BA continues it’s best tools series, and the A ball managers have spoken. Nathan Southard was voted as having the best outfield arm out of the Florida State League and Brandon Buckman was named the best defensive first baseman of the MWL. (Subscription required)
Just a quick recap of Cards featured so far. Ankiel is the best power hitter in the PCL, as is Mather for the Texas League. Colby Rasmus was the “Most Exciting Player”, (is that measured by EORP, excitement over replacement player?) best defensive outfielder and best outfield arm, and Chris Perez was voted the best reliever. While these things are pretty arbitrary as all get out, it’s nice to see the Cardinal farmhands get some recognition.
Also at BA, thawing out after being in a deep freeze is Colby Rasmus, named to this week’s Hot Sheet.
After hitting .421 with two home runs in 19 at-bats last week, Rasmus has lifted his season line to .257/.368/.495 in 378 at-bats. He is hitting .438/.609/.938 with two homers and two doubles in 16 August at-bats, after slumping through June and July.
Kary Booher looks at Springfield utility infielder Juan Lucena.
Springfield hitting coach Derrick May said making adjustments are crucial to Lucena. Most make adjustments to simply get the bat on the ball, but because Lucena is such a reliable contact hitter, he needed sharp line drives, not listless grounders.
Listless grounders is right. Last season in A ball 55% of the balls Lucena put in play were grounders, this season he’s really burning worms, with a grounder rate of 63% thus a .289 BABIP. May also stresses that it’s one thing to make contact, it’s another thing to wait for your pitch and make contact. Lucena strikes out in only 5.3% of his plate appearances, but he also only walks for the same amount as well. At 155 pounds soaking wet, he doesn’t look like much of a prospect with this skill set, but neither did Placido Polanco. With the right adjustments and a few hamburgers, he could still pan out.
AZ pointed out to me earlier today that for all the whole signing bonus mayhem, Tyler Henley has got a higher bonus of any 8th rounder this season, ($150 K) and 10 x’s the bonus last year’s 8th rounder Allen Craig got. Nice to see the ORG open up the purse strings for a good talent and ignore the MLB’s “recommendation”, hopefully they will do the same for Stutes and Zawacki. August 15th is coming up fast.
On to last night’s action!
GCL Cards 6, GCL Mets 11 Game started on 7/27, completed today.
- Gary Daley allowed 10 earned runs over 6 innings. He hit 4 batters, threw 3 wild pitches, walked 5, gave up 7 hits and struck out 4. This dude was a 3rd round draft pick a year ago, out of college being lit up by 17 year old 145 pound Dominicans for crying out loud! Say wha?
- Brian Buck doubled and tripled.
- Gerald Haran doubled and homered and allowed 2 passed balls.
- D’Marcus Ingram went 2 for 4 with a walk.
- Juan Cabrera went 3 for 4.
GCL Cards 6, GCL Mets 4 7 innings
- James Hooker threw 4.1 innings, allowing 2 earned runs on 5 hits and 3 walks while striking out 5. Yes, I know his name is Deryk but First Inning has this player linker doo-hickey and for it work you have to have the name just right.
- Osvaldo Morales homered and drove in 3 runs.
- Juan Cabrera hit a pinch hit RBI double.
- Brian Buck hit his 1st homer.
- Pete Kozma went 0 for 4. It’s very very early, but he’s only hitting .188.
- Ateo Folli went 3 for 4 with a double.
- Travis Mitchell went 2 for 3.
- Nicholas Additon couldn’t get anybody out, he allowed 5 runs and only got 2 outs.
- Jesse Todd allowed 3 earned runs on 4 hits and a walk, striking out 4.
- Blake King gave up 2 runs on 3 hits and 2 walks, striking out 2.
- Daniel Descalso doubled and stole a base.
- Andrew Brown went 2 for 4 with a homer.
- Their manager was ejected in the 7th.
Quad Cities 8, West Michigan 4
- 18 total hits by the Swing tonight.
- Daryl Jones went 3 for 5 and stole 2 bases.
- Antonio Dejesus went 3 for 6 with a double after having his 13 game his streak snapped yesterday. He is now the proud owner of a .322 batting average and .435 OBP.
- Jared Schweitzer and Oliver Marmol both went 3 for 4.
- The unheralded Kyle Mura struck out 3 in 2 innings.
- Brandon Dickson allowed 1 earned run over 5 innings, stranding 9 runners.
- Tyler Norrick was grizzly. He gave up 3 homers and a total of 9 earned runs. The 5 walks didn’t help, either.
- Isaias Garcia homered, going 2 for 4.
- Donovan Solano went 2 for 4.
- Allen Craig doubled.
- Rasmus, Marti and Anderson didn’t start. Anderson’s bat has cooled since the break a bit, and I get a little flustered when I see that Warner keeps starting him night after night. Don’t want him to develop any of that dreaded “Young Catcher Stagnation Syndrome”. All three did have pinch-hitting opportunities, and only Anderson reached base with a walk.
- The offense was held to just 4 hits and 3 walks.
- Cory Meacham (wrong name, I’m lazy) allowed 2 runs on 5 hits and a walk, striking out only 1 but got 12 ground ball outs.
- Skip Schumaker went 3 for 4 with a HR and a double. Can I actually say this? I miss having Skip in the bigs.
- Ankiel was out of the lineup for the 2nd day in a row, but did PH and k’d
- Blake Hawksworth allowed 4 runs in the 1st inning and pitched 4 scoreless innings to follow, striking out 7 and walking 2. The 7 K’s were a season high.
- Chris Perez overcame a single and a walk to pitch a scoreless 9th.
- Memphis Manager Chris Maloney and hitting coach Rick Eckstein were both tossed from the game.
Filed under: Daily Farm Reports
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I was at the Memphis game tonight in Portland. I wasn’t able to attend Sunday’s game, but when I looked at the box score and saw that Ankiel didn’t play I thought, “Good … that means he should play the next three.” So, you can imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the park to find out he was sitting again. Anybody know what the deal is with that? Some sort of minor injury? It obviously couldn’t be anything major because he pinch hit in the ninth inning, but two “days off” in a row just seems a little odd.
As for his at-bat, he struck out swinging to end the game. On both of his swings he looked HORRIBLE. If he had just made the switch from pitching to hitting and I saw him today, I would say no way he lasts three weeks as a hitter. Seriously; he looked that bad. He was so far out in front of one breaking ball that his back foot was literally in the air by the time he finished his swing. Now, obviously, I’m not so foolish that this one at-bat I witnessed is going to change what I think of him as a “prospect” (that’s the smallest sample size in the world; it could have been his worst at-bat of the season; if he IS battling some sort of nagging injury that could have played a role; those 31 home runs this year can’t just be a fluke) … but still, I just can’t get over how pathetic those swings looked.
Besides Ankiel my biggest disappointment was Hoffpauir. This is a guy I’ve been kind of getting excited for as I’ve read about this season, but seeing him in person, absolutely everything about him screams Aaron Miles to me. His body, his stance, his swing = Aaron Miles. Now, if Hoffpauir ends up having an Aaron Miles type career, that certainly isn’t a bad return for a sixth round pick from a terrible draft, especially when nobody really even thought anything of him prior to this season. However, in the past month or two I had kind of started to think that he could one day be a starting second baseman in the major leagues. I’m no scout — just a fan — but right now I wouldn’t bet on that being the case.
Other impressions:
Joe Mather: seems to have frightening power. The ball just rockets off his bat. The two hardest hit balls all night were both foul balls off the bat of Mather. One of those balls left the stadium, just foul down the left field line. (I think it left the stadium anyway; couldn’t fully tell from where I was seated.)
Blake Hawksworth: pitched okay after the first inning. I don’t know if he’ll ever make it as a major league pitcher, but he certainly looks the part. Big, tall guy, and his mannerisms on the mound reminded me a lot of Carpenter.
Chris Perez: I told my girlfriend that of all the guys currently on the Memphis roster, Perez is the one with the best chance at one day being a major league all-star. Everybody else agree/disagree with that statement? Whether or not he is depends, obviously, on him harnessing his control. He entered the game and threw four straight balls, then gave up a hit on his fifth pitch, then threw two balls to the next hitter who was just trying to bunt the runners over. They don’t have a radar gun at PGE Park (although I swear they have whenever I’ve been to games there in the past; perhaps it just wasn’t working tonight) but he definitely threw the hardest of every pitcher tonight, for either side.
Skip Schumaker: my girlfriend and I cheered so loudly for Skip every time he came up that the people around us must have figured we knew him or were related to him somehow. We do have some sort of unique fascination with the guy. My girlfriend thinks he’s cute; I just think he’s underrated and belongs on a big league roster. Nobody can tell me that he’s not a better player than some of the guys Pittsburgh has started in center field over the past few years (Duffy, McLouth). Steve Finley spent several weeks on a big league roster this year, and he’s not even a third the player Skip is at this point. Sure enough, he didn’t let us down tonight, crushing an opposite-field homer as well as a double into the corner in left. Go Skip!
Hugo Castellanos: I didn’t know he was a sidearmer until seeing him tonight.
Brian Esposito: I sure wish he could hit a little bit. And I would even take just at a Gary Bennett level. He’s hitting .179 on the season. It doesn’t matter how good you are defensively when you’re THAT bad at the plate. (And this is in the PCL!)
Mike Ferris: he has some thick legs.
Nick Stavinoha: just has the look of a career Triple A player to me. I’m sure he’ll take some at-bats in the bigs, but I doubt he’ll ever stay up there for long. I remember how excited we all were about this guy for a brief time after he was drafted.
Mike McCoy: a poor man’s Bo Hart. Take a moment to think about that statement. Not a major leaguer.
Chris Maloney and Rick Eckstein both got ejected from this one. (I certainly couldn’t imagine David EVER getting as angry as Rick did tonight!) That left Dyar Miller in charge, and at one point he, too, came out to briefly argue a call. This led to an interesting conversation/debate between my girlfriend and me. The question was, if Dyar were to get tossed as well, who then would be in charge? Our conclusion ….. Slick Rick Ankiel would take over as player/manager. Our reasons were many: (1) he wasn’t in the game at this point, so he was already in position to lead from the dugout; (2) he’s one of the older guys on the team, so he’s been around a while and seen a lot of games; (3) he has a lot of knowledge both on the hitting side of things as well as the pitching side; (4) of all the players on the team, he has spent the most time around Tony La Russa; it’s possible that a little something had started to rub off; (5) by all accounts he is someone for whom the rest of the Redbirds have a great deal of respect.
Travis Hanson was working out on the field before the game, taking ground balls hit by Eckstein for about 15 minutes. I also saw Hanson’s wife after the game … While Travis may never reach the bigs, I can report that he did pretty well for himself in that area.
I’m going to each of the next two games as well, so I’ll pass along any other random observations or tidbits I may have. Still no word on who is starting tomorrow for Memphis; it’s listed as “TBA” everywhere I’ve looked. For the past month I was hoping that somehow Mulder would end up pitching here, but obviously I’ve given up hope on that by now.
Any other Redbirds/Cardinals fans in Portland headed to these games?
thanks for the info..very good stuff. i love firsthand reports. i’ve seen pujols take some pretty horrific ab’s, too, so i’m not too worried about ankiel, but that doesn’t sound so great. nice to hear mather and perez looked good. as for hoffpauir, he is small, and he’s a IF, but that walk rate and his slugging % tell me he’s > Miles, not =
So does anyone else think that Pete Kozma and Derrick May should be introduced as soon as possible???
I hear they rate the most exciting players in jose reyes’s. Colby got 4 1/2 Jose Reyes’s out of 5.
If Hoffpauir = Miles, I’m going to park my car in the garage and leave it running while I nap.
As I posted under the 2007 Draft, Kyle Russell had a nice game last night in the losers bracket of the NBC Tournament–3 for 5 with a double and a stolen base. He has been in a slump the second half of the wood bat season.
Brief mention of him and the Cardinals in yesterday’s Austin paper.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/longhorns/entries/2007/08/06/suttle_russell.html
The big difference between Hoffpauir and Miles (stats, at least) is that Hoffpauir takes walks. Miles’ OBP is average driven; his highest isolated walk rate is about 40. Hoff has never had one under 90. Until he went 5 games with just one walk this last week it was closer to 120.
Add 50-70 points to miles OPS and he would be a valuable piece… and hoff looks like he can slug a bit, too. At least a bit more than miles, which doesn’t take much.
While Hoff does bear a striking resemblance to miles on defense, he really doesn’t have the same approach at the plate. I’ve watched him over the last couple of years at Springfield and he is a much more selective hitter that waits for his pitch and drives it consistently. Even though he is a small guy, he is not a slap hitter like Miles. He has much better command of the strike zone, as can be seen by his stats. What worries me about Him is that he might actually have less range than Miles. Think Ron Belliard with much less range.
I will be at the Portland game tonight. Hopefully whatever is bothering Rick will have healed enough for him to play. Great report, JD.
I’m excited to see Mather play–hopefully Perez will have a save opportunity.
Another good game for Russell today at the NBC World Series–double, triple, 2 RBIs, 2 runs scored, 1K. Santa Barbara stays alive in the losers bracket, plays again tomorrow. Good to see Russell bounce back, especially in a big game.
Michael — is there a way I can get in touch with you?
It’s funny that I touched off such a debate regarding Hoffpauir with my Miles commment, because I wasn’t speaking to his skillset or his results; rather, just the visual impression I got after seeing him in person for the very first time. Look at him, and it’s tough to argue he doesn’t resemble Miles in a baseball uniform. And that was just straight-up disappointing, given the way I had envisioned him in my mind. It was sort of like the first time I saw John Gall in person. He was a guy I always had some sort of weird fascination with as well, believing he could be an important piece on a big league team. Then the first time I saw him before my very eyes, I just thought, “uhhhhh …. no.”
Obviously, Hoff’s on-base skills and slugging percentage far exceed anything Miles has done or ever could do. That’s assuming these last few months aren’t just some sort of mirage. Miles’ career minor league on-base percentage of .338 and slugging of .401 are about in line with what Hoff was doing prior to this year. Miles had seasons of .369/.450 and .351/.445 in the minors; before ‘07 the best thing we’d ever seen from Hoffpauir over a full season was .344/.355. Hmmmmmm ….
Take a look at Miles’ career minor league stats. I know he never walked much, but there are more homers and doubles there than you might have thought.
Perhaps I have an irrational view of Derrick may, but he has done wonders for the Springfield hitters. Joe mather, juan lucena, jose martinez and Jarrett hoffpauir have all had success under him and have attributed their success at one time or another to May. Now I realize this is a weak argument, however, JH has always been a good contact hitter and drew his walks and perhaps now has found a swing that accounts for more line drives than before which helps his jump in average. I know its a reach, but for now I think he just May is really helping Hitters hit for much higher average.
Be careful when citing miles stats, at the same age as miles he was in high A ball, not even sniffing the high minors.