Archive for the “Francisco Samuel” Category

The Cardinals have released hard-throwing reliever Francisco Samuel per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

#Cardinals have released hard-throwing righty Francisco Samuel. The reliever reached Class AAA; had velocity, lacked command. #stlcards

More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

This has been mentioned in passing a few times but with the graduation of Eduardo Sanchez and Fernando Salas to mainstays in the Cardinals’ bullpen and the knee injury to Adam Reifer, suddenly a farm system that looked rich in right handed relief prospects seems lacking.  We’ll traverse the system looking for pitchers who could be the next prominent relief prospect.

Read the rest of this entry »

Derrick Goold has the story.

Diapoules was somewhat interesting given some strong groundball rates but a rosy projection for him is a fringe bullpen arm. Houston Summers also had limited projection for long term success. Ultimately, the Cardinals have a crunch of A+/AA level pitchers and these two were squeezed out as a result.

Best of luck to Mark and Houston.

Also, in the same story, comes news that Francisco Samuel was being shut down with a lat strain.  Could be a couple weeks, could be a lot longer.

In an effort to be timely, I though I’d take a quick glance at the big name relief prospects in the high minors. Before we get into the numbers, I think the major league pen is fine despite two nasty outings in a row. These things happen when you have a closer who lives on his control and a somewhat crazy-ex catcher who throws pitches into the dugout on a bad play.

There is not currently a player in the pen that I can definitively and unquestionably point to and say, “What is he doing in the majors?!?!?”.  Generally, that statement is followed by an expletive but we’re a family friendly blog.  Part of what brought this post to fruition was a comment from the Cardinals broadcasting pair last night with regards to Kyle McClellan’s future. There seems to be some continued curiosity about his repretoire and converting to starting pitching.  It’s understandable considering that he has a full complement of pitches (FB, CH, CU, SL) but I’ve long had trepidation about Kyle McClellan.

In any event, the Cardinals continue to produce some interesting relief options in the minors. What follows is an admittedly incomplete list of players that may be ready in 2011 or 2012 for a shot at the bigs.

Read the rest of this entry »

This will be a regular feature each week collecting the pertinent links for the minor league teams from their disparate sources.

Brian Walton has a lengthy post at the Globe-Democrat regarding Evan MacLane. MacLane is great for organizational depth but it’s unclear to me that he figures into any potential callups should the major league rotation suffer an injury.  For Memphis, he’s a welcome stalwart of the rotation though.

At the bottom of the article, Walton notes the sad news of PJ Walters’ daughter passing away. A very sad situation to which I can’t fathom the tragedy and can only offer condolences to the family.

Kary Booher is back at the Springfield News-Leader after spending some time with Baseball America.  He’s a top notch reporter and I’m thrilled to see him chronicling the S-Cards again. (Matt Baker, who was a good guy that I had the opportunity to meet, departed after covering the team last season.) Booher notes that Francisco Samuel is out for three weeks with shoulder pain. No reason to panic yet but if three weeks become four. . . well we’ve seen this injury progress in unfortunate ways before.

Booher: Can Daryl Jones breakout this year? Goodness, I hope so.

Booher: Kozma at AA and working with Pop Warner. We’ve seen several players in the past have real success at AA (Joe Mather, Jarrett Hoffpauir) and while some of that is park effects, the coaching staff at Springfield is the best in the system, imo.

Matt Bakers covers the S-Cards for the Springfield News-Leader, and has stepped right in where Kary Booher has left off in putting together some great coverage for the team. You just don’t get the sort of coverage he brings from most AA teams, and he was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule and answer some of my questions about the team and his impressions of the players.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check them out at Bird Land.

Interesting blurb on each pitcher:

Salas had a season in Class AA last season that had results “parallel to Kyle McClellan,” Mozeliak said. And while the Cardinals don’t see a McClellan like leap to the majors this spring for Salas, Mozeliak added: “We wouldn’t be afraid to bring him up to the big leagues.”

Salas throws strikes.

Samuel throws hard.

The lithe Dominican Republic native has an easy delivery and instant velocity. His speed appears to pop from an effortless arm swing. “Electric,” said one official.

Pitchers and catchers have reported. The world just feels right. No more hiatus. I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.

Francisco Samuel ends up being the only Cardinals who ranked in the FSL Top Twenty. A travashamockery, I say!!

Control is the only thing keeping Samuel from rocketing through the Cardinals system. His stuff was generally unhittable—Vero Beach pitching coach R.C. Lichtenstein likened it to Jose Valverde‘s—but patient hitters found they could work him for walks.

The Jose Valverde comparison is pretty interesting, and obviously it would have to be based only on stuff, as Papa Grande has a hundred pounds or so on El Mosquito. You also have to wonder if he will add even more to his 94-98 MPH fastball as he fills out. There’s a lot to dream on with Samuel, you just hope that he gets his control to at least a passable level.

In a chat, Jones was said to have just missed the list.

He was the toughest guy to leave off the list…Jones doesn’t really have an overwhelming tool, although his arm is his only really below average one. There are a lot of 50s and 55s there on the 20-to-80 scouting scale, as he’s an average hitter and has average power. He’s a very solid player and the fact that he didn’t sneak on to the back of this top 20 doesn’t mean he’s not a prospect. He was No. 21 on this list.

No overwhelming tool? Wha? I don’t get this. BA has been trumpeting Jones’ tools year after year, and when he finally puts them together into game usable skills, they downplay them. Even if what he says about his hit tools is true, he has well above average speed, so to say he has no overwhelming tool is just not true.

This is absurd.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »