SB Nation User Blog: StLHugo

List of 2009 Potential Free Agents

StLHugo — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:11:46 -0000

List of 2009 Potential Free Agents

Ankiel, Rick OF SL
B De Rosa, Mark 3B SL
B Glaus, Troy 3B SL
Greene, Khalil SS/3B SL
A Holliday, Matt OF SL
LaRue, Jason C SL
B Pineiro, Joel SP SL
Smoltz, John SP SL
Wellemeyer, Todd SP SL

Where they are now, Cardinals 2008 Top Prospects

StLHugo — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:49:17 -0000

I thought it would be fun to look back at the 2008 prospects list created in late 2007, just after the rule 5 draft by Futureredbirds readers and see where they are now. This list is two years old so Wallace isn't on it, Kozmawas 11 (and I cropped it at 10 for now) and Morty was still new with Koz. See the list after the jump.

All stats are from Fangraphs.com this morning.

Colby Rasmus: Currently the "starting" center fielder for the Cardinals, has a wOBA of .317 and a UZR/150 of 17.1 in CF and 16.9 overall

Jaime Garcia: Has 2 starts for Memphis so far and 6 total this year after coming off Tommy John. Has allowed 8 ERs and has 32Ks and 8BBs over 27 IP.

Bryan Anderson: Recently selected for the AFL and has been injured since June. In his 3 rehab games he has a .460 wOBA over a very small sample size of 11 PAs.

Chris Perez: Now in the Indians' pen and is carrying a 3.69 FIP for the season while getting 11.10 K/9. For a guy who was known for his fastball he has only a wFB of 3.6, though his "replacement" has a wFB of -6.3. Good luck Chris I know it will be hard for some of us to let you go.

Adam Ottavino: Has a 4.48 FIP in 24 starts averaging over 5 IP per start. Has a career low K/BB rate of 1.45 but is recovering from a 2008 campaign that saw a career high HR rate of 1.25, it is down to 0.70 this year which falls in lign with his 2007 numbers and even the small sample from 2006. His BABIP is also down from .338 last year to .309 this year. Nothing about this year is screaming "luck" to me and most of it is just a recovery from bad luck last year. He seems to be mirroring his 2007 season in everything except BBs and Ks, he needs to get more Ks and lower his BB rate and I think he will be back on track.

Tyler Herron: Been a Pirate since June of this year and hasn't pitched since July. Has a FIP of 4.05 in 26 IP for the Pirates AA affiliate.

Clayton Mortensen: Made a start for the Athletics on the 8th and only went 4 innings with 8 ERs. Other than that he has not experienced the same success with Oakland's AAA team as he did in Memphis this year. His K/9 dropped from 7.03 to 5.33 and his BB/9 went up from 2.91 to 4.62. Overall I think Mort will end up as a back of the rotation guy or a long reliever. I had higher hopes for him when this list was created and had pictures dancing in my head of a guy much like what Joel has been this year.

Brian Barton: This list was one of the few created post Rule V draft so Barton was actually ranked. He has a wOBA of .333 for the BravesAAA team. That for a guy with a UZR/150 of 48.4 in RF last year (small sample size but 21.5 overall). is still going to produce value. Worst trade of Mo's tenure right now but in the end I don't know how much the system will feel it, though he would have been nice to have off the bench earlier in the season.

Mitchell Boggs: Has 7 big league starts this year with a FIP of 3.70...tell me how many of you thought his FIP was that low? In Memphis he has a FIP of 4.46 which is more along the lines of what I would expect from him. He also has an unreasonably high BABIP of .417 for the Cards and .343 for the Redbirds. His FIP is aided by a unsustainably low HR/9 of .24 by far lower than his career rates. He is walking more in the big leagues (5.68BB/9 combining 08 and 09) than he has in the minors (usually mid 3s or so and 3.77 this year). He is still a serviceable 5th starter and is showing the ability to be more.

Allen Craig: wOBA of .393, 23 HRs, .902 OPS....sounds great!...oh but he has a .348 BABIP, 0.39BB/K and questionable defense at the hot corner and seems to be stuck in LF in this organization. But as a RH "utility" guy capable of playing 3rd in a pinch and LF every so often he is a valuable commodity and should be playing in place of Thurston now that we have Lugo and Greene to back up 2B and 3B.

Who do you want Managing the All Star game in St Louis?

StLHugo — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:48:45 -0000

I think one of the most important questions to answer right now is who do we want to be managing the All Star game next year?

I am not entirely sure how the All Star game manager is decided if the current manager of a team leaves that team or league so I am assuming the WS managers will be returning to their respective clubs.

To you who presents the best option? Who should get to manager the NL on our turf?

Torre or Manuel?

Who would you rather see manage the AL?

Francona or Maddon?

Take a vote!

Poll

Who should manager the All Star game?

Torre vs Francona, Revive the Yankees vs Red Sox fever!

19 votes

Torre vs Maddon, Veteran vs Young up and comer!

146 votes

Manuel vs Francona, Can't think of anything snarky for this one ;(

3 votes

Manuel vs Maddon, Old guy vs Young guy V2.0

21 votes

189 votes | Poll has closed

Cardinals announce 09 Schedule

StLHugo — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:13:05 -0000

Schedule

The Cardinals open the season on April 6th at home vs the Pirates for 4 games followed by Houston for 3 with no off days planned during that homestand.

They close out the regular season on Oct 4th vs the Brewers.

We play 7 in Chitown and 9 at home with the Cubbies.

They only have 2 trips with more than 2 cities or 7 games which is nice.

Lastly IL play will consist of: Royals Tiggers, Twinkies at Busch and going to Reyesland and KC

CY Analysis and Cards Pitchers

StLHugo — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:00:09 -0000

Beyond the Box Score did an analysis of this years CY award in both the AL and NL Link and used a formula to assign points to each pitcher based on typical "voting" categories. Not necessarily the best categories to evaluate a pitcher by but what categories are most likely to be used by voters when choosing the award.

The formula is W*6-L*2+SV*2.5+SO/12+SHO+(5/9-ERA/9)*IP then 12 bonus points are added if your team is in first place.

BTBS only looked at pitchers with over 10 wins so Lohse, Looper and Wellemeyer from the Cards. I started out wondering where Wainwright would fall if he had 10 wins and ended up calculating the score for all 5 of our main starters and some of our main bullpen arms.

Here are the points:

Lohse 100
Wellemeyer 94
Wainwright 79
Looper 76
Franklin 70
Perez 39
Pineiro 29
Springer 28
Izzy 26
Thompson 25
KMac 17

KMac is hurt by having one save, holds not counting and his high loss number compared to low wins. I do find it funny though that Pineiro has been just as "good" in the eyes of voters as Springer just because one is a starter and one is a reliever.

In the end it is just a neat little chart showing where we rack and stack.

If you have other names I can plug them into my spreadsheet or you can do it yourself and post them here.

UPDATE: Instant replay coming to a stadium near you in August

StLHugo — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:34:17 -0000

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3545338

Baseball Umpires and Owners have reached a deal to allow instant replay for boundary calls (fair/foul, homer/not homer) I would assume all calls from now on will be fair/no homer to allow the play to unfold and then get overturned similar to the fumble rules in the NFL.

What is your take on this? I can see this is a good thing and a bad thing. As long as it is limited to close plays and not used consistently for balls and strikes I don't see it as a bad thing at all.

EDIT: More information about it http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kurkjian_tim&id=3546044

This column has the actual implementation that is going to happen. There will be a War Room that has all the video feeds available from both teams for the game. That room will feed them to the Umpire reviewing the feed. Replays can only be called by an Umpire, and only for Home Run call disputes, NOT for a ball landing on the foul line. At least 1 Umpire will remain on the field at all times.

Poll

Is instant replay good for baseball?

Very Good, I hope they expand it to everything including balls and strikes

7 votes

Good but I hope they never use it for balls and strikes

29 votes

Good if it is only used for boundary calls

20 votes

Don't like it at all

20 votes

76 votes | Poll has closed

Pineiro likely to hit DL, who rotates in for the homestand?

StLHugo — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:14:06 -0000

With the news that Piniero will likely miss his next scheduled start, and knowing that if he does hit the DL they can retroactive it to his last start, which leaves him eligible for his next turn through the rotation (thus he only misses one Saturday by hitting the DL).

If Joel does hit the DL that opens a roster spot. The big question is who starts for him? And also who fills the spot until then and after then. The obvious starters are Reyes and Pairisi, but what about Boggs, Garcia, etc? It would use up an option for some of the others which might not be a good thing. What about Thompson? So little has been heard about his status that it makes me wonder what he is doing.

For the bullpen arm before and after the start do you think they activate Izzy?
Jimenez? Motte probably isn't ready, but Worrell might be. Lots of options and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Another option is to go a man short in the pitching staff for a few games and call up a bench player, Mather, Barden, etc.

So what is your take? How should this roster spot be handled for the next 10 days?

Gibby's great season

StLHugo — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:00:58 -0000

Gibby's great season

Great article on CBS about Gibby's '68 season.

Gameday 2007 links

StLHugo — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:55:15 -0000

Since everyone seems to be wanting the 2007 version of gameday I wanted to give you to tools to "build your own" links for every game.

Today's game should be the following:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/y2007/gd.html?2008_04_03_colmlb_slnmlb_1&brand=mlb

If you look at this link you will see 2 key elements, first is the date, second is the teams. To make a working link you must change those fields to match the game you want.

Team Names are an oddity as well. Notice we are not stl but are in fact sln (st louis national league). For cities with two teams you usually find the use of A and N (NYA and NYN I beleive are the Yanks and Mets).

If you find an odd name please post it.

Teams I know for sure are:
mil=Brewers
chn=Cubs
cin=Reds
pit=Pirates
hou=Astros

col=Rockies

April Fools Joke: Cards Trade Wainwright to Cubs

StLHugo — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:30:03 -0000

In exchange for Fukudome. Cardinals GM John Mozeliak said "Fukudome will help our struggling offense and will fill a key gap in our lineup, at the same time Wainwright was just taking away starts from Anthony Reyes and I really wanted to see him in the rotation this year"

Edit: I changed the title so as not to confuse people browsing the archives or who just saw it this morning and didn't have enough coffee.