Archive for the “Minor Links” Category

The Surprise Rafters will open their Arizona Fall League play this week on October 12th. The team features 8 Cardinals prospects:

• Brian Broderick
• Ramon Delgado
• Blake King
• Jordan Swagerty
• Tony Cruz
• Zach Cox
• Pete Kozma
• Adron Chambers

Obviously the big name there is Zach Cox as his performance in the AFL could have a direct impact on where he starts his 2011 play. Keep an eye on Brian Broderick and whether his one-dimensional pitching repertoire can handle more talented hitters. Jordan Swagerty also gets his first taste of professional baseball. Swagerty will be blogging about his experience here.

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Memphis advances to the next round of the playoffs behind a dominant performance from Lance Lynn who set the single game strikeout record with 16. That makes for a clean sweep in the first round as Memphis tries to repeat as PCL champions.

Quad Cities season ends on a disappointing and rain-soaked loss.

Springfield goes into game three with the best of 5 series tied 1-1.

Batavia’s playoff season ended earlier in the week losing to the Tri-City ValleyCats in the playoffs.

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I missed the links last week so here’s an overflowing edition of minor links.

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John Sickels has a mock draft up for the first round with the Cardinals #25 overall pick taking 3B Nick Castellanos out of high school.  With the plethora of early picks (3 in the top 50), the Cardinals may chase a high schooler early on but Castellanos doesn’t fit the bill imo.

Sickels also has a mock of the supplemental with the Cardinals taking RHP Barret Loux out of Texas A & M 26th overall and SS Tony Wolters out of high school with the 50th. Loux makes sense but again, I’m not sure that Wolters who is more of a polish player than raw athlete fits the bill as the appropriate type of high school pick early on.

Project Prospect has a pretty glowing review of Shelby Miller considering how aw he is as a pitcher.

Brian Walton adds 4 more position prospects to watch.  Matt Adams was on the previous week and was solely a funciton of being ranked on the Scout.com top 40. Why he’s ranked above Andrew Brown (who is basically Matt Adams but two levels higher) is beyond me.  There’s too much focus on these supposed high potential bats in the low part of the system.  The offensive profile for a first baseman is extremely high and very few of these guys actually make it. If you want to follow a defensively challenged power bat, follow Steve Hill.  These bad-bodied first base types in the low minors are getting way to much hype.

Marlon Morgan of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal has a piece on former Redbird Mike Parisi.

Morgan also has an article talking to the diminutive (by baseball standards) AAA two-bagger, Daniel Descalso.

Brian Walton’s weekly piece at the Globe Democrat. This week is about position players to watch. I think the Matt Adams bandwagon has left the station a bit early.

Kary Booher, who broke the Scott Bittle surgery news, has an update.

Fortunately for him, only a damaged joint capsule was in need of repair, not the rotator cuff or labrum that have wrecked entire careers, Bittle explained Friday. But…

“It was a pretty big disappointment,” Bittle said in a phone interview. “But there’s nothing I can do about it now, other than to move forward.”

Kevin Goldstein wrote about Shelby Miller last Thursday. Seems like Goldstein caught the wild version of Miller last night at the QC game. Nothing to really worry about though.

Keith Law has a top 100 up for the 2010 draft.  He breaks it down by position as well.

I know there’s been some clamoring for more info on Quad Cities pitcher Scott Schneider who is off to a great start with 15Ks and 0 BBs in 14 innings.  Steve Batterson has a writeup on Schneider that touches on his offseason regimen as well as his college days.

Quad Cities is going to have it’s game broadcast on the MLB Network on Monday, May 3rd at 11am.  By my tally, that should be a Joe Kelly/David Calhoun start.  I hope that MLBN sends some of their own camera crews there. When I watched some of Steven Strasburg’s first start at AA on ESPNews, the camera angles were absolutely awful.  I’m partial to the CF camera during every AB.  Until the ball is hit, that’s really the only view I care much about.

Brian Walton touches on some of the top pitchers in the system at the Globe-Democrat.  Lance Lynn continues to look overrated to me in most rankings. (FR rankings here.) Adam Ottavino is one I might have been a bit too down on as the early outings for Ott in spring training and the regular season have been quite positive.

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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.