happy 2012, one and all. i’m your designated danup today. good position for a geezer like me -- way too old and slow to be trusted afield, but can pick up a few stray ABs now and again without hurting the team.

so let’s get right down to it. i’m impressed w/ the cardinals’ rapid patch-up job after pujols’ departure. by signing furcal and beltran, they gave themselves a good chance to stay competitive in the short run, while avoiding deadweight obligations that will hurt them in the medium and long term. the latter are what i’ve been thinking about lately -- the 2014 season and beyond, when the expiration dates (literally and figuratively) will have passed on beltran, berkman, furcal, and chris carpenter. molina may be gone by then as well -- and if he’s still here, he’ll be entering an age range at which (as tom s documented last week) catchers are susceptible to sharp drops in value. it’s safe to say that after 2014 the cardinals will need help at catcher regardless of whether yadi’s still on the team.

that’s a whole lot of lost value they’ll have to replace in the not-too-distant future, and the organization is not likely to do it solely with internal resources. here’s the projected depth chart heading into the 2014 season, based on players who are currently under control through that year (2014 age in parens):

1b	matt adams (25)	mark hamilton (29)	andrew brown (29)
2b	dan descalso (27)	kolten wong (23)	greg garcia (24)
3b	david freese (31)	zack cox (25)	matt carpenter (28)
ss	tyler greene (30)	ryan jackson (26)	pete kozma (26)
lf	matt holliday (34)
cf	jon jay (29)	adron chambers (27)	tommy pham (26)
rf	allen craig (29)	andrew brown (29)	oscar taveras (22)
c	bryan anderson (27)	tony cruz (27)	robert stock (24)

plenty of quibbles you could make w/ my selections if you wanted. maybe cody stanley or audry perez or even steve hill (who will be 29 by 2014) should be the 3d catcher; you could make a case that mark hamilton belongs ahead of adams at 1b, or that wong should leapfrog descalso at 2b, or that matt carpenter is likelier to see playing time in rf than andrew brown. all legitimate arguments, but they don’t alter the basic picture: entering 2014, the cards will likely have more holes to fill than resources with which to fill them. the core of the offense by then projects to be craig, freese, and 34-year-old matt holliday. they're good players, but they hardly constitute an mv3 nucleus.

of course, a lot can change in two years.

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surprise.

danup invited me to drop by and offer an emeritus reflection or two, so here i am -- alas, with few worthy reflections to offer. like just about everybody else, i wrote this team off in mid to late august -- not enough defense, not enough pitching, not enough speed, distressing habit of playing down to the level of the competition. in one of the p-d water cooler segments i likened them to the 1980 cardinals, another talent-rich club whose league-leading offense was undermined by deficiencies in just about every other aspect of the game. that club finished 74-88 and never stood more than a game over .500. it was not intended to be a flattering comparison.

having made up my mind about the cards -- they were bums -- i’ve had a hard time getting excited about them again. i watched the great comeback mostly from afar, missing most games entirely and tuning in to the rest only for the late innings. i scoffed at the comparisons to 1964; finishing 4th in a 16-team league is a far cry from finishing 1st in a 10-team league. i couldn’t (and still can’t) quite get over the feeling that atlanta lost the race, more than our side won it; had the braves merely played .400 ball over the last month (12-18), they’d be getting ready to host the brewers for games 3 and 4 and we’d all be lamenting the wins given away in the final week to the mets and the astros -- along with all those other wins the cards gave away all season long. i anticipated that type of sad outcome down to the very last day of the season; a team only gets so many opportunities, i reasoned, and the cards had blown their quota and then some. even after the champagne began to flow, i didn’t completely feel the love. they’d found a way to survive, but i still didn’t view them as completely redeemed.

i admit to all of this without apology or regret; blast me in the comments all you want. there it is.

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jeff luhnow will be in charge of his seventh draft for the cards this year, which puts him in rare company. only two guys in club history have made more draft picks: george silvey (a holdover from the branch rickey era who ran the first 10 drafts in club history) and the late great freddy mcalister.

a couple years ago i made a little chart to get a read on luhnow’s effectiveness in the draft, focusing on his first four years at the helm (2005-08); i updated it last year at draft time. here’s the latest iteration:

	2005-08	2001-04	1997-00	1993-96
STARS		dan haren	albert pujols j.d. drew	matt morris
REGULARS	colby rasmus jaime garcia chris perez brett wallace	skip schumaker brendan ryan daric barton kyle mcclellan	adam kennedy yadi molina jack wilson chris duncan coco crisp rick ankiel	placido polanco alan benes braden looper
PART-TIMERS	luke gregerson mitchell boggs jon jay dan descalso allen craig	joe mather brad thompson jason motte anthony reyes b hawksworth	bud smith mike crudale pablo ozuna	eli marrero jay witasick cliff pollitte britt reames chris richard kerry robinson brent butler

see the original post for definitions of the categories.

those 05-08 drafts continue to look very solid. i’d expect at least two more guys to graduate to the "regulars" box, maybe more. at the moment craig, jay and descalso look like the likeliest bets to become major-league regulars someday, but guys like lynn and mortensen (who is currently in the rockies’ rotation) will certainly have chances, and there are bound to be some part-time contributors (and maybe an everyday player) among the group that includes guys such as hamilton, ottavino, greene, and tony cruz. (you could make the case that ty greene has already earned his stripes as a "part-timer"; i still think of him as the type of replacement-level fodder that wouldn’t be missed if he’d never been drafted, but it’s just my opinion.) some of us would argue that bryan anderson still has a chance to become a big leaguer one of these days (for some other team, no doubt). and few would be shocked if a dark horse like kozma, chambers, pham, or broderick ended up having some sort of career. ditto adam reifer, if his rehab goes well. so there’s a lot of potential left in those four draft classes; if even a quarter of it pans out, the 05-08 period will stand out as an extremely productive one.

in addition to comparing favorably with earlier cardinal draft cycles, luhnow’s first four drafts have produced good results relative to the teams he was drafting against. i made a very quick count and found only three teams that have produced more than four everyday players so far out of the 05-08 drafts -- the braves, dbacks, and nats. i also did a quick WAR inventory and found that the aggregate WAR from the cardinals’ 05-08 draftees, through saturday’s games, ranks 8th among the 30 mlb teams, 5th among the nl clubs, and first in the nl central, just ahead of milwaukee.

for those of you who are still in Stage 1: Denial of the wainwright grief sequence, the 2011 Maple Street Press Cardinals Annual is a must-read. according to that source, wainwright remains at the core of the st louis rotation. that’s because we sent the files off to the printer on february 4, about three weeks before all this "elbow injury" talk began. if your head’s still buried in the sand and you’re determined to keep it there, then ours is the guide for you. hell, we’ve even got wainwright on the cover.

i suppose that means we’ve got a jinx on our hands --- which is really unfortunate, because chris carpenter’s on the cover of this year’s edition, too. no, really. look:

so here's what you do: just fold the cover in half, cut along the crease, and voila! our book is as current as the latest tweet from joe strauss. if you’re handy with photoshop (which i’m not) you can modify the cover to suit your taste (pair of aces: chris carpenter and bryan augenstein!). you could also just tear the damn cover off.

the Annual is scheduled to be on display at your local bookstore / newsstand / convenience store as of today. Danup’s a stalwart contributor as always, along with the red baron, chuck b, will leitch, dayn perry, et alia. the good news is that quite a bit of the material in the book is non-adam-related and therefore retains its integrity. i’m not going to pimp too hard; the list of articles is online at the maple street press website (and you can order yourself a copy there if'n that is how you roll).

if this injury had occurred while we were still working on the magazine, i’d probably have commissioned an article about what happened to other contending teams who were luckless enough to lose an ace pitcher at the start of spring training. only it would have been a short article. i can’t find a single comparable instance within the last 15 years. plenty of contending teams have lost an ace; they’ve nearly all lost an ace at one point or another. but none lost one right at the outset of camp. most of the time, these pitchers go down during the regular season, and the ones who have gotten hurt during training camp got healthy soon enough to give their team 10 or 20 starts. pitchers who came into the season hurt (e.g. tim hudson circa 2009, or pedro martinez circa 2007) don’t make for useful comparisons, because their teams didn’t spend all winter counting on them to contribute. the same goes for guys (e.g. mark prior 2004) who got hurt in training camp but avoided major surgery and were able to pitch at least somewhat effectively that same year; it’s tough to lose an ace for 10 or 20 starts, but still not as tough as losing one for 33 or 34. and then there are cases like daisuke matsuzaka (2009), jason schmidt (2007), and bartolo colon (2006), who began the season hurt, tried to pitch through it, got clobbered, and ended up spending most of a season on the DL anyway.

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i’m probably in the minority here, but i think it’d be cool if bobby cox went out a winner. the guy managed his ass off this year, as always -- had to change starters at four positions (3b, ss, cf, and 1b), lost the back half of his rotation for significant portions of the season, and didn’t get much help from the F.O. (whose "impact" off-season additions included eric hinske and troy glaus). rather than bitch about his burdens nonstop, as a crabby old skipper might be tempted to do, cox solved all those problems and kept his team afloat. they’re in the tournament for the first time since ’05; i don’t like their offense much, but the frontline pitching is strong enough to give the braves a shot. (and not that anyone asked, but i hope they don’t hire hitting coach terry pendleton to replace cox, because i’d love to see TP managing in st louis someday soon.)

in the AL i’m rooting for the twins, who also refused to be deterred by adversity -- they lost their closer in ST and their cleanup hitter (and MVP candidate) at midseason, lived with make-do options at 3b and rf, and still left two higher-payroll rivals (det and chi) in the dust. i don’t like their frontline pitching after liriano, but i admire the hell out of that franchise, which is in the postseason for the 6th time in ron gardenhire’s 10 seasons as manager -- but, alas, still looking to win its first postseason series under his leadership.

anyway, i’m not really here to talk about the tournament. i’m here to say that although you can’t watch the cardinals play this month, you can still read about them. earlier this year post-dispatch scribe derrick goold came out with his first book, 100 Things Cardinals Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. some of it covers familiar ground, but there’s a lot of fresh material in there with which to while away an idle october.

for instance, i’d never heard the one about team owner chris von der ahe getting arrested in the second inning of an 1887 game and charged with conducting business on a sunday (von der ahe got a baseball-only exemption some weeks later), nor the one about the st louis baserunner who later that season was charged with assault and fined $4.50 (!!) after upending a defender on a hard slide into second. i didn’t know that only 10 cardinals in history have hit walkoff grand-slams (and that three of them are david eckstein, aaron miles, and gary bennett), that flint rhem was kidnapped (so he said) and force-fed raw whiskey at gunpoint during a critical 1930 series vs the dodgers, or that billy southworth and his family were homeless throughout the 1944 world series. (the southworths time-shared an apartment all season with the family of stl browns manager luke sewell, trading off occupancy as the two teams came and went during the season; the two families were never in town simultaneously until october.) until i read this book, the agonizing debate about the color of a cardinal’s beak had completely escaped me. and i never really thought about it, but you can make a good case (and goold does) that the first pitch in cardinals history was thrown by none other than cy young, back in 1899.

a couple weeks ago i did a quick Q+A with derrick about the book, the franchise, and the fan base; it follows after the jump. you can order the book direct from the publisher at this here link

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Score a damn run already, you buttheads.

danup is on the road and i am one step behind him --- on a flight this morning and out of pocket all day, so pls excuse my absence from the discussion thread. but i do have the time to toss together this quick post about jon jay, who enters tonight’s action with a .387 / .437 / .624 line in 106 plate appearances. didn’t take that one long to hatch, eh? a few thwacks to crack the shell in half, and now he’s hopped clear. i don’t reckon this chick will be returning to memphis again.

jay’s current batting line is kinda sorta historic. as far as i can tell (and i did a pretty thorough search using Baseball Reference’s play index and game logs), no cardinal has posted a batting average higher than .387 in his first 100 or more plate appearances --- at least, not since 1953, which is as far back as the play logs go. maybe george watkins or ducky medwick or jim bottomley had a hotter bat over his first 100 PA, but you’d have to go to the microfiche to find out. . . . anyway, i'm not partic’ly interested in whether jay has set some sort of weird record. i'm curious about how many similarly emphatic break-ins the cardinals have witnessed --- and what became of the players who compiled them. so here’s a short list of past cardinal rookies whose debuts most resembled jon jay’s:

terry pendleton, 1984
line through 99 PA: .387 / .404 / .452
called up on july 18 after barely two years in the minor leagues, pendleton rapped 27 hits in his first 56 at-bats for a .482 average. the league adjusted to him quickly --- he batted .255 / .288 / .345 in his next 55 at-bats, and .196 in the 56 at-bats after that --- but pendleton eventually counteradjusted. his overall line after the .482 start was .290 / .326 / .400. after his rookie year he only had one really good offensive season in st louis (1987) before eventually emerging as an mvp in atlanta; he lasted 15 years in the big leagues and started for four pennant winners. interestingly enough, jay has now matched pendleton’s .482 spurt --- he’s 27 for his last 56 dating back to may 31.

Poll

What's Jon Jay's ceiling?

3%

Cards eventually retire his number.

43 votes

15%

Future All-Star.

191 votes

62%

Future regular.

747 votes

15%

The next So Taguchi.

191 votes

2%

The next Bo Hart.

26 votes

1198 votes | Poll has closed

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howdy folks. on draft day last year i wrote a post about luhnow's first four years of draft dividends, compared to the harvests from the three previous four-year periods. the quick n dirty of that post (the whole thing is here, if'n you want to read ev'y word) was that luhnow would probably end up with three to five everyday players out of his 2005-2008 drafts, plus a gaggle of part-time players --- a good but not great rate of return, compared to the recent past.

with another year's worth of development time, we can now see how things are shaping up with greater clarity:

 

	2005-08	2001-04	1997-00	1993-96
STARS	????	dan haren	albert pujols jd drew	matt morris
REGULARS	colby rasmus jaime garcia chris perez	skip schumaker brendan ryan daric barton	adam kennedy yadi molina jack wilson chris duncan coco crisp rick ankiel	placido polanco alan benes braden looper
PART-TIMERS	luke gregerson mitchell boggs	kyle mclellan joe mather brad thompson anthony reyes jason motte	bud smith mike crudale pablo ozuna	eli marrero jay witasick cliff polite britt reames chris richard kerry robinson brent butler

since i wrote that post last year, rasmus established himself as an everyday player, and garcia and chris perez have all but done the same. (to refresh your memory, a pitcher is considered "everyday" if he holds a regular rotation slot or is a regular closer.) meanwhile a couple of relief pitchers drafted by luhnow (gregerson and boggs) have become pretty well established as big-league middle relievers, which puts them in the "part-time" category. we may debate whether nick stavinoha merits the "part-time" designation or whether he is still just replacement-level filler (i would argue the latter), but no matter --- we'll probably know which box to put him into by this time next year. for that matter, we'll be better able to gauge 2005-08 draftees such as brett wallace, adam ottavino, jon jay, allen craig, etc etc. we may also know whether rasmus is bound for "star" billing on this table.

those paying attention will note that the 2001-04 ranks have been beefed up by the maturation of daric barton and brendan ryan into everyday big-leaguers. at this time last year neither one merited the title; i feel confident in bestowing it on ryan despite his early-season slump, and barton is finally delivering on his high-OBP promise (his .397 figure for 2010 ranks 6th in the AL as of this morning). at this time last year the cards' 2001-04 drafts had only produced two big-league regulars (haren and schumaker); as of today, those drafts look a lot more presentable.

check back a year from now . . . . .

Pre-programmed to kick in around the 4th inning; go team go.

the diamondback pitcher tonite, dan haren, now owns 80 career major-league victories --- the most of any cardinal-drafted pitcher since matt morris. if haren surpasses morris (121 victories), he'll be the winningest st louis drafted-developed pitcher since the late 1960s, when the organization produced john denny (123 wins), bob forsch (168), and jerry reuss (220).

danup’s on his way back to north america today, so i’m sitting in. man, but SB Nation has made some upgrades to the machinery around here. where’s the ignition on this thing? where’s the clutch?

ha ha ha, get it? see, because the cards haven’t been getting any clutch hits . . . .

so they’re now 5 for their last 40 with men in scoring position dating back to saturday night, and 11 for their last 69 dating back to the home opener. it’s surely just one of those things, a blip — they’ve had some bad luck the last few days, taking good RISP at-bats and hitting the ball hard but right at the defense. but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely random, or that an adjustment or two might not be in order. i have the vague sense that the hitters, in their eagerness to drive in runs, have been taking less patient at-bats with men in RISP. i can’t back that up with any data though, and i could well be wrong. so here’s a set of questions for anybody who has access to a pitch fx database:

 

• during their RISP drought (ie, going back to the home opener), how often do the cards swing at the first pitch in RISP plate appearances? how often do they swing at the first strike?
• how do these rates compare to their rates in non-RISP at-bats?
• what’s their chase rate in RISP plate appearances, and how does that compare to their chase rate overall?
• what’s their walk rate, excluding IBBs?
• eliminate the walks to pujols and the #8 hitter — what’s their walk rate then?
• back to the first pitch / first strike: how often do they swing at a first pitch / first strike that’s not a fastball?

it may be that there’s nothing of interest in those numbers, but maybe there is. if anyone’s got time to lodge some / all of those queries, you’ll be doing a public service.

i did spot some interesting data pertaining to the Hombre: his chase rate is sky high this year. according to fangraphs, he’s swinging 29.8 percent of the time the ball’s out of the zone in 2010, versus a career average of 19.3 percent and a career high of 22.9 percent. rick ankiel, that paragon of indiscipline at the plate, has a career chase rate of 31.7 percent; albert’s approaching that so far in 2010. he was at it again last night, swinging at ball four in at least two of his at-bats (he eventually did walk in one of them). he seems to be chasing pitches up in the zone (maybe that elbow feels a little too good, eh?), and this would explain his atypically high flyball rate of 53.5 percent (career average: 39.8 pct). in albert’s case, some batted balls that are classified as flyballs are what i would call very long line drives; they reach on outfielder’s glove and there’s a little bit of (though not much) arc on them, ergo somebody calls it a flyout. . . .

but i digress. the elevated chase rate is the extension of a trend: albert’s O-swing percentage has been climbing steadily since 2004, when it was 15.7 percent. the percentage of strikes he has seen has decreased commensurately; his swing percentage has mostly held steady, he just has fewer strikes to swing at now than he used to. but in swing percentage, too, the 2010 number is an outlier: albert is going after 49.6 percent of the pitches he sees this year, versus a career average of 42.2 percent and a career high (set in 2003) of 44.3 percent. despite the restoration of his long-absent "protection," he’s become more hacktastic this season, not less.

i reckon he’ll make an adjustment, as he always does.

Poll

Which St. Louis minor-league affiliate has the most future big-league regulars on its current roster?

23%

Memphis

120 votes

39%

Springfield

204 votes

7%

Palm Beach

40 votes

29%

Quad Cities

152 votes

516 votes | Poll has closed

Continue reading this post »

g’morning boys and girls. danup was kind enough to put me in the chair this morning to pimp (gently) this year’s Maple Street Press guide. danup and the red baron made big contributions again this year, and we also brought back chuckb (aka houstoncardinal), jeff sackmann, will leitch, and dayn perry. i did a little writing for the book as well; one of my articles (in the history section) goes on for about a zillion pages about a beloved cardinal team of my youth, the 1974 edition. that’s the "apocalypse now" article of the magazine — originally budgeted at 6 or 7 pages, but delivered at 14 or so. the studio suits wanted to cut the length (so predictable), but i threatened to dump all galleys into the mississippi if they touched so much as a word. i guess "apocalypse now" would be the best-case comp; the worst-case would be "heaven’s gate."

anyway, i don’t want to drone on for 14 pages here. the book will be on newsstands early next week, or you can order it online. it’s an above-replacement-level book, i promise; if you have thoughts about how to make it better next year, email me at vivaelbirdos on the yahoo.

the magazine is pretty sanguine about the cardinals. and why not — the team has collected four very good players who are at their career peak, surrounded them w/ several league-average players who are also in their prime, tossed in a grade A prospect and some role players with upside . . . . given where this roster was just two years ago, it’s a pretty striking turnaround. think back to that spring for a second. heading into camp in 2008, the cards were seriously considering juan gonzalez as a bench player. mark mulder was an important part of the plan for the rotation. their best outfielder was chris duncan, who entered the season with 756 career at-bats; rico washington and kelvin jimenez both made the opening day roster. and the most exciting young players on the roster — the guys we all hoped the team could build around in the future — were rick ankiel and brian barton.

that was just a few months into mozeliak’s tenure, and now here we are today. but here’s what is fascinating — mo didn’t get the team to this point by churning the roster. he built it largely out of resources that were on hand in 2008. ludwick, rasmus, schumaker, and ryan were all in the organization two februarys ago, but none had ever held down an everyday position in the big leagues — and only rasmus was considered a future regular on a first-division team. yadi was a no-hit catcher with a career high ops of .708. carp was on the eternal dl. kyle mcclellan, jason motte, blake hawksworth, mitch boggs — just names for the #hpgf to get themselves worked up over. the only key additions from outside the organization have been holliday, lohse, and penny. that’s not nothing, obviously, but it’s a distinctly different approach from the way walt jocketty built his teams — ie, by bringing in guys from other organizations.

mo has built this one by relying heavily on guys like david freese — passed-over prospects who don’t have star potential and are therefore very easy to dismiss. he’s stuck to that program despite a lot of advice from many quarters (including the media, talk-show callers, field manager, and star first baseman) to blow big chunks of money on guys like brian fuentes or torii hunter or miguel tejada. he has changed the organizational culture to the point that there-for-the-taking veterans like felipe lopez and john smoltz don’t generate much interest in cardinal nation anymore. the focus is generally on players like jaime garcia and allen craig. unproven players with upside have found a home in st louis. thank you, mo.

their handling of freese made me ask myself a question: when’s the last time the cardinals placed this type of faith in a rookie? ie, when’s the last time that a player with 31 major-league at-bats was option A for an everyday position heading into a season? it’s the "option A" piece that’ important here. colby rasmus played himself into an everyday role last year, but he wasn’t entrusted with the position right from the get-go. he opened the season as the fourth outfielder, starting nearly as many games in right field (5) as center (6) during the month of april, and didn’t become the regular centerfielder until ankiel’s collision with the outfield wall on may 4 sent him to the dl. likewise, albert pujols was an everyday player as a rookie, but even after he hit his way onto the roster he didn’t have a regular position. he made starts at four different positions (1b, 3b, lf, rf) in april, and his playing time was divided pretty evenly among those four slots all season — 52 starts at third, 30something at the other three stations. the team didn’t insert him into a position; he forced his way into the lineup.

freese is a different case — they’ve got him penciled in for 130 starts at third base. the last time the organization did that with a rookie was . . . ? with j.d. drew back in 1999, per my recollection. they’ve certainly given opportunities to many other young players since then, but most of those guys got their chances in mid-season, after option A (and maybe B, C, and D) washed out. brendan ryan, chris duncan, ryan ludwick, and rick ankiel all fall into that category. and then there are guys like schumaker and yadi, who understudied for a season or three before coming into a season with an everyday job.

likewise, if jaime garcia should win the #5 starter’s job, he’d become the first cardinal rookie to be counted on for 30 starts since rick ankiel in 2000. my heart kind of broke as i looked back over that history. between 1996 and 2000, the cards opened every season with a rookie figuring prominently in their rotation plans. the five rookies were alan benes (1996), matt morris (1997), cliff pollitte (1998), jose jimenez (1999), and rick ankiel (2000). benes ranked #5 on baseball america’s top prospect list heading into 1996; ankiel was #1 heading into 2000. the team seemingly had a built-in rotation slot for rookie pitchers until ankiel’s meltdown. and since then? baby steps with young arms. it’s a pretty stark dividing line.

one other note, and then i gotta run. assuming that freese sticks, all 8 of the cards’ 2010 regulars will be under club control again for 2011. when’s the last time they returned all 8 starters two years in a row? it happened in 2003 with matheny, tino, vina, renteria, rolen, pujols, edmonds, and drew. it also happened in 1994, when they returned pags, jeffereies, alicea, ozzie, zeile, gilkey, lankford, and whiten; and in 1983, when they returned their series-winning lineup of porter, hernandez, herr, ozzie, obie, lonnie, willie, and silent george. it happens about once a decade, in other words — and they’re about due.

thanks danup for the invitation — thanks ev’ybody for reading.

the memphis redbirds are in colorado springs for the first time since 2007, so i drove down to the game on Sunday night to catch the opener. to my great disappointment, former VEB prospect fave trey hearne won’t be pitching out here; he threw a beauty on saturday night in salt lake city and won’t pitch again until friday in memphis. but i did get to see another worthy pitcher, 2006 1st-rounder adam ottavino, in the series opener sunday night. the redbirds won 7-6, and ottavino picked up the win, his 5th in 6 decisions after opening the season 0-9. herewith my impressions:

first things first: is ottavino still a prospect? you might think not; he rarely gets mentioned anymore within the HPGF, with hopes for a homegrown starting pitcher now pinned on garcia, boggs, lance lynn, and even pj walters. if the ghost of chris lambert has possessed any pitcher in the cardinal system, it’s not todd wellemeyer but ottavino, another 1st-round college arm gone bad. after ranking among the organization’s top 5 prospects on the preseason lists for 2007 and 2008, otto fell to about 20th on most lists this spring on account of a jarring transition to the high minors last year — a lambertesque 3-7 record, 5.23 ERA at double A.

but ottavino finished strong last year, posting a (roughly) 2.5 to 1 k/bb ratio over his last 90+ innings, with a FIP in the 4.30 range. and he still has superior stuff — better than any of the pitchers who passed him on the prospect-watch lists. for those reasons, he was promoted to triple A out of spring training this year in the hopes he’d bounce back. he hasn’t, much — after saturday's start, his 22d of the year, ottavino’s line reads 5-10 with a 4.66 ERA and one very ugly peripheral, a walk rate of nearly 6 men per 9 innings. that figure ruins some otherwise decent-looking stats that include a healthy K rate (7.8 per 9 IP), low HR rate (0.8 per 9), and good groundball ratio (43 percent and rising). a little discreet pruning makes ottavino’s line look slightly better; after a stupendously bad first month in triple A (0-3, 7.94 in 4 april starts), otto has gone 5-7, 4.08, over his last 18 starts (97 innings). unfortunately, he still can’t hit the strike zone — even excluding april, ottavino’s bb/9 stands at 5.9.

many’s the hard young thrower who was undone by lack of control, but there are those who get it figured out in time to have a career. ottavino can still be one of those. he’s only 23 years old, and his ability is big-league caliber — as i witnessed in person on sunday night.

ottavino reminds me of wainwright on the mound -- tall and thin and loose of limb. he’s got a smooth, languid delivery with a low kick and medium stride; his knee remains well below the waist throughout, and his elbow stays well below the shoulder. he’s balanced and generally upright; it’s an extremely simple, clean motion. to my eye (and i'm far from an expert in these matters), it seems that ottavino relies overmuch on his arm to generate power -- ie, maybe he's underutilizing his legs. here’s a triptych that illustrates ottavino’s delivery:

ottavino is a fastball-slider pitcher, with a changeup (otto calls it a split-change) for use against lefties. he uses the slider against hitters from both sides of the plate. the fastball ranges from 90 to 94; the pitches in the lower part of that range are probably 2-seamers. the 4-seamer explodes; hitters were putting very late swings on it all day. even matt murton, an above-average major-league hitter, could do no more with the pitch than to foul it off the other way. ottavino’s slider comes in at 79-81 with good movement; the change travels at about 83 mph.

he breezed through the first two innings while throwing about 90 percent fastballs, yielding only a couple of two-out singles. but in the third, protecting a 2-0 lead, he walked the opposing pitcher leading off. he was pissed at himself; you could see it from the stands. ottavino got the next guy on a force, but then gave up a base knock on a one-hop smash that got through descalso. the next two hitters, matt miller and murton, rank 3d and 4th respectively in the PCL batting race and have EQAs in the .250 range -- average big-league hitters, roughly. ottavino attacked miller with sliders, got ahead 0-2, wasted a fastball up, and then struck him out swinging on a slider down and away. beautiful job. but then he walked murton on four pitches, loading the bases for another former big-leaguer, left-handed slugger dan ortmeier. ottavino went right after him, got ahead 0-2 and then froze him with a changeup . . . . but didn’t get the call. he threw a fastball that ortmeier fouled off, then left the next pitch up; ortmeier whacked it into right for a two-run single to tie the game.

another walked ensued, re-loading the bases and bringing blaise ilsely out for a conference, before ottavino finally ended the frame on a ground out to short. he used up a lot of effort in that inning; 8 men batted, and ottavino threw well over 30 pitches (all but a handful of them out of the stretch). by the end of the frame he’d slowed down considerably, taking a lot of time between pitches.

he got through the 4th on 7 pitches, after the redbirds retook the lead in the top of the inning. he took a 4-2 lead to the mound in the 5th and gave up a double leading off the inning to jonathan herrera, with miller and murton coming up. he struck out miller again, fooling him again w/ sliders; he air-mailed a pitch to the backstop during murton’s at-bat, sending the runner to 3d, but broke off a 2-2 slider to strike murton out swinging and freeze the runner. ortmeier stepped in, and otto got ahead with a change and then heaved another fastball way above the batter’s head. pagnozzi got a mitt on it (barely) and kept it from going to the screen, but the ball trickled away behind his back, just a few feet from home plate on the first-base side. he couldn’t find it, and herrera scored a gift run; ortmeier popped out to center moments later, and ottavino’s outing was over.

the final line: 5 innings, 5 hits, 3 runs (all earned), 3 walks, 4 strikeouts. he induced 6 groundball outs vs 5 flyballs.

i talked to ottavino after he went back to the clubhouse -- the clubhouse guy was kind enough to send back a note. i didn’t have a recorder w/ me, nor a laptop, and thus had to take notes by hand. i didn’t get anything close to a transcription, but i did get enough stuff down to paraphrase.

first i asked ottavino how he felt about the outing, and he said it was frustrating. he was still kicking himself over that walk to the pitcher back in the 3d. he’d pitched very carefully after that and felt he did a lot of things right. he tried to get a double play on the next hitter and succeeded in inducing a groundball, but it was too slowly hit for a dp. he threw three terrific sliders to miller and struck him out; the walk to the next hitter, murton, was an accommodation ottavino decided to make after falling behind 2-0. i couldn’t groove one for him, otto said, he’s to good a hitter; i didn’t want to give up a 3-run homer. he executed his game plan against ortmeier with the sacks jammed and thought he’d struck the guy out on the 0-2 changeup; ottavino claimed that the umpire later admitted that he’d missed the call. the rbi single 2 pitches later came off another changeup. then he lost focus and walked the next guy while still thinking about that missed call on 0-2 . . . . he’s lucky the game didn’t blow up on him right there. ilsely’s trip to the mound was well timed.

ottavino was also angry at himself about the 2 wild pitches. i struck out their 2 best hitters with a guy in scoring position, he told me, and i let him score anyway. he didn’t say it quite this way, but basically he knew that if he could have eliminated the walk to the pitcher and the 2 wild pitches, he’d still be out there working on a shutout instead of watching the 7th inning on the clubhouse tv, and the big-league brass would be getting a report about ottavino’s gem in colorado springs (one of the hitter-friendliest parks in the minors). instead, the results were a mixed bag, and the kid had mostly himself to blame. and he knew it.

he told me he’s been searching all year for command of his fastball; that’s his best pitch, but also the one that gets him into the most trouble. a few starts ago he made an adjustment, moving toward the first-base side of the rubber, in the hopes that this might help; it hasn’t so far. the walks have been coming in bunches, he said. i'll have good location and then i’ll lose it; it comes and goes.

when i asked where he thinks he has made the most progress in his game this year, he said without hesitation that his slider is vastly improved. that was his primary goal in the off-season -- to tighten up the break and gain better command. i feel really confident throwing it now, he says; i’ll throw it from behind in the count, i'll throw it on 3-2. i know i can throw it for a strike. he also bulked up over the off-season, at the behest of the development team (who thought he was too thin last year and thus prone to fatigue). he said he has a ton of confidence in all his pitches, which is a big change over last season, when he was tentative and searching for himself. last year, he said, he hurt his shoulder in the batting cage during the spring and then tried to pitch through it; after about 30 innings (and 20 walks) he went onto the dl, and although he pitched much better after he came back ottavino never felt comfortable. he was toying with his delivery -- he eliminated a sharp stop at the bottom of his motion, where he’d freeze his arm briefly before starting it forward for the pitch -- and as a result he was always thinking about his mechanics while on the mound. now i’m not thinking about it, he says. my motion is much more natural. it’s not the motion i had in college, but it must be natural because i don’t have to think about it. and that means i can think about other things while i'm out there.

i asked how the recent spate of trades had gone down in the memphis clubhouse, and he said it was kind of a shock. ottavino was good friends with chris perez; the two were drafted the same year and came up through the system more or less together. we thought we’d pitch together in st louis for years, he told me. mort and jess were friends of mine too; we kept hearing that jess might be the second player in the trade, and it was hard knowing he might be gone any day. at the same time, ottavino admitted (at my prompting) that the deals have created greater opportunity for the pitchers who are left. i asked ottavino if he felt, given the sudden exodus of relief pitchers from the system, that he might eventually be converted to a reliever himself. that fastball-slider combination might get you some mileage in a big-league bullpen, i suggested. he gave the obligatory responses -- "i'll do whatever they want me to do," and "i've always been a starting pitcher and that’s how i view myself" -- while adding that he, and all the other memphis players, are dying to be a part of the pennant race in st louis. blake hawksworth’s success in the cardinal bullpen so far has not escaped notice down in memphis; if that’s the ticket to the big leagues, ottavino would gladly take it. but he knows he’s not gonna get called up until he gets command of his fastball, and that’s what is foremost in his mind -- not a callup.

i came away encouraged by what i'd seen, and heard, out of adam ottavino. he has two big-league pitches and an intelligent approach to the game; he seems able to identify his weaknesses and work hard on shoring them up. plenty of guys have fashioned careers out of less. he essentially has one problem left to solve -- stop walking people -- before he becomes a viable option in st louis. unfortunately, it’s not a small problem. there have been glimmers of improvement -- after walking 6.3 men per 9 in the first three months of the year, he has walked 5.0 men per 9 since july 1 . . . . . like i said, "glimmers" of improvement. he’s still got to do better. i'd like to see him cut his walk rate to the vicinity of 3.0 bb/9 by this time next year.

a final thought about my trip to colorado springs: the memphis hitter who most caught my eye was mark hamilton, the first baseman. why is this guy no longer considered a prospect by anyone? at the time the cards selected him (number 76 overall in 2006), draft experts were gushing; kevin goldstein wrote, "The Cardinals got one of the steals in the 2006 draft with Hamilton in the supplemental second round." as late as july 2007, goldstein had hamilton ranked as the 9th-best first-base prospect in the minors, on a list that also included daric barton and joey votto. "Hamilton’s power ranked with that of anyone else in last year’s draft," goldstein wrote then.

after his promotion to double A in mid-2007, hamilton struggled for a year and a half -- only 14 homers and a .383 slugging average in roughly 500 plate appearances, although he retained a decent batting eye (about a 10 percent walk rate). this year hamilton has returned to mashing. he’s slugging .542 in 227 at-bats split between double A and triple A and seeing the ball very well, with a walk rate above 13 percent. this guy is as big and powerful as chris duncan but has a much shorter, more direct swing. he just turned 25 years old a couple weeks ago; probably wouldn’t hit for average in the big leagues, but would draw walks and hit for power.

if it were up to me, i'd find a way to call hamilton up to the cardinals before august 31 and see what he can do. the cardinals need a good left-handed bat on the bench; hamilton could be it. the problem is that he only plays one position, first base -- in other words, hamilton would be strictly a pinch-hitter, because there’s nowhere to put him in the field. but with khalil greene, julio lugo, mark derosa, and skip schumaker all on the roster, the cards have plenty of flexibility. i still wouldn’t dump joe thurston (unlike most of you); if you dump superjoe and hamilton doesn’t pan out, then your next best option for an lh bench bat is john jay. i do like jay, but i'm not convinced he offers more than thurston does in the short run. so i'd drop the pitching staff to 11 pitchers for a day or two to get hamilton onto the roster and qualified for the postseason; after sept 1 there’s plenty of room for him.

allen craig had 4 hits in the game, and i like his swing too; he looks like a big-league hitter to me. too bad he doesn’t play a decent 3b, he could make everyone stop lamenting the trade of brett wallace.

gogogogogogogogogogogogogogogogogogo . . . . .

 

pineiro	huff
5-6, 3.97	1-2, 8.71

 

huff, a supplemental 1st-rounder out of ucla in 2006 (chosen between adam ottavino and chris perez), cruised comfortably through the minors and got called up last month. he's a command-type lefty, ie he survives by hitting the corners and staying ahead in the count. Indians Prospect Insider ranked him as the #5 prospect in the cleveland system this season: their preseason scouting report:

[Huff's] fastball plays up because of his devastating plus changeup.  His changeup is his money pitch and a legitimate weapon against lefties and righties.  He displays just as much confidence in his changeup as he does his fastball, and is able to throw it in any count or situation.  Last year his slider developed into an effective breaking pitch he can use against left-handers.  The slider is firm with good depth and is now the third plus pitch in his arsenal and a potential out pitch at the next level.  He mixes in a 12-6 curveball which is real sharp and has a lot of depth to it, but is mostly used as a show-me pitch. 

Huff has a veteran attack plan and is all about command, movement and velocity.  While he does not overpower hitters, he has unbelievable confidence and a very good feel for his fastball which he commands well to both sides of the plate and to the corners on all four quadrants.  He is aggressive and attacks hitters, and he has a great, athletic delivery which deceives hitters and he repeats very well.  He is a pitcher you like to watch pitch because he is smart and knows how to pitch by moving the ball around in and out, gets the breaking ball and changeup over and knows how to use them, and he constantly makes adjustments to hitters in game by reading their swings.  He also does a good job of being consistent around the zone.  He is a very polished, confident mentally tough pitcher who has answered every challenge and has shown the ability to pitch in big games and pitch out of tight situations.

sounds like the type of guy who'll eat the cardinals alive . . . .

here are some random trade musings for friday morning; danup returns to the chair next tuesday.

miguel tejada?: joe strauss snuck that name into a notes column yesterday -- at the very bottom, where we might not notice it. strikes me as exceedingly unlikely to happen -- the astros (like most teams) don’t make deals within their division, and moreover they don’t view themselves as out of the race. why should they? they’re only 5 games behind the cards, just 5.5 games out of first place. if we’re in the race, so are the ’stros. . . . . but let’s just pretend this were possible; how helpful would such an acquisition be?

tejada leads the league in hitting so far this year, but that almost surely won’t continue; once the BA heads back toward the mean, what’s left? tejada still hits a lot of doubles, but since coming to the nl a year and a half ago he has only gone yard 5 times away from the astros’ cozy home park (including 0 times this season); he’s basically a gap-power hitter at this point. kinda like joe thurston. of greater concern, tejada’s defense is atrocious. according to his UZR values at fangraphs, he’s been costing his teams runs for several years and this season is at -19 runs per 150 games. presumably the cardinals envision him at 3b initially, a position he has never played in the big leagues before (although i'll grant that it’s an easy shift from ss to 3b). he might rise to the level of league-averageness at the hot corner, but if glaus does return, then tejada probably gets the everyday ss job -- and that hurts the team. over the course of two months, he’d be about 10 runs worse with the glove than brendan ryan / tyler greene; i don’t think his bat is good enough anymore to overcome that fielding deficit. tejada had a .701 ops away from houston last season, with isolated power of .087; this year his ops away from houston is .805, not all that much better than thurston’s .748.

a tejada trade would be the type of move that would satisfy la russa’s (and pujols’s) yen to add a brand-name player, but i question whether it would really make the cards better. in spite of the marquee name, i don’t see tejada as more than a modest improvement over the status quo -- and only if he stays at 3b. if he ends up playing shortstop every day, i think he makes the team worse. in the very unlikely event the astros were willing to make tejada available to a detested nl central rival, they’d surely demand premium talent in return . . . . pass.

felipe lopez?: the cards saved the guy’s career last season; maybe he could return the favor this year and bail out the cards’ flagging offense. the dbacks are 9 games under .500 and 14 games out of first; brandon webb has been disabled all year with a sore shoulder. only the washington nationals’ season is more dead than the dbacks’. lopez is on a one-year deal and would only cost the cards about $2m in additional payroll, plus a modest (and expandable) prospect. although he’s not a markedly better hitter than what we’ve seen from joe thurston, lopez is a switch hitter who punishes left-handers. his career UZR/150 at 3b is +6 runs (including +18 in his 13 games at the position for st louis last year), and he’s an average defender at 2b. he’s a more likely "get" than tejada -- and also, imho, a better fit for the cardinals.

doug davis?: this lefty starter, also dead weight on the sinking diamondback roster, might have a bigger positive impact than any 3b on the market right now. i know the cards are supposed to be looking for a hitter, not a pitcher . . . . but with lohse out and wellemeyer sucking, adding a reliable starting pitcher surely couldn’t hurt this team. davis is a pending free agent with an $8.5m salary this year and sports a 3.42 ERA; his FIP is only 4.79, but davis (like tom glavine, a similar pitcher) has a history of posting ERAs that are better than his FIP. in the st louis ballpark, i'd feel safe in projecting 6+ ip per start with a 4.00 ERA; his k rate is still good, and he’s the type of pitcher (veteran, groundballer) who tends to work well w/ dave duncan. it would probably cost the cardinals at least one young arm, and not an inconsequential one -- wave bye-bye to one or two of boggs, motte, perez, todd, etc. steep price for a rental, but given that the cards have a deep stockpile of such arms, i’d give very serious consideration to that type of a deal.

jarrod washburn?: another expensive pending free-agent lefty on a dead-end team. the mariners are playing .500 and are only about 5 games out of first, but who are they kidding? the cards reportedly made inquiries on washburn last year, and i heartily endorsed that idea; i still do. washburn is pitching for a new contract and having a fine season; he wouldn’t cost nearly as much in talent terms as his teammate erik bedard (also a pending FA), but like davis he’d bolster the rotation and give the cards a southpaw option. probably would cost at least as much as davis in talent terms.

Poll

Which player would you most like the Cards to deal for?

14%

Miguel Tejada

205 votes

7%

Felipe Lopez

110 votes

16%

Doug Davis

244 votes

16%

Jarrod Washburn

233 votes

44%

none of the above

644 votes

1436 votes | Poll has closed

identify this quote:

"please baby please baby please baby please baby please . . . "

. . . . . like, please win a damn game.

carpenter	johnson
4-0, 0.71	5-1, 2.63

 

draft thread is directly below the game thread. overflow game thread scheduled for ~ 7:30 pm st louis time.

since he smashed face-first into that wall, rick ankiel has struck out once for every 3 plate appearances; prior to getting hurt, he only fanned once per 5 PA. ryan ludwick's numbers are considerably more stable ---- 6 PA/K before he got hurt, and 5 PA/K afterward. seems like maybe he's just got to get his timing back, whereas ankiel ain't seeing the ball at all . . . ..

anyway, ludwick's sitting tonight and ankiel is hitting 5th. rasmus bats cleanup. oh hell, here are the full lineups:

STL	FLA
schu 2b	coghlan lf
dunc lf	bonifacio 3b
hombre 1b	hanley ss
rasmus cf	cantu 1b
ankiel rf	hermida rf
yadi c	ugga 2b
t greene 3b	baker c
carp p	ross cf
ryan ss	johnson p

 

the game thread's directly above. i won't be here to update the picks &c., but hopefully somebody will do that. elsewhere, Future Redbirds has got a live draft chat going ---- cool stuff, check it out --- and i think (not sure) the red baron will be holding forth at The Rundown.

 

Hey, y'all. Baron here. The Cards' first pick is Shelby Miller, a high school righty out of Texas. Throws really, really hard. Love love love this pick. The Cards finally leveraged that depth into a high-upside, possible core player. Good stuff.

Here's a report.

The Cards take Robert Stock out of USC with their second round pick. Stock, you may remember, is the kid who left high school at 16 to go to USC, and he's only 19 now. He's more of a pitcher now, with velocity up into the mid 90s. Creative, and interesting, at the very least. In the 3rd round, the Cardinals go with Joe Kelly, and make me look all kinds of prescient after saying they've had a lot of success lately taking a lot of strong-armed college relievers the past few drafts.

howdy gang; i'll be sitting in today and friday while danup takes his annual leave of the pixels. i got nothing to say about the team this morning that you don’t already know; start hitting soon, boys. please?

the amateur draft starts tonight with rounds 1 through 3, plus a couple of sandwich rounds; i’ll post a comment thread for that, and a concurrent one for the baseball game against florida. i won’t be on hand tonight to update the picks on the front page as they’re made, so if anybody with keys to the blog has a chance to do that, go for it. and thank you.

this will be the 5th luhnow-run draft; that’s a lot of drafts for one guy. according to Baseball America’s executive database, only three scouting directors have run more drafts for the cardinal franchise -- marty maier, fred mcalister (rip), and george silvey. and maier’s were non-consecutive, which leaves silvey and mcalister -- both franchise legends -- as the only two men with longer uninterrupted stints than luhnow at the head of the draft.

there’s still plenty of room for argument about how effectively luhnow has drafted. he’s already had 10 draftees get to the majors -- rasmus, greene, boggs, stavinoha, and garcia from the 2005 draft; perez, walters, luke gregerson, and sugar shane from ’06; todd from ’07 -- but none has been around long enough to establish how good a big-leaguer he will be. the pundits give luhnow good marks -- since he started drafting, the cardinals’ farm system ranking (according to the likes of baseball america, keith law, and kevin goldstein) has jumped from at or near the bottom in 2005 to the top 10 this year. but there are a lot of doubters too, as joe strauss documented in his p-d article on sunday:

anybody want to guess who the anonymous speaker of the last quote is? i'll bet you a number-one draft pick it’s dave duncan . . . . whichever "jocketty holdover" did say it, that comment made me laugh. in the years immediately before luhnow took over, the cardinals didn’t draft players you could build a triple A team around, much less a big-league club. during the dying days of jocketty’s tenure, he’d look down at the memphis roster for a short-term fill-in and his best options would be washed-out 30ish hitters like scott seabol, brian daubach, or timo perez, or mound journeymen like brian falkenborg and kelvin jimenez. the top "prospects" drafted late on jocketty’s watch, such as travis hanson and reid gorecki, didn’t even rise to the level of replacement players.

so it’s a fact -- not an opinion -- that the farm system is stocked with vastly more promise than it was when luhnow took over. he’s been procuring players for four years now, and in that time he’s brought into the organization two likely major-league regulars (colby rasmus and brett wallace), several others who are possible regulars or semi-regulars (daryl jones, pete kozma, tyler greene, bryan anderson), a bunch of others who have bench-player potential (most notably allen craig, john jay, tyler henley, daniel descalso), and a passel of guys with a good chance to stick somewhere as a reliever or mid- to back-rotation starter (mitch boggs, jaime garcia, lance lynn, clay mortensen, chris perez, jess todd, luke gregerson, francisco samuel, fernando salas). that’s not including anybody who’s presently at class A or below (ie, nearly the entire 2008 draft class), nor toolsy caribbean signees like roberto de la cruz and eduardo sanchez and gerardo mannbel.

let’s place that haul alongside the production of previous four-year spans:

	2005-08	2001-04	1997-00	1993-96
STARS	????	dan haren	albert pujols jd drew	matt morris
REGULARS	probably 3 to 5	skip schumaker	adam kennedy yadi molina jack wilson chris duncan coco crisp rick ankiel	placido polanco alan benes braden looper
PART-TIMERS	possibly 8 to 10	kyle mclellan joe mather brad thompson daric barton brendan ryan anthony reyes jason motte	bud smith mike crudale pablo ozuna	eli marrero jay witasick cliff polite britt reames chris richard kerry robinson brent butler

in this chart, the "regulars" category includes starting pitchers who earne a regular rotation spot, plus closers; "part-timers" includes non-closers in the bullpen. i didn’t bother to list replacement-level players (such as stavinoha and shane robinson), who are legion in all the 4-year periods and of absolutely no interest.

what immediately jumps out at me is that the cardinals drafted their asses off in the late 1990s -- and thereby set up the dynasty of the 2000s. between 1997 and 2000 they brought 8 everyday players into the organization, or 2 per year. they drafted an entire up-the-middle core -- yadi behind the plate; kennedy and wilson in the middle infield; crisp in center -- plus a pitcher with ace potential (ankiel) and two mvp-type hitters (pujols and drew). even though they squandered some of the talent (crisp and wilson were both dealt for half-season rentals, and ankiel you know about), the cardinals added an extraordinary amount of value to their portfolio during those years. we don’t think of the 2000s dynasty as being draft-built, but it really was -- their good drafts in the last half of the 1990s yielded albert pujols and matt morris plus (via trade) edgar renteria, jim edmonds, and scott rolen.

could the 2005-08 draft cohort turn out to be as productive as 97-00? not likely, but not impossible. if we’re lucky, rasmus and/or wallace might eventually fit into the "star" category; they might be the two most promising position players the cardinals have drafted since pujols (although wallace’s early showing at memphis -- 4 walks, 21 strikeouts, .088 isolated power in 91 at-bats -- does give me slight pause). daryl jones could turn into coco crisp, and pete kozma could grow up to be jack wilson (a player he was compared to at the time he was drafted); so could tyler greene, for that matter. there might be a closer (perez) and/or a rotation regular or two in the group. . . . in an extremely lucky scenario, there might be 8 everyday players (including a star or two) to come out of luhnow’s first four drafts. more likely the group will produce 3 to 5 regulars plus some bench depth; a good, not great, haul.

will the cardinals be able to build a contending team around these guys? too soon to tell; ask me again when luhnow’s preparing for his 8th or 9th draft . . . . .

 

Red Baron Note: Hey, gang, Aaron here. I'm going to be covering the draft as it happens over at the RFT, and I'll try to keep the draft thread here updated too whenever a pick is made. I'll probably save the heavy analysis, but I will make sure at least the names and maybe a link or a couple of sentences is put up.

Also, I know Erik is doing a liveblog over at FR via the CoverItLive software, so be sure to check that out as well. Lord, I love draft day.

pour it on, birdos. pour it on.

 

wellemeyer	zimmerman
1-2, 6.14	2-0, 2.38

there have been 9 players named "zimmerman" in major league history; the 2009 nationals have two of them. the guy pitching tonight, jordan zimmerman, is the second "jordan zimmerman" to reach the major leagues; the first one had a 7.88 career era in 8 games for the mariners in 1999.

j zim the 2nd was the 67th player drafted in the 2007 draft, chosen a few players in front of jess todd. quoting an old post from the Mound Talk blog:

Zimmerman boasts a good reportoire of pitches starting with his fastball. A true plus pitch, he works in the 91-93 range consistently. He has good heavy sinking motion on his fastball and will attack hitters on the lower half of the plate with it.

Zimmerman threw a good slider with sharp, late bite to it in college but has stopped throwing it as much at the instruction of the Washington Nationals.

Lagging behind these pitches are his changeup and curveball. His curve is becoming a bigger part of his aresenal with the diminishing use of the slider. He throws a big 12-6 curve that sits in the low 70s.

Everything about Jordan Zimmerman looks good. He is a big, college pitcher with lots of projection. He is polished and has great makeup. Even for a college pitcher, his polish and makeup is advanced. For this reason, he should be fast-tracked by the Nationals.

he got called up on april 20 and has pitched 2 games, both wins (vs the braves and the mets).

 

happy may day, ev’yone; what a great month april was. i'm filling the chair for dan while he gets the last of his undergraduate assignments out of the way. some random items:

 

i) boggs tossed another nice game. i'd like to say his slider was unhittable, because when the nationals swung at it they almost always missed; he got 6 swinging strikes on the pitch, vs only two balls in play. unfortunately, one of the latter was zimmerman’s home run in the 1st inning . . . . . . but never mind that. seems fair to say it’s a big-league pitch. boggs also got some swing-misses on his high fastball, including one by adam dunn to start off the 6th inning. that pitch was clocked at 93 mph, so don’t chalk up the unhappy events that immediately ensued to fatigue. boggs was still bringing it.

austin kearns swung through another fastball right before the hbp, which was the only real mistake pitch of the inning. the triple and double both came on pitches at the bottom of the strike zone -- a sinker to flores, a changeup to anderson. not great pitches, but neither was terrible. the fastball to zimmerman that ended the 5th was far worse, a fastball belly-button high down the middle; zimmerman drove it to the wall and nearly put the nationals ahead right then. indeed, that was a far more troublesome inning in my estimation; boggs hit cabrera, an automatic out if ever there was one (19 strikeouts in 20 career at-bats, or something on that order), and had to face the top of the order with men on base. he kept throwing his slider in the dirt, which enabled the nats to sit on his fastball; johnson whacked one for a single, and zimmerman almost blasted another one over the wall. boggs was lucky to escape that frame with the lead intact.

all in all, a very encouraging outing. boggs now has 4 walks vs 15 strikeouts this year; i'd a lot rather have him in the rotation than (for example) jon garland. i'm looking forward to his next outing.

ii) the game-tying and game-winning hits came from a man i derided in the Maple Street Press 2009 Annual as "the automatic out" in clutch situations. if you haven’t seen that article (and for shame, if that’s so), last year ankiel was beyond bad in high-leverage situations: in his 30 highest-leverage at-bats of 2008, he only got 3 hits and struck out 18 times. before last night, ankiel was sucking in his key 2009 at-bats, too: 1 hit in his 10 highest-leverage situations to start the year, with 3 whiffs. his woes last year were mostly due to overagressiveness vs breaking balls; luckily for rick, he saw only fastballs in the 7th and 9th last night. he did show some discernment during his 7th-inning at-bat, when the cards trailed 4-3 and had the tying run on 3d with one out. the first pitch was a borderline fastball, just outside; ankiel let it go, got the call, and went ahead in the count. that forced the pitcher to keep throwing fastballs, insofar as the sacks were jammed.

so far this season, in 18 at-bats deemed "high leverage" by baseball-reference (leverage index of 1.50 or higher), ankiel has 5 hits (.278 average), including 2 doubles, and only 3 strikeouts. signs of growth; may they continue.

iii) tyler greene became the 5th member of the 2005 draft class to play for the cardinals; indeed, fully 1/3 of last night’s lineup (boggs, greene, rasmus) came from that draft. if bryan anderson and daryl jones make it to The Show (as seems likely), they’ll bring the 2005 tally up to 7. the last cardinal draft to produce as many as 7 big-league players was the 1999 draft, which yielded 8 (including pujols, chris duncan, and coco crisp). only 6 of those guys broke in with the cardinals, though. the last draft to produce as many as 7 cardinal players was the class of 1991, which graduated 10 guys to st louis: dmitri young, allen watson, brian barber, john mabry, doug creek, allen battle, mike difelice, mike busby, john fracatore, and rigo beltran. . . . . ok, so quantity does not necessarily equal quality.

iv) the cardinals finish april with a 3.65 era, extending a run of fine first-month performances from the staff. the challenge has been to pitch well after april:

	april	after april
2009	3.65	???
2008	3.41	4.36
2007	4.20	4.73
2006	3.35	4.76
2005	3.38	3.50

the last time they pitched well all year was 2005 -- which, not coincidentally, is the last time they went through a whole year without a significant injury on the pitching staff. the 2009 team has already suffered the injury (carpenter), so if things hold to form we can expect the staff to begin unraveling any day now . . . . . but maybe this year will be different. maybe (fingers crossed) the farm system has now had time to produce the depth that was lacking in previous years. in addition to boggs, the cards can look south and bolster the staff with clay mortenson (1.45 era at triple A after his win last night), jess todd (1.46 era in relief), or big-league vets brad thompson and josh kinney. even blake hawksworth might become an option; he threw a gem the other night and has posted much better peripherals so far this year (0 hr in 22 innings, 6 strikeouts per 9 innings) than we’ve seen from him at triple A. we can hope there’ll be no mike maroths this year, nor any kelvin jimenezes, randy keislers, jorge sosas, or (praise god) "rehabbed" mark mulders to muck up the warm-weather pitching line.

having said that, the rotation merits close watching. wainwright still hasn’t found a groove, wellemeyer’s struggling like crazy, pineiro could turn into a pumpkin at any moment, and boggs still has everything to prove. in spite of the rotation’s terrific april line (13-2, 3.26 era), i'm holding my breath until carpenter returns. and will keep holding it every time he pitches, sneezes, or bends at the waist. . . .

to quote one of my favorite writers, the great jim anchower: hola amigos. i know it’s been awhile since i rapped at ya. . . . hope 2009 is off to a good start for ev’yone. danup is on the road today, so i’m filling in for him. i’ll do my best not to rehash too much old ground . . . . although what other type of ground is there in this slooooow off-season market? it’s all been hashed up pretty good. anyway, here goes.

first of all: the cubs signed so taguchi to a minor-league deal. gooch becomes the fourth member of the 2006 championship team to be acquired by the northsiders, following marquis, edmonds, and miles. no doubt jim hendry has made contact w/ scott spiezio’s agent, and there must be hopeful stirrings in the preston wilson and jeff weaver households.

next item: if the trade market for xavier nady is so hot (and that’s what i keep reading), then why the hell can’t the cardinals find any interest in ankiel? he and nady are both in their free-agent year, but ankiel’s a year younger, walks more often, has more power, and has a lot more value as a defender. nady has been linked in the rumor mill to the braves, nationals, pirates, reds, and giants --- and that’s just in the last week. the orioles and angels would also figure to be potential suitors. my guess is that the trade market will remain frozen until man-ram, adam dunn, and bobby abreu sign; once there are no free-agent bats left, maybe ---- maybe ---- the cardinals will get the offer they are looking for on ankiel (or, alternatively, ludwick).

if they don’t, they'll just have to pick up one of the 237 free-agent pitchers who remain unsigned. matt leach posted a rundown yesterday of that market, which even at this late date holds plenty of interest. ben sheets is on the list, and as much as we’d all like him to become a cardinal, we know it ain’t happening; he’s neither affordable nor reliably healthy, and therefore fails on both of the cardinals’ prime criteria. the team already has one $15m-a-year crapshoot in the rotation, and there aren’t many clubs that can afford more than one of those --- or even one, for that matter.

the only other pitcher leach mentions who’s actually good is andy pettitte. i might rather have pettitte than sheets, given his superior health record. but i doubt he will end up in st. louis, for the simple reason that he has never expressed any interest in pitching here. even though his two previous teams (yankees and astros) are both out of the running, andy might still have an offer in his home state of texas (the rangers) or back in new york (the mets) --- and if he doesn’t, he might just retire. it seems unlikely to me that the cards would offer him $15m on a one-year deal, and if they did i don’t think it’s likely pettitte would take it. if both those things were to happen, hallelujah.

once you get past those two guys, you’re down to the garland / looper / perez tier; perez will be too expensive (the mets are gonna throw tons of money at him), and the other guys just aren’t that much better than the top in-house option, kyle mcclellan. on the contrary, mcclellan (my opinion) has more raw ability than anyone left on the market besides sheets and pettitte; he’s got a live arm, good mound presence, and command of three big-league pitches. to that, you can add the fact that mcclellan is club-controlled for another 5 years and has some upside, which is the main thing lacking in the looper / garland model. even if you get a decent season out of a stopgap like that, you haven’t really moved your team forward; you still have the same damn problem, a so-so rotation. guys like that seal in mediocrity; they keep your team from backsliding too much, but they also keep it from moving forward. whereas if the young player pans out, you’ve got one less problem to solve for the next few years.

duncan thinks mcclellan has the makings of a starter --- same as he thought about wainwright, looper, and wellemeyer . . . .

as unsatisfying as the off-season has been so far, i can’t relate to the angry-fan stuff. the cards aren’t in bad shape. they didn’t lose anyone of consequence off last year’s team, they improved at shortstop very cheaply, their in-house personnel ought to improve the bullpen, and they've got near-ready prospects at several positions. they still have question marks, and they still haven’t made the redefining move they are so primed to make this off-season --- the acquisition that opens a new window of world-title opportunity. the cards came into the off-season with money to spend and talent surpluses to deal from; if they come out of it with nothing more than khalil greene, trever miller, and (let’s just say) jon garland, that’ll be frustrating. but splashy off-seasons don't always pan out --- viz. the mariners and tigers last winter --- and dull off-seasons sometimes do. after their disappointing third-place finish in 2003, the cards had a lackluster winter and seemed to fall further behind the competition. while the cubs added greg maddux and the astros added clemens and pettitte, jocketty did nothing more than acquire a couple of free-agent stabilizers (jeff suppan and reggie sanders) and a bunch of retreads and rejects --- jason marquis, roger cedeno, julian tavarez, marlon anderson. the cards didn't land their starting second baseman, tony womack, until the last week of spring training; their opening-day platoon in left field consisted of anderson (a journeyman middle infielder) and 37-year-old ray lankford, who’d been out of baseball for more than a year. they played .500 ball for the first month and a half of 2004 and looked like anything but a contender. . . . .

sometimes it takes a while for things to jell. maybe they will jell in 2009, or maybe they won’t. it’s too soon to say.

Game 2 of the NLCS; Game 1 of the ALCS. enjoy the baseball, enjoy the weekend.