Archive for the “Winter ball” Category

We’ll resume our top twenty next Monday, but in case anyone’s out there and is interested, there is still some baseball being played. Here’s an update on some of the Cardinal players of interest-

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I want you all to know that I’m thrilled to have AZ back in the saddle again. He’s been knocking it out of the park the last couple of days, the Arizona Fall League started yesterday and the Caribbean winter leagues will be starting very soon. I feel like we are getting our mojo back. The DFR, oh, how have I missed thee. I’m still not sure if I’m going to do a daily report or some sort of weekly update on the winter leagues, we’ll just have to play it by ear, depending on how much action there is to report.

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Our old friend Kary Booher breaks down the rosters of each of the Hawaiian League rosters.

FORGET ABOUT THE REGULAR SEASON: Cardinals righthander Tyler Herron, a 2005 first-round supplemental pick, was only mediocre in Double-A Springfield after arriving in early May and eventually was demoted back to high Class A Palm Beach. He was a combined 7-7, 4.17 with 102 strikeouts and 40 walks in 138 innings. But he also struggled to pitch beyond the fifth inning in Double-A and doesn’t have the put-away fastball, requiring him to pitch to contact.

X-FACTOR: Cardinals righthander Blake King, a nephew of the late Mickey Mantle, was 3-8, 4.52 in 93.2 innings this year in A-ball. A former juco standout in Oklahoma, King struck out 105 but also walked 85 this season.

One of the nice things about Booher’s hire is I think we’ll be hearing a little bit more about Cardinal prospects.

Non-baseball observation: Tyler and Blake had to have been the trendy name to give your kid if they were born in the mid-eighties. Just looking in the Cards’ system, it seems like there is nearly a dozen Tylers and Blakes. I shouldn’t gripe, I suppose. I once considered myself to be pretty anti-trendy when it came to baby names, and now I have a son named Landon…pretty trendy. I wanted to name him Miles, after the jazz musician, but my wife wasn’t having it. Next time.

Baseball observation: There are some pretty good and intriguing prospects going over to Hawaii. Buster Posey, Yonder Alonso, Jason Castro, Andrew Brackman, (the Yankees 1st rounder from last year, who is coming back from Tommy John), Jeremy Bleich, Roger Kieschnick, Chris Carter (Oakland’s Chris Carter who came over in the Haren deal), Corey Brown, Ryan Kalish, Todd Frazier, Tony Thomas, the list goes on. Should be a pretty competitive league, with Japanese players sprinkled throughout.

Hooray for Jeff Luhnow, who announced recently that the Cardinals will be sending more players to winter ball then ever before. Hooray I say because it makes covering the farm system all the more fun year round. So far we know of the players going to the Arizona Fall League and the Hawaiian Winter League. Also we know David Freese is playing in Venezuela, and The Man, The Myth and The Legend of Amaury Marti will play in the Dominican.

From the sounds of things, Luhnow and the Cardinals are really encouraging their players to participate.

“There’s two ways to do winter ball,” Luhnow said. “One is to be reactive and just put the team in touch with the player. The other way is to talk to the player, tell him what it’s all about, try to encourage him and take some of the fear of the unknown out of it. Make sure you actively work with the club to place the player in a good situation. And that’s more the approach that [general manager John Mozeliak] has advocated this year.”

Last week I wondered what was the deal with Colby not playing in a winter league, and a lot of you equated that with Colby being as good as gone. Luhnow responds:

“I think he’s going to focus 100 percent on being ready for Spring Training and making this club,” Luhnow said. “That’s where his head needs to be. Forget who’s posted what online, or what people are saying about what he’s doing or not doing. He and I had a good long chat, and I believe he’s got the right attitude.

“When you talk to him directly, he has one goal and one goal only, and he’s pretty focused on it. I tried to communicate to him that I have that same goal. That we all do, really.”

As I said, I don’t think Colby is going to be goofing off all winter, not in the least bit. I still think if your boss encourages you to do something, you should do it. Colby did play for Team USA last year, maybe he figures playing almost all year is what could have led to his injury, I don’t know. You all can read into this all you want, I for one am just going to keep observing how things play out and not try and jump to any conclusions. I still believe it still is a good idea to do what your boss is asking, but things were hashed out and by all appearances Colby and the Cards are on the same page.

Even if Colby doesn’t make the team out of spring training, I would expect that Colby does not want to relive the miseries of the first two months of last season. I’m confident he’ll be ready.

I just received word that the Cardinals will be sending Tyler Herron, Blake King, Arnoldi “Tony” Cruz and James Rapoport to the Honolulu Sharks of the Hawaiian Winter League. That sure beats last year’s group of Marco Gonzalez, who finished throwing in middle relief in AA and Michael Cooper, who was released early in the season. The league starts on the 27th of this month. Mike Budaska, the hitting coach for Memphis, will be the hitting coach for the team.

• Tyler Herron‘s stock slipped this season from last given how hittable he proved to be in AA, but taking his cumulative numbers and neutralizing for park and luck, he did manage a respectable 3.99 FIP. He threw nearly 150 innings, so I would imagine they won’t stretch him out too much in Hawaii.
• Blake King struck out ten batters per nine innings between the Quad Cities and Palm Beach, but also walked over seven batters per nine. Obviously, he’ll be working on his control.
• Arnoldi Cruz got off to a slow start, but was coming on pretty strong in until hitting the DL in July. He was hitting .308/.342/.511 throughout June and July. Not sure if he’ll be catching or playing 3B.
• James Rapoport hit .277/.322/.339 with 23 steals between Palm Beach and Springfield this past season. He struggled to hit in AA. Seems like a Scott Podsednik clone.

It could prove to be a pretty competitive league, with five first rounders going to play, including Buster Posey and Yonder Alonso. We will keep you posted on the Cardinals progress while they suffer for their craft in sunny Hawaii.

Apparently Colby is not going to play winter ball, and it has nothing to do with related injuries. According to the P-D:

Rasmus, once projected to play winter ball in the Dominican Republic, apparently will sit out.

“I don’t think it’s as much a knee thing as much as it is a personal decision,” Mozeliak said. “It’s not uncommon for a player to sit there in August and wonder about the validity of going. He may believe there’s more value to experiencing his normal offseason program.”

Does this bother the Cardinals? It would have appeared that a couple of weeks ago they really wanted him to find a team to play for this winter being to make up for some of the time he lost competing. Don’t get me wrong,  I believe that last thing Colby will be doing is sitting around at home in Alabama playing video games. He’s a noted “workout warrior”; a couple of seasons ago he put on 20 pounds of muscle during the winter. I just wonder how wise a move it is to refuse to do something your employer would really encourage you to do for “personal reasons”. Maybe I’m getting overly concerned about nothing.

The same article says Freese will be playing winter ball in Venezuela. That brings me to remind you all that we will be covering the winter leagues as closely as we can, right now I’m debating whether or not to do a DFR or just a weekly update. We should find out soon about who will be playing where, and that may help determine the amount of coverage that goes into it.

What say all of you?

Sorry things have slowed since the minor league season is ended, I think we all are just taking a little breather before we get into prospect profiles, ranking players, covering the fall and winter leagues and a number of other things that go on during the offseason. Stay tuned.