with David Freese headed to the DL with more foot issues.

Protracted commentary will come later this week — snap decision: too soon.

Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com is rolling out his Top 50 prospect list, and has Brett Wallace at  # 42. With his report, there’s a video of him in action.

Ryan Fagan of Yahoo! has some scout talk on the Walrus as well.

“Let’s put it this way: If he was a better third baseman, I think we’d be talking about him being ready for a starting job this spring. He’s that good…Problem is, defensively he’s a question mark. His agility, actually, is OK for as big as he is. He’s a pretty agile guy. He makes good plays—he can dive for the ball, pop up and get the throw to first—but when you’re projecting him, he’s not going to get any smaller and he’s not going to get any faster. He’s at least average at third at 22, but is he going to be OK at 26 or 28? And his throwing arm is OK. He doesn’t have a classic third baseman’s rocket arm. He can get it over there, but it’s not the ‘Oh, wow’ that you want at third base.

He can hit, but he might not be able to stay at third base. You don’t say.

Tony Cruz makes BA’s Hawaiian League Top 20 on a technicality. In their print edition they actually have someone else, but then they realized the player they ranked threw 7.2 innings. I guess it’s better to be ranked because of a goof than to not be ranked at all. It’s subscriber content.

Ben Badler gives us some context on the Arizona Fall League. The league average slash line was .293/.365/.473, so yeah, I’d say it was a hitter’s league. Steve Hill led the Cards with an OPS+ of 133. Wallace was next with 128, followed by Tyler Greene at 111, and Robinson brings up the rear with 89.

If the Cards get outbid on LOOGY’s this winter, they easily could land one in the Rule 5 draft.

Jon Jay and Allen Craig are in a dead heat for the # 14 spot at Bird Land, so be sure to vote. That is a tough call.

Here’s how some of the Cardinal prospects are faring in the Caribbean Leagues:

• Bryan Anderson is hitting for a bizarre .240/.406/.240 in 25 at bats for Jose Oquendo’s Carolina Gigantes.
• His battery mate P.J. Walters is an oddity of his own. In 19.1 innings, he has 24 K’s to 7 walks but has allowed 28 hits and is sporting an ERA of 6.52.
• Luke Gregerson finally allowed a run. In 17.1 innings, he has an ERA of 0.52, with 13 K’s to 2 walks and 13 hits allowed. Gregerson’s pitching in Venezuela for the Margarita Braves.

A scouting term that Goldstein uses to describe Brett Wallace.  Be sure to read Kevin Goldstein’s chat from yesterday — it’s always insightful.

Also, as a reminder, the prospect lists are being added to the link at the top as they are released.

[Update]

A really compelling article by Kary Booher over at Baseball America about Colby Rasmus. They probably don’t have anyone more qualified to write on Rasmus, as you’ll remember Booher used to work for the Springfield newspaper that covers the Double-A team.  It’s behind the subscription wall so there’s not much I can share but I have to clip these 4 lines.

What is clear is that Rasmus is a changed man, even at 22. Where before excitement and optimism overflowed from a deep voice, the tenor of his conversations follows a more cautious and guarded path.

“I’m a lot different now than I was at the beginning of the season,” Rasmus said. “Early in the season, I was playing to have fun. I didn’t look at the business side of baseball.

That flat out sucks.  More than anything I was hoping that Rasmus would bring a youthful exuberance with him to a St. Louis team that at times can seem dirge-like in their professionalism.  The article discusses in depth much of the hubub that went on during the last year and it’s a little bit dismaying.  I felt like I was watching a kid have his dreams crushed before my eyes.  I hope that’s not the case (and it probably isn’t) but if nothing else I hope Rasmus realizes that he still has a huge fanbase out there despite anything that’s happened in the organization.

More importantly, he’s still a supremely talented player and the long term outlook is unchanged.  He still has the potential to be a perennial All-Star and he’s still the long term solution to the Cardinal’s CF question.  Even if he starts the year in AAA (likely at this point), he should be the first option to be called up from the minors if an outfielder goes down.  Who knows, maybe Rick Ankiel will pull a hamstring.

As an addendum to the inital ZiPS post, Dan S. added two more players to the projection at the behest of commenters: Brett Wallace & Daryl Jones.

Wallace projects as something near to an average first baseman already (he’s likely above replacement level by a win or so) leaving him about 6-7 projected wins behind Pujols.  At third, he’s slightly above average but the loss in defense would probably be a push and keep him near the same value he’d have at first.  He projects to be better than Allen Craig and David Freese at this point, which should serve as further indication how expendable one of those two prospects are.  (You’re still my favorite 3B prospect, Allen!!!11!!1)

ZiPS trips Daryl Jones and then kicks him while he’s down.  A projected line of .235/.299/.351 is downright terrible (Braves fans should choke on that Francouer-ian line).  I suspect (ALERT: ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT PROJECTION MODEL AHEAD) a significant portion of that is a ZiPS regressing his BABIP from last season.  That’s not an unreasonable thing to do — it was high — and while Jones’s speed is an asset he needs to show more power to indicate that the line drives are sustainable at higher levels.  As promising as Jones’s season was last year, we’re still talking about 150 PAs above A-ball.  His upside as an outfielder is second only to Rasmus (apologies to Jon Jay) among Cardinal prospects but there’s still a significant gap between what he’s done thus far and a real live boy major league player.  To complete Goold’s SAT on Jones, I’d suggest Brian Barton as a reasonable floor to the Carl Crawford ceiling.

P.S. TOLAXOR makes an appearance in the ZiPS comments.  I subscribe to the objectivist school of thought with probability if you were wondering.

Baseball America continues to roll out it’s top twenty prospects in each league, and this time the Midwest League is up to bat. Brett Wallace came behind Mike Moustakas, Neftali Feliz, Jarrod Parker and Ben Revere to be ranked the 5th best prospect in the league, and Kozma ranked 15th overall.

Pete Kozma ranked a spot behind Justin Jackson, who also plays shortstop and was the 45th pick overall in the same 2007 draft. Kozma had better numbers, but the scouts whom BA talked to took to Jackson’s overall tools. While scouts do like Kozma, he’s more of an acquired taste. In a nutshell, BA’s synopsis on Kozma is that he remains spectacularly unspectacular, but the tools that he does possess play so free and easy that he can and at times does play above them.

Their synopsis on Wallace is pretty much the same types of things we’ve been hearing: Great hitter, iffy range. Will hit well enough to make up for iffy range. I am tempted to debate that he belongs above Revere, but when you hit nearly .400 as a 19 year old for an entire season, it sort of takes away that argument.

Cardinal70 recently asked me to participate in the latest “United Cardinal Blogger” collaboration, a project that I could not say no to. The project: Name your Top 7 Prospects, as inspired by our esteemed beat writer Mr. Derrick Goold. The regular minor league season just finished and it seems like it wasn’t long ago we were talking draft, and here we are already ranking players. Time flies.

NOTE: This is NOT our official list that we will be rolling out later. This is more or less my off the cuff rankings as things stand at the moment, and it’s still pretty fluid right now.

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There was some dispute as to who was the player of the month. Both Wallace, David Freese, Josh Phelps and Daryl Jones all had outstanding months. In the end, I think we all were happy to see Daryl take home the “Futchee” for the last month of the minor league season.

Jones hit .319/.441/.549 in 91 at-bats in August. He hit five home runs and stole five bases in six chances. He struck out 23 times but walked 19 times, showing some excellent plate discipline. For his all around efforts this season Jones will get plenty of Top 100 consideration, a vast improvement from going getting cut from the Cardinals Top 30 in Baseball America’s last Handbook. Jones is no longer tantalizing us with his tools, he’s flashing them on the ball diamond.

2. Brett Wallace – I personally voted Wally for the top spot, but he did have somewhat of an uneven month. Through 71 plate appearances for the Quad Cities Wallace had a power outage, hitting .306/.394/.387. But once promoted to Springfield, he went on an absolute tear, hitting .400/.471/.711. He did hit the ball on the ground a lot – 69%, but when he did hit the ball in the air, it usually went a long way. 27.3% of the balls he hit in the air cleared the fence.

3. David Freese – After a hot July, Freese showed no signs of slowing, hitting .349/.410/.632 for the month of August with seven homers.

As with the hitters, neither of us could decide who was in the top spot for the pitcher of the month. According to our system, Nick Additon is our pitcher of the month. Additon had a 3.21 ERA in 14 innings for QC with 24.1% K/PA rate and a 5.2% BB/PA rate. He had a 0.50 ERA with a 13/5 K/BB ratio over 18 innings and held batters to a .167 average.

2. T- Jason Motte and Richard Castillo – Motte held PCL hitters to a .163 average and struck out 22 of the 47 batters he faced, just showing utter dominance. Seeing him pitch yesterday all I have to say is wow…beware the goatee. Castillo posted a 1.99 ERA with a 23.2% K/PA ratio and a 4.5 K/BB rate. Pretty nice to see a converted catcher and an 18 year old pitcher both have terrific months.

Brett Wallace tops out BA’s Hot Sheet this week. Later BA chatted about the Hot Sheet, and a reader asks a question some of you may have in your heads as well.

Q: Katie from St. Louis asks:
At this point in time, who would you give the nod to as the top overall Cardinals’ prospect – Rasmus or Wallace?
A: John Manuel: Still Rasmus, he has more ways to win. I am the office Wallace apologist, and I actually have talked to scouts who believe he can handle third base in a below-average to fringe-average fashion. He has plenty of arm (55 arm strength), that’s not the issue, it’s his large lower half and agility. if he handles third base it still would be short-term. Dude can rake and I think him spending one, two or even three years at 3B in MLB isn’t out of the question. He’s also a smart, savvy baserunner. That said, I still think 30 out of 30 clubs would rather have Rasmus.

In the “not so hot” sheet, Pete Kozma gets a kick in the behind.

Kozma’s full-season debut went well with low Class A Quad Cities, but the transition to high Class A Palm Beach hasn’t gone so well for the 20-year-old. He hit .158/.250/.211 (3-for-19) and had five whiffs. That puts him at a resounding .132/.247/.191 since joining the FSL on Aug. 5. In 68 at-bats he’s struck out 24 times and he’s also committed four errors in 21 games. Yes, the FSL is a tough league to hit in, but this is not the kind of transition you want to see from a first-round pick.

I knew he wasn’t hitting, but I didn’t realize he had been striking out at such an alarming rate. Oof.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Jason Motte getting his cup of coffee this weekend. The Commercial Appeal looks at his unflappability as well as him discovering that elusive secondary pitch. Says his pitching coach Blaise Ilsley:

”He’s starting to mix pitches better, especially here in the second half. He’s done a real nice job for us. He’s working on his slider. He’s come up with a legitimate second pitch. It’s still a work in progress. At times it kind of backs up on him, but other times it’s hard like a cutter. He’s been using it a lot more and using it effectively.”

The farm goes 3-6 tonight.

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Kevin Goldstein has either read some comments on this site or you’ve been e-mailing him.  Two Cardinals make his Monday Ten Pack.  The first is Daryl Jones whom Goldstein says will get plenty of top-100 consideration.  I have a hard time picking on Kevin for dropping Jones off his top 10 list last year.  I barely kept him on my top 25 list. . . he was almost a throw in down at the bottom.  I’m sure we’ll have some post-mortems of the top-25 list once the season is over but Jones is definitely one I’d like a do-over on.

Brett Wallace also makes the ten pack:

I don’t think anyone is all that surprised that Wallace has an overall batting line of .341/.430/.549 in his first 46 pro games. The guy can hit—nobody questions that at all—although many still wonder where the defensive liability fits in with the Cardinals big-league roster, and at this rate, they’ll need to come up with an answer more quickly than expected.

Goldstein’s spot on and I’m not sure the Cardinals have answer all their questions about Allen Craig’s defense much less Wallace’s.  (PS – Kevin’s been stepping his game up lately, imo, after a bit of a slump in his writing.  He remains one of the foremost reasons that I subscribe to BP.)

Memphis Redbirds are officially eliminated from playoffs.

Jose Martinez out for the season on foot injury.

Josh Kinney:

That comfort level is what has kept Kinney out of commission for so long. He could throw fastballs as early as spring training but has only recently been able to throw breaking balls without pain.

“The doctors told me it would take a little while to heal, and they were right,” he said. “I’ve been throwing really well the last three weeks, and here I am.”

Todd, Craig and Salas all named to the All-Star team.

Daryl Jones was the Texas League player of the week.  Nick Additon was the FSL pitcher of the week.

Sorry for the delayed DFR. This is Erik..I’m willing to bet $100 that AZ unexpectedly lost his power or his internet, as the post was just a few lines away from being complete and then suddenly was cut off mid-sentence. Anywho, the farm goes 2-for-5 tonight.

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Most of you by now have heard that Brett Wallace has been called up to Springfield. Allen Craig hits the DL with lower back pain. Quad Cities is sliding out of the MWL Western Division race, while Springfield was tied for first in the TL North going into tonight, and in need of a powerful bat to replace Craig in the lineup. I think Wallace fits that bill. Yet another aggressive promotion.

Jon Jay also hit the 7 day DL. He’s had a shoulder problem that has dogged him since last year.

Derrick Goold revisits Baseball America’s Top 30 Cardinals, something he was pretty key in putting together and will be again in 2009. He is looking for some feedback, so be sure to drop by and give him your input. I would have to think Brett Wallace, Daryl Jones, Lance Lynn, Nico Vasquez, Fernando Salas, and Francisco Samuel should all have spots and that ranking, and maybe Ryde Rodriguez and Jon Edwards to name a couple more.

BA reports the Cardinals are in the right in the gooey center regarding how much each team spent on signing bonuses for its players selected in the top 10 rounds. They spent $4,893,000. That team across the state unbelievably spent over $10M, which leads the MLB. (Subscription required)

Ramon Delgado was named the NYPL “pitcher of the week”. Reynier Gonzalez received the same honor for the Appy League.

Only one win tonight in the system.

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