Archive for the “shelby miller” Category

SEO tells me that I am contractually obligated to write an article on Shelby Miller today and so I comply.

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Update #2: The Hummel article linked below now fleshes out most of the details related to the article now.  Post-Dispatch pulls one of their awesome journalistic updates with no indication that the article has changed from original posting. Huge fan of that.

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Update #1: Miller declines to comment (via Kary Booher). More indication that suspension will be brief.

Interested to see whether StL media pursues this.

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Rick Hummel has the story at the Post-Dispatch.

We’ll see if this story has legs (my guess is yes) and more details emerge.

Here’s a two part interview between (what I believe is) a Palm Beach staffer and top pitching prospect Shelby Miller.

Part 1

Part 2

They’re brief but I’m actually surprised by how blunt he is in answering what could be construed as critical questions.  He also seems much older than I perceived him to be last year. Not quite the same fresh faced, wide-eyed look we got from the Texan right out of high school.

If there was any doubt as to what the strength of the organization is right now, the last five days of games should have put that to rest.  Starting pitching throughout the system, though most prominently in the low minors, is very much the backbone of the Cardinals prospect lists.  Here’s a recap of the top pitching performances thus far.

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Shelby Miller ALERT!

We saw how shaky the big league bullpen can be and how opportunities may present themselves to younger guys as the season progresses. Likewise, that dead weight we have at 1B may be an issue that needs addressed soon as well (snark!).

On to the DFR!
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Derrick Goold has some early top prospect assignments in his Bird Land blog today:

No. 1 prospect Shelby Miller, a righthanded pitcher, and No. 2 prospect, third baseman Zack Cox, have been assigned to the High-A Palm Beach club.

The Cardinals are not in a position to confirm the assignment, but it’s expected that Martinez will continue pitching in extended spring training rather than join the full-season rotation in Quad Cities.

All three assignments make sense.  Miller moves up a level.  Cox gets his first full season ball experience in Palm Beach.  Martinez continues his education before moving to Quad Cities this summer.  Smart move by the Cardinals, no reason to push Martinez when he is still new to the country.

As far as Quad Cities, I think their rotation will be fine for the time being:

Assigned to the Quad Cities No. 1 roster as RHP Seth Blair, RHP Jordan Swagerty and RHP Trevor Rosenthal.

We’ll project our #1 prospect this week. I’ve debated what assumption to make regarding his level.  Let’s say that the Cardinals are aggressive with Mr. Miller and he gets his wish playing the entire season at Springfield.  Projections should be in the following format:

IP,Hits,BB,K,HR,ERA

I’m pretty jealous of Kevin Goldstein. Beyond the fact that he has an awesome day job of discussing bsaeball prospects all the time, he’s also seen Shelby Miller four times this year in person! I’ve seen nine Quad Cities games and zero Shelby Miller appearances. Boo!

KG saw Miller in his latest start during the playoffs against Kane County. Miller was dominant over 7 innings and Goldstein has a full scouting report on the Cardinals top prospect:

Summary: Between body, delivery, and stuff, Miller has easy frontline starter potential, as 9/8 playoff start was best performance by a pitcher I’ve seen all year. Previous looks do create concerns, although potential for improvement is significant. Don’t see much projection in fastball, but doesn’t need it, and shows enough high-quality curveballs to project for a 70/60/50 repertoire only seen in star-level arms. Improved control/command throughout season and could be poised for ’11 breakout.

I’ve been critical of Baseball Prospectus in the past (and they still need to clean up their UI experience — their stats sections are awful) but between Goldstein’s continually awesome prospect reports and the additions of some “hardcore” sabermetric types (namely Colin Wyers), it wasn’t a hard decision to re-up my subscription last week.  The teaser above is just a small part of the awesome writeup that Shelby got from Goldstein.

I’ll be making my third trip of the year to Quad Cities to watch some prospects this weekend.  Once again, the starting pitching rotation has foiled me as Shelby Miller started last night and will not pitch again until next week after I’ve left.

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(azru: I asked Steve Sommer if he would toss together the limited pitch f/x data from the Futures Game for us.  Minuscule sample size alert as Steve will note so don’t make any life decisions from this. You can find more of Steve’s work at various joints including ESPN, Beyond the Box Score and Play A Hard Nine. Thanks, Steve.)

One of the best aspects of the Futures Game is that we get some Pitch F/X data on pitchers that we otherwise would not have any data on. This is especially useful for those of us that will not get to see these guys pitch until they reach MLB. Clearly we will be doing some analysis and making some observations with extremely small samples, but it is still useful to get a feel for each pitcher’s fastballs if nothing else.

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