Yesterday’s game was a long and merciless beat down handed out by the O’s, the pitching prospects did not look so hot.
- Clayton Mortensen allowed 3 runs on 5 hits and a walk while striking out 2.
- P.J. Walters allowed 2 runs on 2 hits, a walk and a wild pitch in his lone inning of work.
- Jason Motte allowed a run on 2 hits, striking out 2.
- Mark Worrell looked good compared to the rest, striking out 2 in his 1 inning of work, allowing a double against Luke Scott.
On the plus side, the hitters did pretty good. Colby took Hayden Penn deep, going 2 for 3 overall. Speaking of Colby, John Sickels has a Rasmus versus Bruce Smackdown and concludes:
Ultimately I went with Bruce as the Top Hitting prospect in baseball, with Rasmus at number three in the 2008 Baseball Prospect Book. As you can see they are very close, but ultimately I think Bruce’s offensive ceiling is just a tad higher than Rasmus’, though Rasmus is hardly a slouch and may develop into a more complete player in other ways.
I propose Sickels does Marti versus a hurricane for his next Smackdown. The catch is the hurricane is named Hurricane Amaury.
- Brian Barton went 2 for 3 and was caught stealing.
The Cardinals lost again in their afternoon game today, but Brian Barton is coming alive-
- Barton went 4 for 5 with a HR, raising his spring training average to .375.
- Starter Mike Parisi allowed 3 runs, 2 earned over 3 innings on 4 hits and had 3 K’s.
- Joe Mather tripled, walked and was hit by a pitch.
- Tonight was Jaime Garcia’s coming out party, he allowed just a hit and 2 walks over 3 IP, striking out 2. He also had a nifty 5 to 1 ground out to fly out ratio.
- Colby Rasmus walked twice and had a RBI sac fly.
- Amaury Marti went 2 for 4, playing blindfolded and on one leg.
Kevin Goldstein has the top half of his organizational rankings up and low and behold the Cardinals are in it. Sure, it’s the bottom of the top half, but that’s a vast improvement over #27 a year ago. KG notes the Cards are pretty strong up the middle, but a couple of weaknesses of the system is lack of a high ceiling SP and after Rasmus, there is no great athlete. This year’s #1 draft should provide an answer to at least one of those problems, one would hope. Outstanding athletes would include: Tim Beckham, Harold Martinez, and Aaron Hicks to name a few. Kyle Skipworth doesn’t bring speed, but he’s intriguing me more and more. Top of the line starters would be some of the guys FGC mentioned earlier today.
Speaking of high ceiling athletes, the Reds opened up their checkbook and signed 16 year old Dominican power hitting prospect Juan Duran, giving him a $ 2 million dollar bonus. This paragraph jumped out at me.
“I’ve never seen a 16-year-old with this type of ability. I talked to some people in the Dominican Republic who crossed paths with Vladimir Guerrero at that age, guys who have been scouting in the Dominican for more than 20 years, and they said they’ve never come into contact with a bat like this. He’s got 80 power potential and just gets tremendous loft. In my opinion, in terms of his bat and his body, he’s a better overall package than Angel Villalona. We wanted to change the perception in the baseball industry that Cincinnati is a cheap organization. We want to get back to being the Big Red Machine.”
I’m not saying the Cardinals are cheap when it comes to signing Latin American players. Over the last two years they have opened up their wallets for Frederick Parejo, Romulo Ruiz, Ryde Rodriguez and Kevin Moscatel, as well as others. Maybe their scouts weren’t sold on Duran, I don’t know. The Reds are believers, however, and they sent a message to their fans with this move. Kevin Goldstein rates Villalona a 5-star prospect, and if Duran is a better talent then all I can say is wow.
Filed under: Daily Farm Reports
erik
azruavatar
fewgoodcards
roarke49
theredbaaron
Erik - not that it’s a big deal - but the 3.04.08 stats for Worrell, Motte and Walters are not correct - someone over at the Birdhouse noticed it -
http://forums.scout.com/mb.aspx?S=321#s=321&f=2089&t=2138373&p=3
I believe they have since been corrected
Also, I’ve read Colby’s HR was a bomb
On Duran “One National League international scouting director compared Duran’s body to that of a young Juan Gonzalez.”
Ha. The Reds will never real thing. (Unfortunately the Cards will.)
Also, I believe that teams didn’t even think he was eligible to sign yet.
Duran is going to end up being quite big already at 6-6 195 as a 16 year old.
Frederick Parejo, Romulo Ruiz, Ryde Rodriguez and Kevin Moscatel….I wonder if all of them combined equal what the lowly, poor Reds just gave up for the kid?
Aumary Marti vs. Hurricane Aumary
Isn’t that just his nickname? Would he be having a smackdown against himself? Would the world implode if that happened?
The answer to all of those questions is yes.
It’s absolutely sick that both the Red Sox and Yankees are both in Goldstein’s top 6. But thank God we’re not just wearing rose-colored glasses about our minor league system…
I predict that tomorrow Amaury Marti will go 2-2 with 12 rbi’s while carrying an ox on his back.
erik, there was a mistake in the box score. garcia really went 3 innings, 1 hit, 0 runs, 1 walk, 2 strikeouts.
fgc-i updated jaime’s numbers. i got it originally from gameday audio, i wonder what was up with that.
picklefork-i don’t know what parejo and ruiz got, but moscatel i’m fairly certain got 260 k, and ryde 460 k. that’s an improvement over nothing, but i’m with ya.
tim-kg isn’t the only one who like the yankees and sox. i too believe the yanks are overrated, after joba i don’t see a ton to get overly thrilled with. but joba is a great pitching prospect. kennedy, tabata and jackson are interesting, but none of them are slam dunks for me. i’d have to look a little closer at them. the sox otoh have more depth, i think most of they are one of the best farm systems out there. and it’s not just what they are now, they’ve recently produced quite a bit too.
dougie-i thought i was going by the right stats. i got them off of mlb.com this evening. huh…
St. Louis IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
Reyes (L, 1-1) 2.0 6 4 4 0 2 1 7.20
Mortensen 2.0 5 3 3 1 2 0 13.50
Walters 2.0 3 2 2 1 2 0 9.00
Worrell, M 1.0 2 1 1 0 0 0 4.50
Motte 1.0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0.00
Those are the stats posted now on MLB.com. So Motte only went 1 inning and didn’t give up any runs and had 2ks. Worrell went an inning and gave up 1 run, and had no Ks. And Walters pitched 2 innings not 1.
A quick note about the Reds signing of Duran, the article goes on to mention that many teams were surprised that he was even eligible to sign. Apparently, he was very close to an age cutoff and most teams weren’t even aware he could be signed until July 2nd. So it might not have been that the Cards were too cheap but maybe a combinatation of circumstances.
Also, at least one scout in the article was quoted as saying there were concerns about Duran and that he felt the Reds overpaid. We shall see…………..
When Juan Gone came out swinging and Barton came out ice cold, I know most of us were worried. It’s nice to see Barton may make LaRussa make a “difficult” decision this spring.
Hopefully, the young guns keep firing. Go Cards!
I was at the baltimore game Rasmus Homerun was to right center field. 20 mph wind blowing to left. It was hit a ton
Barton missed cuttoff man 4 times. he is looking good as a hitter including bunt single. any other questions about the game let me know.
I wonder what happened in today’s game? A play to R scored 2 runs, Barton was allowed to bat afterward but then pulled for Ankiel?
Was it another fundamental error? Did his arm cost an extra run? Was he pulled because of it or was it just spreading the plate appearances around and coincidence?
I feel like the arm is already a noted issue. If TLR was concerned about his arm costing runs in a ST game, why would he throw him in RF in the first place?
I am probably reading way too much into gameday scoreboards.
RedR,
I asked the same question yesterday and the answer was that he can running in trying to make a sliding catch on a bloop and the ball went in and out of his glove and took a weird bounce away. It was also 2 outs so the runner on first wasn’t being held on and was going on contact.
I wrote:
I’m very discouraged by what you’ve been writing in the PD. Brian Barton was an absolute steal in the Rule V draft and there should be almost no way he doesn’t make this team. Somewhere between Juan Mateo & Luna? Barton has all the potential to be a regular starter in the outfield. His upside is enormous. Is Tony really going to base the decision on keeping him on a few spring training at bats? That just seems crazy to me. D.GOOCH
Goold replied:
Quote:
Keep in mind we’re writing on March 6, and potential only goes so far for a Rule 5 pick. It most likely that he’s got to make the team to help the team or even stay with the team. So, it’s great that he has a lot of tools — and he clearly, clearly does — but those tools have to turn into production. Until recent games, he has been surprisingly unpolished in workouts and batting practice. He falls between Hector Luna and Juan Mateo because, well, Luna made the team and stayed with the team and Mateo never really got the chance to show what he had because of the visa issues.
Barton is closer to Luna on the spectrum than he is to Mateo, but he’s still between the two. He has several weeks to move the needle, and maybe even more than that because of the knee …
D.GOOCH