Three Up, Three Down

I’m starting a new series, something that could be weekly but more likely bi-weekly. It’s just a quick glance at the present “hots” and “nots” in the system. Of course, there will usually be more then three players that fall in those categories at any given time; I’m just looking at the ones that stand out to me at the moment. So don’t be upset if I leave out your favorite player, it’s no snub. In this edition, I could’ve very easily talked about Clayton Mortensen, Bryan Anderson, and Daryl Jones in the “Who’s Up?” section. And I could’ve just as easily talked about Thomas Eager, Kenny Maiques or Colby Rasmus in the “Who’s Not” section. (On the other hand, the Raz is coming on a bit lately.) Chances are that player will probably get a mention in the next edition anyway. Of course, you can make an argument for those who are standing out to you, obviously that is part of the fun, and what makes the FR community as enjoyable as it is.

Without further adieu…

Walking the line

I wanted to check the theory on how indifferent the Cardinals have been towards walks when it comes to their early round draft picks, chiefly college pitchers. I find puzzling as to why the any team would take numerous chances with college players with wobbly control. If you’re gonna gamble on upside, you would think that would be on a few more high school pitchers, as presumably they are more impressionable and pliable. You’d also have to think it would be more challenging to attempt to correct the flaws of a more established college pitcher that’s already enjoyed a measure of success rather then an 17 or 18 year old kid. It seems like a method to stockpile the minors with future relievers, not starters. Anyway, here are the BB/9 numbers for players taken in Luhnow drafts. The #’s are their final college season. Yes, 2004 is included, although Luhnow wasn’t fully in charge of the draft at that time, his stamp is indelibly on it:

Predictions 08

Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com has started to publish his organizational previews this past week, and he takes a pretty nice look at the Cardinals. He gives you ten players to watch, his under the radar players, and predictions on who will be the organization’s player and pitcher of the year, comeback player of the year (is there such a thing?) and the team to watch. I thought for fun we could do the same. AZ, Roarke can feel free to jump in on the fun with their own posts or just in the comments if they wanna.

Pitching Health, Part 2: 2008 Workload

There are a multitude of reasons why pitching prospects don’t pan out.  I believe that, after talent, the biggest reason is health.  Every organization has had its share of pitching prospects that have flamed out, or at least have had their career temporarily derailed, due to injury and the Cardinals are no exception. 

There is no absolute connection between workload and injury – certain “rubber armed” pitchers seem to be able to throw endlessly without injury (Livan Hernandez comes to mind), but there is enough of a connection that teams are paying much closer attention to pitch counts than they used to, especially with younger pitchers.  The depth of the Cardinals system, at least according to most prospect lists, lies in our pitching prospects.  The question then, is what has their workload been thus far, and what would be ideal for 2008?  I’m going to take a look at five of the Cardinals top starting pitching prospects after the jump.

Mechanically inclined

Goold had some pretty interesting stuff to report out of camp the other day. Several of the Cards pitching prospects are at camp early, watching video, doing long toss and working with the new roving pitching instructor Brent Strom. Those pitchers are Garcia, Ottavino, Perez, Boggs, Mortensen and Walters- which also says something about their prospect status. One of the things that really caught my attention the work being done by Michael Witte, an on-staff consultant. Witte is not an ex-player, he’s just a fan. Doing a little googling, I found this article about him in the New Yorker. Witte is an illustrator by profession. Bored by his normal routine, he started going through old videos of games that featured Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, and Tom Seaver and felt he found common denominator in their mechanics and what helped them become so successful. He started sending his findings to the Cardinals, and eventually they came around on some of his theories. Sounds like our own version of Chris O’Leary or Carlos Gomez.

While I believe a good pitching coach worth his weight in salt ought to be able to find mechanical flaws in pitchers, I’m intrigued by the possibilities of utilizing video and finding what durable pitchers like Gibson and Seaver did to be successful and not fall apart while doing it. If many of our modern day pitching coaches already understood it, we wouldn’t see so many promising young players have their careers shipwrecked by injury. I’m glad the Cards have an open mind to this sort of stuff. And I’m liking what I hear about Strom’s desire to not make everyone cookie cutter. Adam Ottavino’s remarks show he’s pretty enthused. Maybe I’m reaching a bit here, but it sounds like they are willing to allow him to be himself instead of force-feeding him sinkerballism. With the changes in coaching staff and the new emphasis on “classic mechanics”, could it be the Cardinals are changing in philosophies? Just musing here…

…after typing that last sentence or two, I did a little more googling, this time on Strom. He is an ex-MLB pitcher, but what intrigued me was his work at Ron Wolforth’s Baseball Ranch. I actually heard an interview by Will Carroll with Wolforth on BP’s podcast a week or so ago; it was interesting stuff. Looking at their rather ugly website, they have some pretty out of the ordinary ideas. They emphasize going retro. In their own words they teach a pitching style that is “up-tempo, dynamic, athletic, free, non-choreographed, and individually unique movements of Hall of Fame pitchers such as Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Whitey Ford, Dizzy Dean, and Fergie Jenkins.” They have an accent on long-tossing to build arm strength and preach a paradigm shift in coaching, stressing freedom and allowing pitchers to use their athleticism rather then trying to be robots. There are certain elements they are looking for, and they are all for making some adjustments, but they aren’t in the cloning business.

I don’t know about you, but I’m digging this. While Koufax and Dean aren’t the poster boys of mechanical success given their relatively short careers, I like the freedom they are giving their pitchers and am excited for Ottavino in particular. We may witness some breakouts this season.

[update: DG has even more info on the relationship of Strom and Witte at his blog.]

Prospect Q + A w/Keith Law

Keith Law was kind enough to do a little email Q+A with the me. As many of you I’m sure already know, Keith is the lead baseball analyst for Scouts Inc. of ESPN.com. Before joining ESPN, he spent 4½ years with the Blue Jays as a Special Assistant to the GM, and he also was previously a writer for Baseball Prospectus. He’s a Harvard grad, so naturally he intimidates the crap out of me. I kid, I kid. Thanks again to Keith for taking his time to share his perspective on the Cardinals.

A peak at peak translations part 4: pitchers

As promised, we will now take a look at Clay Davenport’s Peak Translations for pitchers. This gets into a little more precarious ground, as pitcher projections are much hazier then projecting hitters, as pitchers can be pretty volatile lot.

Prospect Profile: Adam Ottavino

I admit I was a little disappointed that BA ranked Adam Ottavino only the 15th best prospect in all of the Florida State League. After all, he was a first round draft pick and was among the league leaders in ERA (3.08), strikeouts (128), and innings pitched. (143.1) Honestly though, I wasn’t all that surprised. While Ott put up some impressive numbers, he does have his wrinkles.

Florida State League Top 20

(If you’d like to read about the Mesa Solar Sox, the Cardinal’s Arizona Fall League team, Goldstein has a look at the team with brief mention of Joe Mather and Jarrett Hoffpauir.)Another Cardinal affiliate, Palm Beach, gets it’s Baseball America top 20 list revealed today. The news isn’t good. The Cardinals only garner a single spot in the top 20 at #15 Mr. Adam Ottavino. I’m higher on Ottavino than most prospect evaluators but you’ll still hear a range of where people think he’ll end up from mid-rotation starter (Kevin Goldstein) to middle-reliever (Keith Law). I’m more with Goldstein on this but Ottavino didn’t really help my case this year.

Frankly, I could have written BA’s scouting report on him. It’s extremely bland and generic. He “relies on his 92-93 mph fastball” with an above average slider. His “command isn’t very polished” (duh.) but the movement on his fastball makes up for his lack of control to a degree. He also has a fringe change-up and curveball that aren’t major league quality pitches. There are questions about whether he can throw the slider “consistently for strikes” and if not will “more advanced players lay off of it”. And then BA hedges it’s bets by saying that he may end up a reliever (frankly, almost any pitching prospect could end up a reliever so this is largely meaningless.)

Ottavino’s command is what worries me. His fastball and slider are good enough that if he can find some command he wouldn’t have to worry much about the other pitches. That’s all I will say about him now as he’s slated for a prospect profile in the future. Allen Craig (a personal favorite of mine), Mark Hamilton and Eddie Degerman are the other “names” for the Cardinals who spent significant time in the FSL this year. None of them made the top 20 and while that doesn’t necessarily surprise me, it is mildly disheartening.

Who’s #2? Herron or Ottavino?

Assuming Jaime Garcia is healthy, I think most would peg him as the #1 pitching prospect in the system. But who would you say is #2?

Checking in with BA’s Top 30 Cardinal Prospects: 1-10

Finishing up the series of looking at who BA ranked in their top 30 Cardinal prospects during before the season. Here is part one and two.

10. Daryl Jones- The Cardinals continue to preach patience with Jones, and at times he shows flashes of brilliance but the results are seriously lagging. He has just a .550 OPS thus far for the Swing and has 50 strikeouts in 201 at bats. I’ve seen him play, he does look like a scouts dream but so far he’s a statistical nightmare.

9. Josh Kinney- As you all know, he’s out with TJ surgery. And he lost his dog. He did just have his own bobblehead day at Springfield this week, so I guess that’s a good feeling.

8. Mark McCormick- Our own Rickie Vaughn is still out with a strained shoulder and is just starting a throwing program, according to Derrick Goold. If he still has his velocity, he’s valuable. Hopefully he’ll learn that ever important lesson of learning to be a “pitcher, not a thrower.” Darn cliches.

7. Adam Ottavino Ottavino has been pretty strong, striking out 25% of the batters he’s faced but the walks are still an issue, as he’s given up 29 walks in 59.2 innings. Perhaps Dan Nelson is a terrible 2nd baseman, because according to Ott’s batted ball chart at Firstinning.com, batters are hitting .333 against him on ground balls to Adam’s left. That’s not going to encourage him to throw sinkers. .333 also happens to be his opponents BABIP, no wonder he just wants to just strike guys out.

6. Bryan Anderson – He’s roughly done the same thing in Springfield that he’s did for the Swing last year. He still throws out base runners, has issues with passed balls, hits for good average but has limited power. He’s not a monster prospect, but at 20 years old he’s really doing something to be proud of is still a ways off from his ceiling. His .354 BABIP seems rather unsustainable but he hits lots of line drives and doesn’t strike out much, so his ability to hit for average is very real.

5. Jon Jay-Hurt his shoulder and re aggravated it promptly upon returning. Hit just .235/.333/.373 in 102 at bats, mostly due to a slow start in April but was starting to really heat up in May, hitting a 1.090 in 25 plate appearances. Hopefully he comes back soon, I fear he was vastly overrated based on what he did in low A last year.

4. Blake Hawksworth- Wow, he got hammered yesterday. Hawksworth has shown excellent control but his K/IP ratio dog low and is reason for alarm. His comeback last season was inspiring, but my gut feeling is he’s not a going to be much of a factor in the future. I hope I’m wrong.

3. Chris Perez- He’s striking out 38% of the batters he’s faced, pretty freakish. The strike against him is that he’s a severe fly ball pitcher and his walk rate is too high. In other words, he’s a Dave Duncan nightmare. He’s exciting, but makes things too exciting for his own good too often. Once he cuts those walks down, he’ll be major league ready. I’d like to image he’s destined for Memphis very soon.

2. Jaime Garcia- Not quite the extreme ground baller that he was in A ball, but his 56% ground ball rate at AA is still pretty good. When he gets the ball elevated, bad things happen, as he’s allowed 11 homers in 73.1 innings. There was some nail-biting after his strikeout rate dropped precipitously once being promoted to Palm Beach, but that has come back with a vengeance. Unfortunately, his walk rate has doubled along with the return of the K’s. Still, he’s 20, and he’s pitching in AA and doing a fine job. There’s a lot to like here.

1. Colby Rasmus- Very streaky. He hit his 12th homer last night, hopefully that’s a good omen. .734 OPS in April, 1.138 in May, .544 for June. Also just a .695 OPS against left-handers while he has a .901 OPS verses righties. Looking at this slump he’s in, he’s really had some tough luck. His BABIP is .205 while he’s hitting line drives 22% of the time. His ground ball rate went up some, and he’s doubled his K rate, so some things are his fault, too. I wonder about why he’s suddenly striking out so much, I hope it’s not because he’s been solved. Alright, enough hand-wringing, he’ll be fine. I don’t believe in jinxes, so I have no issues saying he was born to be a major leaguer, and at 20 years old he’s done some impressive things upon being promoted aggressively. Hopefully he can start catching some breaks and start waiting for hit pitch rather then hacking away.

Since we’re at the half-way point, here’s my own personal half time Top 30, without comments, just for fun.

1. Rasmus
2. Garcia
3. Anderson
4. Perez
5. Ottavino
6. Hawksworth
7. Herron
8. Mather
9. Ankiel
10. Hamilton
11. Shaun Garceau
12. Degerman
13. Tyler Greene
14. Stavinoha
15. Jones
16. Jay
17. McCormick
18. Buckman
19. Maiques
20. Jon Edwards
21. Craig
22. Pham
23. Walters
24. Boggs
25. Norrick
26. Marti
27. Furnish
28. Motte
29. Daniels
30. Worrell

I’m sure I’m overlooking someone here, just going off the top of my head late at night here.

6/5/07 Daily Prospect Report

First , I hope you all like the new look to the site. It’s nothing fancy, but I was tired of the “red alert”. It was a little hard on the eyes for me, so I figured it had to be the same for you readers. The side bars seem totally huge, unfortunately there’s no way for me to shrink them down.  I switched it back. It looks fine on Firefox, but upon checking the site on Explorer it’s a little messed up. Sadly, not enough people are hip to Firefox yet, so back to “red attack”.

l boros had a revealing interview with tonight’s starter for Palm Beach, Adam Ottavino. He speaks on how he’s improved his change up and how it’s helped him neutralize lefties, and the stats bear that out. Adam allowed a .892 OPS against southpaws last year, this year so far just .596. There’s also that whole sinker ball controversy. Says Ottavino:

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t agree with the philosophy of pitching to contact, and I guess that’s what the 2-seamer’s all about. But to me, the whole key is not to leave pitches over the fat part of the plate. And I can control my 4-seamer right now a heck of a lot better right now than I can control my 2. So right now, I’m just a work in progress. The 2-seamer’s gonna come, but right now I’m trying to refine the package I already have before I throw something else in there and totally rely on something different.

I wish someone would find a way to get that over to Dave Duncan re:Anthony Reyes. After witnessing Todd Wellemeyer walk 6 batters tonight, it’s painfully obvious to everyone Reyes doesn’t belong in Memphis. Sorry, no more Reyes soapboxes, I promise.

6 Swing players have been named to the Midwest League All Star game. Brandon Buckman and Christian Lopez have both been named starters. Joining them are pitchers P.J. Walters, Elvis Hernandez, Kenny Maiques and Brandon Dickson. (No love for Shaun Garceau or Tyler Herron?)

Speaking of the Swing, Dan at Get Up, Baby! has the stock report for the Quad Cities roster in the beginnings of a promising new series he’s doing. On to the games-

Memphis 2, Las Vegas 4

• Mike Parisi allowed 4 runs on 7 hits, which included 2 homers. He gave up 4 walks with 6 K’s over 7 frames. He extracted 9 ground ball outs.
• Ryan Christianson and Tagg Bozied drove in the Cardinal runs.
• Rick Ankiel went 1 for 3 with a walk and a strikeout.
• John Rodriguez went 1 for 4 with a double.
• Mark Worrell pitched 2 innings of 1 hit ball, striking out 2.

Springfield 5, Tulsa 4

• Joe Mather drove in 5 runs on a double and a HR. He seems to have regained his power stroke as of late, as that’s his 2nd homer in 2 games. Since June 1, Mather is hitting .385/.471/.923.
• Mitchell Boggs allowed 2 runs (1 earned) on 5 hits and 2 walks, while striking out 5. He got 10 ground ball outs.
• Chris Perez picked up his 13th save of the season, albeit was a rocky one. He allowed a 2 run homer.

Palm Beach 0, Clearwater 8

• Adam Ottavino got knocked around a bit tonight. He allowed 3 runs on 7 hits and 4 walks while striking out 6. The 3 runs came off a 3 run homer.
• While you could say Ottavino got hit, Matthew Trent got hammered. He allowed 5 runs in 1 inning.
• James Rapoport went 2 for 4 with a steal.
• Nathan Southard went 2 for 3 with a double.

Quad Cities 13, Wisconsin 5 (Game 1, 7 innings)

• Brandon Buckman went 3 for 4 with a homer.
• Jaime Landin, Luke Gorsett and Christian Reyes all had two hit, and all had doubles.
• Elvis Hernandez allowed just 1 run on 2 hits and 2 walks, striking out 5.
• P.J. Walters had an off night, allowing 3 runs on 3 hits, including a solo HR. He walked a batter and threw 2 wild pitches while striking out 5.

Quad Cities 3, Wisconsin 2 (Game 2, 7 innings)

• Tyler Herron is really on a roll as of late. He allowed just a hit in 3 innings, while striking out 6.
• Brad Furnish was also pretty dominant, he allowed 2 runs on 2 hits and a walk over 4 innings while striking out 9 batters. He did however throw 3 wild pitches, perhaps catcher Christian Reyes had something to do with that.
• Tommy Pham hit a single, drew a walk, stole a base and was picked off at 1st.
• Wilmer Alvarado went 1 for 3 with a double and walk.
• Brandon Buckman went 2 for 4 with a double.
• Chris Grossman went 2 for 4.