—————————————————————–

Wagner Mateo

5. Wagner Mateo, International Signing, 3B/OF, 16: Picked by many scouting services as one of the top 3 international prospects in 2009, the Cardinals shelled out over 3.1 million dollars to sign the 16 year old Dominican prospect. He will have time and room to grow in the Cardinals system, but it will be a while before we see him in Cardinal red (or AA ball for that matter).

The ceiling for Mateo may be the highest in the organization, so many prospect gurus will have him rated higher, but he was born in 1993 so I believe you must temper your expectations. (See Shelby Miller and subtract 2 more years as to why this can be bad.)

Projections get more sketchy the farther out you go, but he has shown a nice ability to hit, with a compact left handed swing and is a scout’s 5 tool dream.

——————————————————————

Unfortunately for the Cardinals Wagner did not pass his physical and the Cardinals have voided his contract. There is speculation of a vision issue and another unknown ailment that caused the Cardinals to back out of the contract that was to pay Mateo a nice signing bonus of over $3 million. Could this money possibly go into the Holliday/Pujols funds. Nobody knows.

What I’m affraid of is the harm this could do to the Cardinals presence in the Dominican. They have a good set up with their new baseball academy in the Dominican and having Albert Pujols, but let’s hope the handling of the Mateo contract doesn’t hurt future relationships. International signings are more like college recruiting rather than professional drafts we are used to seeing in the US. Teams build their Internationals Baseball Academy’s in order to recruit the best talent and hope to strike gold with the next great baseball star. If Dominican baseball players look at the Cardinals voiding Mateo’s contract in a negative light, then this could cause future players to avoid the Cardinals academy.

I understand the Cardinals had to do what was right for their organization, but I hope the rest of the Dominican athletes feel the same way about how the Mateo situation was handled.

On a side note, tickets for the NLDS and NLCS went on sale today. I’ve purchased some tickets to sell and try to make a profit on to cover my own playoff ticket expense, so if you’re interested in any playoff tickets, post a reply and I’ll get you my inventory for the NLDS and NLCS. You’ll definitely save money over buying on stubhub or ebay.

I don’t know if health reasons or other unknow circumstances caused the Stan Musial tribute/ceremony to be unceramonious, but what was that.

Everything I heard leading up to the event was that the Cardinals were going to try and give Stan the Man the same recognition Ted Williams received in 1999 with a moving ceremony/tribute. That, in my opinion, did not even come close to happening.

During the All Star Game pregame ceremonies I was enjoying from the left field bleachers, I see the wagon gate open in right field and a piece of grounds crew equipment brings Musial out from the right field corner down the first base line. He stops and waves. They introduce the President, he comes out, shakes Musial’s hand and takes the ball from him to throw out the first pitch. After this, everything dies down. Musial does stop as Joe Torre comes out of the National League dugout to spend a couple of minutes with Stan, but then retreats to let Stan cart down the right field line again and out the right field wagon gate.

I know with Stan’s health, there probably wasn’t much on the field they could have done, but they didn’t even have a video tribute to not only one of the games finest players, but one of the finest baseball ambassadors ever known.

More to come on the rest of my All Star weekend experience, which overall was pretty amazing.

Matt Wilson

Wainwright really needs to step up tonight and outshine Matt Cain, which will not be an easy task. Wainwright has the ability, but hasn’t shown the consistency this year to be the stopper we are in need of. I know the pitching, both starting and bullpen haven’t been lights out lately, but you have to wonder what is going through the pitchers mind. If he gives up a run or two, the offense is not picking up the pitchers at all. And the offense revolves all around the outfield.

You are getting more than expected from Pujols. The man can’t hardly be any better than he has this year. Schumaker adn his .352 obp and Yadier Molina are giving you what you expected along with whatever you get out of the shortstop position, which you shouldn’t have expected much from. You have to hope that DeRosa will give you something from the 3B spot, because that has been lacking since hot starts in April by Thurston and Barden, which you knew wouldn’t hold up.

On the flip side, there is the outfield, or lack their of. Duncan, Ludwick, and Ankiel are all failing to meet expectations. Colby Rasmus has played well, but is very streaky, which is understandable from a yound player, but he shouldn’t be your most productive outfielder withe 3 other guys who have put up 20 plus homer seasons in the past. I think you just have to leave Ludwick in and hope he can get himself out of the funk, but with Duncan and Ankiel, I just don’t know what to do. For a power hitter, Duncan has one of the weakest swings I’ve seen, and Ankiel can only hit a fast ball or a hanging breaking pitch. Don’t throw one of those two pitches and he’s most likely down without a fight.

With the half way point of the season two games away, if we sweep the last two with the Giants to even the series, we’ll be 5 games over .500, which would equal out to 10 games over .500 for a record of 87-75. Not going to get you into the playoffs this year, so Redbirds, right the ship or possibly turn from buyers in the trade market to sellers in less than a month.

Matt Wilson

Mike Metzger from Stan Musial’s Stance will get a chance to interview Cardinal Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter. The interview should be at about 10:30 central time on Tuesday morning. Check it out by clicking here.

I know I haven’t been posting much lately. Busy work and busy life with 2 kids is taking up all of my time. I also have been trying to prepare for the 5k so I don’t completely get smoked by Dustin (Mr. 10 mile) or Michael (Mr. I work out 3 times a week). If anyone wants to join our www.whiteyball.com team for the All Star Game 5k run on Sunday morning July 12th, put a comment up for this post and I’ll shoot you an email invite to join team www.whiteyball.com for the All Star Game 5K.

The 5th inning was covered nicely over at Redbird Chatter. Game was flying by at this time. The Cards had a 3-0 lead, but with the way Kyle Lohse was pitching, it seemed like a 8-0 lead.

Lohse had the top of the lineup coming up in the top of the 6th. Crisp and DeJesus were quickly retired with groundouts to second and short respectively. In the third spot, Billy Butler, singled to left and Lohse hit Guillen with the pitch. This put men on first and second, but Lohse got Teahen to ground out to short to end the small threat.

With another scoreless inning, the Cardinals have not given up a run to the Royals yet in this series, and only given up a total of 3 runs in the last 5 games. What a stretch!

Duncan, Stavinoha, and Molina are scheduled to come up in the bottom of the sixth. Duncan has really been struggling lately so I didn’t expect much. Stavinoha already produced a 2 run single earlier in the game. You really haven’t seen any multi hit games from Stavinoha, even though he has come up with some big hits to drive in runs recently. Molina hasn’t been tearing the cover off the ball, but he’s still hitting around .280.

The inning went as I expected it to. Duncan struck out looking. Stavinoha grounded out to short. Molina singled to right and Brian Barden followed up by lining out to center fielder, and former Cardinals prospect, Coco Crisp.

Not much excitement in the sixth. Lohse is throwing well and the bats did almost as expected this inning. The Cardinals pitching staff is exciting Cards fans around the country. How many more innings or games can they keep this streak going. Hopefully many more, but you just never know in this game.

Head over to The Cardinal Virtue to check out their perspective on the 7th inning.

Matt Wilson

Nick Stavinoha (Photo by Dustin Mattison)

It appears Cards outfielder Ryan Ludwick strained his right hamstring while diving after a flyball to right center by Nyjer Morgan in last night’s game. Nyjer Morgan was already pesky enough and was driving me crazy leading off for Pittsburg and now he’s semi-responsible for injuring our best outfielder. Anybody think Nyjer Morgan should take one right in the rib cage when he leads off tonight? Hopefully the Cardinals can right the ship against the Pirates and try to win this series over the next couple days.

Stavinoha isn’t exactly raking in Memphis, but his .264 average, 4 homers, and 25 RBI’s is the best we have to bring up from Memphis. It’s amazing that we had a plethora of outfield depth back in spring training and now the Cards are scrambling to bring up Robinson and Stavinoha.

Joe Mather during BP, August 2007 (Photo by Dustin Mattison)

The outfield corp in Memphis has not been that strong so far this year. Besides Shane Robinson, who was batting .345 when called up to the big club last week, the remaining outfielders besides Stavinoha were all batting less than .230. Joe Mather is hitting .129 with no homers after 85 at bats so far this season. Where have you gone Joey Bombs? I wonder where the player that came up and looked like a legit Major League ballplayer last summer has gone. John Jay has cooled off considerably and is hitting under .250 and not getting on base nearly enough.

With the outfield not hitting, would bringing up David Freese and having a platoon situation between Freese, Thurston, and Barden at 3rd and 2nd be a good idea, while moving Skip back to the outfield till Ankiel gets back. Freese is starting to hit a little better in Memphis, which might be why they want to keep him down, but I just think having Robinson and Stavinoha on the team is having two players that should be your last pinch hitters on most nights.

Anyone think Jim Edmonds should be getting a phone call? Not likely to come back, but wouldn’t that be fun. I’d like to see how he and Tony would co-exist in the locker room or dugout.

On a side note, www.whiteyball.com has set up a team in the ALL STAR GAME 5K run that will be on Sunday July 12th. If you are interested in joining team www.whiteyball.com, just post a comment with your email address and I’ll send you an invitation via email to join team www.whiteyball.com.

ALL STAR CHARITY 5K presented by Sports Authority and Nike

Manny Ramirez - Fox Sports Photo

Fox Sports is reporting that Manny Ramirez will be suspended 50 games for a positive PED test.

For all of those who thought Manny would look great batting behind Pujols in 2009, I’m sure glad that never materialized. I hope the Dodgers have a clause in the 1 year contract to cover something like this. A one year $25 million contract, and he will be suspended for about 1/3 of the season.

I wonder how this will affect the Dodgers, who currently sit with Major League Baseball’s best winning percentage. Only time, well 50 games, will tell.

Matt Wilson

TR Hughes Ballpark

On my first run since my knee surgery back in October, things were going as expected. After about 1 mile, I hit TR Hughes and noticed the game was going on. I went ahead and stopped in and Mizzou was up in the 7th inning by the score of 7-4. I watched Mizzou close out the victory over an overmatched Eastern Illinois squad from the Ohio Valley Conference.

I don’t know if it was the wood bats, but both squads seemed to have difficulty driving the ball. It was a cold night, so that might have had something to do with it as well. The thing that really caught my eye was the pitching both teams had in the last couple of innings. I watch many Frontier League games at TR Hughes, and each pitcher that trotted out to the mound for Mizzou or Eastern Illinois were throwing harder than the majority of Frontier League pitchers. They were all throwing gas. I wish I would have had my radar gun to see what the actual velocity was, but they all seemed to be hitting in the 90’s with their fastballs.

The one thing that really shocked me was the bad field conditions at TR Hughes. It’s been raining buckets, so you would think the field would be in great shape, but I guess the grounds crew is not working too hard at this time. Rascals start the season later this month and are hosting a celebrity softball game between former Cardinals and Blues players on Saturday May 9th. You would think they would want to have the field in better shape at this time.

The celebrity softball game should be fun and tickets are just $10 if purchased beforehand or $15 on the day of the game. The former players will be signing autographs before the game as well.

Heading to a bunch of baseball this week. I’ll be catching the Cards against the Phillies tonight and tomorrow and the Pirates on Thursday afternoon. Hopefully a good story will come from the experiences.

Matt Wilson

I have a few big projects at work, that have made my work week around 60 hours a week lately, but I’m still keeping up.

Not posting, but keeping up with the Cards and checking in with my Frontier League connections. The Frontier Leaugue open tryouts are coming up soon. The Gateway Grizzlies have their open camp on Saturday. If you meet the Frontier League requirements, and want to try and make a professional baseball team, live your dream.

More Frontier League coverage to come as my work load dies down and the Frontier League kicks off Wednesday May 20th.

Look for more to come on Jacob Turner as well. I’m trying to work with the Westminster AD and coach, but I’m sure I’m the least of their worries with 30 scouts wanting info every other day.

Gotta love the baseball season, no matter how hectic it makes life!

Matt

I’ll be leaving work in about 5 minutes to head downtown with my son to the game.

Wish us luck. Well, wish us warmth.

My 2009 win loss prediction. Let’s check back in a few months on this.

2009 Cardinals – 94 wins – 68 losses