With the draft behind us now it feels a little bit like the day after Christmas. The anticipation of not knowing what you are going to get is gone, but you just can’t wait to play with all your new toys. You can check out four of our new toys at the Super Regionals this weekend. Aaron Luna of Rice will be on at 2:00pm (all times are central time) Saturday on ESPNU vs. Texas A&M and 6:00pm Sunday on ESPN2, Jared Bradford of LSU will be on at 5:00pm Saturday on ESPNU vs. UC Irvine and 3:00pm Sunday on ESPN (I don’t know if or when he is scheduled to pitch), Cold Cedbrook of Arizona will be on at 6:30pm Saturday on ESPN vs. Miami and 6:00pm Sunday on ESPN (if necessary), and the #1 pick, Brett Wallace of Arizona State will be on at 8:00pm Saturday on ESPNU vs. Fresno State and 9:00pm Sunday on ESPN2.
Colt Cedbrook and Arizona played Miami tonight and Colt was 1-4 with a HBP as Arizona upset the top ranked Hurricanes in eleven innings.
As noted in the comments to an earlier post, the Texas League announced its mid-season all star teams and seven Springfield Cardinals are on the team. I’m just going to state this fact without comment and let you discuss amongst yourselves: Tyler Greene made the all-star team.
There was a bit of shuffling in the system today (as was also discussed in the comments), which leads to a hearty congratulations to Mitchell Boggs who is now up with the big club. Mike Parisi was sent down after a couple of rough outings. Clayton Mortensen will also be heading up to Memphis, apparently to take Kelvin Jimenez‘ spot when he is put on the DL.
Whew. With all that out of the way, let’s take a look at the games tonight. The system went 1-2 (with QC pending at the time of this writing) on the day - all the details are after the jump.
- PJ Walters was greeted rudely, giving up nine runs on nine hits and a walk in only 1.2 innings.
- The bullpen pitched well, though, with Hugo Castellanos pitching 2.1 scoreless innings, Nick Webber giving up one run on two hits and three walks over three innings and Matthew Scherer and John Wasdin each pitching a scoreless inning.
- Colby Rasmus was 0-2 with three walks.
- Nick Stavinoha was 2-5 with a double, Cody Haerther was 1-3 with a double and a walk and Gabe Johnson was 1-4 with a homerun.
- Steve Hill hit another bomb. He was 3-5 on the night.
- Shane Robinson and Jon Jay were each 3-5 on the night, Robinson had a double and Jay had a triple.
- This game was won by the back end of the bullpen as Scott Vander Weg pitched a scoreless inning, Jon Mikrut pitched two scoreless innings and Luke Gregorson pitched a scoreless final two thirds of an inning.
Brett Wallace we need you…
- Luke Gorsett was 2-3 with a walk and Andrew Brown was 2-4. The team had zero exra base hits and basically just stunk up the joint.
- Outfielder Seth Fortenberry hit for the cycle against the Cardinals, which punctuates the sorry state of our offense.
- Kyle Mura gave up five runs on… you know what, let’s just say that Mura, Davis Bilardello and Brandon Garner were all pretty bad and move on, shall we? Nothing to see here.
- After a pretty sorry May, Pete Kozma is having a nice start to June. So far, he has gone 4-5 with a walk and a stolen base on the night and is 8-18 so far on the month.
- Tommy Pham was 2-5 with a double, a walk and a stolen base.
- Domnit Bolivar was 1-4 with a walk and a three run homer.
- Mark Diapoules gave up four unearned runs in four innings on four hits and a walk. He struck out six.
- Nick Additon continued his dominance as he went four innings and only gave up one hit, while striking out seven. That makes six appearances in a row without giving up an earned run (26 innings).
- Matt Spade is the extra innings goat. A single, double, IBB and a single to LF scores the winning run. He failed to retire a batter.
Filed under: Daily Farm Reports
erik
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Steve Hill is pretty ridiculous. Hasn’t he been hitting since the day he was drafted?
Hawksworth was DL’d also. Stavinoha continues to hit well.
Hill has hit wherever he’s played, but has gone unnoticed for two reasons: he’s been old for his level, and he has no good position. The age, IMO, should no longer be held against him, because he doesn’t stop hitting when he moves up a level. Lack of a fielding position, however, is a problem. Where’s he gonna play? He has the Eli Marrero skill set, with an uptick at the plate but two large steps down in the field, and that skill set really didn’t give Marrero a career.
UC Irvine will have a couple card draft picks going against LSU too, most notably Scott Gorgen who will probably be the starter for tommorrow nights game.
In extras for QC:
10th Garcia grounded out, Pham Ks, Kozma Singled, Folli Ks
Parise Ks 2 and gets all 3 in order
11th Vazquez Ks, Chambers Ks, Peoples Ks
Spade gives up a single, double, IBB then a single, didn’t record an out
Final 6-5 Wisconsion over QC
That’s a fantastic night for Kozma.
And the pitching tandem in QC.
I’d love to see both our QC tandem stars move up when Lynn & Gorgen come to the Midwest League–the sooner the better.
Rasmus may have gone 0-2, but the three walks are such a good sign that the Power And Patience combo is back, I’m *very* enthused about Colby right now.
Speaking of plate discipline, Hill’s BB/K/AB numbers have regressed so badly since moving up to AA, I have my doubts about his ability to continue hitting for both average and plus power–but I hope he fools me.
Keith Law has an article on espn.com in which he ranked the Cards first day draft as the 4th best. He does admit that the Cards first day lacked “upside”.
I have to say that I personally really like the Cards strategy this year. They took guys that are very projectable with the high picks, which is really smart. To me it makes more sense to take a guy in the Comp round that has say a 70% chance of becoming a solid #4 starter and a 90% chance of being a MLB starter than to use that pick on a guy who has a 50% chance of completely washing out, but a 10% chance of developing into a solid 1 or 2. When looking at SP especially it is almost impossible to say this guy should be an ace in the future when if you look at MLB rosters there are maybe 15 in all of baseball (Webb, Zambrano, Oswalt, Santana, Beckett, Halladay, etc).
To me upside is what the second day should be all about. The guys that are “toolsy” (Pham, Jones) and have a chance at being special but haven’t quite developed yet.
I just get tired of hearing people say that they aren’t thrilled about our draft due to the lack of upside. If this draft produces a 300 avg 30 hr 100 rbi #3 hitter (Wallace), a 4.00 era 200 ip #4 SP (Lynn), and a 270 avg 20 hr 70 rbi guy (Vazquez) that is one hell of a draft, not to mention the probability that we at least get some more contributions from the others.
For the record I’m hugely excited about Wallace. When was the last time we had the #1 ranked college hitter come into our system! If you can’t get excited about Wallace now, but you get excited over guys like Steve Hill you are crazy. No offense Steve.
I’m excited about Wallace. I hope they polish up his 3B skills and we can see him at the latest next year and at the earliest in September(not gonna happen but I can dream).
I am right with you Chris. I still remember this day last year, when all the talk was really on the guys we didn’t get signed (russell, stutes) and not on some of the players that are ‘helium’ now (todd, mort).
Everyone just needs to take a breath, hope we get these guys signed ASAP, and see what they can do. It is an exciting time given the state of the Cardinals’ minor league system right now.