Posts Tagged “Steve Hill”

Ben Badler takes a look at catchers in the minors who best controlled the running game. The good news is out of the 55 catchers on his list, 3 Cardinals are in the top twenty in caught stealing percentage.

• Nick Derba caught 34 out of 78 attempts (43.6%) and came in 5th on Badler’s list.
• Luis De La Cruz caught 20 out of 52 (38.5%), coming in 13th.
• Bryan Anderson was much improved from last year, catching 41 out of 109 attempts (37.6%), good for 19th. Last year his CS% was 26.8%. Hopefully that will squelch some of this nonsensical talk that he should be moved to another position.

Badler only looked at players whose names were in one of their handbooks so I figured I may as well could look around and see how well our other catchers controlled the running game. Onward bullet points, ho!

• Arnoldi Cruz:  15-for-55, good for 27.2%.
• Blake Murphy:  20-for-53, 37.7%.
• Paul Vasquez:  31-for-74, 41.9%
• Brandon Yarbrough: 26-for-75, 34.6%
• Kevin Moscatel: 12-for-35, 34.2%.
• Steve Hill: 1-f0r-4, I don’t have is AFL #’s, unfortunately.

Some quick thoughts:

• The reverse-Inge experiment with Cruz is probably still worth exploring, but he has some work to do. That percentage would put him well in the bottom third of Badler’s list.
• Nick Derba fooled us into thinking he could hit, posting a .377 wOBA for the Quad Cities last season. This season at Palm Beach his wOBA .274, but he dominated the running game. Another Jason Motte experiment in line?
• Murphy was my favorite late round pick last season, and here is another reason why. The 42 round pick completely dominated college ball both on offense and defense, then he hit pretty well in Batavia before struggling a bit at the QC. We’ll see what he can do over a full season before I get really interested.
• Paul Vasquez came from the independent leagues to hit for a .394 wOBA in the Quad Cities. He struggled in under 70 plate appearances at Palm Beach. Maybe he’s a hidden gem.

The Arizona Fall League is also known as “prospect finishing school”. You need only to look at the past couple of MLB All Star games and you’ll find each team is packed with AFL grads. As a rule, the dry air of Arizona makes for a hitter’s league, and for Cardinal players, the rule stuck. Let’s give out the grades.

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It actually was snowing here in Iowa for a few minutes. Snow! That’s just not right. Another sign of the season is Dan Syzmborski’s ZiPS projections are out. I’m sure someone at VEB will be covering the projections for the big club, here we’ll run down some of the minor leaguers projections. I’m sure most of you know by now these aren’t to be taken as gospel, and I’m not here to argue their merit. If you don’t care for them, come back another day. Some thoughts after the jump-

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