Tag: Jack Flaherty

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Can’t-Miss Cards?

Jordan Walker (photo by Wes Hale)

Since the St. Louis Cardinals last played in the World Series (2013), the franchise has suited up six prospects of the “can’t miss” variety. These are the future stars who become centerpieces in annual postseason runs. Alas, the six players share two distinct similarities: each has played for the Memphis Redbirds, and each has, in fact, missed.

Oscar Taveras was the Cardinals’ Minor League Player of the Year with Double-A Springfield in 2012. By the time he suited up for Memphis in 2013, Taveras was the second-ranked prospect in all of baseball. A line-drive machine from the left side of the plate, Taveras battled injuries over two seasons with the Redbirds, but still hit .306 over 46 games in 2013 and .318 over 62 games before being promoted to St. Louis in 2014. He hit a game-tying home run in the only game St. Louis would win in the 2014 National League Championship Series, then died with his girlfriend in a car accident two weeks later. Taveras was intoxicated behind the wheel.

Michael Wacha needed only 15 games at the Triple-A level to convince the Cardinals he was ready for a big-league rotation. After posting a 2.65 ERA for Memphis in 2013, Wacha joined St. Louis and came within an out of no-hitting the Washington Nationals in only his ninth major-league start. He earned MVP honors in the 2013 NLCS, twice beating the Dodgers and not allowing a run in 13 innings. He battled injuries but remained a part of the Cardinals’ rotation for six years, winning 17 games in 2015. Since departing as a free agent after the 2019 season, Wacha has pitched for five different clubs. Now with the Kansas City Royals, he’s four wins shy of 100 for his career.

Alex Reyes was the Cardinals’ Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2015 at the tender age of 21. He struck out 93 hitters in only 65 innings for Memphis in 2016 before a late-season promotion to St. Louis, where he posted a 1.57 ERA over 46 innings. But Reyes only pitched in 20 games over the next four years, sidelined by one significant arm injury after another. He made the National League All-Star team as a closer in 2021, a season he topped for the Cardinals with 29 saves. But he hasn’t thrown a pitch since surrendering a walk-off homer in a wild-card loss to the Dodgers to end that season.

Jack Flaherty was the Cardinals’ Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2017 when he helped the Redbirds to a Pacific Coast League championship by going 7-2 with a 2.74 ERA over 15 starts. He was a certified big-league ace two years later, posting a 2.75 ERA and the most strikeouts (231) in a season for St. Louis since Hall of Famer Bob Gibson retired in 1975. But by 2023, Flaherty was a trade piece, going to Baltimore in return for current Redbirds infielder Cesar Prieto.

Dylan Carlson was the Cardinals’ Minor League Player of the Year in 2019 when he hit .361 over 18 games with Memphis after a September promotion from Springfield. He lost what would have been a full season at Memphis to the 2020 pandemic, but still took over right field in St. Louis in 2021. Carlson finished third in National League Rookie of the Year voting that season after hitting .266 with 18 home runs and 65 RBIs. But injuries have diminished his production. Carlson batted .198 over 59 games this season before the Cardinals traded him to Tampa Bay last week.


It’s unfair to include 22-year-old Jordan Walker among this group of fallen stars, but you can’t help but wonder (if not worry) with Walker posting pedestrian numbers (.252, 7 home runs through Sunday) against Triple-A pitching after leading the Cardinals with a .276 average a year ago. Prospects are fun to rank and track as they rapidly climb the minor-league ladder. But sustainable success in the big leagues remains the goal. And for a franchise now more than a decade removed from its last National League pennant, “can’t miss” must be reconsidered.

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Baseball’s Back! (Right?)

CREDIT: Taka Yanagimoto / St. Louis Cardinals

As Major League Baseball opens the first made-for-TV season in the sport’s history, 30 clubs will be measured by four components: pitching, hitting, fielding, and what might best be described as bubble management. The defending-champion Washington Nationals return the best one-two pitching punch in the game: Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. They have one of the most exciting young sluggers in the game in Juan Soto. They lost a slick-fielding third baseman when Anthony Rendon departed for the Los Angeles Angels. But here’s the question that may decide the champs’ 2020 fate: How antisocial are the Nats?
Taka Yanagimoto / St. Louis Cardinals

Mike Shildt

This is where we are in the age of coronavirus. A baseball team’s starting rotation will only be as strong as the five men in that group are at self-isolation. An urge to stray outside a team’s “bubble” — whether at home or on the road — could prove catastrophic when “quarantine” and “contact-tracing” become part of the box scores we check in the morning. There’s never been required teamwork quite like this. How smoothly your favorite team’s shortstop and second baseman turn the pivot may be less important than how quickly your outfielders don their masks upon leaving the ballpark.

AutoZone Park will remain dormant, as the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league training camp will be housed in Springfield, Missouri (home of the franchise’s Double-A club). But several former Memphis Redbirds — including skipper Mike Shildt, the 2019 National League Manager of the Year — will help determine if the upcoming 60-game season will be memorable for reasons beyond its brevity. Here are seven to watch.

Yadier Molina — The 38-year-old catcher’s remarkable streak of 15 consecutive seasons with more than 100 games behind the plate will come to an end, but Molina has a pair of significant milestones within reach. He needs 37 hits to reach 2,000 for his career, a number that should all but punch a Hall of Fame ticket for the nine-time Gold Glove winner. And when he plays his 17th game this season, he’ll become only the third man — after Stan Musial and Lou Brock — to play 2,000 games for the Cardinals.

Adam Wainwright — Like Molina, Wainwright — who turns 39 in August — is climbing some significant charts in the record book. With two wins, Wainwright would move past Bob Forsch (163) for third place on the Cardinals’ career chart. Should he start six games with Molina behind the plate, the two will climb into sixth all-time for games played as battery mates. (Six more would give them 271, the most in a half-century.)

Jack Flaherty — In a regular season squeezed down to two months, pitching will be more of a premium than ever, and Flaherty enters the season as the Cardinals’ unquestioned ace. Still only 24 years old, Flaherty is coming off a season in which he struck out 231 hitters, the most by a Cardinal since Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in 1970. A team simply cannot endure a losing streak in the abbreviated campaign, and Flaherty would appear to be the antidote for such.

Tommy Edman — The 25-year-old Edman can be classified as a throwback player, a utility man — remember that tag? — who can play six positions, bat at the top or bottom of the batting order, and bring speed to both the base paths and the field. Look for Edman to play every day, but check the lineup for exactly where.

Paul DeJong — If you asked me to identify a player most likely to be a Cardinal in the year 2030, I’d go with DeJong (who turns 27 next month). After less than two months in Memphis, DeJong took over at shortstop for the Cardinals in 2017 and has slugged 74 home runs in the three seasons since (30 last year). He’s emerged as a strong fielder and was the Cardinals’ lone representative in the 2019 All-Star Game. If he can cut down on the strikeouts (149 last season), DeJong has several more All-Star trips in his future.

Matt Carpenter — The designated hitter has arrived in the National League, and Carpenter could be the man to make it a position of impact for St. Louis. Having bounced from second base to third and over to first since 2012, Carpenter has been a hitter without a position to call his own. Having lost 89 RBIs when Marcell Ozuna departed for Atlanta, the Cardinals desperately need the 34-year-old Carpenter to find his All-Star form at the plate. After drilling 36 homers and finishing ninth in MVP voting after the 2018 season, Carpenter slumped to a slash line of .226/.334/.392 (with 15 homers) in 2019.

Carlos Martinez — The team’s ace as a starter merely three years ago, Martinez took over closer duty last season when Jordan Hicks went down for Tommy John surgery. While he’d like to start again, Martinez would bring a degree of ninth-inning certainty to a team that will, presumably, play a lot of low-scoring games.

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Memphis Redbirds Revival

In mid-May, not long after the Memphis Redbirds reeled off a franchise-record 11-game winning streak, I asked first-year manager Stubby Clapp about the secret sauce he’d concocted at AutoZone Park. Once a blue-collar player, the blue-collar manager responded with a blue-collar answer: “Our pitchers attack the strike zone and our hitters grind through every at-bat.”

It was an understated evaluation, to say the least. Using even fewer words, Clapp could have responded: “We have a lot of talent in this clubhouse.”

Redbirds manager Stubby Clapp is head over heels about his team’s success. (This shot, of course, is from Stubby’s playing days.)

Not since 2013 — when Baseball America ranked the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system the best in the business — has Memphis been stocked with the kind of talent we’re seeing these days at the corner of B.B. King and Union Avenue. You’ll recall that 2013 club included outfielder Oscar Taveras, second-baseman Kolten Wong, and a pair of top pitching prospects, Michael Wacha and Carlos Martinez. Taveras died tragically in 2014, but the other three are now regulars at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (If you read last week’s column, you’ll know performance this season hasn’t matched projection with the exception of Martinez.)

The 2017 Redbirds have featured three everyday players who will soon be seen in big-league batter’s boxes. Infielder Paul DeJong (who turns 24 in August) enjoyed a 12-game cup of coffee with St. Louis recently when Wong landed on the disabled list, returned to Memphis for less than a week, and can now be found again in the Cardinals’ dugout (Wong back on the DL). He became the sixth former Redbird to homer in his first major-league at-bat and has played stellar defense at second base. Here in Memphis, DeJong has it .299 and hammered 13 home runs, the kind of pop that increases a middle-infielder’s value exponentially. (DeJong homered 22 times and drove in 73 runs at Double-A Springfield last season.)

When I watch centerfielder Harrison Bader (23) play, I see a shorter (and whiskers-free) version of Charlie Blackmon, the Colorado Rockies’ All-Star. The former Florida Gator brings speed and a dose of power (12 home runs) to the Redbirds lineup. And he’s perfectly willing to crash into walls to rob opposing hitters of extra bases. It will be interesting to see how the Cardinals manage Bader’s rise in light of the multiyear contract their new centerfielder, Dexter Fowler, signed last winter.

Then there’s catcher Carson Kelly. Yadier Molina’s presumed heir will turn 23 next month but handles backstop duties with the aplomb of a 30-year-old big-league veteran. Kelly’s offensive production — .290 batting average, 7 home runs — feels like a generous bonus package. He could be catching every day for a few major league clubs. Similar to Bader, Kelly’s rise is blocked somewhat by a Cardinal player with a multiyear contract manning his position. For now, he simply helps the Redbirds win baseball games, the man Clapp trusts with those pitchers tasked with attacking the strike zone.

And those pitchers? Three members of the Redbirds’ current starting rotation — Luke Weaver (24 in August), Marco Gonzales (25), and Jack Flaherty (21) — have been ranked among the Cardinals’ top-10 prospects (Gonzales topped the list in 2015). Among all position groups and across all levels of the farm system, the Cardinals enjoy their greatest abundance in starting pitching. Which means flexibility between Memphis and St. Louis and bargain chips should the Cardinals remain in contention when the trade deadline arrives in late July. (As noted in last week’s column, the Cardinals lack “The Guy” in their batting order.)

Prospects don’t necessarily translate to winning baseball. (The 2013 Redbirds finished 69-75.) But this year’s club has a supporting cast that steals the spotlight one win after another. First-baseman Luke Voit has been a right-handed-batting Matt Adams (and then some), belting 12 home runs while putting up a slash line of .322/.404/.572. Healthy and manning third base has been Patrick Wisdom (12 home runs, 41 RBIs). Through Sunday, the Redbirds are 42-27 and five-and-a-half games ahead of second-place Nashville in their division of the Pacific Coast League. Triple-A baseball may be about development first, but take this as gospel: Winning spurs development.