The United Cardinal Bloggers asked this month what was an obscure player from Cardinal history. It’s a loose definition of obscure as the story of George Frazier’s 77 innings pitched with the Cardinals isn’t a terribly interesting one. So obscure but not too obscure. I dug out my 2005 Baseball America Prospect guide to find a forgotten prospect from the pre-Luhnow era.
Failed prospects litter the annals of the Cardinals organization. That’s the nature of prospects (depending on how broad a definition you use): more will fail than succeed. The minor leagues aren’t in place to create stars so much as cull the weak. It’s the cut throat reality of the minors that, ultimately, the dream of professional baseball could be over at any moment. So finding a “forgotten” prospect isn’t exactly hard to do.
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After running through all the top prospects, we turn to the award for prospects: Rookie of the Year. It’s interesting for several reasons: (1) arbitration year trickery played by teams can keep leading candidates out of contention for the ROY award, (2) top prospects in the majors aren’t necessarily fully matured and a more polished rookie with less future upside can win the award and (3) it’s based (loosely) on actual production rather than just someone’s guess at a player’s future career.
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In addition to being the highest ranked among the NL West’s prospects, Trevor Bauer also has the coolest back story. Make sure and google Bauer for a host of entertaining articles about his unique training program.
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We’ve reached the prospects that you’re most likely to see lose to the Cardinals — their NL Central opponents!
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I’m not sure how many of you are aware of the United Cardinals Bloggers (aka the UCB) but it is a loose collection of bloggers that write about the Cardinals. It’s run by C70 and each month they have a project that many of the sites participate in. Future Redbirds participated briefly in the exercise years ago when Erik was running the blog. It wasn’t something that FR was consistent about but I think that this year we’re going to change it.
One thing to keep in mind is that the UCB is focused on the Cardinals and, by that, I mean the major league team. FutureRedbirds continues to occupy a rather unique spot in the blogosphere in that our focus is 95%+ minor league. We’ll have the occasional post on a player like Lance Lynn or Daniel Descalso but the vast majority of what we write is about the minors. There isn’t any other site that operates like that right now. So when the March project came out as predictions for the divisional standings in 2012, my goal was to give that a prospect twist to stay in line with Future Redbirds.
What follows is the top prospect for each club with the prediction of whether they make the majors in 2012. Moreover, one prospect will get a more detailed discussion for you to digest and comment on. Tuesday through Thursday we will cover the NL divisions, which Jeff and I will be splitting up. On Friday, Jeff and I will take a stab at an award prediction unique to prospects: Rookie of the Year.
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