Kyle Russell certainly sounds like he’s going back to Texas. Per the Austin-American Stateman.
“I’m thrilled to death to be coming back,” Russell said. ” “It’s not going to hurt playing one more year of college baseball, and I can’t wait to come back and see my old teammates and meet my new teammates.”
“We haven’t stopped,” Cardinals farm director Jeff Luhnow told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. “We haven’t stopped working on it, on getting something done.”
Russell said he hasn’t received an official offer yet from St. Louis, and the Cardinals claim they still are trying to get one done.
Still no official offer? Why are they farting around? Some sort of internal disagreement? I don’t know, but I’m tired of this whole saga. Someone is being unreasonable. Russell isn’t worth more then what they gave Kozma, but of course he’s not worth 4th round money either. I think they should pony up, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the Hendricks Bros. are being pretty difficult. It’s not over yet, hope still remains, just not much left. The Cards can expect a little fan backlash if they don’t get something done. And I’m wondering where Gordo got his info when he said the deal was almost done. Hmph.
In case you missed it, Brett Zawacki signed. The Cardinals also claimed Brian Barden of the DBacks off of waivers. Barden was rated by BA as the #20 Diamondback prospect overall going into the season, but has struggled for AAA Tucson, hitting for a lowly .691 OPS in one of the better hitter’s parks in the league.
Daryl Jones made Kevin Goldstein’s Monday Morning Ten Pack: (Subscription required)
Jones is the best athlete in the Cardinals system, and that includes Colby Rasmus, but he’s also incredibly raw…Over the last two weeks, something is suddenly clicking with Jones, and perhaps Cardinals fans should be excited. On Sunday, Jones hit a game-winning home run as part of his first four-hit game of the year, and in his last 10 games he’s gone 17-for-39. As to whether or not this is real, that’s still a mystery, but this has been his hottest streak of the season by a mile, the potential for a breakout has always been there…
I’m glad to see him finally hitting, but just glancing at some of his peripherals it’s hard to tell exactly what is going on. He’s hitting .386/.383./.545 in 47 plate appearances for the month of August…how you have a lower OBP then average is a mystery to me at the moment. Anyway, his BABIP is a whopping .485, and his line drive rate is just 9%. The biggest trend is that 66% of the balls he’s putting in play are fly balls, sort of a reverse trend of what he’s previously been doing, so he must be hitting the ball with more authority then usual, demonstrated by his season high ISO of .159. Let’s hope he has turned the corner, judging by the numbers it’s hard to say exactly for sure, but he’s certainly been lucky to some extent.
Jose Martinez has made BA’s Hot Sheet this week:
Martinez was one of our breakout candidates back in a March edition of Prospect Pulse, and while it’s taken the 21-year-old Venezuelan some time to get rolling after being promoted from high Class A Palm Beach in June, he’s proven to be a valuable commodity in the organization. After hitting .158 over his first eight games, Martinez is batting .391/.404/.696 in August–a month after he drove in 24 runs in July.
Into the action. Pete Kozma is koming alive. Steve Hill goes boom for the 3rd time in as many games. Kenny Maiques lays claim of the Swing saves record. And scary news about Colby Rasmus (Fingers crossed). It’s all in today’s DPR.
Palm Beach, Batavia, and the GCL team were all off.
- Nick Stavinoha and Tagg Bozied both went yard.
- Mike McCoy went 2 for 4 with a stole base.
Springfield 1, Corpus Christi 6
- Cody Haerther hit a 2 out RBI double.
- Amaury Marti went 2 for 4.
- Adam Daniels isn’t fooling anyone lately. He allowed 4 runs on 7 hits and 5 walks over 5 innings,striking out 1. He did induce 3 DP’s, minimizing the damage some.
- Colby Rasmus was removed from the game after being hit in the arm by a pitch. Keep on eye on Kary Booher’s blog for updates.
- Kenny Maiques struck out 2 in 1.1 innings, picking up his 27th save.
- Clayton Mortensen struck out 6 in 4 innings. He walked 1 and allowed 3 hits.
- Steve Hill went 2 for 4 with a HR and 3 RBI.
- Jaime Landin went 4 for 4.
- Antonio DeJesus went 2 for 3.
- Pete Kozma went 2 for 4 with a double and a stolen base. He’s gone 7 for 17 in his last 4 games.
- Matthew Arburr went 2 for 4 with a double.
- Ateo Folli went 2 for 3 with a triple and walked twice.
- Jose Mateo allowed 3 earned runs on 8 hits and 1 walk, striking out 3 over 4.2 innings.
- Senger Peralta gave up 4 earned runs in 1.1 innings.
Filed under: 2007 Draft, Daily Farm Reports, Daryl Jones
erik
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Jones hitting is very good news… the reason you can have a higher avg than OBP is that sac flies are included in the OBP formula but not the BA formula ( I did not know this until I googled- i need to find a way to get paid for disobfusciating things)
Tagg Bozied needs a job in the MLB. I’m sad that we didn’t trade him for something useful (or try to turn him into a 3B).
Seems like Colby get hit by a lot of pitches. How many HPBs does he have this year? I guess he must really crowd the plate or something.
I would pay money to have access to the back end of some minor league database so that I could run custom queries and see splits for players like Daniels who suddenly hit a wall. He started off great in AA but has really fallen flat for his last 4-5 starts. It’s almost certainly not a change in actual skill level but I’d love to know if he was seeing variations in his peripheral stats during this time frame.
I’d like to see the Cardinals move Maiques and Gregerson up to AA next season.
7.3 million for Porcello is an ungodly sum but we wouldn’t be able to complain for an entire draft if the Cardinals did something like that. You may disagree with the move but you can’t deny it shows a real commitment to player development on the Tiger’s part.
having been a teammate of Steve Hill last year at SFA, Im proud to see that he has kept up his pace. Hope they can find a position for him because he was one of the best hitters in college baseball last year and he is continuing his unbelievable pace….Also good to see colby is comin around a lil bit.
Just speculating, but perhaps the Cardinals failure to extend an offer can be explained by Goldstein’s article on the slotting process. If the Cardinals want to go over the recommendation, they have to notify MLB. According to the article, MLB puts heavy pressure on teams to adhere to the slot. There are apparently conversations not only with the GM but also with ownership.
The Cardinals might figure that by waiting until the last day when there could be a logjam of overslot notifications, MLB won’t have so much time to badger them. I suppose one could also infer that by waiting this late, the Cardinals do intend to exceed the slot by a significant amount.
Okay, I’m getting carried away.
That article about Porcello says its a four year ML contract. Since he will go directly on the 40-man, does this year count towards the 6-year service time? Also, would it be possible for Boras to get him to free agency after those 4 years?
Assuming he flies through the minors in 2 years, it could be only 2 years that the Tigers truly get his services.
Great news on Zawacki! Hopefully we can get great news on the other 2 soon.
Small sample size, but it is nice to see Kozma hitting fairly well. Appears like he has a clue of what he is doing at the plate decent K, BB, and OBP. Doesn’t look like he packed his glove though.
Whatever happened to this guy
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?n=Berroa%20%20SS&pos=&sid=milb&t=p_pbp&pid=407556
if porcello is signing a major league deal, he isn’t going to have long to make it to the bigs. he will have to use an option for the 2 weeks of a season he will have left and that will leave him with only 2 option years left. 2 seasons of minor league ball to reach the majors is a lot to ask of a kid straight out of high school. if he misses any time with an injury he is screwed.
I’m so glad the Cards would rather spend money on the Kennedy’s of the world over the Porcello’s of the world.
Tagg Bozied is supposedly a natural third baseman. I haven’t seen him play there, but I remember reading that somewhere.
I agree that he should have an MLB job somewhere.
Taggs hasn’t hardly played 3B all year including Spring training. Given the Cards lack of depth there you’d think if he could play that position he’d get some work there. Because of this, I have assumed he can’t really play 3rd anymore.
re: Tagg Bozied. How much would it suck to injure your knee like this:
Still working to fully overcome the effects of a 2004 knee injury, suffered while jumping onto home plate following a walkoff grand slam for Triple-A Portland, the 28-year-old from Sioux Falls, S.D., is feeling the effects — both good and bad — of a long season.
Yeah that would be horrible. Regarding Taggs though, what are the chances of him being called up in Sept for IF depth?