Archive for the “David Freese” Category

I think Matt Carpenter is a great prospect. Personally, I think he’s poised to take the starting 3B job from David Freese either during 2011 or by 2012. That said, I think he belongs in Memphis to start 2011.

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Right now, David Freese appears to have a healthy handle on the starting 3B job.  There’s a substatial number of free agent third baseman who are better than average players over the course of a season: Beltre (3 WAR), Troy Glaus (3 WAR), Mark DeRosa (2.5 WAR), Joe Crede (2.5 WAR).  These players and many of their less valuable associates have various concerns that come with them (most often health) but David Freese isn’t a sure product either.  Assuming the Cardinals acquire Matt Holliday, and I sincerely hope they do, I expect Freese to be the Cardinals starting third sacker.  What should we expect from him?

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Lots of drama unfolding already this spring. Like most of you, I fully expected Freese to seize the opening day 3B job with Glaus on the DL for the first month of the season or so, but now that scenario is starting to fade away. First we find that Mather was given a big boy number (Lucky 7, which formally was Adam Kennedy’s) and now it’s been revealed Freese is dealing with soreness in his Achilles tendon due to him totaling his car on his way to a fundraiser. Talk about bad timing. But even if Freese was 100%, is he any better than Joe Mather? Seems like a natural 3B would be a better fit, especially considering the season Freese came off of, where he was arguably the system’s most productive player. Let’s take a closer look.

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We’re introducing a new format to some of our posts.  In an effort to further clarify and explore some of the different prospect rankings, we’ll bring you more opinion-oriented posts where erik, roarke and myself discuss prospects from a variety of angles.  Today we unveil the first of this irregular and unplanned series with Allen Craig and David Freese.

[edit: Kevin Goldstein's Top 11 may come out today.  Feel free to discuss that in this thread as well.]

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Great chat with Luhnow today at the official site of the Cardinals, I love the access the front office has given the fans this year. Hopefully there will be more of these in the future. The whole transcript is worth your time, but I wanted to share a couple of interesting bits regarding two sleepers:

Q: Thanks for the chat, Jeff! What can you tell me about the velocity/repertoire of Venezuelan southpaw sensation Moises Colorado?
Luhnow: I just saw him pitch the other day in Jupiter, and I saw him in Venezuela earlier in the year. He’s a tall pitcher with long arms. His fastball is 88-89 but he still could throw harder and he’s a left-hander. He has a curveball and a changeup, both of which are improving. I’m looking forward to seeing him in the US next year.

Q: Can you name a few hidden gems, future prospects we may not have heard much from yet?
Luhnow: Sam Freeman. Left handed pitcher up to 94 with good secondary pitches, and one of the best athletes we have in our system. Watch out for him! Good timing, too, as we certainly aren’t going to turn away any good lefties. Also, Ryde Rodriguez is really coming on. He was finally recognized as an All-Star in the GCL. He has matured as a hitter and has big league tools, as well as big league makeup.

He later says the system is lacking in the left-handed pitching department, but hopefully these two will prove to be useful down as they move up the ladder.

Sean Chone Smith released his 2008 MLE’s. David Freese had the best line I could find, with a .276/.321/.467 translation. I’m not sure how sold the Twins are on Brian Buscher; I wonder if Freese would interest them. I dunno, maybe Boof Bonser for Freese? I know Bonser has struggled with a 5.86 ERA and is now in their bullpen, but his peripheral stats haven’t really changed from year to year; his 4.21 FIP tells the real story. They have five young, cost-controlled pitchers right now and a couple of more on the cusp in Mulvey and Humber, so they could be more then willing to part with the Boofster for some offense/glove at 3B.

Speaking of the Twins, watching them come back on the White Sox last night was pretty impressive. I’ve always begrudged the Twins over ’87, and what the Northstars did to the Blues in ’91 furthered my hatred towards Minnesota sports teams. Yet somehow, I found myself pulling for them last night. It must be my appreciation for prospects, that team is packed with young, homegrown talent. They definitely know what they are doing with that farm system.’

And speaking of beefy pitchers (Boof), Goldstein starts an interesting conversation by looking at different pitcher body types in trying to determine if size matters when it comes to results and durability.

Tanner Scheppers, who the Pirates were unwilling to sign do to his shoulder issues and asking price, signed with the independent league St. Paul Saints. That makes two top draft picks in the American Assocation, with Aaron Crow playing for the Ft. Worth Cats being the other.

Apparently Colby is not going to play winter ball, and it has nothing to do with related injuries. According to the P-D:

Rasmus, once projected to play winter ball in the Dominican Republic, apparently will sit out.

“I don’t think it’s as much a knee thing as much as it is a personal decision,” Mozeliak said. “It’s not uncommon for a player to sit there in August and wonder about the validity of going. He may believe there’s more value to experiencing his normal offseason program.”

Does this bother the Cardinals? It would have appeared that a couple of weeks ago they really wanted him to find a team to play for this winter being to make up for some of the time he lost competing. Don’t get me wrong,  I believe that last thing Colby will be doing is sitting around at home in Alabama playing video games. He’s a noted “workout warrior”; a couple of seasons ago he put on 20 pounds of muscle during the winter. I just wonder how wise a move it is to refuse to do something your employer would really encourage you to do for “personal reasons”. Maybe I’m getting overly concerned about nothing.

The same article says Freese will be playing winter ball in Venezuela. That brings me to remind you all that we will be covering the winter leagues as closely as we can, right now I’m debating whether or not to do a DFR or just a weekly update. We should find out soon about who will be playing where, and that may help determine the amount of coverage that goes into it.

What say all of you?

Sorry things have slowed since the minor league season is ended, I think we all are just taking a little breather before we get into prospect profiles, ranking players, covering the fall and winter leagues and a number of other things that go on during the offseason. Stay tuned.

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.

I attended the Memphis Redbirds game on May 30th in Des Moines. I have not gone through and applied scounting grades like Az did for the 5/4/08 game, but I was able to make some useful observations. I also took a lot of pictures (I was a guest at the game of friends that have season tickets directly behind home plate) which I will share with you after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball Prospectus continued its ‘PECOTA Takes On…’ series with third base prospects today. This article is probably for subscribers only, but I think I can go so far as to mention that David Freese made the list as a “Very Good Prospect” (which is odd, because that list actually ranks below the list of “Good Prospects”). Allen Craig did not make the list at all. Both Freese (.284/.336/.480) and Craig (.284/.342/.493) are off to solid starts to the season and probably deserve a little more respect than PECOTA gave them based on their careers prior to this season. I imagine that Freese was downgraded in PECOTA because he had never played above high A before this season and he is 25 years old, but after skipping AA and mainting a solid performance in AAA I would imagine that criticism would fade. It is a little harder to understand why Craig would be overlooked by PECOTA, since he has hit at every stop and has been fairly age-appropriate for each level. Regardless, I think Freese and Craig are emblematic of the newfound depth in the system. The outfield isn’t the only position that is getting crowded with solid prospects in the upper levels.

This is a few days old, so I might have missed mention of it elsewhere, but here is a nice story/interview with the Cardinals minor league pitcher of the month for April, Jess Todd.

The system played four games tonight and all the details are after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »