Lotsa news tonight. Amaury Marti joins the Springfield club. I’m not sure how much we should or shouldn’t read into him being sent to double AA. As much fun as we have with him, he’s a long shot to have a real, sustained MLB career. The article also addresses why Tyler Johnson started tonight — to ensure he could pitch more than one inning. Of course, Tyler then proceeded to stink tonight and not record an out in the second.
Pete Kozma and Matt Spade both join the Johnson City team. I haven’t seen any official release on it but they played in tonight’s games.
I recommend Kevin Goldstein’s article ranking 3B prospects even if their aren’t any Cardinals on the list.
I do not recommend the garbage that Baseball America is posting about tools in the NL and AL. It’s a survey of NL and AL managers asking them whose best at vaguely defined area A, B, C, etc. The managers show how ignorant they are ranking Holliday above Pujols as the best hitter and not having Alex Rodriguez in the top three best hitters. Seriously? A-Rod is having a season for the ages with a VORP of like 26502742.9 (that’s an estimate). My favorite category, which shows how absurd and useless this exercise is, would be the “Fastest Base Runner” category. Ummm, folks. Hate to destroy the game with all sorts of new fangled technology but we can actual time people to see who is faster with a stopwatch. . .there’s really no reason to ask this as it doesn’t have a hint of subjectivity to it. It’s quantifiable with 99.999% accuracy.
Colby Rasmus goes boom. Amaury Marti adds to the legend. Brandon Buckman finds a way for me to like him even more. Mountain Dew quenches the Batavia fire. DPR! DPR! DPR!
- Please enjoy this captured image of Tomo Ohka’s gameday face. He hasn’t had a shoulder problem this year — it’s all in the eyes.
- Rick Ankiel went 3-for-6.
- Tagg Bozied went 4-for-6 with a double and a pair of homeruns.
- Joe Mather went 3-for-6.
- Blake Hawksworth got lit up for 8 runs in 1.1 innings.
- Matt Ginter then allowed 4 runs in 2.2 innings.
- Credit Kelvin Jimenez, Andy Cavazos and Chris Perez for throwing blanks on the board for the last three innings while the offense got busy. Perez walked 2 and struck 1 for his first save.
- FR reader Trayton has an eye-witness account below from the
footballbaseball game.
- Some kid named Colby Rasmus went 3-for-3 with 2 walks. He also hit 2 HRs. I’ve never heard of him before.
- (I’ve got an e-mail from erik singing Rasmus’ praises - one of the HRs was to left field. Sometimes we talk about the prospects behind your collective back; deal with it.)
- Cody Haerther went 3-for-5 with a HR.
- Amaury Cazana Marti hit a HR. He also ate one of the opposing players whole. These things happen. . .
- Tyler Johnson pitched 1 inning allowing 2 hits, 2 BBs and a run.
- Cory Rauschenberger gets a win despite being terrible. In 6 innings he allowed 13 baserunners: 8 hits, 3 walks, 2HBP. Defensive errors behind him didn’t help but it doesn’t matter when you are allowing that many baserunners.
- In fairness, Nick Webber and Matthew Scherer were bad as well. The Springfield pitching staff took a play out of the STL Cardinals playbook.
Palm Beach 7, Daytona 2 (Game 1: 7 innings)
- Isaias Garcia goes 2-for-4.
- Jon Jay goes 1-for-3 with a walk.
- Allen Craig comes off the DL and starts screamin’ promotion. He went 2-for-3 with a walk and a pair of doubles.
- Brandon Yarbrough goes 2-for-3 with a double and a walk.
- Luke Gorsett collected 5 RBI going 2-for-3 with a double and a grandslam.
- Brad Furnish was dominant for 5 innings. He allowed 2 hits and a walk while striking out 6. Well done Mr. Furnish, well done.
Palm Beach 2, Daytona 0 (Game 2: 7 innings)
- Brandon Buckman went deep off the Cubs 10 Million dollar arm for a 2-run shot scoring AJ Van Slyke.
- While Samardzija (I’m glad I don’t have to type that name very often) was good Tyler Norrick was lights out. He allowed 3 hits in 7 innings while striking out 7. The less rational side of me very much enjoys watching the Cubs affiliate lose twice in one day.
- Antonio DeJesus and Christian Reyes both had 2 hit games. DeJesus also drew a walk.
- Brandon Dickson struggled allowing 2 HRs in 5.2 innings. His defense didn’t help resulting in 6 runs but only 3 earned while striking out 3 and walking 2.
- Kyle Sadlowski threw 2.1 scoreless innings allowing 3 hits.
- Tyler Henley went 1-for-3 with a walk playing CF.
- Oliver Marmol went 2-for-4 with a walk.
- Tommy Pham went 2-for-3 with a triple and a walk.
- Justin Roberson went 3-for-4 with a double and a triple.
- Clayton Long allowed 3 hits and 1BB for 1ER while striking out 4 in 4 innings.
- Thomas Eager and Davis Bilardello then proceeded to suck. So much so that Mountain Dew was called in to record a 1-out save (he got a groundout for save #9 stranding the tying runs on the bases.)
- LF Adron Chambers went 2-for-3 with a walk.
- Peter Kozma went 2-for-4 in his first at bats for Johnson City.
- Nicholas Vera went 1-for-3 with a walk.
- The Johnson City defense had 4 errors.
- Matthew Spade struck out 4 in 3 innings allowing just 2 hits. This was his first appearance at Johnson City.
The GCL Cardinals game was postponed.
Filed under: Daily Farm Reports
erik
azruavatar
fewgoodcards
roarke49
theredbaaron
salmonandjamida should’ve stuck with football. 5.06 ERA, 1.26 K/BB ratio, striking out only 9.4% batters faced. I’d rather have nick webber. good gravy.
I was at the Memphis @ Tacoma game Wednesday night. Wow, it was a roller coaster. The Rainiers batted around in the 2nd, scoring 10 for a 10-2 lead. The Redbirds started chipping away scoring 1, 2, 1, and 2 over the next 4 innings while Ginter and Worrell held the Rainiers to 1, 1, 1, and 0 from the 3rd to the 6th. Then the Redbirds batted around themselves with a scoring 6 in the 7th, capped by the Tagg Bozied grand slam to take a 14-13 lead. They scored 1 in the 8th and 9th to extend the lead to 16-13 while Parisi, Cavazos, and Perez closed the game allowing 2 hits and 2 walks combined.
Assorted notes:
Tomo Okha started for the Rainiers. He was signed June 19th and released July 3rd.
Mike Pagnozzi hustled for a double off the left field wall in the 2nd. He was booking it the entire way. His catchers’ speed required him to slide in, but the SS wasn’t set to make a tag. In the 8th, Cabrera hustled for a triple into the RF corner. The relay throw was a little off and the 3b couldn’t catch it to tag him out.
Everything seemed to be hit hard tonight for both teams. Worrell was the only pitcher who fooled anyone (and with that side arm, who wouldn’t be fooled) and Cavazos had the heat to blow past the batters he faced.
Both teams were scorching the left field line and knocked several off the left field wall. The walls are 20 feet high at Cheney Stadium, even higher for the batting eye in dead center. It’s a big park, but there were five HRs in the game all over the left field fence. Two by the Rainiers in the second and another by Jones and two by Tagg Bozied.
In the first, I think Hawksworth kept the ball down. In the second, he started getting up in the zone and into trouble, but Green’s HR came off a low pitch. Jones and Morse took walks and everything was below the knees.
Later in the inning, Ankiel showed off his arm from mid-CF to home just a little late on the Rainiers’ catcher running from second. It was on the mark, a hell of a throw, just a little late. In the fifth, the 3rd base coach held up Green (speedy ss) at third on a single to Ankiel.
More Ankiel news: in the 4th, Ankiel worked a 10 pitch AB, grounding past the 2nd to RF with runners on 1st and 2nd. The throw went to home, late on the lead running. Ankiel strayed too far to 2nd on the throw and was picked off for the 3rd out. 9-1-3 for those scoring at home. IN the 6th, Ankiel ripped a liner into RF. He was picked off by the pitcher before the first pitch of the AB. Two painful baserunning mistakes.
Worrell showed some awareness in the 5th, with the bases loaded and a 0-2 or 1-2 count, Lahair swung and the ball bounced high into the air. Pagnozzi couldn’t see it and Worrell hustled into foul territory to retrieve the ball, but not before Reed crossed home. Luckily, it was a foul tip and not a WP/PB, so the runners reset.
In the 6th, McCoy drew a full count and a walk off of Okha. Ryan took 4 balls and a base, chasing Okha from the game. In the 7th, they pulled the same stunt, BB, BB, pitching change. The first lead to Ankiel’s RBI-single + pickoff. The second preceded Bozied’s Grand Slam.
Speaking of Bozied, he took a strike at 2-1 and stepped out of the box. Adjusting his gloves, I could see the determination in his eyes and the anger in his face at letting that second strike get past him. The next pitch was placed over the wall in left-center field.
Ryan turned three nice DPs with the runner from first coming in hot.
Perez started the 9th very very shaky with 8 straight balls. He got a talking to after the 5th and 8th balls. Then he homed in, striking out Green (off-speed + check swing) and forcing Reed into a chopper that he barehanded and sent to Ryan for a 1-6-3 game-ending DP. Guess it was nerves of being called up to AAA and in a save situation. After the rocky start, he made 4 good pitches to end it.
Rainiers’ CF Adam Jones left in the 7th inning. I heard on the radio on the way home that the Mariners were calling him up on Friday. He was crushing balls all night long, lining a single into right, crushing a HR into the left-center power alley, and skying a ball to left-center that stayed in only because the wind was blowing in. 3 for 3, BB, 2 RBI, by my count.
Too bad Bozied is at first basically blocked by Pujols. Is that his natural position and would he be good trade value if he’s of 1b-starter quality?
I mildly entertained the possibility of leaving with Rainiers up by 6 and 7 runs in the 4th and 5ht innings. But the Redbirds got hits in every inning and scored in all by the second. This was going to be a PCL slugfest, so I was going to sit through all of it. The few Redbirds fans in the stands were well rewarded.
That’s enough rambling. I may make it to Thursday night’s game too.
Hey, the 3b position rankings over at BP has Blake Dewitt rated number 8. I am a big Dewitt fan as he grew up in the same town and my brother has played with him. He is a great kid. Wish the Cardinals would have picked him instead of Lambert in 04.
http://www.whiteyball.com
Trayton, thanks for that great summary.
Wil Pujols was released. I can’t believe they wasted a 6th round pick for him and gave him $120K signing bonus. Pujols may be his name, but an Albert he certainly is not. he’s not even ozzie canseco.
Good stuff, Trayton.
I’m concerned about Johnson. What is originally diagnosed as biceps tendinitis sometimes turns out to be something worse, like a rotator cuff issue. Rotator cuff pain is very often referred down the arm to the lateral bicep.
samardzija actually got promoted to AA after last night’s start even though florida state league opponents are hitting .329 off of him.
interesting note, baseball america said today in their prospect report that allen craig got some support for best power prospect in the FSL in their annual best tools ballot.
bring up Amaury!
I read something on Stltoday.com that Marti was sent to AA only because Skip was demoted to AAA. Something about how he originally flew into Memphis but was redirected to Springfield instead.
I heard Marti is so huge that while his plane was in the air, he altered the gravitational pull on the earth causing him to end up in Springfield instead of Memphis.
Erik-
You should do a “top 10 prospects to watch” or “top risers”. Something like that.
I would include Cruz, Henley, Riportella, Hamilton, Buckman, Hill among others
Trayton- that was great, thanks!