Archive for the “Jason Motte” Category

I wrote about Jason Motte at VEB on Sunday. I knew that there’s a history of me scouting him and watching him so I spent some time digging up old posts about Jason Motte when he was still in the minors. I wrote a lot about him in 2008 and it turns out, some things never change.

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One of the things that I enjoy the most about writing here is that I’ve got a record that I can be held to.  It’s really easy to log on to the internet and start dropping bombs on players.  What’s difficult is establishing a conclusion and staying consistent with it.  Keeping that in mind, I searched the archives to come up with my notes on one Jason Motte.

The conversion began in 2006 but Motte burst onto the scene in 2007 in Springfield.  I made a point of watching an excessive amount of video on Motte. Read the rest of this entry »

From Josh Kalk’s Pitch F/X cards.

Kalk also runs similarity scores on his site for each pitcher and interestingly enough, Motte’s most comparable pitcher from 2008 was Grant Balfour. Balfour happened to lead the majors in K/9 with 12.65. Jason Motte led all of the minors in K/9 with 14.85. Both throw fastballs 90% of the time. So you tell me – can he get by with one pitch?

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.

The pitching was more impressive than the hitting in Memphis. I got a chance to watch several relievers (Motte, Scherer, Worrell) as well as a couple starters (Walters, Boggs) that could play roles in the future for the big league club. I also saw my two nemeses far too often.

It’s boring out here.

They don’t blow enough games in late innings at Memphis.

They’re still learning to be major leaguers. We’ve got it down already.

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Once again, you’ve probably all heard by now, but I will post the link to Team USA’s 7-0 victory over Netherlands. They play Cuba tonight.

Derrick Goold has some notes about Colby Rasmus‘ rehab and Josh Kinney‘s intention to return to the team this season. Goold also posted this article about Rasmus and a whole lot of other minor league related notes.

Kevin Goldstein answered three Cardinals questions in his chat the other day. Since it isn’t a subscription piece, I don’t feel bad giving them to you here in their entirety (although you really should subscribe to BP and visit every day):

KCardinal (KC): With Daryl Jones turning his tools into performance this year, will he make your top 100?

Kevin Goldstein: I’m a big Daryl Jones supporter and he’s got a lot of tools, but Top 100 is pushing it.

MikeJordan23 (Brooklyn): I’ll keep asking until you answer: With Brett Wallace hitting abilities but lack of position should the Cardinals trade him to the AL when he’s eligible or find him a new position? And thoughts on Niko Vasquez?

Kevin Goldstein: Stop asking! You don’t really worry about any sort of logjam until you are forced to. The Cardinals right now have a valuable commodity in their minor league system, but there is no reason to start making any decisions on it. Thoughts on Vasquez? I’m a big, big fan.

Jason Motte (Memphis): Would my one-pitch repetoire hold up in the Majors right now?

Kevin Goldstein: Seriously, what’s up with all the Jason Motte questions? Is there a fan club or something? I love the guy, gotta give it up for any converted catcher who has 97 whiffs in 58.2 innings at Triple-A. That said, I think he’d get righties out right now, but his arm angle and lack of secondary stuff would give him trouble against lefties.

Action all over the system (and the globe) – all the details are after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

John Wasdin had a no-no through 7 before Jason Motte came in to strike out 5 batters over the 8th and 9th inning. I took a look at the video to see what Motte was up to with his pitches.

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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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My first day in Jupiter afforded me the opportunity to get a first hand look at some of the prospects we write about for the first time.  My first impressions are after the jump.

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