Yes–even in this time of erratic posting I feel compelled to bring back Get Up, Baby!’s very own white whale, an annual posting series that rivals Chris Lambert in its ability to haunt this site and cause unscheduled downtime. Last year’s Not-Top Twenty produced, after significant tedium, such wonderful current prospects as Jose Martinez, Tyler Herron, Jason Motte and… well, that’s it. I picked three, and my Fearless Prediction–that Nick Webber would be converted to relief (correct!) and thrive (not correct!) was apparently not quite fearful enough. It’s not my fault Randy Roth retired, I’ll tell you that.

Originally the plan was to do this in two posts; one was to be about role players, the other about high-upside types. But in grand sitcom fashion there were two breakout characters deserving of their own spinoff. Can two borderline pitching prospects, one a tidy up-and-comer and the other a sloppy, erratic ex-star, share a blog entry without driving each other crazy?

Mike Parisi - SP - 9th Round, 2004

     AGE   LG   G     IP    H  BB    K  HR   K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  22 A(+)  27  164.0  177  47  129  11  7.08  2.58  2.74  3.68
2006  23   AA  27  150.2  168  63  107  13  6.39  3.76  1.70  4.60
2007  24  AAA  28  165.0  192  65  111  21  6.05  3.55  1.71  4.91

I’m not really a Parisi believer, but he’s the designated first-to-the-majors starter, so I’m including him here in the interest of completeness. The main thing here, his primary gift, is that he continues to move forward; he’s never struggled so much that a demotion has been in order, and he’s pitched a full season of games each of the last three years. But in moving forward a level at a time he’s never looked particularly great or been particularly young at any one stop. Tortoise-marching your way through the farm is great, but eventually you’ve got to succeed against real, live major league hitters.

Interesting, complicating fact from First Inning: Parisi has had an extremely high BABIP at each of his last three stops; it’s never been below .320, whereas the expected BABIP against pitchers is .300. This could be taken as evidence of his ugly ERAs underrating his actual pitching skill, but after three seasons I’m more inclined to take it as the analogue to the Brad Eldred Rule, which reads: lots of strikeouts for a hitter are only a problem if they come in the minor leagues. The Parisi Corollary, if I’m correct here, might go: if minor league hitters are putting the ball in play extra-hard against him, what might major league hitters do? Given his consistently mediocre strikeout rates (sub-WonderBradian) and his average control, major league hitters are going to put plenty of balls in play regardless.

In the end, he interests me mainly in the way he relates to Fearless Prediction 2008: I think he’s going to be overtaken as the sixth starter, the next-man-up, by this guy:

Blake Hawksworth - SP - Draft-and-follow, 2001

     AGE   LG   G     IP    H  BB    K  HR   K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  22   SS   7   14.2   18  10   12   0  7.36  6.14  1.20  7.98
2006  23 A/AA  27  163.1  147  50  121   8  6.67  2.76  2.42  2.91
2007  24  AAA  28  129.2  150  41   88  24  6.11  2.85  2.41  5.28

That’s right: it’s the final appearance, on this list, of one of the all-time great Get Up, Baby! hobbyhorses. To recap: I successfully tabbed his 2006 comeback as a rousing success before the season started and, as can happen when one is drunk with prospecting success, I’ve been overly high on him ever since.

The main thing here is to compare him, after his disastrous AAA debut, to already-anointed Parisi. Despite Hawksworth having been around since this blog was born, and Parisi having been selected in this blog’s least-favorite draft, they’re the same baseball age; Hawk, who began his comeback from serious arm problems at the same time Parisi began his career, is a month older. Both spent all of last season in Memphis, and both got Charlie Browned on a regular basis.

I think there are two things keeping people from seeing Hawksworth as the most likely candidate to replace whichever part of the Wellemeyer/Thompson/Reyes/Clement contingent fails most catastrophically. The first block is mental: Hawksworth was still considered something of a high-upside prospect coming into 2007, and as a result his mediocre final numbers are less heartening than they were coming from a middling pick in the worst draft in recent memory.

The second block is statistical: Hawksworth gave up an absurd number of home runs last year–1.67 of them per nine innings, to be exact. Last year only Woody Williams reached that hallowed plateau in the majors, and he did it in ex-Enron Field; in the minors, only one player–journeyman Jeff Harris–came near it while pitching enough innings to qualify for the title, such as it is.

More important, though, is that pitchers rarely find themselves that homer-prone over an entire career. Among pitchers who’ve managed 1000 major league innings since 2007–that’s 125 innings a season–only Eric Milton put up a HR/9 over 1.60. If you drop Hawksworth’s home run rate to 1.25, which would put him in the first large grouping of players on this list, his fielding-independent ERA drops from 5.20 to 4.59, in line with Parisi’s 4.70.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that using that many major league innings as a basis for regressing a season’s worth of minor league innings introduces some serious selection-bias problems, to say the least. As a general rule I wouldn’t do it. But such is the nature of a Fearless Prediction. Knowing what I know about the pitcher–that he has good stuff; that his strikeout and walk numbers were identical to his 2006 totals; that he had yet to give up a lot of home runs up to this point–and knowing what I know about home runs–they’re one of the more volatile statistics a pitcher has control over–I think we’ve underestimated Blake Hawksworth to this point. If it turns out I’m wrong, and 2006 was the anomaly–well, I’ve championed dumber causes.

So, here’s the thing: there’s just one guy currently with the Cardinals’ AAA affiliate who’s particularly impressive, unless you’re excited about the idea of John Nelson striking out in half of his at-bats at the big league level (slogan: I’m Not Jose Vizcaino!) And, honestly, I don’t know what to make of Andy Cavazos. He doesn’t put up extreme Colter Bean numbers in the minors, so I can’t get excited about him from that standpoint. And I didn’t watch him throw cartoon sliders for a month and a half, so he hasn’t yet earned the Josh Kinney Exception. But he did put up a 3.43 K:BB in Memphis, so I wouldn’t have minded the Cardinals handing him the job, rather than give Russ Springer money to… do whatever it is that Russ Springer does better than Andy Cavazos. (Russ Springer’s slogan: I’m neither Jose Vizcaino nor Ricardo Rincon!)

In any case, we’re back to your regularly scheduled programming here at Get Up, Baby!, whatever that is. I’ve been asked by the lovely people at CubsHub–I don’t really know them, but I like to think they’re lovely–to draw up a prospect list for their series on the NL Central. I hadn’t planned on doing one, but after slumming it with the pseudo-prospects for a while I feel like I’ve earned the chance to pretend I know any better about prospects than people who’ve actually seen them play. So that should be happening in the next few days. (Danup slogan: I never, ever turn a writing “job” down! Ever!)

On a hypothetical note: would you prefer a more open design? This fixed-width column deal was basically done out of convenience–I can fake my way through HTML and CSS, but that’s about it–and it doesn’t transfer well to very large and very small screens. For that matter, is there anything else you, The Viewer, would like to see?

The wrong Springfield, for me, but then my hometown wasn’t able to keep a Frontier League team in old Robin Roberts Stadium–even one with Jason Simontacchi’s undeniable star power–so it’s probably for the best. At this point the Not-Prospects shift from players who aren’t yet on the radar to players who had their time on the prospect lists and are now struggling to stay noticed or even employed. In AA, we have two of the most recognizable of the species:

Stu Pomeranz - SP - 2nd round, 2003

     AGE   LG   G    IP    H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  20   A+   8  48.1   56  10  29   1   5.40  1.86  2.90  3.35
2005  20   AA  18  98.2  110  40  66  12   6.02  3.65  1.65  5.29
2006  21   AA  18  98.1  107  30  64  13   5.86  2.75  2.13  4.39

Pomeranz is huge–6′7″, 220 pounds–and young. Were it not for those two facts, he would have never made it onto any prospect lists. And in spite of them, he’s off most now. But he’s still both of those things, so among the Not Top-Twenty he remains. Pomeranz illustrates the difference between position prospects and pitching prospects. He’s been young for his leagues, and adequate; he seems like he should be eminently projectable. But scouts picked up early on on his shaky stuff, in spite of the imposing mound presence, and nobody ever got all that excited about him.

In spite of his size, his fastball is a pedestrian high-80s model with little in the way of sink, and his knuckle curveball is pretty flat. That said, he was a 21-year-old in AA ball, and he held his own. He’s got good control, if nothing else, and he’s got a few years to learn a sinker, or get some more of that weight behind his pitches.

Travis Hanson - 3B - minor league free agent

     AGE  LG    G   AB    H  2B  3B  HR  BB   SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2005  24  AA  137  546  155  29   3  20  54   99  .284 .347 .458  18
2006  25 AAA   65  252   57  12   0   2  16   52  .226 .275 .298  21
2006  25  AA   67  223   49  11   1   1  20   43  .220 .282 .291  19

Yikes. I was never that high on Hanson–at least, I don’t remember it, and I’m certainly not that wowed by his performance in hindsight–but as barren as the Cardinals system has been of position players his age-24 power spike made him a prospect by default.

And then this happened. Hanson started the year in AAA, looked awful, was demoted, and–this is the impressive part–managed to continue to suck in exactly the same way. Some sort of bounceback is to be expected, because it’s impossible to be this bad, but I think the main thing is that he was just never that good to begin with; in the two years prior to his breakout he slugged .406 and .335. He’ll be given every chance to stick at AAA, and if he does that he still has a shot at making the big league roster–a big league roster–as a Spiezio-esque utility man. But to realize that dream, he’ll have to get through… Spiezio. And I’m not sure he has the facial hair to do it.

Wow, what was that? I had a few too many things on my plate at once, and as usual I compensated for that by not accomplishing any of them. That said, consider Get Up, Baby! back in business–and just in time for pitchers and catchers to report. Now, to get back to our tepidly-received regular feature: the not top-twenty.

Today’s bushers–why, yes, I have been reading some Ring Lardner lately–are the Palm Beach Cardinals, who in 2006 continued to be one of the Cardinals’ most successful minor league teams. Usually that kind of continued success means there’s a fair amount of non-prospects on the squad, good enough to contribute without being promoted. In this case… well, not really; Palm Beach had significant time with the Cardinals’ two best prospects, benefited from Blake Hawksworth’s comeback and Terry Evans’s ascendance into tradebait heaven, and got solidly average production from several players I wouldn’t even dare to profile. But there’re two relievers–and one guy who will be a reliever soon, if there’s any justice–who are worth a look.

Mike Sillman - RP - 21st round , 2004

     AGE   LG   G    IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  23    A  56  65.2  39  49  77   3  10.55  6.72  1.57  2.74
2006  24   A+  57  57.1  34  20  86   2  13.50  3.14  4.30  1.10

If you’re a reliever in the low minors looking to get noticed, you have to either get drafted high, like Chris Perez, or… well, do this. Mike Sillman is a sidearming righty with a fastball that hits 89 on a good day, and he had a pretty decent year with the Quad Cities in 2005. But he didn’t profile well to go further. High strikeout rate, no control–since he could probably beat his fastball to the catcher’s mitt if he had already stretched, he wasn’t a guy to count on for continued success.

Of course, we’re still talking about him, so he fixed something. He ramped his strikeout rate up from really good to Gagne-esque, and he cut his walks in half. And he got better as the season went on; in August, the last month of the FSL season, he allowed five hits and struck out twenty batters. These are videogame numbers. His splits are even more ridiculous. He held righties to a combined line of .148/.248/.180. They slugged .180! And he struck out 14.8 of them per nine innings!

When all is said and done, he’s still a minor league reliever, but righties still struggle against sidearmers with iffy stuff at the major league level. Chad Bradford, patron saint of the species, can’t really compare; he was already in AAA at 24, where he was putting up good ERAs but mediocre peripheral stats. Jeff Nelson also reached AAA at 24; prior to that he was the Worst Starter Ever at a number of minor league stops. What I’m trying to say is that there’s really nobody to compare him to. Most sidearmers and shady relief pseudo-prospects don’t have a season anything at all like this. We won’t know anything until he hits AA next year, but I predict good things.

Dennis Dove - RP - 3rd round, 2003

     AGE   LG   G    IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  24    A  18   102  93  30  72   6   6.35  2.65  2.40  3.88
2005  24   A+   8  42.2  48  15  23   1   4.85  3.16  1.53  4.85
2006  25   A+  41  51.1  38  13  56   3   9.82  2.28  4.31  2.81
2006  25   AA  13  14.1  18   8  15   6   9.42  5.02  1.88  8.79

Unlike Sillman, Dove broke into relief work the proper way–by initially failing as a starter. Always touted as a great arm, he posted numbers more befitting an undrafted finesse type until he was converted to relief to begin the 2006 season. He proceeded to show unerring control of a fastball that at times approached triple digits, and was consistently in the mid-90s. Pay no more attention to the beatdown he took in AA than you would the nine great innings he pitched in the Arizona Fall League after the season.

That said, I’m less high on him than I am Sillman, because his great fastball is his only pitch. And even as a reliever, a great fastball isn’t enough. You have to have a transcendent, Rivera/Wagner/Zumaya fastball to rely exclusively on it. I worry that he’s going to run into the same trap ex-top-prospect Jimmy Journell did: his high-90s fastball will produce some ridiculous-looking strikeouts and some equally ridiculous upper-deck home runs in the majors.

Nick Webber - SP? - 2nd round, 2005

     AGE   LG   G    IP     H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  21   SS  10   53.0   35  15  43   2   7.30  2.55  2.86  1.87
2005  21    A   5   29.0   28   9  11   1   3.41  2.79  1.22  3.41
2006  22   A+  27  134.2  153  63  65   7   4.34  4.21  1.03  4.21

I realize this has been a pretty conservative list so far, so consider this my one Fearless Prediction: Nick Webber is 2007’s Dennis Dove, only better. Ever since he moved to full season ball, after a dominant short season debut, Webber’s peripherals have been downright unpleasant. Not only is he not striking anybody out, but his K:BB ratio is approaching critically nasty mass.

That’s because Nick Webber is a relief pitcher. He did it in college, and he’s going to do it if he reaches the pros. He’s got a mid-90s fastball with incredible sink on it–even when he wasn’t striking anybody out he kept the ball in the park, and his groundball/flyball ratio has been high throughout his career. But that’s his only pitch. As Jason Marquis so adeptly proved, it’s really, really hard to be a starting pitcher when every batter knows what’s coming, even if what’s coming is a pitch that’s really hard to make solid contact against. Add a few miles an hour, forget about the alleged breaking balls, and just rear back and throw it.

If you want another reliever to watch next year–if you somehow can’t get enough of the species least likely to transfer minor league success to the bigs–keep an eye on Jason Motte. I could put him on the Palm Beach list, but it would be cheating; Motte went 4-30 with eleven strikeouts as a catcher early in the year, before disappearing in early May. He was exceedingly well-regarded, defensively, but no amount of glove can carry that batting line.

As it turns out, he was in extended Spring Training, and he made short-season State College as its closer. He’s got a fastball that touches 95 and the beginnings of a hard slider; between short-season A and the Quad Cities, he struck out thirty-eight and walked seven (in thirty-nine innings) in the first experience of his life as a pitcher. He’s a long way away, but that’s a solid start.

And here we get to the true meaning of not top-twenty. The players you see before you are not, strictly speaking, prospects. They’re prospects to be prospects, and maybe one of them will break out and hit the top twenty of a middle-of-the-road Cardinals system. But they’re still interesting, as far as late January goes, and worth discussing.

So, if you’re interested in Preston Wilson, scroll down. But if you want to read about two guys who, collectively, charitably have a 50/50 shot at doing anything notable, this is the entry for you.

Jose Martinez - 2B/SS

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2005  19   R  55  150  45   8   2   6  20  15  .300 .387 .500  10
2006  20   A  91  326  88  20   2   8  18  26  .270 .320 .417   8

Future Redbirds recently hit most of my talking points, because Erik is a startlingly comprehensive minors blogger, but Martinez remains my favorite sleeper prospect. After a big debut in rookie ball he hit the periphery of the prospect lists, but a late start and mediocre numbers in his first full season stop dropped him right back off. He might be starting over, but there’s still a lot to like.

First off, how about that contact rate? My omnipresent and irrational worry, when there’s an untouted player who makes incredible contact coming through the system, is that he’s another Yadier Molina. I got a bad case of the Yadis when I checked Martinez’s final numbers, in fact, but a check of the statistical record allayed my concerns. Molina hit .280/.331/.384 in his age-20 season, and he hit for even less power the next year. Martinez seems considerably more inclined to harder contact, and with his speed–which is average but not Molina-esque–he’s able to make use of the hard grounders Yadi can’t.

The walk rate is a concern, but a lot of Martinez’s decline is in his batting average on balls in play; now, it certainly isn’t as rigid a rule as it is when discussing pitchers, but it’s relatively safe to say that Martinez’s .273 BABIP smells like an aberration, since that number mostly hovers around .300. Give him a .300 BABIP, like he had in 2005, and year-to-year he looks like this:

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2005  19   R  55  150  45   8   2   6  20  15  .300 .387 .500  10
2006  20   A  91  326  96  22   2   8  18  26  .294 .331 .448   8

Much more palatable, right? It’s only eight hits, but it makes a big difference. Of course, it also sets his collapse in plate discipline into greater relief. My guess, uneducated as it is: part of it can be attributed to the jump in league quality, but at the same time this is a guy who was (subconsciously) frustrated by a mediocre BABIP and some nagging injuries throughout the year. Given his ability to make contact almost at will, he probably forced the issue.

He won’t be pushed as hard as Molina was–I’d be surprised if he didn’t start the year back at the Quad Cities–but if his power returns he’ll be back on the radar in a hurry.

Randy Roth - 3B/1B - 10th round, 2005

     AGE  LG   G   AB    H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2005  23   R  35  119   39  13   1   7   6  24  .328 .368 .630  20
2005  23  SS  32  119   29   6   1   3   6  21  .244 .283 .387  18
2006  24   A  97  385  118  24   2  18  20  49  .306 .353 .519  13
2006  24  A+  30  105   31  10   0   2   8  12  .295 .368 .448  11

Isaias Garcia, profiled in the Johnson City entry, hopes to someday become Randy Roth, the elderly rookie leaguer who has continued to slug the ball, in search of a league where the rest of his team remembers when Paula Abdul was a sex symbol and the Simpsons was consistently brilliant. Roth is a defensive suspect, with a great arm but stone hands and mediocre range. He’s also got a truly bizarre swing–he starts off like Albert Pujols, crouched down, ready to strike, but then sort of whirls the bat around and flicks his wrists at the ball. It looks cobbled together from several attractive swings, like an English accent learned alternately from Howard Cosell and Audrey Hepburn.

In spite of the stats, he’s not enjoyed a warm reception from the prospect mavens. Midseason, Baseball America gave him their most scathing rejection: “He’s not a prospect.” Having continued to hit, though, they picked him as the Cardinals’ sleeper. With Rico Washington gone and Travis Hanson in sink-or-swim mode, Roth has a golden opportunity to stick at third base in AA. If he makes it to AAA and continues to hover around an .850 OPS, he’ll be in the Cardinals picture for September. The most important thing is going to be whether he sticks at third base in time for his final minor league stop; even if he sucks there, he’ll seem more versatile.

So long, State College; after just one year with their new affiliate, the Cardinals have replaced the Spikes with the decidedly less-elegant Batavia Muckdogs. But it wasn’t an unproductive year, as several of the Cardinals’ college arms from the 2006 draft made their way to Pennsylvania.

Brad Furnish - SP - 2nd round, 2006

     AGE   LG   G  IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2006  21   SS  15  75  65  19  68   5   8.12  2.27  3.58  3.94

Furnish is one of the numerous college performance starters the Cardinals picked up in the first several rounds, and probably the best one not named Ottavino. Southpaw, 90-ish fastball, good curveball, impressive low-level numbers–you know the drill. He’s certain to move fast, and once he appears in AA we’ll have a better guage of his overall abilities. BA projects him as a “back end of the rotation” type, a little disappointing for a second rounder.

Gary Daley - SP - 3rd round, 2006

     AGE   LG   G    IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2006  20   SS  15  74.0  76  32  64   0   7.78  3.89  2.00  3.28

Even when the Cardinals wanted to sign high upside projects, they couldn’t bring themselves to draft a high school pitcher. Daley’s very young for a collegian, and put up generally unimpressive numbers there–an ERA well north of 5. His pro debut wasn’t spectacular, but not allowing a single home run in 74 innings is worth noting. He’s got a very good curveball, and a low-90s fastball that’s a tick above the rest of his college Cardinals prospect class; if his command problems are worked out, he could reach the middle of the rotation.

Eddie Degerman - SP - 4th round, 2006

     AGE   LG   G    IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2006  22   SS   9  42.3  37  20  53   1  11.27  4.25  2.65  2.76

This particular performance collegian is the one with the bizarre mechanics–he goes completely over the top. It’s deceptive enough for him to have struck out 225 batters between college and the pros in 2006. The delivery helps him out, because his stuff is–surprise–average. It seems like the Cardinals are taking a throw-a-lot-of-them-at-the-wall approach, hoping that some of them stick at the back of the rotation, but Degerman’s cartoonish delivery could lead him to the bullpen.

Nathan Southard - OF - 17th round, 2006

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2006  22  SS  66  243  74  21   4   5  27  42  .306 .384 .488  17

Southard was a very good hitter in college, but the Cardinals were probably surprised by the way he took to professional ball; he pretty much did everything right, right down to sixteen stolen bases in eighteen attempts. If nothing else, his .872 OPS kept the Spikes from floundering completely after Mark Hamilton was promoted to low-A.

Donovan Solano - SS - Columbia, 2004

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2005  17   R  67  222  57   9   0   0  21  34  .257 .320 .297  15
2006  18  SS  44  149  42   2   0   0  12  17  .282 .341 .295  11

You read that right, his isolated power this year was .013. But here I am talking about him.

Solano has been a sleeper prospect since the long-lost prospect stop The Cardinal Nation passed along a report about him being more advanced than Edgar Renteria was at the same age–16. Now 18, it’s still true, but only because Renteria was a mess at the time. Pushed all the way to low-A, Renteria managed nine extra-base hits in 116 games and hit just .205. Renteria continued to struggle, in fact, until he hit AA as a 20-year-old and did far better than could have been anticipated in the majors. The Renteria path was unlikely for Renteria, so it’s unreasonable to expect that kind of development.

Regardless, there are some things to like here. He hit for average in 2006, even though extra bases are mostly hypothetical at this point, and he’s a very disciplined hitter for his age. He’s also supposed to be a defensive whiz. That said, he reminds me the most of stalled pseudo-prospect Juan Lucena, who’s put up consecutive seasons near .300 in which his OPS hasn’t topped .680. What it means is that Solano is an unknown quantity right now; at this rate he’s liable to get the bat knocked out of his hands at higher levels, but he’s got another few years to learn the rule about taking two bases if you get the chance.

The Not Top-Twenty resumes this Monday with the Swing of the Quad Cities. One of my favorite sleeper prospects plays there, so it should be interesting. And one more familiar name before I go: remember Rhett Parrott? An all-name Hall of Famer (his middle name is Manton!), he was heartbreakingly close to the majors in 2004 before his arm gave out. He came back at the end of 2006, did well in short-season, and got the crap beaten out of him (eight earned runs, one third of an inning) in one high-A start. Now 27, I don’t know if he’s even playing anymore, let alone if he’s with the Cardinals, but I feel that anybody named Manton deserved as many shots as possible.

For the most part, it’s a fool’s errand to rank players in rookie leagues, let alone the ones that prospect mavens don’t already like; they’re so far from the major leagues that the game they play might as well be totally different. The hitters swing at bad breaking pitches, the pitchers groove mid-80s fastballs–lots of people put up big numbers to never be heard from again. Since these guys are mostly anonymous anyway, we’ll ditch the not top-twenty motif for these leagues and find the players worth watching in general. In order of well-regardedness:

Tyler Herron - SP - Supp. 1st Round, 2005

     AGE   LG   G    IP   H  BB   K  HR   K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2005  19   RK  13  49.2  47  27  49  11  8.88  4.89  1.81  5.62
2006  20   RK  13  69.2  69  22  54   6  6.98  2.84  2.45  4.13

Herron’s the supplemental 2005 first rounder the Cardinals got for Mike Matheny, a typical raw high school pitcher who got raked over the coals in his first professional season. He improved somewhat in his second trip through Johnson City, even throwing a solid start at short-season A to finish out the season, but it wasn’t exactly a dominant showing; his strikeout rate tumbled as he was stretched out to full-length starts, and he still gave up a significant amount of extra-base hits. That said, it was still a step forward, and in reducing his home run rate he also showed some noticeable groundball tendencies. He’s short on stuff as far as the stereotypical high school project goes, but he’s still interesting.

Blake King - SP - Draft-and-Follow, 2006

     AGE   LG   G    IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
2006  19   RK  13  62.2  37  29  74   3  10.63  4.16  2.55  3.02

Talk about stealing Tyler Herron’s thunder. Erik already said more than I could at Future Redbirds, which is a must-bookmark. Basically, King is the Cardinals’ most interesting draft-and-follow since Blake Hawksworth, and he’s got a major league fastball. That’s enough to warrant continued attention when you strike out a batter an inning.

Jonathan Edwards - OF - 14th round, 2006

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2006  18  RK  48  154  41  16   1   4  20  33  .266 .360 .461  21

He’s huge and he’s young. 6′5″, 230 and a .200 isolated power is enough to get me excited by itself. But he also showed good plate discipline, and played through some nagging injuries; he was hitting .295 until a miserable August dragged his stats down. He’s a long way away, but he’s an exciting hitter in a draft that–for the most part–traded excitement for safe bets.

Thomas Pham - SS - 16th round, 2006

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2006  18  RK  54  182  42   8   3   1  26  42  .231 .340 .324  23

Pham was a top-five-round talent out of high school, but he was committed to Cal State-Fullerton and pretty adamant about getting early round money. The Cardinals opened up the wallet and picked up a five-tool type who is going to have to improve his performance everywhere on the field. He started off hot, but missed some time to a groin injury and never got back on track when he returned. Meanwhile, he had a terrible year in the field–eighteen errors in 54 games, many of which he played as the designated hitter. Like Daryl Jones, a top Cardinals prospect who’s yet to translate his skills into performance, he’s got a long way to go before he’s written off. Look for him to approach the Cardinals’ top ten next year.

Isaias Garcia - 2B - 34th round, 2006

     AGE  LG   G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
2006  22  RK  57  192  65  17   2   4  15  13  .339 .395 .510   6

This year’s Randy Roth, Garcia was the team’s MVP but he’s way old for Johnson City. That said, he hit a solid .339, with a fair amount of extra-base pop, and that strikeout percentage is ridiculous. Like Roth–who will be covered in the Palm Beach section of this series–he’ll be old for his league until he hits AAA, but if he keeps hitting like this he could find his way onto a major league roster eventually.

January and February are prospect season by default; there’s little in the way of new news, aside from the occasional winter league breakouts and breakdowns, but it’s not like anything else is happening. If it weren’t for prospects, sportswriters would be left with nothing to do but churn out asinine, inflammatory, semi-literate straw-man teardowns for their own amusement. And we can’t have that.

Baseball America christens the season, as always, with the publication of their prospect handbook. Along with the annual Baseball Prospectus it’s the guide for looking unusually informed over the course of the season. The Cardinals’ top thirty is out, and most of the names are familiar. I have nothing to add about the top names on the list; I haven’t seen them play, I haven’t stuck a radar gun out, I haven’t guessed at their grit and hustlin’ tendencies. When push comes to shove, if you’re going to predict a guy as the next best thing you have to take a look at him, see how he does what he does. But those aren’t the only players that make the bigs; I do have time, and the internet. So: for your edification, and for our desire to ferret out the next Trey Hearne-sized internet sensation, the not-top-twenty Cardinals prospects.

I’m going to team-by-team. Up tomorrow are the short-season leagues.

Before we begin with the real baseball, though, a note: the Cardinals have a Venezuelan team. This was news to me, delivered via MiLB.com, so I figured I would relay it. Further research turns up the fact that this was the club’s first year, and it shows; only one position player on the team with more than a hundred at-bats hit over .260, and the pitchers aren’t much more interesting. The Cardinals’ best summer leaguer from last year, outfielder Jose Ramirez, only got into a few games before losing the year to injury.

But one pitcher stands out enough to not only make the Not-Top Twenties on an exception, but to be the official Get Up, Baby! Longshot Prospect of 2007. Our patron saint, if you will, since I’ve heard exactly one sentence about his abilities from someone who’s seen him play. And that player is Wladimir Mendoza. His numbers–which admittedly need to be taken with a huge grain of salt–speak volumes:

  IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
75.2  50  47  89   2  10.59  5.59  1.89  2.26

That appears to be the work of a live arm. But ten of his runs allowed came in two miserable outings. Let’s take those out, and see what we have left.

  IP   H  BB   K  HR    K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA
66.0  38  36  82   2  11.18  4.91  2.28  1.23

So he was old for his league–20–and his control was still pretty bad, but when his command wasn’t totally off he was off-the-charts dominant. According to an interview of Jeff Luhnow, VP of player development, that Scout.com conducted a while back, he’s got a fastball that sits in the low-90s and “the makings of a good breaking pitch.” In the Liga Paralela, a Venezuelan winter league, he allowed one earned run and struck out nineteen in fifteen innings pitched. We probably won’t hear from him again until short season leagues open up in June, but when that happens he’ll get the first sidebar spot since I tracked Rick Ankiel’s first season as an outfielder. Let’s hope this goes a little better.