Springfield made it to the Texas League Championship Series this year in part because they had an excellent cast of hitters. Uber-prospect Colby Rasmus leads the way and I get the impression that someday writing about Rasmus will be as difficult as writing about Grady Sizemore or Jim Edmonds. He’s one of those players that makes the extraordinary look ordinary and can carry a team for stretches of time. But you know that already. . . let’s see the numbers.
Click on the thumbnail and then “All Sizes” for larger viewing options.
Rundown:
- Washington, Richardson and Marti all clutter that upper-right quadrant. I’m still perplexed by the Marti draft choice but I’m skeptical that any of the trio makes it to the majors. They’re nice organizational players but they’re peaking as players right now if they follow a standard aging curve.
- I’m concerned about Bryan Anderson. The power isn’t coming. It’s still too early to say that the power will never show up but I think the organization would be wise to leave him at AA to start next season. Yadier Molina is still a cheap backstop and Anderson has been pushed hard through the minors so far.
- For all the hype Arnoldi Cruz got, Allen Craig remains the Cardinals best 3B prospect by a considerable margin.
- I’ve gotten questions as to why I’m not a but Cody Haerther fan previously and it’s not because of his bat. It has a lot more to do with his defensive limitations. The
dearthdepth [Azru had an idiot moment] of LH hitting outfielders that are already succeeding at the big-league level should allow the Cardinals to dangle Haerther as part of a package deal. He has value as a hitter but he’s not someone the Cardinals should be overly concerned about moving. - Mark Hamilton was good at Palm Beach but really struggled in Springfield. He’s another player that the Cardinals could look to move in a trade (and another that I wouldn’t be overly upset at losing).
- Jose Martinez inverted Hamilton’s track record by struggling at Palm Beach but showing a real uptick in power at Springfield and hitting for average too.
- The Cardinals seem to have a liking for contact hitting shortstops (Martinez, Lucena, Eckstein, Ryan) that don’t walk very much.
- Tyler Greene, I had high hopes for you. Barring a monster season next year, I wish you the best as a career minor leaguer. You simply struggle to hit for average which is an impediment to your OBP and your defense isn’t good enough to get you to the bigs.
Raw Data:
| Link | Age | AVG | OBP | SLG | ISO | BB% | K% | BABIP | GB% | LD% |
| Bryan Anderson | 20 | 0.298 | 0.350 | 0.388 | 0.090 | 7.6 | 18.2 | 0.359 | 46 | 21 |
| Henry Guerrero | 25 | 0.130 | 0.173 | 0.208 | 0.078 | 3.7 | 20.0 | 0.135 | 58 | 8 |
| Allen Craig | 23 | 0.311 | 0.367 | 0.541 | 0.230 | 7.4 | 17.5 | 0.340 | 46 | 21 |
| Tyler Greene | 24 | 0.244 | 0.309 | 0.448 | 0.204 | 6.7 | 26.1 | 0.305 | 40 | 24 |
| Mark Hamilton | 23 | 0.269 | 0.332 | 0.448 | 0.179 | 8.5 | 19.8 | 0.306 | 42 | 21 |
| Juan Lucena | 23 | 0.257 | 0.304 | 0.330 | 0.073 | 5.3 | 6.2 | 0.328 | 44 | 22 |
| Jose Martinez | 21 | 0.275 | 0.314 | 0.401 | 0.126 | 4.8 | 8.8 | 0.283 | 50 | 18 |
| Juan Richardson | 28 | 0.291 | 0.369 | 0.472 | 0.181 | 9.8 | 24.7 | 0.364 | 55 | 22 |
| Rico Washington | 29 | 0.303 | 0.369 | 0.513 | 0.210 | 9.4 | 11.4 | 0.313 | 42 | 15 |
| Amaury Marti | 33 | 0.308 | 0.370 | 0.523 | 0.215 | 7.7 | 19.8 | 0.346 | 39 | 28 |
| Sean Danielson | 25 | 0.296 | 0.371 | 0.385 | 0.089 | 10.0 | 11.7 | 0.332 | 53 | 18 |
| Reid Gorecki | 26 | 0.259 | 0.350 | 0.315 | 0.056 | 12.1 | 19.5 | 0.333 | 47 | 11 |
| Cody Haerther | 24 | 0.292 | 0.377 | 0.494 | 0.202 | 9.9 | 18.7 | 0.342 | 48 | 25 |
| Colby Rasmus | 21 | 0.275 | 0.381 | 0.551 | 0.276 | 12.9 | 19.9 | 0.299 | 28 | 23 |
| Casey Rowlett | 24 | 0.249 | 0.315 | 0.346 | 0.097 | 8.4 | 15.0 | 0.290 | 48 | 16 |
| Mark Shorey | 23 | 0.279 | 0.331 | 0.462 | 0.183 | 5.8 | 19.5 | 0.319 | 38 | 17 |
Averages for minor league levels
(Stats via MILB.com — except BABIP, GB & LD which were compiled from First Inning.)
Filed under: Visualizing Hitters
erik
azruavatar
fewgoodcards
roarke49
theredbaaron
I agree on Anderson. He is just 20, he has time to develop and should stay at AA.
Anderson may well be needed as a Major League backup next season though and I think AAA isn’t that much harder then AA so he should probably make that jump and stay with the pitchers that are making that jump. I think it might be best to progress him and release Esposito. Anyway this is one interesting crop of stats.
What I find most interesting is of the players in SPG that had over 200 ABs (thus Marti is excluded) the best batting averages are Hoff, Mather and Martinez. First two were promoted and for perfect reasons too (.345/.420/.527/.947 for Hoff and .303/.387/.607/.994 for Mather). I think the reason Martinez stayed was his not so outstanding OBP, he needs to learn to walk. Now of the same group of 200+ AB the leaders in OBP were Hoff, Mather and Rasmus, again Hoff and Mather tore apart AA and Rasmus had an outstanding OBP, 106 points over his BA (the biggest jump between BA and OBP on the team). In SLG we see familiar names, Mather, Rasmus then Hoff. All I can say is what if the Championship series had Mather and Hoff still playing for Springfield instead of Lucena and Hamilton?
Overall a great season for Springfield. Lastly, Rasmus has the lowest GB% of the ones listed above, yet still has only a .299 BABIP and is the 4th lowest on the team in that stat and Martinez seems to swing at everything yet still makes contact with everything, problem is this results in ground ball 50% of the time, if he learned to shelf his bat and take a few walks he could be dangerous.
Hamilton, Greene, and Martinez all have LD percentages in the 20s along with fairly low BABIPs. (So does Colby, but it sure didn’t affect his production.)
In all three cases, the sample sizes are too small to draw any conclusions, but at first glance it does look like “bad luck” might have given them numbers a bit lower than they should be.
And I’m not so sure about Haerther as trade bait. I’ve read that he hits to all fields with a short, compact swing. If he really can’t play the outfield, okay.
But we also don’t know what our current surplus of left-handed-hitting outfielders will give us next season.
Did Duncan’s groin injury affect his numbers this season? Or is he just a streaky hitter who happened to get hot at the right time in 2006?
And Ankiel is very much a mystery man. He might have gotten derailed by the HGH stuff, but he also might be a really streaky hitter whose cold snap coincided with an embarrassing news story.
If Haerther is a more consistent hitter day to day, he might have as much long-term value as either of those guys, even if he doesn’t have their raw power, or Ankiel’s defensive value.
So from a “trade high” perspective what about including Anderson in some deal this off-season? As always it depends on what we could get, but I don’t think he should be in the “untouchable” catetogry.
I think with Molina’s offensive production this season Anderson is no longer an untouchable, we also now have the latin catcher in the system who is rated highly, I think Anderson is a very real trade bait right now.
One of the things that always needs to be remembered when evaluating players is not to weight your expectations too heavily on current year production. Yadi’s decent offensive produciton this year mitigates but doesn’t eliminate the fact that he was absolutely terrible the previous two years. I’d expect his offensive numbers to be down a touch next year. Even with the improved offense he had a .304 wOBA which isn’t anything to brag about. I think it’s too early to move Anderson given how high scouts remain on him. As Yadi moves through arbitration he’s going to cost more than he’s actually worth.
re: unlucky BABIPs and low GB%
When calculating BABIP you remove Ks and HRs from ABs because neither is actually a BIP. At that point, GBs scatter for hits more than FBs.
I believe that Nick Derba (or possibly Hill) may have made Anderson expendable. If scouts are very high on Anderson that is even better; sell high imho, assuming we have additional legitimate resources in the pipeline.
I believe that the only way the Cards end up getting what they need for the MLB team will be to deal and from the farm system. If you look at the prospects that other organizations would covet the list probably contains: Rasmus, Anderson, Garcia, Ottavino, and Perez. Of those Rasmus is obviously untouchable and Perez is obviously the heir to Izzy so he is probably semi-untouchable with only only 1 year left on Izzy’s contract (assuming the Cards exercise the option). That pretty much leaves Anderson, and the Cards do have a couple of decent young catchers moving up in the system. Molina isn’t going anywhere, nor should he. He is probably the best defensive catcher in all of baseball and a leader on the team. Anderson is rated highly by scouts and any trade the Cards make would almost have to include him.
It could be an interesting battle for Greene and Craig next year. Greene should be the starting SS at AA next year and Craig will most likely be the starting SS next year. I still believe Greene is better suited at 3B and if Craig outplays him with the bat, Greene very well could be a career minor leaguer or included in a trade. I just don’t see how Greene can catch up and pass Martinez and hold off Kozma. It says a lot that the Cards drafted a SS in the 1st round, it says to me that they don’t believe Greene can be an everyday SS. His defense isn’t elite enough to be able to how the low OPS he consistenly puts up.
Haether’s bat isn’t near enough to threaten Duncan or Ankiel. His future is probably as a solid 4th outfield and an effective pinch-hitter. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings to see him traded if he was included in a trade that helped the MLB team get some much needed pitching and even some team speed. Hell, he would be valuable if the Cards could include him in a package that included Adam Kennedy for a twelve pack of beer.
Wow. Yadier Molina has a “break out” season at age 25 and a 21-year-old catcher who is highly rated and played in the Futures Game is suddenly expendable. Makes sense though, the place for sweet swinging left-handed catchers is not on this team.
Ryan, Yadier may well have had a “breakout” year this year. He did hit almost .300 if I remember correctly when he was in AA at age 20. That said, I totally agree that Anderson is not expendable and should be kept.
There is no reason to “sell high” on a player that has been “high” his entire career, and will most likely stay that way into the major leagues.
The Cards should trade lesser prospects, IMO and let their excellent prospects show what they can do with the big club. As I don’t think next year (with Carpenter out half the season, Edmonds in transition, etc.) is the year the Cards are going to go for it again, we have time to let Rasmus, Anderson, Hoffpauir, Mather, and possibly Garcia come up and show what they can do before we talk about possibly trading some of them off.
Some pretty good LD rates on that team this year. Interesting hos Greene’s BABIP was the same as high LD rate.
Both Rasmus and Greene seem to have some pretty low BABIPS for their LD rate, and Greene in particular has an odd line, with his BA being the same as his LD rate. His high K rates should explain some, but not all, of this. I’m wondering if he started out a little unlucky, then got hurt.
Anyone see this guy live in both 07 and 06 and able to relay whether his approach improved or not?
I only think Anderson is tradeable because Yadi won’t be getting more then 4-5M for several years and at that price he is still worth the cost and his offense is improving, he has locked down on one stance and he is actually hitting pretty well. Anderson on the other hand isn’t doing enough with the glove and to me doesn’t seem to have the potential to be that much better with his bat, maybe this year was a complete write off, maybe he was too young for the level, but what ever the case the big league club needs pitching and I think Anderson is your best chip right now. With that said we also will most likely need a big league backup next year and I could see Anderson staying just for that reason whether he gets it out of ST or he is the backup to the backup I don’t know but I think they could be wanting him to fill in there soon.
Well, Molina’s only year at AA he hit .275/.321/.332 and Anderson hit .298/.350/.388. His swing will be conducive to him progressing as a hitter. If Molina gets paid $4-5 million to hit .250/.320/.340 then the Cardinals are dumb.
Ok 4-5M was a bit much maybe 2-3M is where I should have gone. Matheny was a career .239/.293/.344 hitter and he got 4M his last season with the cards. I expect Molina to get around 1M this offseason but I don’t see Anderson as that much better right now and as you say he looks like he could get better and thus he is trade bait or he could be valuable if he is kept, he is a very nice player to have right now since you don’t “need” him but he would be nice to have.
Yadi was worth 6.0 WARP3 (5.1 WARP1) this year. That is definitely worth a lot. To put it in perspective, Edgar Renteria has only been worth more than that twice in his career. $5M/year would be a good deal, but it’ll be two more years before he makes that much because of arbitration unless we buy him out.
Yadi’s WARP is entirely predicated on his DWARP which has two problems: 1) he Davenport Translatons are a bad defensive metric and 2) a metric that isn’t specific to catchers is likely to incorrectly evaluate their defensive contributions given how unique the position is.
In the end, Yadi is nuetral with the bat during good years. It’s a matter of how much you value catcher defense. The St. Louis Cardinals value catcher defense very heavily. I don’t.
Azru, I think that is also a mindset that differs you from me we both love numbers and looking at stats etc. but I value the “head games” piece of things much higher and in that world a pitcher feels more confident pitching to a better catcher and thus they locate better. I know the numbers in no way back it up but that is how I feel and I think how the club feels.
Az - not to nit pick your English but I believe you are using the term “dearth” when talking about Haerther and LH hitting OF´s to mean abundance when it actually means the exact opposite.
That’s not nit-picking. That’s blatant terrible vocabulary on my part — not sure why I choose that word since it’s so obviously wrong.