Kevin Goldstein had an interesting article today at BP on positional differences and why moving a prospect to one position or another can hurt or help a prospect’s status based on what the average hitter does at his position. This explains why moving Bryan Anderson to another position is a dumb idea.
Did you know that Brendan Ryan was kicked off his college baseball team? 4 times!?
Adam Foster of Project Prospect has their mid-season Top 10 SS prospect rankings, and Kozma appears conspicuously at #5 on the list, ahead of notable prospects Chin-Lung Hu and Jed Lowrie. Apparently Adam puts a lot of stock in to how high a player was drafted, as much as I’d like to be in agreement with him, let’s see what Kozma produces on the field first.
At VEB, poster “Whopperman” has a diary of the post-game festivities at the Memphis game Saturday night, which involved Rick Ankiel, Tagg Bozied and hitting coach and Wrestemaniac Rick Eckstein rumbling in the squared circle with some pro-wrestlers. Mulleted Redbird fans rejoice.
Elsewhere, games were played. Ank hit #30. Jesse Todd continues to miss bats. Palm Beach and the GCL team was off today. More after the jump.
- Rick Ankiel hit HR #30 (!!!), and doubled twice.
- Joe Mather went 3 for 3 with a homer and a double.
- Mike Parisi went 7 innings, allowing 2 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks, striking out 5.
- Mark Worrell pitched a scoreless 9th to pick up the save.
Springfield 0, Wichita 1 (Completed early due to rain)
- P.J. Walters allowed just 2 hits but uncharacteristically walked 3 batters while striking out 4. The lone run surrendered was a HR.
- Colby Rasmus went 0 for 2 with two strikeouts and a walk. Get hot! Get hot! Please GET HOT!
- Tyler Herron allowed 6 hits and struck out 4.
- Kenneth Maiques picked up his 24th save by retiring all three batters he faced, striking out 2.
- Antone DeJesus went 2 for 3 with a walk. He’s now hitting .340 for the QC.
- Daryl Jones and Jose Garcia both went 2 for 4 with 2 strikeouts and both were caught stealing. Garcia hit a double.
- Free Jesse Todd. Todd allowed a run on 3 hits over 5 IP, while striking out 8.
- Blake King didn’t walk a man! Over three innings, to boot. He struck out 6 in 3 innings while allowing a run on 4 hits. The run came off a solo HR.
- Mountain Dew struck out 2 in route to the save.
- William Groff hit a 2 RBI double but struck out 3 times.
- Tyler Leach allowed 3 hits and a couple of walks while striking out 3 over 5 innings.
- Omar Javier allowed just a walk over 3 innings, while getting 7 ground ball outs. No fly outs.
- Nicholas Vera went 3 for 4.
- Jonathan Edwards went 1 for 3 with a double.
- Adron Chambers went 2 for 4, was caught stealing and threw out a man at 2nd.
Filed under: Daily Farm Reports
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Joe Mather raises his BA ~20 points and his OPS by ~70 in one day. I know it’s small sample sizes, but I feel so much better seeing him as a .233/.303/.442 hitter than a .214/.279/.397 hitter…
I wonder what the clubhouse atmosphere is like between Mather and Ankiel and Stavinoha?
Mountain Dew. I love it.
One thing I’ll say about the “average hitter at each position” approach is that it’s a deeply flawed way to evaluate offensive standards at each position. If you do what Kevin did and compare shortstops and second basemen, for example, you might be tempted to think of the positions as having equal standards.
But while most of those elite-hitting shortstops could move to second base if they needed to, you can’t necessarily claim the reverse is true with regard to elite-hitting second basemen moving to shortstop. Could you imagine a managerpenciling in Jeff Kent at shortstop?
So the population of good bats available to play second base is going to be considerably greater than the population of good bats avilable to play shortstop… regardless of what the averages are at each position.
In regards to Jesse Todd: What are the Cardinals waiting for? They need to promote him now.
Also, have they announced the Cardinals’ International signings for this year? I heard they were spending more on International players this year, I’m interested to see who they signed.
I’m not going to dog Adam, like so many blog posters like to do, but I respectfully disagree with his SS list. Hu’s stock is way up, and should be ranked higher than the bottom half of that list. It says he defers to recent production, and Hu has been hitting over .300 for awhile now. Sickels has him one spot below Brignac on his OVERALLL list.
I just don’t see how you rank Hu below Kozma, who at the time he wrote it hadn’t had a major league AB.
Adam’s thirdbase list though, I agree with completely. I’m not a total jerk.
Yea, there is no reason Todd shouldn’t be in QC by now. He is a college pitcher, so I see no problem fast tracking him.
Also, how can Kozma be rated 5th, when he has played…2 professional games….in the gulf coast league?
I see what you’re saying Chris. I probably should’ve thought it through a little bit. The Cards are kicking the idea around of moving Bryan Anderson to another position. 3rd base might make some sense given Rolen’s health/struggles, but I think he’s too valuable behind the plate to be moved. Your thoughts?
Oh, no doubt that a prospect like Anderson is more valuable behind the plate (assuming even slightly below-average defense) than at third base. I guess my point in regard to commenting on the “average at position” approach is that common sense can result in better guidelines for positional scarcity. Fewer players are capable of catching than are capable of playing third base, and if Anderson becomes a .280 / .340 / .420 type of hitter that would be great production coming from a catcher and the kind of production that will inspire upgrades via free agency or trades at third base.
Of course, it’s more complicated than that in reality because catching is sucha unique position. Some players don’t handle the physical demands over a full season very well. Sometimes teams move players off the position to allow promising bats to develop more quickly - that was the Pirates’ rationale with Neil Walker and so far it has worked as planned.