Springfield Cardinals (AA): The Northwest Arkansas Naturals beat the Double-A Cardinals yesterday at Hammons Field In Springfield, Missouri, 5-4.

The Naturals came back from being down 4-0 after five innings, scoring their five with the remaining innings.

Tyler Greene went 3-for-4 in the losing cause with two home runs.

Batavia Muckdogs (A): The Muckdogs beat the Lowell Spinners yesterday, 5-3. Scott Gorgen got the win, his first against no losses. Gorgen walked only two in 3 full innings or work while striking out seven.

Domnit Bolivar went 2-for4 with a home run.

Johnson City Cardinals (R): The Cardinals defeated the Lowell Flying Tigers 7-5 yesterday in extra innings. After scoring five runs in the first, the Flying Tigers chipped away, tying the game and sending it into extra frames.

The first inning assault came from a bases-loaded RBI walk by Daryl Jones, followed by a grand slam by Luke Gorsett. 

In the tenth inning Matthew Arburr hit a walk-off, two-run homer to give the Cardinals the 7-5 win.

Kenneth Maiques (1-1, 5.96) picked up the win.

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Memphis Redbirds (AAA): D’Angelo Jimenez went 3-for-4 with a double and two RBIs to the Redbirds to a 3-1 victory over the Omaha Royals at Autozone Park last night.

Starting pitcher P.J. Walters threw deep into the game, eight full innings, allowing only three hits and two walks while striking out eight. Walters was nicked for one earned run, a homer in the fifth inning that had put the Royals up 1-0.

The Redbirds would tie the game in the sixth when Nick Stavinoha scored from third base on a sacrifice fly by Rico Washington.

The go-ahead runs were tallied in the eighth when D. Jimenez singled home both Jarrett Hoffpauir and Josh Phelps.

Kelvin Jimenez came on in relief for the ninth, allowing one Royals’ base runner on a walk. His defense picked up the tab, however, eliminating the base runner and wrapping up the game on an inning-ending double play.

Springfield Cardinals (AA): Every run in the 4-2 game was a result of a round-tripper, but the Cards’ homers yielded more runs than the one Northwest Arkansas Naturals’ home run.

The Naturals scored two in the top of the first on one dinger. It wasn’t until the second inning that the Cards’ Matt Pagnozzi (3-for-4) hit a solo shot to cut the Naturals’ lead in half. Another solo blast by Tyler Greene in the fifth tied it up a 2-all.

In the bottom of the ninth, Allen Craig hit a two-run, walkoff homer to double the Cards’ score and snag the 4-2 victory.

Luke Gregerson picked up the win (5-5), having worked one inning, pitching in the ninth while the scored was yet tied.

Quad-Cities River Bandits (A): The River Bandits tallied a dozen hits in a 4-2 over the South Bend Silver Hawks in Indiana last night.

Chuckie Fick (2-2, 2.74) earned a victory, working five full innings. Fick struck out five, walked only one, and gave up six hits. He gave up two runs, both earned.

Wayne Daman and Matt Spade got credit for a hold. Pete Parise got the save, his eighth.

Ross Oeder went 3-for-4, scoring a run. Teammate D’Marcus Ingram hit a solo home run.

Palm Beach Cardinals (A): Luke Gorsett hit a grand slam in a five-run first inning, but the Lakeland Flying Tigers tied it up by the eighth. Still tied at 5-apiece after nine, Matthew Arburr hit a walkoff two-run homer to give the Cards a 7-5 victory.

Batavia Muckdogs (A): Domnit Bolivar went 2-for-4 with a home run, leading the Muckdogs to a 5-2 win over the Lowell Threshers yesterday. Scott Gorgen (1-0, 1.50) earned his first victory with three innings of work. Jason Buursma recorded his first save.

Johnson City Cardinals (R): The Cardinals came out on top, 4-3, edging the Elizabethton Twins in an extra inning game at Howard Johnson Field last night. A combined 11 pitchers took the hill, six of them from the JC squad.

In order of appearance for the hometown Cards and (IP): Reynier Gonzalez (5.0); Kevin Thomas (2.0); Jose Mateo (1.0); Jorge Rondon (2.0); Joel Pichardo (3.0); Santo Maertz (2.0).

Maertz (2-0) picked up the win.

Of the JC Cards’ eight hits, none were for extra bases.

Memphis Redbirds (AAA): Mike Parisi fell to 6-2 after the Redbirds lost 5-4 to the New Orleans Zephyrs. Shane Robinson homered for the Redbirds.

Springfield Cardinals (AA): Got nipped 11-10 by the Northwest Arkansas Naturals. Fernando Salas was the losing pitcher, his record now 4-2.

Matt Pagnozzi went 3-for-3 with a double and two RBIs. Allen Craig hit a two-run home run in a 3-for-5 game, tallying two RBIs and scoring two runs. James Rapoport tripled, gathering two RBIs and scoring two runs. Also in the losing effort, Andrew Jones went 2-for-5, hitting a two-run homer and scoring two runs.

Quad-Cities River Bandits (A): The South Bend Silver Hawks pounded the River Bandits at Coveleski Stadium in South Bend, Indiana yesterday, 10-2. Nick Additon (7-3) got lit up for a couple of home runs in the first inning, according to the Quad City Times.

In the losing cause, the only Bandits’ run came in the form of solo home runs, one apiece by Nick Peoples and Brett Wallace.

Johnson City Cardinals (R): Fell 7-3 yesterday to the Pulaski Mariners. Jon Bravo (0-3, 4.76) took the loss for Johnson City.

Alex Castellanos went 2-for-3 with a home run. Jairo Martinez hit a solo home run, his only hit of the game. Curt Smith doubled.

Palm Beach Cardinals (A): Beat the Clearwater Threshers 5-3 yesterday. Brandon Dickson notched the victory, improving his record to 7-6 with an ERA of 2.95.

Matthew Arburr went 2-for-4 with a double and a home run. Also having a 2-for-4 game was Luke Gorsett, who hit a home run. Yet another home run was hit by Daniel Descalso. (All the round-trippers were solo shots.) Tyler Henley added to the offense with a double on a 2-for-4 day.

Batavia Muckdogs (A): Were shut out by the Lowell Spinners. The losing Muckdog pitcher was Zachery Pitts (0-2).

In the loss, Shane Peterson doubled and Charles Cutler went 2-for-3.

One last post about my trip to Spring Training and then I swear I’ll shut up about it.  This one will be more observational and less photo-riffic (although I can’t resist throwing a few more pictures out there).  So, after the jump I’ll list the guys that made positive and negative impressions during my time in Florida.

Positive Impressions

• Rasmus, Mather, Perez - I’ve talked enough about them.
• Ian Church – At his age (27) he’s not really a prospect, especially since he bounced around the independent leagues and he’s never played above Palm Beach, but he crushed the ball in BP the day I saw him.  I’m not sure how many times we said “everybody looks good in BP” while we were in Florida, so it really takes something special (or awful) to garner attention – and Church’s BP performance did that.
• Luke Gorsett – Gorsett may not have the big league upside of guys like Daryl Jones or Jon Jay, but [warning: ambiguous Joe Morgan-speak ahead] the ball just sounded different coming off his bat. 
• Allen Craig – I said in my Top 25 that I thought Craig was the most intriguing hitting prospect in the system outside of Rasmus.  Seeing him take BP did nothing to dissuade that opinion – he was completely crushing the ball.  One of my bigger disappiontments was that I just missed Craig and Freese taking grounders at third – I really wanted to see how he looked defensively.
• Pete Kozma – I had the opposite reaction to Kozma in my Top 25, but I liked what little I saw of him.  I never got a chance to see him swing the bat, but he looked very good in the field during middle infield practice.

Negative Impressions:

• Mark Hamilton – Mark was taking BP in the same group as Craig and looked terrible.  I expected to see moon shots, but instead he was hitting these crazy linedrives with topspin on them so that they dove for the ground after getting out of the infield.  Perhaps someone out there with more knowledge regarding the technical aspects of swings can tell me what that means, but something was definitely off with his swing the day I saw him.
• Tyler Greene – Greene didn’t exactly do anything poorly, he just didn’t do anything that looked all that great.  He made all the plays in infield practice, but compared to Kozma he looked a little plodding and like he was giving half-hearted effort.  He didn’t do anything memorable in the cage, either.

Other interesting tidbits:

• One day while I was snapping pictures my father got into an interesting conversation with one of the Cardinals scouts, Mr. Fick (I don’t recall his first name).  Mr. Fick called himself the Grim Reaper because he was going around putting guys on his ‘cuts list’.  He told my dad that it was a tough job because he had signed some of those guys and had sat in their house and sold their parents on the idea of their son playing for the Cardinals.  He was a nice guy with a tough job.
• John Mozeliak sat one section over from my father’s seats at the games – here is Mo just after he signed Kyle Lohse (maybe – they announced later that day):

Here is a picture of Mo trying to work out a deal with the Braves (if we trade for Brent Lillibridge, remember that I broke the story):

And finally, here is a picture of Mo getting fed up with me taking his picture:

Finishing up with part three of the series, it’s been a pretty fun ride. According to the translations, we found out we have a future star CF, and future above average catcher in Anderson, a power hitting first baseman in Hamilton (trade bait), a possible future all star 3B in Craig, and a pretty fine SS in Jose Martinez. And we have at least an average 2B in Hoffpauir. Not too shabby. Of course there is always the “grain of salt” warning attached to all this, but it’s at least been entertaining. To wrap up, let’s look at some others of note:

Brandon Buckman

Peak translated line: .301/.337/.541. EqA .291. (Quad Cities only)

Like his fellow first baseman, Buckman slumped upon being called up to the next level. But for a good while, he terrorized the MWL and because of that his peak translated line looks pretty good. .279 was MLB average for a 1B last season, putting Buckman in above average territory. After watching Buckman play several times over the course of the season, I like him. His swing is a bit long, but my impression is his power is real and he’s a very nice fielder at first.

Joe Mather

AA peak translated line: .278/.352/.538. EqA .308
AAA peak translated line: .226/.309/.428 EqA .239

Like I said earlier about Hoffpauir, I would put more stock in what translation is given based on what the player did I AAA versus AA. I think the truth could lie more in the middle here for Mather. I really doubt Mather is quite the monster he was in AA this past season, but I think he should be better then what his peak line shows based on his #’s in AAA. Power prospects peak between the ages of 27-30, he’s 25 now and will be under team control for a good while. It’ll be interesting to see if he fully blossoms.

Finishing this up, let’s look at three more outfielders peak translations:

Luke Gorsett .299/.335/.489 EqA .272
Mark Shorey .258/.313/.589 EqA .258 AA, .282/.329/.507 EqA .279 A+
Cody Haerther .274/.355/.466 EqA .278

Here are more corner outfielders, a rather fungible group. The average EqA of a major league corner LF is .269; think the current version of Luis Gonzalez here. Haerther looks better then what I’ve been giving him credit for, but he can’t hit lefties and he doesn’t field well, so it’s hard for me to imagine him being a regular. Then again, you can say the same thing about Chris Duncan, but he had an admirable .284 EqA. Here also is your sleeper alert for Gorsett and Shorey, two players who both quietly had good years. Both show decent upside in the power department. Luhnow and Co. seem to do a good job of finding these types of hitters on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum later in the draft who. Like I said, corner OF’s are a pretty fungible group on a whole, unless their names are Crawford or Holliday.

We’ll look at pitchers possibly as soon as next week.

Lucky me, I was able to be there live at my hometown ballpark in Cedar Rapids to witness the Swing defeat the Kernels, 5-4. Well, I got to see most of the game anyway. My 4 month old son was getting a little fussy so we had to leave in the 8th inning. I was a little disappointed at having to miss Kenny Maiques pitch, but you when you’re a dad you gotta do what you gotta do. (Maiques went on to strike out 2 and picked up his 7th save.) On the bright side, I got to see a couple of pretty interesting pitching performances from Eddie Degerman; who was recently called up from an extended camp after ironing out his control issues; and from Shaun Garceau; a name I haven’t heard much about but will be checking into now. First of all: about Eddie Degerman. I liked the Cards selection of him in the 4th round last year; he’s the type of results oriented college arm they seem to like despite him possessing a very weird delivery that would turn most scouts off. I’ve read before that his delivery is straight over the top, that’s no exaggeration. Here’s a shot at different frames in his delivery I was able to catch-

It was quite a sight to behold; I could see how it would be deceptive from the hitter’s perspective. I’m afraid the pictures don’t quite do it justice but hopefully it gives you all an idea. His fastball had pretty decent sink to it, but it topped out at 87 according to the stadium radar gun. It was a decent offering when he located it, but when he left it up it was subject to plenty of hard contact. His curve ball was a whole other story. Nasty is how I would describe it, a true 12-to-6 hammer in the 73-76 MPH range. Degerman’s curve got plenty of swings and misses and weak contact and appeared to me to be a dominant offering. At one point he struck out 4 batters in a row, all on the curve. He finished the game with 6 K’s in 5 innings, walking 1 and allowing 3 runs on 4 hits. 2 of the runs were earned. (He was not helped by his catcher Chris Grossman, who will not get confused with Mike Matheny anytime soon.)

A different animal was Shaun Garceau. He had a fastball that threw in the 90-92 MPH range, and he dialed it up to 94 several times. He also had a change up he threw in the low 80s that he had some swings and misses on. The 5 hits he gave up were either the weak contact that found a hole variety, with the exception of a couple mistakes. He also showed a curve. I’m not a scout, but it looked pretty average, especially after seeing Degerman’s. Garceau struck out the side in the 7th working mostly with heat. Garceau was a 20th round draft pick out of high school in 2005. He’s only 20 19 years old right now, and I’d say he has a future.

Not much else of major interest, the Kernels committed 6 (!) errors, two of them were throwing errors by their pitcher and another by their catcher Hank Conger that resulted in a run scored. It was like watching last year’s World Series. Daryl Jones only came into the game as a pinch runner, and run he did as he really does have some wheels. Not one of the hitters made an impression on me, really. Jim Rapoport is about as fast as Jones on the base paths, his speed really screwed with the Kernel’s defense, resulting in some of the throwing errors. Mark Shorey’s swing has quite a pronounced uppercut in my judgment; he looked just plain rough at times. Luke Gorsett seems to have a good idea of the strike zone. He was able to shorten his swing when needed, yet I could see he has some power potential. He went 2 for 3 with a walk, including a triple. Brandon Buckman is a big, tall guy that also has a pretty big swing, but not as pronounced as Shorey’s. He went 2 for 4 with 2 strikeouts, and delivered a key line drive double down the right field line in the 5th that brought in two runs.

Overall it was a fun day, my son got to go to his first ballgame and I got a new cap in spite of my wife making fun of me and telling me that the cap had the ugliest logo on it that she’s ever seen in her life.

I actually sort of like it. Only in Iowa would a hat with a bat growing out of a corn stalk on it would be considered cool. If you ever need some therapy from watching the big boys look like chumps like they did today, then a family trip to your local minor league park is the cure for what ails you.