Archive for the “Bryan Anderson” Category

Despite a down year at the plate, BA whole heartedly named Colby Rasmus the top prospect of the Pacific Coast League, ahead of Chase Headley, Max Scherzer, Brandon Wood and Carlos Gonzalez. It’s their faith in his tools that supersede the numbers and judge that’s it’s only a matter of time for Colby.

Chris Perez ranked the 12th best prospect in the league and is the top relief prospect. Bryan Anderson ranked between Nate Schierholtz and Franklin Morales, and was the second catcher to make the top twenty after the M’s Jeff Clement. They praise his game calling skills for someone of his youth, and they note his improvement in controlling the running game. They also like his speed (for a catcher) and hope he still may yet add some power.

Jaime Garcia and Mitch Boggs ranked 16th and 17th, respectively. Someone needs to update BA with the fact that Jaime went under the knife for Tommy John surgery, as they project him to be in the 2009 rotation. Scouts are high on Boggs’ pitching acumen and competitiveness, but question his ability to stick as a starter without at least an change up.

What excites me the most is in BA’s top twenties for the TL and PCL, nine of fourty made the cut. I’d rather have some players ready to make some big league impact then to have our best prospects in the lower minors. Now it’s up to the coaching to recognize their talents and properly employee them in the right spots.

Ed. Note: This is a guest post from GForce. We’re always open to talented writers sharing their thoughts here at FR.

Thanks to Erik for this opportunity and I hope my writing skills aren’t too rusty. I have been thinking of a series to tie in the gap between the end of the minor league seasons and when the AFL and other winter ball starts. My thoughts lately have been drifting to next year and how the newly found depth of true prospects fits in throughout the higher levels of the organization. Using the criteria below, I give my top three at each position.

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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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I missed on my last chance seeing the Walrus in person tonight. It happened to be fireworks night at my local ballpark. Not knowing that, I got to the park a tad late only to find the parking lot completely full and the overflow parking nearly full, so I just gave up. Maybe I’ll just have to make the 2 hour trip to Davenport. Meanwhile, AZ is in Memphis for the weekend, so I’m sure he’ll have all kinds of goodies for us when he gets back.

Watching Chris Perez and Jeff Samardzija work the latter innings in yesterday’s game was fun stuff. If I had my choice between the two coming into the season, I would’ve taken Perez over the Shark any day of the week. Jeff’s mind bogglingly low 3.77 K/9 rate honestly made me wonder if he missed his true sport, but apparently something’s clicked, because at least the two times I’ve seen him on TV, he’s toyed with big league hitters. Now I’d say give me Samardzija. His velocity + freakish movement on his sinker is a sight to behold in and of itself, and then you throw a nasty splitter and a nice slider on top of that and wow. I like Perez quite a bit, and he’s been very good since being recalled, but Samardzija made my jaw drop.

No Cardinal made BA’s Hot Sheet this week, but Francisco Samuel was mentioned in their “Helium Watch”.

…if you’re looking for the reliever with the league’s scariest stuff, it’s Samuel. The righthander features a 95-96 mph fastball and an 87 mph slider, a combo that leaves him unhittable at times. He’s struck out 13.8 batters per nine innings, and he’s been especially deadly on righthanders, holding them to .170/.278/.240 averages. Samuel could still sharpen his control, but opposing managers say his two-pitch mix will continue to dominate as he climbs the ladder.

Palm Beach wins one in a doubleheader and Johnson City wins. L’s everywhere else.

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Peter Gammons says the Cardinals are now the favorites to acquire Brian Fuentes from Colorado. He states the Rockies like our farm system. Gulp. Everything I have heard has indicated that GM Dan O’Dowd has been completely unrealistic in his trade demands, like Dave Littlefield type of nuts. I hope they do something to improve in the here and now, but I am just really hoping they don’t do anything rash for a rental. Fuentes is a FA at the end of the season. Earlier, Will Carroll said he believed the Cardinals are looking to the scrap heap, which he also notes isn’t necessarily a bad thing given the team’s track record with some of those types of players, e.g. Wellemeyer, Pineiro, Ludwick.

A little reaction around Cardinal bloggerdom regarding the Reyes for Perdomo swap.

Kyle Sadlowski and Dan Nelson were both released today. Sadlowski’s departure makes room for Perdomo.

The farm goes 3-for-6 tonight.

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Fangraphs has become one of my daily stops, as they’ve added some great writers over the last few months. First Marc Hulet looks at two Cardinal prospects headed in opposite directions-Jess Todd and Adam Ottavino. I think both have similar futures in the bullpen, but I think Otto’s got the better chance to stick as a starter. I know the numbers don’t say that right now, and I’m sure some of you will vehemently disagree. I guess my thoughts of Todd are a little changed after seeing him in the Futures Game, his delivery just screamed “reliever” to me. A good reliever, but a reliever nonetheless.

Also at Fangraphs- Eric Seidman gives us some us some Pitch F/X data on the pitching prospects who played in the Futures Game. Pitch F/X had Todd averaging out only 88 on his fastball, although I don’t think he was throwing four-seam fastballs, mostly cutters. Salas averaged out at 91.5. I feel like I have been underrating Salas this whole season. Unlike Todd, whom I had high expectations for, I wasn’t sure what Salas was even doing in the Futures Game despite his lofty K% rates. I had read his stuff was rather average other than his curve, but he impressed me with both his fastball and changeup, and I didn’t even see the curveball. With three solid average to above average pitches, I would say he has a big league future.

Steve Batterson of the QC Times says Nick Additon is feeling good about his command of his fastball. That’s great for Nick, but at least the time I’ve seen him pitch he was topping out at 86 and sitting at 83,84. The article says he tops out at 90. Right.

Former 2nd round pick Nick Webber was let go last week. The man was a one trick pony. The man could not miss bats and had crummy command, but this news still comes as a little bit of a surprise.

Not counting the “CL” teams, Springfield and Johnson City were the only teams that played tonight, everyone else had the night off.

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In addition to the signing that Erik posted about earlier, Derrick Goold is reporting that the Cardinals are set to announce a total of six international signings. He has all the details about the players in this article.

Kyle Mura got the call up to Springfield to make the start tonight, all the details are below, but the News-Leader had a feature on him before his first appearance. The News-Leader also reports on Jon Jay‘s shoulder injury. The team is hopeful (as am I) that the shoulder won’t keep him out long. Here is what Jay thinks:

Sounding an optimistic tone, Jay couched his shoulder situation on Wednesday as “just the bumps and bruises you go through (in) the season.”

I missed this yesterday, but the Memphis paper had a feature on Bryan Anderson on their website.

The organization was 4-1 on the day (Palm Beach was rained out).  All the details are after the jump.

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Izzy got the start tonight for Springfield and here is Kary Booher’s review of the outing. Booher also had a piece on everyone’s favorite overachiever, Shane Robinson, and his heroics last night.

Baseball Prospectus has an audio interview with Matt Slater, who is the Special Assistant to the GM and the lead scout in Asia for the Cardinals. I must admit that I haven’t listened to this yet, but it sounds like it would be interesting.

Now that the draft is over, the international signing period is on the front burner. Baseball America has an article that discusses that signing bonuses will almost certainly break the all time record for international free agents (Wily Mo Pena, Yankees – $2.44M). There is also a mention of the Cardinals being one the teams that is expected to be more active this year than in the past.

BA also did a Prospect Hot Sheet Q & A where they received this Bryan Anderson question:

Jake from Missouri asks:
Q: Did Bryan Anderson receive any consideration for the list? He’s mashed all year.

A: Matt Eddy: It’s astonishing that Anderson has reached Triple-A at age 21 and has served as Memphis‘ everyday catcher. But to say he’s mashed is an overstatement. He’s a terrific hitter for average (.351 this season; 314 career), but the power has been lacking thus far. Of course, that’s to be expected from a 21-year-old backstop in Triple-A.

I don’t think this answer give Anderson enough credit (although the caveat at the end seems to acknowledge this). On the year (combined between Springfield and Memphis), he’s slugging .467, which would be good enough for fourth-best catcher in the majors. It is true that Anderson hasn’t hit many homers (only two on the year) and that his slugging percentage has slipped since his promotion to Memphis, but I think any expectation of ‘more power’ would be asking a lot.

On to the games: the system went 3-2 on the night. All the details are after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Cardinals catcher Bryan Anderson has hit at every stop of his minor league career, including a torrid first month of this season that earned him a promotion to AAA.  Bryan was drafted out of high school in the fourth round in 2005 and he was a mid-season and post-season all star for the Texas League in 2007 and the Midwest League in 2006.  He was also selected to play in the Futures Game in 2007 and Baseball America ranked him as the #85 prospect on their 2008 pre-season top 100 list.  Bryan was kind enough to spend a few minutes talking with me about his draft day, his approach to hitting and his improved defense behind the plate.  The Q & A is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the prospects currently in the Cardinals system and that the Cardinals have developed (or failed to develop) over the past five years or so on a position-by-position basis to take a closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of the system. The first position we’ll look at is catcher, which has become a strength in the last few years after producing a starter at the major league level and a top prospect that is getting close to the big leagues. The full breakdown of the position is after the jump.

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