Daily Prospect Report 7/20/07

Jim Masilak writes that the Memphis rotation is in flux. Why this is a concern/issue bewilders me as luminaries such as Kiesler and Smith should be moved from bullpen to rotation at need since they have zero value to the organization. I know it’s crude to view them as chips and that’s obviously not how Maloney can handle them but they are really just cogs in the AAA club and I’m sure they realize that for the most part their time as prospects is past.

Sean Danielson has a strong arm — or at least that’s what people perceive it as. I’m trying to find some articles on defense particularly relating to outfield arms and I’ve only come across one at THT. . .and I’m not sure I like the analysis. This has to be one of the more difficult things to quantify since the perception of an outfielder having a good arm (be it right or wrong) may or may not cause runners to hold up on a single or going first to third. If that’s the case, do we attribute the runs saved to the OF’s arm even if that’s simply a public misperception. I need to dig deeper here. Kary Booher’s article is interesting but the premise strikes me as something that’s difficult to pinpoint.

Booher’s also got some words on Rasmus. Another area I’m not sure on is what is causing this recent slump for Rasmus. Could be luck related or a significant slump. Is he hitting a wall with steady diets of good breaking balls? I wish I had answers but I’m not sure what’s up. Let’s hope it ends quickly.

Arnoldi Cruz is the new Bill Brasky. Anthony Reyes pitches well for Memphis. Blake King rears his head and a pair of GCL batters are off to fine starts. It’s all here in the one, the only, Daily Prospect Report.

Cardinals dinking around with another draft pick

I’d really like this guy, so naturally the Cardinals are low-balling College World Series hero Mike Stutes–

“We’ve had a long negotiation process, and it’s been rocky at times,” said Stutes, the Beavers’ top winner (12-4) and the victor in the June 24 national championship game against North Carolina. “They (the Cardinals) are a good organization and I’d like to play for them, but this is a tough decision to make.

“It’s 50-50 about going back to school, and I’m almost leaning on going back to school.”

This is really starting to irritate me, Stutes is a great arm and I don’t think a few thousand dollars should keep the Cardinals for signing him. Of course, this made me think of Rice’s Tyler Henley, I couldn’t find any word on him on whether or not he’s going to sign. As I type this, I thought I’d do a li’l google search regarding our ol’ pal Kyle Russell…

And I find News Channel 8 of Austin saying…

The Cardinals have another month to come to terms with last years leading homerun hitter but apparently both sides aren’t even close and Russell has already made up his mind to return to Texas.

Sure. Ok. That’s fine……….LDJF:LKSFJ LSKJF LKJDFL:K JSLDJ FLKSJD :FLKJS:LKSF JLKSJ F LKSLF S FL: S FLSKJFL:KSJLKFJ

SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!

SLJ:LSDJ:SLK JF:LKJ NVOIUJW” ){&U)&*YH VLNVN.

–quick update. i’ve pulled the colby and russell watches. i figured they are bad luck. colby hasn’t been hitting for almost 2 months now, and russell’s headed back to Texas. sorry.

Daily Prospect Report 7/19/07

BA has some mideason minor league AllStar teams. Bryan Anderson gets an honorable mention while Allen Craig, Rick Ankiel and Joe Mather all qualify for the “All Surprise Team”. I’m going to come up with an All-Gimmicky-Reason-To-Make-A-List Team one of these days. It’ll include everyone who a) hit into a triple play in the minors b) hit an inside the park homerun and c) pitched a no-hitter. I may also pick some players for their name cache because the other reasons don’t have quite enough gimmick to them.

Damn but I love these Swing “Meet the Prospect” pieces. Meet Tim Dorn.

Do you have any superstitions? What are they?
I run five sprints before each game.

I don’t run five sprints ever. Unless there was a disease ridden beast chasing me, I like to avoid any activity that looks like sprinting.

Who is your favorite musician and why?
Bert McCracken from “The Used.” He has a great voice and plays a good piano.

Not bad taste in music at least.

What has been the highlight of your career up to this point?
Getting brought into this organization.

Tim, what’s that brown stuff on your nose?

Ahhh, these questionnaires just crack me up! The rest of the news was covered yesterday in the thread below.

Cory Rauschenberger shuts down the opposition but gets upstaged by PJ Walters. Jon Jay returns to the lineup and Beau Riportella continues to hit. Guess what! Some of our teams won some games tonight. Find out who in the Daily Prospect Report.

Thursday News Roundup

Baseball America does a Q&A with Clayton Mortenson.  My favorite part –

BA:  Tell us something most people don’t know about you.
 
CM:   I’m a video game nerd.  I play a variety of games, and I play them all the time.

Clay, can I call you Clay?  K, thanks — might I recommend Dungeon Siege II.  I just purchased it and am already addicted.

Tyler Greene is going to have what could be season ending surgery.  I couldn’t add this to last nights DPR as the boxscores were disheartening enough.  (By the way, answering my rhetorical questions in the comments — Brilliant!)  Greene’s always had highly touted tools but never really seemed to get everything together.  At this point he looks more like a bench player than a regular starter and maybe not even a viable SS backup depending on who you ask.

Chris Narveson is trying to get himself back into working order.   Kid missed a big opportunity with his untimely oblique strain (about which there were conflicting reports) given how awful some of the STL Cardinals’ starters have been this season.  He’ll be a minor league free agent at the end of the year so he may not be with the organization next year.  He’s always been one of those prospects I liked regardless of performance.

Mark Hamilton does his best to make AZ look like an ass.  Remember my Mike Ferris comment way back when.  ya…about that.  I can promise you that I won’t ever shirk what I say on this site and I seem to have been overly hard on Hamilton.  That’s gonna happen.  I’m gonna mess up on prospects (erik stood up for him) and I’m ok with that.  He’s still just in AA but he’s really turned it on since his dismal April.  Well done, Mr. Hamilton.

Chris Lambert is a terrible pitcher.  Nope, I think that about sums it up on that topic.

{Update} As I mentioned on erik’s thread, I shot Joe Strauss an e-mail regarding Bryan Anderson.  Here’s my e-mail and his response (after the jump — this got too long):

Daily Prospect Report 7/18/07

What an awful set of boxscores I’m forced to bring you tonight. Without preamble or comment, please begin the funeral dirge as we enter the Daily Prospect Report.

Whaddya know, Joe?

Is this a chat with Joe Morgan…or Joe Strauss?

MaggieD:I have a question about Yadier Molina’s contract. I know his contracts have been year to year for the last few years. Is he coming up on a long-term contract at the end of this year, and if so, do any of the minor leaguers pose any significant competition for his job??
Joe Strauss:Molina becomes arbitration-eligible after this season. I anticipate the Cardinals will approach him about a multi-year arrangement. He does not have a challenger within the system as the team’s starting catcher.

Not one challenger? Not one? Really? C’mon, Joe. You’re smarter then that. The non-stop love affair this town has with all glove-no hit catchers astounds me. Maybe Kevin Goldstein can tell us who Yadi’s challenger might be in his latest editition of Future Shock.

Anderson had a very good year in 2006, batting .302/.377/.417 in his Midwest League full-season debut, but nobody saw him as the kind of talent that would be ready for a two-level jump to the Texas League. As it turned out, not only was he ready, but he’s now ranked second in the circuit’s batting race. Defensively, Anderson is neither plus nor deficient in any area, but it’s his bat that’ll keep getting him promoted. That said, Anderson’s primary value as a hitter comes from his batting average. He’s an aggressive, contact-oriented hitter who attacks balls early, with a slicing swing that isn’t designed much for power or power potential. Anderson is a very good prospect doing very well while being young for the level, but it’s easier to see him developing into that rare catcher who fits in the number two spot of a lineup than his developing into a true impact hitter.

I guess there’s no place for a hitting catcher in the Lou…the team’s crazy Matheny-esque catcher fixation. What happens with Tony and Walt in the near future should be telling regarding Anderson’s future on whether he’ll be donning the birds on the bat or if we’ll be witnessing years of Yadi-ism.

I’m not saying Yadi isn’t a fine catcher and I truly believe he should hit better then he has so far in his career…but give me Anderson over Yadi any day.

Fact Checking: Revisiting the Draft

I made a claim Monday that I shouldn’t have made. I said:

But what’s odd is that the last two drafts have deviated from the success of 2005.

Now there are two reasons that this was a more aggressive statement than was fair at the time. 1) We’re looking at the 2006 draft with the benefit of another year. At the time, the 2005 draft looked good but I’m not sure it looked this good — i.e. two position players and a starting pitcher that project as above average regulars. So I’m saying Luhnow deviated from “success” when in 2006 it wasn’t as definitive either way — and it still may not be deemed a success. 2) This reason is more reckless on my part and it’s one I need to avoid. I hadn’t done my homework before hand. I was relatively sure that I was making a correct statement but it’s unfair of me to make characterizations without having done the research to verify them.

7/17/07 Daily Prospect Report

Goold has the latest scoop on Kozma, saying the team hopes to sign him by next week.

Jocketty said he does not think Kozma will be unsigned by the deadline. The player taken two picks ahead of Kozma received a $1.4 million signing bonus and the Cardinals’ next pick, 36th overall, received a $650,000 bonus. “I hope to get this moving in the next couple days,” said Jocketty, who is handling the negotiations with Kozma’s representatives. “It’s important to get him out there and playing.”

Again, I say he needs to take the money the Cards offered or leave it. I know today I said I am hoping he doesn’t sign, but if he does it won’t make me unhappy, either. Not in the least. I want to be wrong about my judgments regarding Kozma, I really do. The org should have more info that any source and they like him, so that accounts for much. I still stand by my statements, and that’s my last word on it, at least for now.

Baseball America has their midseason top 25, and Colby Rasmus is listed at #12 overall. They also say Bryan Anderson has a very good shot breaking into the Top 100 for 2008.

Rasmus was back in Springfield’s lineup after sitting out the last 2 games after getting plunked in the head off a hanging curve.

David Eckstein has his own step stool giveaway night for the Lowell Spinners-

David Eckstein, last season’s World Series MVP, began his professional career in 1997 with the Lowell Spinners. The diminutive shortstop hit .301, stole 21 bases, and walked more times than he struck out, setting the stage for the success he would go on to achieve. On Friday, the Spinners will celebrate the 5-foot-6 Eckstein in a tongue-in-cheek manner by distributing “David Eckstein World Series MVP Step Stools” to the first 1,500 fans in attendance. Hopefully, this promo starts a trend throughout the Minors. Personally, I’d like to see a David Wells bathroom scale giveaway.

Good times.

And away we go…

The kontinuation of the Kozma kerfluffle

It’s been 40 days since the amateur draft and the #1 pick has yet to be signed. There’s not a peep on the front on what his status is and I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on. It’s not totally unusual, many of the top picks have gone unsigned still, including David Price, Mike Moustakas, Josh Vitters, Daniel Moskos, Matt Wieters, Matt Dominguez, to name a few. I’m just starting to wonder a little bit if after all the talk about him being the next Nomar that the Cards aren’t getting cold feet. One of Kozma’s selling points was his sign-ability, yet the August 15th deadline is less then a month away. That could be a good thing. Why do I say that? With the new MLB collective bargaining agreement in place, the Cards have some big time insurance–

Several draft alterations, ranging from a uniform Aug. 15 signing deadline to compensation for unsigned picks, will change how both teams and players experience the process, as well as how much and when money changes hands.

The most notable changes are those that deal with draft-pick compensation–both for teams that fail to sign a high pick as well as those who lose major league free agents in the offseason.Teams that fail to sign a first-round pick no longer receive an extra pick after the first round as compensation, but instead a virtually identical pick the following year; for example, a team that fails to sign the No. 5 pick one year will receive the No. 6 pick the next, rather than one in the 30s or 40s.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the Kozma pick to begin with, many felt the Cardinals could’ve got a similar player in the supplemental round in Justin Jackson. The Baseball America folks seem to think he’s great, while others like Bryan Smith, Kevin Goldstein, Keith Law to name few where underwhelmed. Heck, the scout that recommended him (Steve Gossett) compared him to likes of mediocrities such as Jack Wilson and Mark Loretta for crying out loud. And the opinion I tend to respect the most is Mr. internet scout himself, Carlos Gomez. He detailed out Kozma’s rather ugly swing, dubbing it one of the worst swings of the draft. (And he was shocked to find a worse one! Sorry, Minnesota fans.)

The Cardinals have all the leverage here. Kozma can take the deal they offered or walk to Wichita State. There are plenty of other fish in the sea for ’08, and at this rate it looks like the Cardinals could get a top 10-15 pick AND the 19th pick of the draft next season. What really do they have to lose?

Derrick Goold said yesterday that if the Cardinals did not sign Kozma that would take some of the shine off of Luhnow’s star. I’m not so sure about that. Right now, I’m actually rooting for them NOT to sign Kozma. They could just give most of his bonus to Kyle Russell (there is no compensation for 4th rounders, btw) and walk away winners in my opinion.

7/16/07 Daily Prospect Report

Mark Hamilton won the Texas League “Player of the Week”

Hamilton has had a smooth transition from the Florida State League to the Texas League. In 23 games played with the Cardinals, the Baltimore native has looked right at home. This week he helped his team go 4-2 by going 11-for-24 with five runs scored, three doubles, a home run, seven RBIs and an impressive .708 slugging percentage. The 22-year-old posted back-to-back 3-for-5 games in wins against Wichita, driving in five runs to help lead his team.

Eddie Degerman made the cut on BA’s latest Hot Sheet:

The former Rice standout found mixed results in low Class A Quad Cities’ tag-team pitching rotation–Degerman went 1-1, 1.93 in six starts (28 innings) compared to 0-0, 3.20 in six relief appearances (19.2 innings). The trend continued after a July promotion to the Florida State League: Degerman has 13 strikeouts and two earned runs in 11 innings as a starter compared to three earned runs and no strikeouts over three innings in a relief appearance.

DanUp has an eyewitness account of the funky delivery that belongs to Mark Worrell.

And on to three with the daily report:

Monday Afternoon Reading

Let’s review some articles today shall we.

7/15/07 Daily Prospect Report

Wilmer Alvarado was sent down to Johnson City. Brad Furnish was promoted to Palm Beach. And as I’m sure most of you all noticed tonight, Brendan Ryan was recalled to the bigs.

[updated 1:35, 7/16] Per the Swing’s site, Clay Mortensen is going to take Furnish’s place in the Swing’s rotation. Hat tip, Whiteyball.

Tough break for Allen Craig. He was just going to be promoted to Springfield, now he’s on the DL with lower back issues. His return is unclear at this time. Jon Jay also has been placed on the DL, his shoulder is acting up again.

Kary Booher has the story of Kyle McClellan‘s return from Tommy John. I knew he was from St. Louis, but didn’t know he played at Hazelwood West. Like seeing the locals in the system thriving. McClellan has been impressive to say the least coming out of the bullpen, between Palm Beach and Springfield he’s struck out 36 in 39.1 innings, walking just 7. He also has over a 55% ground ball rate.

And on to the daily report…