At draft time, Baseball America said:

[Todd has] a 90-94 mph four-seam fastball and a hard mid-80s slider that ranks as one of the best in the draft. He also throws an upper-80s two-seamer and a circle changeup that acts like a splitter.  He opened the spring as the Razorbacks’ closer, and scouts envision him as a late-inning reliever in pro ball. Todd’s size (6 feet, 213 pounds) and violent delivery lend themselves more to that role, though he has shown a deep repertoire, command and durability as a college starter.

Todd easily lapped both Razorback rotation mates (who remain in A+ ball) as the Cardinals aggressively promoted him through the system.  Working in Batavia after being drafted, he tossed 59 innings striking out 69 against 14 walks. In 2008, his first full year in the system, he skipped the Quad Cities starting out in Palm Beach and ending the year in Memphis.

Todd had success in the rotation in 2008 with all but 4 of his game appearances as a starter where he struck out ~7.5/9IP and walked ~2.5/9IP.  The jump from Springfield to Memphis revealed some control problems as Todd’s walk rate crept up but given just four starts there, it’s impossible to know whether that was prescient.

In 2009, Todd was converted to a full time reliever by the Cardinals. He’s notch 24 saves for Memphis while recording a 10+K/9IP rate, a cup of coffee in St. Louis and a PTBNL tag in the Mark DeRosa trade sending him to the Cleveland Indians.  Todd pitched well in Indians AAA affiliate remaining exclusively a reliever during 2010.

It’s curious that the Indians released him this year (as did the Yankees). Whether it was a 40-man roster issue or not, Todd had performed well to date in every stop he made.   He’s been bitten by some bad luck (high-BABIP, HRs) recently but his peripherals remain strong. Here’s his composite yearly strikeout and walk rates.

That looks like a pretty good reliever to me. Todd’d groundball rates are generally around league average though he’s tended to be a bit more of a flyball pitcher in the majors. Over the last four years, however, he’s posted strong rates that indicate he’s capable of pitching in the majors.  Both ZiPS and Marcel liked Todd to be better than the replacement level reliever entering 2011 projecting a FIP around 4.00, which was on par with projections for Mitchell Boggs, Eduardo Sanchez, Bryan Augenstein and Ryan Franklin. Todd also projected to be clearly better than Miguel Batista.

So the Cardinals managed to claim a player off waivers who, for some peculiar reason, doesn’t look like most of the players you find on waivers. Right now, Todd is trying to stem the tide in a rather weak Memphis bullpen but there’s no reason that he shouldn’t be considered an option in St. Louis either this year or next. Welcome back, Jess Todd. Please don’t destroy us.

Memphis – Francisco Samuel, Jess Todd

It wasn’t that long ago that the troika of Samuel, Sanchez and Salas were mentioned in the same breath.  Samuel had the most consistent velocity on his fastball and the least consistent command. He’s been interrupted by some recurring injuries related to his arm. At 24, he’s still got some time but he seems like more of an afterthought at this point in his career.

Todd was claimed off waivers to help bolster an anemic Memphis bullpen.  Drafted in 2007 by the Cardinals, Todd needed just a single season to ascend to AAA Memphis. More surprisingly was that he did so as a starter. After being traded in 2009, Todd split time between the Cleveland Indians bullpen and AAA with respectable strikeout numbers.  There’s good statistical reasons to wonder why Todd was released at all and having just turned 25, it’s not to late for him to solidify a role in a bullpen.

Springfield – Blake King, Casey Mulligan

The demotion from Memphis to Springfield would seem to be the final bell tolling on King’s career. Mentioned as having, arguably, the best slider in the system, King has been undone by his awful control.  After a brief improvement last year, he’s walked more batters than he’s struck out in 2011. He’s the only ‘name’ pitcher in Springfield but it is highly unlikely that he reaches the majors with the Cardinals.

Mulligan has been sidelined by injuries but remains an interesting footnote to the conversion of Jason Motte. Mulligan’s plus changeup makes him an unusual right handed reliever that can retire left handed hitters. Drafted in 2007 out of high school, Mulligan is surprisingly young at 23.  His ascension through the system has been methodical and occasioned by demotions to give him further time to adjust to the opposition or bolster a faltering pen.

* * *

Below Springfield, there are some unheralded relievers and Keith Butler would be chief among them who struck out 50 in 30 IP at Batavia in 2010.  Hector Corpas is a hard throwing Panamanian in low-A who has seen improved fastball control as he transitioned from Venezuelan to American leagues.  Boone Whiting posted 68 strikeouts to 5 walks across 13 appearances (9 starts) in Johnson City during 2010.  He’s continued to strikeout better than a batter an inning at Quad Cities in 2011.

While the low-minors contain some potentially good relievers, they’re still far removed from being in any near term discussion of contributing to the big leagues. The prospects in the high minors, perhaps excepting Jess Todd, are thoroughly underwhelming.

It’s worth mentioning that the Cardinals now have four relievers on their major league squad still under team control after this year: Jason Motte (3 years service), Mitchell Boggs (2 years service), Fernando Salas (1+ year service), Eduardo Sanchez (1 year service).  The need is not necessarily immediate but neither can they particularly afford to trade from this pool given the lack of obvious replacements in the minors.

The Cardinals do have a group of players that may be better suited to relief in the long term than starting though they are getting a chance at the latter right now. Adam Ottavino, David Kopp, Joe Kelly and Jordan Swagerty all come to mind.  It’s too early to pigeonhole the latter two but scouts have often regarded Kelly as a reliever and Swagerty, despite a surprise 2011, was not generally considered a starting prospect prior to the 2010 draft.  The former two may be forced to the pen in an effort to keep them healthy.

One other thing to mention is that the 2011 MLB draft (starting June 6th) is ripe with pitching prospects. I would be completely unsurprised to see the Cardinals take a college reliever with the ability to “move quickly” in the sandwich or second round much as they did in 2006 with Chris Perez.  Tony Zych or Anthony Meo would be college arms that could start in the minors but project more as relievers in the majors. If the Cardinals were to draft them in the sandwich round, they could fast track them to the majors if they committed to relieving from day one.  While I’m not necessarily an advocate of this approach, it’s one that the Cardinals have used before (though not recently) and it did pay some dividends.

I wasn’t a big fan of either trade at the moment they happened, but I gradually sobered up from my prospect fanboyism and realized that the deals, in themselves, were perfectly justifiable even if it meant putting a pretty big dent in the farm system. So far, Luhnow has done a pretty good job re-stocking the system with some potential, assuming the tops picks of the draft sign and the Carlos Matias signing is OK’d.

I thought it would be fun just to check in with some of the players and see how they’re doing for their new clubs. This isn’t to pronounce a winner or a loser in the trade, just a status update.

The Walrus’ slash line of .293/.353/.503 for Triple-A Las Vegas looks pretty good, but can be deceiving. I’m not hear to bash on Brett, but there’s some red flags about his numbers. First of all,  Las Vegas is a hitter’s heaven. Adjusting for park, Wallace’s line diminishes to .280/.341/.480. Still not shabby considering he was only drafted two years ago. What’s got to be a little disconcerting for Blue Jays’ fans is his plate discipline. Touted as a disciplined hitter coming out of college, Wallace has a .32 BB/K ratio and just a 6% walk rate. His MLE OPS is .667. Oh, and he’s officially moved over to 1B.

I like Wallace, I still think he’s a good prospect, but I’m not quite as confident that he’s some sort of future all-star.

Shane Peterson has a .300 wOBA for Double-A Midland and a nice, shiny .003 ISO.

At age 25, Clayton Mortensen is still doing his thing in the PCL. He has thrown 100 innings, is striking out about 7 batters per nine, walking 2.8 per and is still getting lots of groundballs. (53% GB%)

Through 125 innings of professional ball, the former “closer of the future” has pitched right around replacement level. His strikeout rate has dipped down to around 6 per nine for Cleveland this year, and he has a 5.31 xFIP. Ouch. Remember the Motte versus Perez debate? I was on Team Perez for the reason of secondary offerings or lack thereof for Motte. Bully for those who were on Team Motte.

Jess Todd probably won’t destroy us all after all, but for Triple-A Columbus he’s striking out a batter per inning with good control to boot. I feel sort of silly for thinking he ever might be a starter, but he still might be a valuable set-up man. He was pounded in his brief major league stint, his opponent’s BABIP was .411. I wouldn’t read too much into his struggles in the majors last year.

Who knows what will become of Seth Blair once he signs, but if he turns out to be a quality #3-4 starter like he’s projected, then Todd and Perez for a couple of bad months of DeRosa and Blair will look pretty good.

I think the deal that none of us bemoaned but are bemoaning now happened before last season started. If you ever want to get depressed, just look at what Luke Gregerson is doing to major league hitters now. I can’t discuss it, it’s too painful. Just look. He has become my new Dan Haren.

Mark “I’m a legend in my mind” Worrell is in Triple-A, still. He has a 4.36 FIP in 34.1 innings pitched.

I still like the futures for several of these players, but it’s funny to me, in a painful way, that the most valuable player out of them all, at least so far, is the guy we didn’t mind parting with, the player we thought of as a fungible middle reliever. Sure, we all liked his shiny minor league numbers quite a bit, but we had several relievers in the minors doing similar things. The players I liked least parting with are showing all sorts of wrinkles and may not end up amounting to much of anything.

Oh the  joy of prospects.

Let’s do the whole surplus value thing.

Chris Perez was a top 76-100 pitcher last year, meaning his surplus value is $8.7M.  Jess Todd was given a B grade by John Sickels. B grade pitchers historically have averaged $6.5 million in value. That’s a total of $15.2 million of assets headed to Cleveland for a few months of DeRo. After some hand wringing about his wrist, he seems fine, hitting 4 homers over the last few days. DeRosa is worth about a win over the rest of the season, and about a 7% increase in playoff expectancy. Figuring his salary ($2.3M), what he adds in terms of wins ($4.5M), and Type B free agent compensation ($2.5) and the help he adds in possibly reaching the playoffs….

$15 M to CLE, $7M to STL. More paying out of the wha-zoo for rentals.

That said, Perez has that spotty control and may never pan out. He has been nails in low leverage situations since getting a rudely greeting to the AL. I have this weird thing with Todd. Having seen him pitch, I was less than impressed, but it’s really hard to argue with the results. He might end up being better than Perez when it’s all said and done, as he has pitchability and control that Perez definitely doesn’t have yet.

My poor faberge eggs. Win, Cardinals, win.

• The draft mailbag will be posted Monday.  My apologies for the lateness, my schedule has precluded much blogging this week as you may have noticed.  Tuesday is the draft and we’ll be here chatting about it.  We expect you to be here as well.
• cardsfan1, our resident tipster, indicated that Hawksworth got the callup last night.  I’m a little unsure of this because of the risk involved in calling him up.  He can’t simply be optioned down again and would have to pass through waivers.  Now, the Cardinals have a plethora of guys like Hawksworth who are backend starter types so it certainly wouldn’t be a crippling loss but there’s more risk here than a Mitchell Boggs callup.  This is all probably related to the Lohse to DL move, which, by the way, once again shows the incompetency of the medical decisions this season with regards to the DL.

Moving on. . .

Obviously Jess Todd didn’t have the kind of callup that we’d all hoped for.  There’s not much to read into a night when 1) he’s pitching for the first time in the bigs and 2) the Rockies go to score 11 runs against some of our best relievers.

Inspired by The Destroyer’s promotion, bgh sent some quality shots of Todd from an Iowa Cubs v. Memphis Redbirds game.  And, I hope he doesn’t mind, but I have to quote the first line of the e-mail, which had me laughing uproariously at work:

My girlfriend has been holding these pics hostage for about a month via her indifference to my baseball photos.

With much thanks to bgh, pictures after the jump.  Don’t look to close, you might get hurt. . .

Cardinal Beat has the word.

Todd will be added to the 40-man roster as well.

UPDATE: So, Todd is promoted because Boyer is DFA’d to Memphis.  Reliever for reliever makes more sense.  Bring up a fresh arm, send a tired one down.

UPDATE 2: Matt Leach has all the info as usual on the follow-up moves.  In Summary:

Boyer DFA -> Todd to STL

Thurston’s wife is going to give birth soon -> T.Greene to STL

K.Lohse DL’ed -> Mather to STL

azruavatar: One of the more surprising outcomes for me when we were doing our rankings was that Jess Todd eaked out Mitchell Boggs for the top (healthy) starting pitching prospect.  I feel like there’s a lot of myth surrounding Todd especially after Derrick Goold’s article on learning the cut fastball.  Todd rocketed through the system, but why the hype?

roarke: Todd went through a period during last season where he was a monster and I think that stretch got a lot of people excited.  As I said in my comment during the list, my enthusiasm for him was tempered by an underwhelming performance at the Futures Game and some hard times in AAA (of course, he’s still pretty young for that level).  All that being said, I think that his ranking above Boggs has more to do with my feelings on Boggs than my feelings on Todd.  I hope I’m wrong, but Boggs just seems like a run-of-the-mill utility pitcher type that every system produces.  Maybe he can fill out the back of a rotation temporarily, or be a swingman, or pitch some relief – but he probably won’t be exceptional in any of those roles.  Todd seems to have the potential to be a little more than that.

erik: During his “He Will Destroy us All” period he grabbed a lot of attention. Todd rocketed through the system while Boggs has pitched one rung at a time. I too was a little soured by his performance in the Futures Game, but there has to be more to him than we I saw in just one inning. As for Boggs, I do like him, but for me he’s more of a back-end starter no matter how I can slice it, barring the chance he learns a third pitch and/or gains consistency with his breaking ball.  I guess Todd lends himself a little more to my imagination, whereas Boggs “is what he is”.  Maybe it’s just mystique, and Todd could easily lose that mystique with a bad season in AAA.

azruavatar: 6.6K per 9IP, 2.0BB per 9IP.  If I quoted those numbers for someone at the major league level, I’d be talking about Derek Lowe.  But these are the numbers of a AA pitcher who doesn’t have the 60% GB rate of Lowe.  If we’re going to be honest about Todd, we have to note that he’s a control oriented pitcher and not a high strikeout pitcher.  Which brings us to Todd’s stuff.  He throws a fastball with multiple looks that sits in the low 90s.  He’s got a slider with good tilt that sits in the 83-84 mph range.  His cutter probably sits in the 87-89mph range.  None of that jumps off the page.  Contrast that with Mitchell Boggs who has a fastball in the 93-94mph with a curveball that has good break (but he struggles to locate).  The comparison to me seems like a control pitcher versus someone with better pure stuff but less command.  How often do we take the control pitcher in these circumstances?

erik: I agree, more often than not we would take the power pitcher. The problem with Boggs is while he has “power stuff”, his strikeouts also have taken a dip every time he has leveled up. 7.82 at Palm Beach. 6.91 at Springfield. 5.82 at Memphis. So while Boggs may look like he should be a strikeout pitcher, he definitely is not. If I have to choose between lighter stuff/better control with around the same amount of K’s, of course I’m going to take the control pitcher.

azruavatar: I’ll concede there’s a fine balancing act to be had here since neither player has particularly overwhelming stats nor an overwhelming scouting report.  Why is that though?  This is more a question about Boggs than Todd.  The general perception of Todd is that he has slightly above average stuff but very good command and he knows “how” to pitch.  So Todd gets more out of his pitches than we’d expect.  Boggs seems to have the opposite problem.  He has, to my eye, a 60 fastball and a 55 curveball.  He has some location issues with the curveball but overall he has two good pitches.  Why is it he only strikes out 5.8K per 9IP?

roarke: Wouldn’t it be great if we had pitch f/x data for the last few years in the minor leagues so we could see what Boggs’ tendencies are?  From a ‘big picture’ perspective, though, does it say anything about the Cardinals system that we are discussing these two pitchers?  They are the top two starters in the Cardinals system, partly because of Garcia’s injury, but also because all of the other contenders (Ottavino, Mortensen, Herron, etc.) either took a step back last season or stagnated.  Before last season I thought that the Cardinals had a lot of high upside young arms in the system, but now the strength is elsewhere.  I suppose that’s the nature of TINSTAAPP.

erik: Well we do have Pitch F/X data for Boggs and pitch type and plate discipline stats at Fangraphs for the 34 innings he did pitch, but I’m not sure that it gives us the answer given the sample size. Two things do stick out to me: He’s heavily reliant on his FB and his swing % outside of the strike zone was just 16.1%.  On the team, only Parisi and Mulder were worse.

I wonder what either of these pitchers would look like pitching in relief. They both are more valuable if they can start, but both Todd and Boggs have some experience relieving back in their college days and the notion of them moving to the bullpenhas been floated before. Boggs was reportedly throwing 96, 97 in the AFL last year in short stints, and Todd has that nasty slider. Do you two think their stuff good enough to succeed in any sort of high leverage relief role, either as a set up man or possibly even closing?

azruavatar: I’m inclined to pick Boggs fastball for a late inning role but his command of the curveball is pretty iffy so the high leverage relief seems to be stretching it.  Todd’s stuff just doesn’t impress me much but the slider would play better being seen once a game rather than 2-3 times.  In either case, this all seems like more than just TINSTAAPP to me.  The Cardinals have a fundamental problem developing starting pitching.  They’re throwing crap at a wall and hoping some sticks but up until last year and the introduction of classic mechanics, the system lacked a comprehensive philosophy and implementation from top to bottom.  Luhnow still needs to prove that he can pick starters in the same way he has right handed relievers and position players.  Am I overreacting here or would you agree that the system has little in the way of reliable starting pitching prospects?

roarke: I wouldn’t be opposed to giving McClellan a shot at the rotation and slotting Boggs in McClellan’s bullpen slot to start the season (or at least try it out in Spring Training).  Whether McClellan can be effective as a starter is debateable, but I feel pretty good about Boggs in the bullpen and it would give him some valuable major league experience.  As for Luhnow’s ability to pick starters, I do agree that starting pitching is a weak spot for our system and that is partly because of the strategy the Cardinals have used with their high picks recently (that is, College pitchers with limited upside – Ottavino, Mortensen, Kopp, Lynn).  But they’ve also had a bit of bad luck with injuries to Ottavino, Kopp and Garcia, which brings us back to the nature of pitching prospects.  It is much easier to be right about position players and relievers than it is with starting pitchers.

erik: It is a weakness. The only person close to looking like something better than a # 4 starter this season was Jaime Garcia. While I like some of the pitchers they’ve taken high in the draft, there is a growing list of who they could have drafted but passed on.  Derrick Goold well chronicled on how passed on Phil  Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy.  I would now add Brett Cecil to that list.  To be fair, a lot of teams also passed on these arms, so maybe finding a future top pitching prospect is more of a rare event, but I would think they wouldn’t be so hard to detect. I wish they would shed the high school pitcher aversion. It’s not like they never draft high school pitchers, Herron was the highest in recent memory, and he’s in the same boat as the others,which is to say his upside a #4-5 starter.

azruavatar: I bet we could match the list of Hughes, Chamberlain, etc. with one of starters the Cardinals didn’t choose who have fizzled out in the minors.  Regardless, starting pitching looks to remain an issue for the Cardinals’ farm system in the short term.  That’s not necessarily a deal breaker but it does require a reallocation of free agent money over time with more going to frontline pitching and less to position players (assuming that the farm will produce the lion’s share of the position players) if the trend continues.  Todd and Boggs, for all their faults, still seem like reasonable bets to be starters.  There’s certainly no conclusive evidence to this point that they can’t be.  In the long term, Luhnow and company might be well served by re-evaluating their approach to starting pitching prospects.

For whatever hand-wringing we were doing about Todd’s velocity, BA’s scouting report has him topping at 94. They seem to be fairly sold on him becoming a starting pitcher in the big leagues despite his size and they praise his strike-throwing ability and how he does a good job of keeping the ball down. Four pitch mix with fastball, slider, sinker, and a “squirrely” circle change. Todd was the third starting pitcher in the top twenty, with Vin Mazzaro (A’s) and Daniel Cortes (Royals) ranking just ahead of him.

Jones was omitted from the FSL top twenty, but again he came in 13th overall here. They praise the strides he has made in patience, power and base-stealing ability, but knock him for having a noodle of an arm and lack of instincts to play center field.

What BA liked about Jon Jay is his hands and ability to get the bat through the zone quickly, along with his solid center field defense. They again bring up his unorthodox approach but don’t seem to be concerned. With Colby and Ankiel ahead of him in the depth chart, he may need to move over to left field, where his power (or lack thereof) doesn’t profile well.

I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see Salas at the back of the list, but I think I like Allen Craig better as a prospect. They say Salas gets by more by being a strike thrower then by being overpowering, although with his short arm delivery his 91-92 MPH fastball can sneak up on hitters. His curve is also an effective weapon, but certainly not isn’t a devastating pitch. He ranked sandwiched between Kevin Jepsen, who is on the Angels playoff roster, and Casey Weathers, the 8th overall pick in 2007.

While I’ve belly ached about some of the rankings this year, I do look forward to reading them as they come out. Agree or disagree with them, they do get us talking.

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.

1. Colby Rasmus – Rough season or not, Colby’s tools have not gone anywhere. As rough as his start was, Colby finally started looking like the Razzle of old when he hit .333/.441/.535 for the month of June and was named to the Olympic national team, only to miss Beijing due to a sprained right knee. It was a rough season, but Colby still is a monstrous talent. As excited as I am about his offense, I am also pretty darn excited about his defense.

2. Brett Wallace – I’m getting about as sick about hearing about his defense (or lack thereof) as I am hearing the television talking heads gab about Sarah Palin. When you project to hit .300/.400/.520+ at the major league level, you can afford to be a minus ten at the hot corner. He is a lot more athletic than his pear shape dictates, and as I said, the fact that he can rake causes me to overlook the defensive liabilities.

3. Chris Perez -He’s had a few hiccups this year, but that’s not completely unexpected. Should continue to be a solid MLB closer…er, Duke of the Ninth.

4. Daryl Jones – If Jones played on an East Coast team, would prospect watchers be more excited about him? Think about how nuts people went over Austin Jackson last year when he turned his tantalizing tools into game usable skills. I’m not saying their breakouts are perfectly comparable, as Jones played mostly at the High A level, but Jones carried over his success in Double A. Hit a cumulative .316/.407/.483 line with 23 steals and profiles as a 20-20 outfielder in the majors.

5. Bryan Anderson – Young catchers can tire, and that is what I think happened to Anderson. He hit .388/.412/.525 in AA and was promoted in late April to Triple A. Before the all-star break in Memphis he hit .320/.396/.433; the second half: .212/.317/.282. Hopefully he grows in stamina and stops the trend of having second half swoons. What catches my eye is how Anderson considerably improved his defense. In 2006 he allowed 17 passed balls, in ’07 he allowed 15, this past season only ten.  He also caught 37.6% of would be basestealers, up from 26.8% last season. Matheny factor?

And here is where it gets dicey, at least for me, anyway. Garcia would have been my number five had it not been for him needing Tommy John. Now I’m not sure where to put him, being he will be of no use to the club until 2010.

6. Jason Motte – All I have seen so far is a pretty intimidating force on the mound, and from what little I’ve seen, his secondary stuff is not as bad as advertised, although I did read somewhere hearing that he had been developing a hard slider/cutter pitch. Secondary stuff or no, the man throws freakishly hard. He and Perez look to be a pretty nice 1-2 punch in the back of the bullpen, and it’s hard for me not to root for a guy who not long ago was struggling to hit as a catcher.

7. Niko Vasquez – It is interesting to see Vasquez leap over Kozma despite being picked in the third round and Kozma in the first last year. I sort of question myself putting Vasquez over Kozma here. Vasquez had a better pro debut than Kozma; for that matter he had a better pro debut than a lot of players drafted much higher than himself. I guess when I boil it all down, if you would ask me to take the less athletic SS with the power bat or the solid athlete with the ability to handle the bat but not hit for much power, I’d be a more apt to take the slugger.

Near misses: Todd, Kozma, Garcia. Todd is about as a near of a miss as I can think of given his great season.

Head on over to some of the other Cardinal blogs to read and discuss their rankings:

• Viva El Birdos
• Rockin’ the Red
• C70 at the Bat
• Pitchers Hit Eighth
• The Redbird Blog
• Cardinals GM

Be sure to tune into Bird Land later for his take on the project.

This article discusses Jess Todd‘s rough outing last night, including this analysis from Todd himself:

“My mechanics are a little off right now,” Todd said. “I’ve been flying open a little bit, and it’s just something I’m going to have to work on.”

Batavia was postponed due to rain, but the rest of the system was all in action today and they went 2-3 on the night. All the details are after the jump.

Portland 4, Memphis 15

• Brian Barton looks to be ready to resume his role on the bench for the big club. He was 2-2 with a double and three walks out of the leadoff spot.
• D’Angelo Jimenez was 2-5 with a double and a walk.
• Nick Stavinoha was 2-6.
• Rico Washington was 2-4 with a double and a walk.
• David Freese was 2-4 with a double, triple and a walk.
• Jarrett Hoffpauir was 2-4 with a walk.
• Bryan Anderson was 1-2 with a pair of walks.
• PJ Walters had a solid evening, if a little wild. He went six innings, allowing two runs on three hits and four walks. He also struck out four.
• Matt Clement came in and gave up a pair of runs on three hits and a walk.
• Matthew Scherer finished off the blowout with a scoreless inning.

Arkansas 1, Springfield 2

• Adam Ottavino had a great outing. He went seven innings, allowing only an unearned run on five hits and a walk. He struck out seven.
• Josh Dew followed with a scoreless inning, pitching around three walks and Luke Gregerson threw two perfect innings.
• The Cardinals only got five hits, but runs in the ninth and tenth brought home the win.
• Jon Jay was 2-5.
• Tyler Greene was 1-5 with a double and a stolen base.
• Mark Shorey and Andrew Brown each had a hit.

Brevard County 4, Palm Beach 3

• Tyler Henley was 2-5 with a pair of doubles.
• Brandon Buckman and Daniel Descalso were each 1-3 with a walk.
• Mark Diapoules pitched a great game, going seven innings and striking out seven while only allowing one run on four hits and two walks.
• Diapoules great game was undone by Kenny Maiques, who gave up a hit and three walks in a third of an inning, which led to three runs.
• Blake King didn’t help Maiques out, allowing two of his three inherited runners to score. King lasted 1.2 innings, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out two.

Quad Cities 1, Lansing 6

• Pete Kozma and Brett Wallace were each 1-4. Kozma doubled.
• Adron Chambers and Oliver Marmol were each 1-3.
• Joshua Wilson got the start and gave up six runs (five earned) in five innings on nine hits and a walk.
• Brandon Garner, Matt Spade and Dylan Gonzalez each pitched a scoreless inning. Garner and Gonzalez each struck out a pair.

Oneonta 0, Batavia 0 – Postponed

Bristol 3, Johnson City 2

• Alex Castellanos provided the offense for Johnson City tonight by going 3-3 with a double and a home run.
• Brett Lilley, Jack Cawley and Jairo Martinez were each 1-3.
• Andres Rosales got the start and struck out five in 4.2 innings, giving up only an unearned run on two hits and two wild pitches.
• Michael Blazek pitched 3.2 innings, allowing two runs (one earned) on five hits and a walk. He struck out six.