Archive for the “Pete Kozma” Category

Well, this is surprising.  Pete Kozma has been called up from AAA Memphis to replace Nick Punto who was put on the DL.  I’ve pushed my normal Wednesday to tomorrow post for this discussion topic.

UPDATE: Makes sense for two reasons.  1 – he’s already on the 40 man roster.  2 – he’s a middle infielder like Punto.  3 – He’s the only infielder left in Memphis on the 40 man roster.  1+ 2 + 3 = callup.

Kozma has a 220/284/284 slash line so far this year.   Kozma will wear number 47.

And of course, congrats to Mr. Kozma.  His first major league appearance will be a huge milestone in his life.

DEVELOPING.

Subtitle: Kozmanaut Fails to Leave Lower Atmosphere

In 2007, Pete Kozma was selected by the Cardinals as their first overall pick. There was much wailing and gnashing of the teeth (including here) due to Rick Porcello, who was widely regarded as the best high school arm, still being available.  Even though Pete Kozma was no Rick Porcello, I doubt anyone predicted or hoped his time in the minors would be so thoroughly mediocre.

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Let’s throw this one out to the Future Redbirds community.  Who do you think is poised for a breakout this season and why?  Don’t forget to show your work.  I’ll give you a few of mine to get the exercise started.

Tommy Pham - This is an easy one because he is “poised” to break out every year.  We thought we were seeing it last year after his impressive Spring Training, but it has not yet come together for Pham.  He hit well in Springfield in 121 at bats after finally graduating from the pitchers-haven of Palm Beach. He ended the year on the DL, which also did not help him.  A full year in Springfield in his age 23 season should assist Pham’s break out in 2011.

Pete Kozma – Kozma’s jump to Springfield for a full season did not bring much success, but he is in line to repeat AA as a 23 year old.  If he is going to have any success at the major league level, he will need to break out this season when he repeats in Springfield.  That’s more of a “must break out” than “poised”, but I think it still applies.

John Gast – Gast put up great numbers as a lefthanded starter in Batavia.  This season, I think he will take those great numbers up to Quad Cities and possibly Palm Beach.  In Batavia, he increased his strikeouts and limited his walks compared to his college career.  He should have a break out season by continuing his good numbers at higher levels and against better competition.

Who do you think is ready for a break out season?

I’ve had the question posed to me previously and Derrick Goold had a well written piece (does he have any that aren’t?) about Kozma in the Arizona Fall League. Quoting:

Some of the others, like Blake King and Pete Kozma, are out playing in Arizona to win a spot on the 40-man roster or impress another team enough to take them in the Rule 5 draft.

As I’ve said previously when asked about the situation, it just doesn’t make sense to me that Pete Kozma is being auditioned for anything.

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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.

Matt Baker has a really well written article up on Pete Kozma.  To a lot of us, this probably seems like a dead horse, but remember that he’s writing for Springfield where Pete Kozma was recently called up.  For the casual S-Cardinal fan, the 2007 draft was probably just another day in their work week.

There’s been a lot of back and forth on this site about Kozmanaut and Rick Porcello.  I’ve tried to stay in a middle ground of sorts — Kozma was never the worst draft choice but I was never excited by his talent or thought it was first round caliber talent.  It’s not a pleasant position to take because it leaves both flanks open for assault.  The Kozma-lovers say I’m underrating his tools/overall package and the Kozma-haters say that I’m not coming down hard enough on a guy who looks like a utility player right now.

One things for sure, Pete Kozma and Rick Porcello are inextricably linked in the minds of Cardinal prospect followers.  I think the reason for that linkage is important to decipher.  It’s about more than just those two prospects; it’s about the often underwhelming nature of the Cardinal drafts.  Jeff Luhnow and Co. operate from a different playbook than we might like.  They aren’t going to pick the flashy draftee to appease the hardcore fanbase and I’m certain they have good reasons for the picks that they’re making.  That doesn’t make it any less frustrating for us fans though.  When an instance comes along that so precisely mimics the macrocosm in micro, well, Pete Porcello and Rick Kozma is born.

After the jump there’s a few quotes from Baker’s piece I want to look at.

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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.

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Matt Baker, following in Kary Booher’s excellent Springfield Sports blogging shoes, has all the details of the minor league fall out from Brendan Ryan/Khalil Greene’s injuries:

• Pete Kozma from Palm Beach to Springfield
• Donovan Solano from Springfield to Memphis
• Kyle Mura to the DL
• Trey Hearne from bullpen to rotation
• Marco Gonzalez demoted from Memphis to Springfield
• Fernando Salas off the DL(?)

AZ decided to start the painful process of auditing his rankings of last year, something I think most prospect “rankers” would rather not do. Thinking of doing it myself makes me think about that dream you have where you are in the middle of class and suddenly you realize you are the only one in your boxer shorts. Really though, it’s a great idea and I’m looking forward to patting myself on the back/embarrassing myself in a future post by going over my list in a later post. (Brad Furnish…really? What was I smoking?)

I’ve been thinking about Pete Kozma controversy for a while lately, what with Bird Land’s Reader Top 30 ignoring him every week. I think AZ perfectly encapsulates how many fans feel about Kozma.

#16: Right where he should have been. Great start to the season earned him much acclaim in the blogosphere and much finger pointing at detractors. Things evened out by the end of the season to show that he’s a decent prospect but still not a great choice for a first round pick.

I’ve waffled back and forth on Kozma, but now I have to respectfully disagree.  It’s true, he started hot this season, fizzled, came back strong enough to earn a promotion to FSL, and there proceeded to lay a big, fat stinky egg over 94 plate appearances.

Allow me to cherry pick a little and throw out the aforementioned doorknob. What happened in Florida will stay in Florida, after all, it was the end of a long season. Let’s look at the bigger picture of his MWL season. If I butcher some numbers, then tell me so.

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Baseball America continues to roll out it’s top twenty prospects in each league, and this time the Midwest League is up to bat. Brett Wallace came behind Mike Moustakas, Neftali Feliz, Jarrod Parker and Ben Revere to be ranked the 5th best prospect in the league, and Kozma ranked 15th overall.

Pete Kozma ranked a spot behind Justin Jackson, who also plays shortstop and was the 45th pick overall in the same 2007 draft. Kozma had better numbers, but the scouts whom BA talked to took to Jackson’s overall tools. While scouts do like Kozma, he’s more of an acquired taste. In a nutshell, BA’s synopsis on Kozma is that he remains spectacularly unspectacular, but the tools that he does possess play so free and easy that he can and at times does play above them.

Their synopsis on Wallace is pretty much the same types of things we’ve been hearing: Great hitter, iffy range. Will hit well enough to make up for iffy range. I am tempted to debate that he belongs above Revere, but when you hit nearly .400 as a 19 year old for an entire season, it sort of takes away that argument.