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Thought it might be nice to have a place to track the minor-league affiliates. Both our Triple A team (Memphis Redbirds) and Double A team (Springfield [Mo.] Cardinals) have their own Web pages:

Memphis Redbirds

Springfield Cardinals

EDIT: I'm adding the links here for our two Single A teams

Palm Beach Cardinals

[url=http://www.swingbaseball.com/]Quad Cities Swing
[/url]

and a blog on the Cardinals' minor-league system that looks like it is pretty useful

http://futureredbirds.com/

As of today, Memphis has a record identical to the big-league club's, 6-7. The similarities don't end there. The Redbirds have had pretty solid pitching--their team ERA of 3.49 ranks fifth in the sixteen-team Pacific Coast League--but their team batting average of .220 ranks dead last.

Springfield doesn't look much brighter. They are in last place in their league at 2-7, and nobody there is hitting much either. Top prospect Colby Rasmus is hitting under .200 with no home runs. Granted, the season is young.

Go back to the Memphis site, and you will see that right fielder (!) Rick Ankiel is indeed on pace to hit 54 home runs and drive in 162 runs for 162 games played. If Ankiel ever makes it back to St. Louis, and as a slugging outfielder no less, that would be a story to rival Josh Hamilton!!!

Alas, his batting average stands at .186.

Ankiel is hitting a ton of HRs in AAA so far, too bad thats all he's doing though. With his 5 HRs comes a .773 OPS (.220 OBP) which is pretty bad for a corner outfielder. Add to that he's 27 in AAA, and the only thing that looks impressive is the HRs.

But everyone watchout for Bryan Anderson, he's our catcher in AA, he's 20 years old, and is killing AA right now, albeit a very small sample size. I really like this kid, we'll see if he can push Molina in a couple years, or if he gets moved to another position.

Another kid I'm looking at is Elvis Hernandez who is in A ball, although he is a 22 year old he is dominating. He was signed out of the DR in 2005 and this will be his 1st full season.

Also good to see our 1st round pick from last year doing good so far (Ottavino).

bigboy1234 wrote:Another kid I'm looking at is ElvisHernandez who is in A ball, although he is a 22 year old he is dominating. He was signed out of the DR in 2005 and this will be his 1st full season.

Oh, hell yes I want this guy to make it to the bigs with the Cards.

I love it when people name their babies after Elvis Costello.

His close friends call him Declan.

pacerfan wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



Oh, hell yes I want this guy to make it to the bigs with the Cards.

You must love Blake Hawksworth then too.

nice call on the thread,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

this will keep us updated on the call up players for the year

I found this recent blog on Adam Ottavino:

link

Bear with me, I'm still trying to figure out the best Web sites for following minor-leaguers. I'm at the beginning of the learning curve; in the past I haven't paid much attention to the minors because it has always seemed like such a crapshoot to me--God only knows which prospects won't get hurt or otherwise die on the vine before reaching the bigs--but I have a feeling the Cardinals are going to be more dependent on their farm system in the next five years than they were for the last five. We just seem to have so few tradeable assets right now--we'd better develop some new ones.

Oh, and Ankiel hit another home run yesterday. Two more RBI. Average jumped all the way to .191.

Ankiel was my 2nd favorite Cardinal when he was up in the big leagues....behind of course McGwire...

Would love to see him on the big league club in some capacity one of these days

I think there was some guy a long time ago named Ruth who started as a pitcher and ended up as a power-hitting right fielder.

If Ankiel wants to hit 714 big-league HRs like Ruth did, he'd better get cracking. He would have to be our everyday right fielder by the start of next season, then carry over his current minor-league HR pace to the majors and sustain it until the year 2022.

My handy Texas Instruments calculator tells me the odds of that happening are approximately 13810386639058.89510985713097190357 to 1. But it would make a great story!

I have a feeling once Shaun Garceau gets a few more injury-free innings logged under his belt he may be one of the better under-the-radar pitchers in the minors.

Here is the team Web site of the Quad Cities Swing, proud sponsors of both Shaun Garceau and "King" Elvis Hernandez.

http://www.swingbaseball.com/

OK, I think it is time to call up Ryan Ludwick from Memphis. Ludwick is off to a good start--5 HR in 73 AB, with a .342 batting avg. and a 1.008 OPS. He is 28 years old and already has more than 300 big-league at bats (all in the American League between 2002 and 2005), so I don't really think he needs more developmental time in the minors. Also, he is not someone who needs to be playing every day somewhere--it's not like he is being groomed to be an everyday player at the big-league level.

So bring him up already, and let him get some at bats for St. Louis, at least until Juan Encarnacion is ready to play. Our offense desperately needs a boost. Call me crazy, but I don't think Skip Schumaker is going to provide the spark. It may be grasping at straws, but WE WANT LUDWICK.


Rick Ankiel Update: he hit his seventh HR yesterday, and also leads Memphis with 20 RBI. He is averaging one HR per every 9.7 ABs. That's pretty good! But he still sports a .235 batting avg. and a .280 on-base pct., so there's some work to do before he's ready for the big-league call-up.

Ludwick? please, Joe Mather is were it's at.

Also, Chris Narveson has been pretty impressive in AAA, wouldn't mind seeing him soon.

Mather, Ludwick, whatever. Just do something Cardinals.

Mather's not that old, but man, he's been in the minors for a long time. And has made very slow progress. Looks like he is off to a good start in Springfield though.

I'm kind of focused on our offensive problems these days, but I'm with you on Narveson...why not give him a few big-league starts instead of Keisler?

Yeah, Mather is dominating AA right now. It's more than likely just a fluke considering his career OPS in the minors is lower than .750. But right now he is leading all of the minor leagues in HRs, and has an OPS of 1.300.

I'm pretty sure Narveson is out of options, so if we called him up he would have to clear waivers once we send him back down, which we would more than likely do once Carpenter gets back.

On another notes.

Hawksworth has been terrible so far this year.

Rasmus hasn't been good.

My boy Bryan Anderson stepped up his game last night and hit a HR for me.

Jaime Garcia and Ottavino have both been pretty good this year.

Chris Perez has been pretty dominant but he needs to work on not giving up so many flyballs.

2 other of our top 10 prospects, Jon Jay and Daryl Jones have looked pretty bad so far.

All in all very small sample size so you can't really take anything from this.

I see from the Springfield team Web site that Juan Encarnacion is red-hot...NOT. He is batting .077. Two singles in 26 at-bats. With one walk. So that's an OBP of .111 to go with that .077 slugging pct. I've never heard of a guy being under the Mendoza line with his OPS before.

Looks like Rasmus is starting to hit a bit, his numbers have gone up some.

For Memphis, Hawksworth finally had a good game yesterday, allowing 2 runs in 7 innings, with no walks. The leading hitters continue to be Ludwick and Ankiel. Slick Rick has raised his average to around .260 and his OBP to about .300. And his HR and RBI numbers are good. I admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for Ankiel, I'd really like to see him make it back to the bigs as an outfielder. If it ever happens, Disney Studios will be all over it.

He's back! Rasmus had a double-header yesterday and boy did it do wonders for his stats. He's now sporting an .881 OPS, hopefully he keeps up the goodness tonight. Only 13 strikeouts in 88 ABs is also damn impressive.

Joe Mather is still killing it, I'm starting to think he was a 3rd round pick for a reason, and that he might deserve a shot with the big boys. Although I'm very skeptical because he only has 86 ABs above A ball.

Oh, and so I was bored the other day and I found out we have 3 of the 6 youngest players in all of AA.

Here are the 3 youngest lists I did if anyone is interested in minor league players:
AAA
Homer Bailey 5/3/86
Yovani Gallardo 2/27/86
Carlos Gomez 12/4/85
Ryan Feierabend 8/22/85
Daric Barton 8/16/85
Adam Jones 8/1/85
Lastings Milledge 4/5/85
Ian Stewart 4/5/85
Matt Moses 2/20/85
Tyler Clippard 2/14/85

AA
Fernando Martinez 10/10/88
Bryan Anderson 12/16/86
Andrew McCutchen 10/10/86
Nick Adenhart 8/24/86
Colby Rasmus 8/11/86
Jaime Garcia 7/8/86
Mike Carp 6/30/86
Trevor Plouffe 6/15/86
Collin Balester 6/6/86
Gaby Hernandez 5/21/86
Matt Tuiasosopo 5/10/86
Jose Coronado 4/13/86
Jair Jurrjens 1/29/86
Chuck Lofgren 1/29/86
Franklin Morales 1/24/86
Reid Brignac 1/16/86

High A
Deolis Guerra 4/17/89
Elvis Andrus 8/26/88
Jose Tabata 8/12/88
Brandon Erbe 12/25/87
Jose Guzman 11/5/87
Justin Upton 8/25/87
Luis Sanchez 5/27/87
Ivan De Jesus 5/1/87
Cameron Maybin 4/4/87
Jay Bruce 4/3/87
Shairon Martis 3/30/87
Carlos Carrasco 3/21/87
Daniel Cortes 3/4/87
Aaron Thompson 2/28/87
Will Inman 2/6/87
Travis Wood 2/6/87

Here are a couple of articles on our top prospect, Colby Rasmus:

Springfield News-Leader

MiLB.com

Sounds like Colby is starting to figure out Double A pitching.

Oh, Rasmus is the ****. As of right now I have him as without a doubt top 20 prospect in the game. By the end of the year he will be a top 10 prospect. A good comparison for him I believe is Grady Sizemore.