Bye Aaron Miles. It was somewhat nice to know you. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.
Besides Ron Flores (LH reliever) and C Mark Johnson, the Cardinals also signed groundball machine Hugo Castellanos and “Uncle” Rico Washington to minor league contracts as well. Both players were part of the Cardinals farm system last year as well.
(erik edit): I was just thinking of posting along these lines, AZ beat me to the punch. I wanted to add-I found it encouraging that the team also beefed up their international ops. They hired Moises Rodriguez and Juan Mercado. Mercado is famed for discovering Jose Reyes and Carlos Gomez for the Mets and will be the Latin America scouting supervisor. Moises Rodriguez will be the director of international operations. He was previously the manager of international operations for the MLB since 2003.
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Jack Cassel was non-tendered by the Padres. I like his statistical look without having any real knowledge of his repertoire. Colby Lewis was shipped off to Japan as Liam noted but if the Cardinals tried to see what Cassel had, I’d be pleased as well. He’s a strong groundball pitcher with respectable K rates and he’s cheap. . .
These are the types of players the Cardinals should be willing to take risks on when they’re (sort of) rebuilding. He’s probably as good a bet as Brad Thompson.
Yes, I will continue to look for players like this and hound to death about why we should try and see if these players are worth anything. Can they be any worse than this?
Filed under: Transactions
erik
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Jack Cassel is interesting, but how much can you blame bad babip luck for this? –between AAA and MLB he pitched 179.1 innings, and allowed 233 hits. He doesn’t walk anyone, but he sure can’t afford to.
Chad Durbin is another Colby Lewis type player, misses bats in AAA but hasn’t fared as well in the bigs. Detroit let him go as well.
I saw Kiko Calero was also non-tendered. His K rates took a sharp drop, I wonder what happened there?
And wow, I’m sure glad we rushed to sign Izturis now with Everett available.
Miles and Taguchi gone? That’s all I wanted for Christmas.
You know what scares me? There was a trade rumor about a week ago, Jack Cassel for Anthony Reyes. Yikes.
I’m of the opinion that BABIP skill is real, it’s just that you don’t find much of it at the MLB level because everyone has enough of that talent, that DiPS research doesn’t lend favorable results. Otherwise they don’t stick or never get a shot because they get knocked around. I have no idea if this applies to Cassell, or even how sound of a theory that is, but I thought I’d throw it out there. Then again, if he was getting creamed it stands to reason that he’d give up more taters.
Coupled with the LD rate, the fact that he keeps the ball on the ground, and played part of the year in the PCL, makes him a candidate to have a high BABIP anyway. That’s too high, but I bet his true talent is going to be worse than league average anywhere he plays.
He seems like a great depth guy if he’d sign a MiL deal. I’d rather give Anthony another go-round in St. Louis, but I think we all know that’s probably not too likely at this point.
If I’m Mo, even with the roster as is, I’d go after Everett, McPherson, and Towers immediately and start working on getting out from under some mistakes, some of which are his doing.
what about taking a flyer on Prior. holy crap that rhymed!!!! I know i know but i just really really want us to sign him and magically he returns to cy young prior of old. And than we can rub and rub and rub it in!! hey it COULD happen.
Also we signed Bob Gibson’s son from the Grizzlies, more Frontier league pouching.
^And Chris Gibson absolutely sucks. A favor that will cost someone who actually deserves a shot at affiliated ball.
Yeah I saw his near Mendoza batting avg. I wonder if the Cards instructors can teach him anything that his dad already hasn’t tried to teach. Or if Bob wants to convert his son to pitcher. Either way it is more of a hmm thats interesting thing then a Wow that is great thing.
speaking of everett–anyone know if izturis contract is guaranteed?
hey erik, what do you think of josh towers, the starter from toronto; he was nontendered. i know larry mentioned him and said that he might be a decent pitcher in the national league and under duncan, what do you think?
Jack Cassel and Josh Towers look like awfully similar versions of the same player to me.
re: his BABIP. It looked normal in 2006. I’d assume that’s just fluke random variation.
Prior is finished. He has issues about his desire, and a shoulder surgery that will be very difficult to come back from.
“And Chris Gibson absolutely sucks. A favor that will cost someone who actually deserves a shot at affiliated ball.”
Glad I’m not the only one that bristled at this signing. It’s B.S.
I suspect Gibson’s son will quickly go the way of Red Schoendienst’s nephew. I can’t imagine that he will be allowed to block any worthier prospect from the system.
Poor AZ, the Astros stole Cassel from him.
I saw that. They gave him a major league contract too. At least I should get to see how he does on a regular basis for a while.
You next guy you should start telling people the Cardinals should sign is Chris Oxspring. He is an Aussie who played for the Brewers AAA team last year, and was sold to a Korean team mid-season. I’m not sure how he did in Korea though considering I have no idea where to get those stats.
Or you could go the reliever route with Winston Abreu and Dan Giese.