Over at Future Redbirds the Reader Top 25 has wrapped, and it’s a pretty good list–if you’re not one of the people who helped make it I highly advise checking it out. The most interesting thing about it is just how many of these guys are low-level pitchers, especially now that stalwart older-prospect Blake Hawksworth is now a stalwart older-suspect. (Fearless prediction: Hawksworth makes at least one quality start in 2008 in his new role as Randy Keisler-Memorial Prospect Shield.) Levels and age-next-year for the pitchers in question:

AAA
Chris Perez (22)

AA
Jaime Garcia (21)
Mitchell Boggs (24)
P.J. Walters (23)
Jason Motte (26)
Kyle McClellan (24)

A+
Adam Ottavino (22)
Mark McCormick (24)

A
Tyler Herron (21)
Clay Mortensen (23)
Ken Maiques (23)

SS/R
Jess Todd (22)
Deryk Hooker (19)

Aside from what seems to be an overrating of low-minors relievers this seems to be a pretty accurate list, and what it says to me is this: at the end of 2007 the Cardinals are going to either have a bunch of really nice pitching prospects or a very new-looking prospect list.

The tandem starter system is dead, long live the tandem starter system. Eddie Degerman moves up to Palm Beach. Here are his numbers, since his last year at Rice:

       G     IP  HR  BB    K    K/9  BB/9  K:BB  HR/9   ERA   FIP
NCAA  20  130.2   3  58  172  11.85  3.99  2.96  0.21  2.00  2.19
  SS   9   42.1   1  20   53  11.27  4.25  2.65  0.21  2.76  2.42
LowA  12   47.2   4  19   71  13.41  3.59  3.73  0.75  2.45  2.51

He’s a deception guy, featuring a low-90s fastball and a good curveball disguised by a bizarre delivery, but the improving level of competition has yet to expose him. I was hoping he’d touch AA by the end of the season, because there’s only so much you can take from pitchers’ numbers in the Florida State League, but he was obviously too much for the Midwest League and it’s good to see him move on.

Blake King, also leaving Quad Cities, was the first of the two to reach full-season ball; King broke camp with the club, while Degerman stayed behind to work through a Spring Training control meltdown. Little did the Cardinals know that Control Meltdownosis is a transmittable disease:

       G    IP  HR  BB   K    K/9  BB/9  K:BB  HR/9   ERA   FIP
   R  13  62.2   3  29  74  10.63  4.16  2.55  0.43  3.02  2.85
LowA  19  57.0   3  44  62   9.79  6.95  1.41  0.47  5.21  4.02

He’s pitching this whole season as a 20-year-old, so he’ll have plenty of time to work things out as a Batavia Short Season Muckdog, but man is that some kind of control problem, especially when you take into account the 18 wild pitches he threw.

Before I decided that this would be a fiction-writing-night, instead of a keep-six-baseball-cube-tabs-open night, I was working on the long-delayed AA review. One of the players that has recently picked things up–the one who was going to be in the introduction as someone who benefitted the most by the way I’ve dragged my feet in writing this review–is Tyler Greene, the Cardinals’ Rob Deer-ian shortstop prospect.

Unfortunately, by waiting another few days longer I’ll be incorporating this news into the review:

The outlook for Springfield shortstop Tyler Greene does not appear favorable for the 2005 first-round draft pick, who on Sunday afternoon limped into the clubhouse a day after he injured his right knee in taking a swing.

Greene will undergo medical evaluations today to determine the seriousness of the injury, suffered in the third inning of Springfield’s 6-5 win at Wichita, Kan.

Team trainer Brad LaRosa described the injury as being in back of the knee, adding that Greene said he felt a “pop” as he fouled off a pitch. “Where he’s sore is not a good thing,” LaRosa said.

He is out of tonight’s lineup and his status may become clearer later tonight.

As far as I can tell, his status has yet to become clearer, but that doesn’t sound good. It’s really too bad, if he’s going to miss any significant time, because a guy with his tools has always got a shot to put things together.

Well. That was interesting. If the idea of me complaining about the draft doesn’t sate you, scrolling down a lot will get you the All First Round team. Spoilers: good lineup, but the number four pitcher is Allen Watson. Each pick on the first day has its own entry, so hypothetical comments aren’t all on the same thread.

I do not envy Pete Kozma, not at all. Unless he comes through as an above-average regular, which is certainly possible, he’ll be forever identified with a draft characterized not by risk-taking (2005), or simple poor decision making (2004), but by cost-cutting, which isn’t much of a legacy.

The case for Peter Kozma, first rounder: He’s a shortstop, and his broad base of skills sets him apart from the Cardinals’ other two shortstop prospects, Tyler Greene and Jose Martinez, who may be better in one tool or another but have some gaping hole in their game that they must fix to be major leaguers. He’s a high schooler, and he’s got decent size, so there’s a chance that he projects more than expected, a la Jaime Garcia. Most pundits are convinced he’ll end up in the majors, and he’s polished, considered a good bet to fulfill his potential.

The case against Kozma: He’s a shortstop, and that’s why they drafted him. Drafting for a specific position–even pitcher–makes me very uncomfortable. There is, first, the outside chance that he can’t stick at short; most people seemed convinced he would, but remember when Tyler Greene went from defensive standout to “might need to be moved”, before his hitting collapsed and he had to stick there?

Second, getting an average shortstop is fine, but wouldn’t having an above-average player at another position be better? Average types can be found on the free agent market; Juan Encarnacion and David Eckstein are recent examples. But the price scales up very fast. And Kozma is the worst of both worlds, as far as prospect “types” go. He lacks projection but is figured to end up filling a gap and manning short without issue, but he’s nineteen and figures to spend a while in the minors before he comes up. If Kozma were a college shortstop with similar projection, who would have a shot at the shortstop as early as a year from now, I would be fine with this pick. But why pick a “safe” player if, at several years away from the majors, he isn’t all that safe?

And by lack of projection, it would appear that they really mean lack of projection. ESPN forecasts, as though it were a good thing, “eight-to-ten home run power.” Who has two thumbs and has flashed eight-to-ten home run power? This guy. That’s not power, that’s the kind of fluke that can happen over 162 games. That’s like saying he has ten stolen base speed–that sort of thing manifests itself in fits and starts like Pujols’s inexplicable fifteen SB year.

I mean, Mark Loretta comparisons? For most of his career Loretta has been an average-ish middle infielder who got shunted into big utility-guy roles on a regular basis. Are they predicting Kozma is that Mark Loretta, or the one who inexplicably contended for a batting title for two years? Or is he the very same Mark Loretta, already planning to have two big fluke years after he turns thirty? It’s not a very instructive comparison, and it’s not much of an exciting one either. I mentioned the Skip Schumaker reference earlier, and I’ve got to say, if some executive greenlit this on the premise that Kozma would one day be a good enough minor league hitter to hit, say, .250/.323/.330 in the majors, he should be fired, in the sense of actually setting him on fire.

In conclusion: Kozma isn’t a bad pick, if you’re a small-market team who can’t afford to plug holes with free agents. The Cardinals are not a small-market team who can’t afford to plug holes with free agents. This last Cardinals NL Central dynasty has been based on building a team around two or three superstars and a few above-average players, and then just plugging positions up when necessary.

In my mind, it’s a much easier method to maintain; the 1996 Cardinals, a team built on the “Let’s put on a show!”, Lake Wobegon everybody’s-above-average platform, was a lot of fun to watch. But when several of the above-average players fall back to a less-effective state, what could they do? You can’t replace all of them, and the team becomes, well, average.

With that in mind, I think the Cardinals should be spending draft picks (and the associated bonus dollars) on guys who have the potential to be great players–successors to Edmonds, then Rolen, then Carpenter in the team hierarchy. The best thing about drafting guys with the potential to be great players is that if they don’t pan out, a lot of them are still good players. If Pete Kozma doesn’t pan out, he’ll be riding a lot of buses.

The case for Clay Mortenson, first rounder: Nothing much. He’s supposedly a “projectable” college senior, which is good because he throws “89-92″ (in scout talk that has to be, what, 86-89?) in his early twenties, when a lot of people seem to peak in terms of velocity. You know what a high-80s sinker gets you when you don’t have a great secondary pitch? Brad Thompson. And I love WonderBrad, but he’s the kind of happy surprise you should end up with in the middle of the draft, like the Cardinals did when they got him in 2002.

The draft tracker video–I’d embed it but Major League Baseball does not understand the internet and therefore uses pop-up windows and Windows Media Player for everything–shows good movement on his fastball, and all the fastballs they showed hit 90, but there’s something odd about his delivery. I’m not Carlos Gomez, but it seems like his arm action is inconsistent–every few pitches he looks perfectly fine, but there’s an odd hitch in some of them, where his front foot comes down and then everything just stops for a moment. That’s almost a little heartening; perhaps fixing his mechanics is part of the projectability.

I’m also a little wary of the way he’s “developed” in the last year or so. Are we sure that this is a new talent level, or is he just pitching really well right now? If you’re going to make a pick on a statistical basis, it’s good to have a bigger sample to draw from than one college season.

The case against–wait, I think I already made that.

In conclusion: It’s not that Mortenson is going to be a bad player–he might end up in the back of the rotation, which would be fine. The problem is that the Cardinals drafted three or four of these guys last year. Throwing bodies at a position is a fine thing to do in the bullpen, because the individual bodies are cheap in terms of both cash outlay and opportunity cost. But the fifth spot in the rotation–heretofore ably manned by several converted relief pitchers–is no cause for spending draft picks that could be used on players with the chance to do much bigger things.

Back-of-the-rotation starters shouldn’t be developed intentionally; no pitcher should be drafted, especially in the first round, because he looks like he’ll be a good back-of-the-rotation starter. This is like drafting relievers, only on a much more insidious, subtle level. I don’t have the numbers to back this up, but it seems like most good innings eaters were originally pretty good pitching prospects in their own right; consider Boof Bonser, or Joe Blanton, or the endless retreads who’ve ended up here in the past (Pat Hentgen? Andy Benes?) Sure, some of the less-effective models might be these middle-round “polish” guys, but I’d be just fine with taking somebody else’s when they get pushed out of a good rotation or discarded too soon.

But most importantly–nobody was lining up to get this guy. Even if Jeff Luhnow and the scouts saw something amazing in Clay Mortenson, the consensus seems to be that they could’ve gotten him a few rounds later. If he turns out to be a middle-of-the-rotation type, great, but I’m not going to say I was wrong–it is the principle of the matter. The Cardinals obviously and depressingly traded opportunity for dollars here. As the Giants of Brian Sabean’s avoid-first-rounders phase proved, you can’t afford to make that trade if you’re an older team. Especially when you can, uh, afford to not make it.

Finished with their polished back-of-the-rotation fetishizing, the Cardinals drafted David Kopp, a college pitcher with a low 90s fastball, below-average command, and–in one of the best faint-praise lines ever utilized by the perpetually content, unopinionated MiLB draft report, a “Steve Trachsel body type.” His strengths include “the ability to throw three average to above average pitches.”

The case for Kopp, second rounder: From the people who brought you Brad Furnish and Brad Furnish 2: Tyler Norrick… Brad Furnish 3: David Kopp. They may throw with different hands, but if you like occasionally entertaining sequels with a very low risk of wowing you, make sure David Kopp is second only to Rush Hour 3 on your list of things to see this summer. Kopp significantly increased his command all three years at Clemson, cutting his walk rate nearly in half during his final year, but his strikeout rate barely budged and still hung around below seven batters per nine innings.

The case against Kopp: Stop drafting the same player!

Luhnow and co. did it twice last year, selecting two middling college lefties (Norrick and Furnish) and three speedy outfielders with little power (Jay, Southard, Robinson) on the first day. And now the Cardinals continue to throw guys with not much in the way of tools or projection into the apparently insatiable maw of the Quad Cities Tandem Starting Rotation.

Out of the fifty or sixty that the Cardinals seem to have picked up in the last two years, a few will probably become good players, but the rest will still have been drafted. Since these are all shorter term prospects than, say, high school outfielders or project pitchers, can I remind the Cardinals that they recently signed Chris Carpenter through 2011, and that they have Adam Wainwright and Anthony Reyes in their control for quite a while yet, and Jaime Garcia in AA and still younger than some of these pitchers? (Can I also remind them that Anthony Reyes, a pitcher with better stuff and command than any of the pitchers taken today, who puts up better numbers in the majors than some of them will this year in the minors, is still struggling to stick at the back end of the rotation? And that that might raise an issue about signing guys with middling stuff and expecting them to polish their way to said rotation?)

The case for Jess Todd, second rounder: Probably another reach, but I like him. Unlike roundmate David Kopp, his average-ish low-to-mid 90s fastball manifest itself in some excellent peripherals; he struck out 12.3 per nine innings with a K:BB ratio around five, and he allowed just three home runs in his 93.1 innings pitched. And apparently this is one case where the ever-generous MiLB scouting report was hard on a guy; if you ask these guys, or apparently Baseball America (my subscription lapsed–at the worst possible moment, of course), he’s got an excellent slider. If you ask MiLB, he’s got an average slider. I’ll take the results, especially given the way in which this draft has systematically beaten my expectations into the ground.

The case against: Teams see him as a reliever, because he is short and owns what is characterized as a violent delivery. From the video, it’s odd–compact and quick, a little reminiscent of the way Pedro’s arm looks at the start of his delivery. I think the violent characterization might be colored a little by the speed of his delivery, though; his jump toward the plate is very fast. His slider looked great, but his fastball didn’t seem to have a ton on it.

In conclusion: I like this pick, so long as the Cardinals give him a chance to excel in a starting role before choosing to move him to the bullpen. If he does have to move to the pen, his slider looks positively Kinney-esque.

The case for David Descalso, third round: He put up very good numbers in college.

The case against David Descalso, third round: I have trouble spelling his name. Also, he is a pudgy third baseman with little in the way of power.

Erik has a blurb stating that some thought it only kinda likely he’d be drafted in the first ten rounds. You might be wondering: how unlikely is it that he was going to go this high in the draft to anybody else? This David Descalso, a seventeen-year-old track runner, shows up more often on Google.

Cardinals: Hey, David? We’d just like to tell you that we drafted you.

David Descalso: Aww, crap, is this the government?

The case for Kyle Russell, fourth rounder: Now that’s the stuff. Kyle Russell slugged nearly .900 and destroyed Texas’s home run record as a sophomore. He is big but still projects to fill out; he’s young for a college pick; he already has a ton of power. Plus, there’s a video of him dunking a home run into the Crawford Boxes on YouTube:

Nice.

The case against Kyle Russell: There are worries about holes in his swing, since he struck out once per game in college. He could just go back to college, too, if the Cardinals don’t show him the money. If that were to happen what happened next might get me arrested, which is just a bad thing for everybody involved.

In conclusion: this draft feels a lot better if you switch him and Clay Mortenson around. Then we only reached on Mortenson a little, and we took a chance on Kyle Russell! Much better. If they don’t sign Kyle Russell, I’ll put up a few more ads or maybe set up a good old-fashioned meth lab and see if I can’t make up the difference myself.

Over at Baseball Think Factory (I’ll always know it as Primer), they’re doing all first rounder teams to celebrate Baseball-Reference’s latest killer app, this ridiculously awesome draft database. We start in 1965, and aside from moves down the defensive spectrum everybody has to play at a position they spent significant time at, as opposed to where they were drafted. (Dmitri was a shortstop!?) Ladies and gentlemen, your first round St. Louis Cardinals:

               NAME  YEAR  #     G   AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS+
 C      Ted Simmons  1967 10  2456  .285 .348 .437  118
1B      Leon Durham  1976 15  1067  .277 .356 .475  124
2B     Adam Kennedy  1997 20  1069  .277 .331 .394   90
3B     Dmitri Young  1991  4  1231  .291 .348 .476  113
SS  Garry Templeton  1974 13  2079  .271 .304 .369   87
LF   Andy Van Slyke  1979  6  1658  .274 .349 .443  119
CF        J.D. Drew  1998  5  1009  .283 .390 .502  130
RF     Brian Jordan  1988 30  1456  .282 .333 .455  105

                                G    W   L   ERA  PEAK+  CAR+
 1      Matt Morris  1995 12  282  117  80  3.72   137   113
 2      Joe Magrane  1985 18  190   57  67  3.81   125   103
 3  Donovan Osborne  1990 13  163   49  46  4.03   121   100
 4     Allen Watson  1991 21  206   51  55  5.03    93    86
 5   Braden Looper?  1996  3  584   40  36  3.59   109   117

CL     Todd Worrell  1982 21  617   50  52  3.09   188   122

Plenty of offense from Simba, Durham, and Drew, although the team as a whole is built on the low-OBP slugger, late-model Cubs model. The problem is that rotation; I’ve included their top single-season ERA+ along with their career ERA+, so that we can mourn Joe Magrane, the Matt Morris that struck batters out, and pre-meltdown Donovan Osborne.

The Cardinals’ biggest bust, numerically, is Paul Coleman, taken with the sixth pick in the 1989 draft. (He’s got a Baseball Cube page, but no stats; did he sign, people who weren’t two years old at the time?) The best player taken before him was Tyler Houston, who became a surly utility catcher. Drafted with the seventh pick in the 1989 draft was Frank Thomas. Later in the first round were Chuck Knoblauch and Mo Vaughn; just three real impact players, but missing one of the best hitters ever and two all-stars isn’t exactly great.

More recently, Shaun Boyd went thirteenth in the notoriously awful (for everybody) 2000 draft; the first twelve picks included Adrian Gonzalez, Rocco Baldelli, and a ton of pitchers who’ve flamed out prior to spending any significant time in the major leagues. The Cardinals got Chris Narveson (second round), Yadi (fourth), Carmen Cali (tenth), and John Gall (eleventh), and then Tyler Johnson as a draft-and-follow in the thirty-fourth.

Remember these names, or not: Adam Johnson; Mike Stodolka; Justin Wayne; Matt “I’ll wait ’til next year” Harrington; Matthew Wheatland; Mark Phillips; Joe Torres. Combined career record: 6-11. Chase Utley was picked fifteenth, or the Cardinals could’ve gotten some guy named Adam Wainwright, who was taken with the twenty-ninth pick.

And if you’re wondering about the Cardinals’ worst recent draft, try 2002, which produced one major leaguer: WonderBrad. In its defense, though, the Cardinals had no first or second rounders, which means that everybody’s favorite draft, 2004: The College Years, has a very good chance of topping it. Provided Chris Lambert doesn’t do anything to justify picking a raw college pitcher ahead of, say, Phil Hughes, the 2004 draft’s best hope of producing a single major leaguer involves either Mark Worrell or Mike Sillman cracking the bullpen, although Christian “I was the only high school pick before round 40!” Reyes and Jarrett Hoffpauir are doing alright. 1996 is another fun one.

Coming tomorrow: an attempt at a level-headed draft analysis, which will surely fail. Much like this draft. (Crap, I did it again!) The minor league series will continue on Monday.