Archive for the “Jaime Garcia” Category

With Jaime Garcia’s masterful performance over the weekend, I though it would be fun to go back to early 2010 before h broke into the majors and see what people were saying about him.

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There’s a lot of reason to be excited about Jaime Garcia.  After being selected in the 22nd round of the 2005 draft, Garcia pitched very well in 2006, held his own as a 21 year old in AA in 2007 and made it all the way to the majors as a 22 year old pitcher.  He suffered an elbow strain toward the end of 2007 that the club chose to treat with rehab only to see the ligament tear the following year.  Since having Tommy John surgery last year, Garcia has begun working his way back with rehab starts at various levels of the system. 

On August 19th, he started at Memphis with a terrible first inning followed by a successful 5 frames where he struck out 8.

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Per John Mozeliak during today’s KSDK Cardinal broadcast (paraphrasing):

Jaime Garcia is a few weeks away from starting his own rehab program.

There’s potential that if everything goes right he could be in STL later this year.

Prior to the season I took a look at the workloads of several Cardinals prospects in relation to the Verducci Rule.  The basic premise of the Verducci Rule is that pitchers who increase their workload by more than 30 innings from one season to the next have a heightened risk of injury.  Will Carroll has found that the Verducci Rule does not exactly translate for minor league innings, but I used it as a conservative baseline for the number of innings I thought would be appropriate for the Cardinals prospects.  After the jump I’ll take a look back at the workloads for those same pitchers and how it compared to the numbers discussed prior to the season. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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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Well, I’m not really freaking out, but I’m not too happy about the situation, either. In lieu of an afternoon post, feel free to discuss the situation here. Obviously losing your top ranked starting pitching prospect for the next season hurts. While some have blamed his usage, it’s been pointed out that Jaime’s mechanics are less than ideal.

I promise I’ll get that Scott Gorgen Q and A up very soon. I’ve been really busy, but am getting closer to having it transcribed.

Josh Phelps got the call to St. Louis, while Jaime Garcia was sent down and Mark Mulder was shifted to the 60-day DL. In the same article LaRussa hints that Garcia will probably not get a September call up due to the number of innings he has already pitched this season. I approve of that line of thinking, especially after he had the elbow strain at the end of last season.

Four teams were in action today, all the details are after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Goldstein addressed a Jaime Garcia question in his chat today (I don’t know if Chris from St. Louis is an FR reader that saw Az’s request or if the question was serendipitous, but thanks to Chris for the question, either way):

Chris (St. Louis): Jaime Garcia is off to a great start. If his elbow issues are behind him, and his control seems to be better this year, what’s his ceiling?

Kevin Goldstein: He’s been outstanding. Very good #3 starter. Before anyone gets worked up about that, that is NOT an insult, that’s a high compliment.

Personally, I’m not sure that it is a high compliment. I appreciate that becoming a “very good” number three starter in the major leagues is very difficult and I agree that to project a guy to become that when he has never pitched above AA is not an insult. However, the question was what Garcia’s “ceiling” is. To me, when you say someone’s ceiling is a very good number three, then you don’t think there is any possibility that the player will be better than that. That, to me, is not a high compliment. I also think that Garcia’s ceiling is higher than that. His numbers have been solid at every stop (and his K rate has improved from 2006 to 2007 and from 2007 to this year so far) and he’s got two MLB quality pitches right now. He may end up being a number three pitcher, but I wouldn’t limit his ceiling to that at this point. [Note: I suspect that I just put myself into the category of "someone getting worked up about that" in Kevin's comment, but I can't help myself.]

On to the DFR, where a couple of our young guys jumped all over a big league Ace this afternoon. There were only two games today due to a day off for Memphis and a rainout for Springfield. All the details after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a multitude of reasons why pitching prospects don’t pan out.  I believe that, after talent, the biggest reason is health.  Every organization has had its share of pitching prospects that have flamed out, or at least have had their career temporarily derailed, due to injury and the Cardinals are no exception. 

There is no absolute connection between workload and injury – certain “rubber armed” pitchers seem to be able to throw endlessly without injury (Livan Hernandez comes to mind), but there is enough of a connection that teams are paying much closer attention to pitch counts than they used to, especially with younger pitchers.  The depth of the Cardinals system, at least according to most prospect lists, lies in our pitching prospects.  The question then, is what has their workload been thus far, and what would be ideal for 2008?  I’m going to take a look at five of the Cardinals top starting pitching prospects after the jump.

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