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).