Tag: Memphis Redbirds

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From My Seat Sports

A Memphis Redbirds Wall of Fame

The St. Louis Cardinals do history well. Their marketing slogan this season is “Tradition Meets Today.” With no fewer than nine statues of Cardinal greats just outside Busch Stadium — two for the greatest Cardinal of all, Stan Musial — a blindfolded fan might literally bump into a bronzed Hall of Famer on his way into the ballpark. Once inside the stadium (blindfold removed), that fan can count the retired uniform numbers of Cardinal heroes in two different locations. The team’s 11 world championships? There are 11 flags flying high above the rightfield stands, and 11 pennants painted atop the Cardinals’ dugout with every championship year from 1926 to 2011.

Here in Memphis at AutoZone Park, the Cardinals could teach local fans a history lesson or two. And now that the parent franchise has an ownership stake, it’s time to crack the books.

Deep in the bowels of the 15-year-old stadium, next to a batting cage, Memphis baseball championships are painted on the wall. This is the only place you’ll see any indication the franchise has two Pacific Coast League titles (2000 and 2009) to its credit. The red Pujols Seat remains — now a solitary chair — on the rightfield bluff, just inside the foul pole where Albert Pujols’s championship-winning home run landed on September 15, 2000. (The chair needs a small plaque for those oblivious to the most famous hit in franchise history.) As for the heroics of other former Redbirds, good luck.

Baseball history fades entirely at Third and Union, some of the fading intentional. Stubby Clapp’s number (10) was retired in 2007, but the back-flipping face of the 2000 PCL champs had his name removed from the bullpen wall last winter, the Cardinals asserting the number had been retired for Hall of Fame manager Tony LaRussa, negating the same honor — for the same uniform number — elsewhere in the farm system.

There have been too many good players — popular players — to wear a Memphis Redbirds uniform for the stadium to remain devoid of any form of tribute. My proposal: A wall of fame — presented where any ticketed fan can see it — with a photo or plaque saluting former Redbird heroes. Borrowing from the Cardinals’ own Hall of Fame, a new member of this wall of fame would be announced near the start of each season. And Memphis baseball tradition would, finally, meet today at AutoZone Park.

We’ll need an inaugural class, of course, so here are the five Redbirds that would receive my vote. Let’s establish a minimum of 100 games played with the team for position players, and either 50 games or 10 wins for pitchers. Apologies to the likes of Pujols and Yadier Molina. Great Cardinals, to say the least, but Redbirds all too briefly.

• Rick Ankiel — His two stints as a Redbird were Ruthian. As a 20-year-old flame-thrower in 1999, the lefty won seven games and struck out 119 hitters in 88 innings pitched. He was the last Memphis baseball star at Tim McCarver Stadium. Eight (long) years later, having lost his ability to throw a baseball over the plate, Ankiel returned to Memphis as a centerfielder and led the Redbirds with 32 home runs and 89 RBIs in just 102 games. There will never be another like him, for good or ill.

• Stubby Clapp — His backflips (a tribute to Cardinal great Ozzie Smith) are memorable, but Clapp was the heart and backbone of that 2000 championship team, leading the club in runs, hits, and dirty uniforms. He remains third in franchise history in games played (425) and hits (418). Stubby was the Gashouse Gang by way of Canada.

• Skip Schumaker — He’s the only player to appear in 200 games as a Redbird and 500 games as a Cardinal. Never a star, he merely played solid baseball, in the outfield and at the plate, then at second base for a team that won the World Series. In trying to define the fabled “Cardinal Way,” Schumaker would be good source material.

• Nick Stavinoha — The Redbirds’ career leader in games (479), hits (531), home runs (74), runs (531), and RBIs (316). Stavinoha was a slugger without a position, but not quite enough slugger to find his way to an American League team where the DH lives and breathes. He played in 72 games for the 2009 PCL champs, but was with the parent club when Memphis reeled off six straight playoff wins.

• Adam Wainwright — Waino was a .500 pitcher (14-14) over two seasons with Memphis, though he led the PCL with 182 innings pitched in 2005. Since then, though, he’s won 121 games with the Cardinals and climbed to second on the franchise strikeout list behind Hall of Famer Bob Gibson. As a rookie out of the bullpen, Wainwright was integral to the Cards’ 2006 World Series win.

History matters in baseball. It should be given life at AutoZone Park

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From My Seat Sports

The Memphis Redbirds’ Dan Johnson: A Long Odyssey

CREDIT: Roger Cotton

Roger Cotton

Dan Johnson

The Memphis Redbirds were stumbling along with a record of 8-15 on May 4th when their parent club in St. Louis signed Dan Johnson. The transaction didn’t make headlines, not even here in Memphis. Johnson had been released by the Cincinnati Reds two weeks earlier after playing nine games with Louisville, the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate in the International League.

Two days later, Johnson slammed a 3-run, walk-off homer at AutoZone Park to give Memphis a 6-5 win over Colorado Springs. It was Johnson’s first home run in a Redbirds uniform . . . and the 240th of his lengthy minor-league career. (Only Toledo’s Mike Hessman has hit more among active players.) Since the 35-year-old slugger’s arrival, Memphis has turned its season around, going 26-15 and climbing back into contention in its division of the Pacific Coast League.

Johnson is Crash Davis — of Bull Durham fame — come to life. He played his first professional game (with Vancouver in the Oakland A’s system) in 2001 and his first game at the Triple-A level (with Sacramento) in 2003. Unlike Kevin Costner’s character, though, Johnson has had some time in The Show, appearing in 431 games with five major-league teams. He hit the most famous home run in Tampa Bay Rays history, a ninth-inning shot in the last game of the 2011 season that tied the score and allowed the Rays to later clinch a playoff berth. But Johnson’s big-league achievements have been interspersed with stints in the bushes. He’s one of two men in baseball history to be named MVP of both the Pacific Coast League (with Sacramento in the River Cats’ 2004 championship season) and the International League (with, you guessed it, the Durham Bulls in 2010).

The secret to sustained happiness when traveling so many miles — over so many years — on the baseball map? According to Johnson, it’s as simple as being a good teammate.

“I enjoy being around the guys,” he says, “and helping out. If you get the label of being a bad clubhouse guy, or selfish . . . teams don’t want that around. It wears on other players. When I first got to Triple-A, it was unheard of for a young guy to be at that level. You respected the veterans. I learned from the vets in front of me, and listened to what they had to say.”

Johnson’s felt the sting of being traded or demoted, but each time has dusted off any bitterness, packed his gear, and headed for the next franchise and next challenge. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself,” he says. “I got traded from a good situation in Houston [last spring] to Cincinnati. From the beginning, it didn’t seem right, and it never was right. But if it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to play for the Cardinals. Things happen for a reason.”

Johnson won’t accept credit for the Redbirds’ improved play since his arrival. (Despite not appearing with the Redbirds in April, Johnson is second on the team with 28 RBIs.) “It wasn’t that the talent wasn’t here,” says Johnson. “We just needed to put it together; change the mindset a little bit. This game is very humbling. If you stay down, you’re never going to win. You go out there and know that you can win, instead of just hoping.”

The Cardinals’ system is the eighth in which Johnson has played, and he recognized a different culture within days of his arrival in Memphis. “It’s been awesome,” he says. “The way you go about your business here, the way everybody’s pulling for everyone else. It’s not something you see often. The guys here are rooting for the players with the big-league club. In a lot of organizations it’s, ‘I hope that guy stinks, or that guy’s hurt.’ There’s no negativity here. The value this organization brings, and the tradition in St. Louis is amazing. The way they teach things, the thought process.”

Johnson’s entire family — his wife and four children — have joined him for a summer in Memphis, one he hopes takes a detour through St. Louis. He’s seen much of the baseball world (including the 2009 season in Japan), but has yet to land the sport’s most prized possession. “There’s nothing like the playoffs in the big leagues,” says Johnson. “There’s no better feeling as a baseball player. I don’t have a [championship] ring, and I’d love to get one. I’d love to play till I’m 100. Until I can’t compete, I’m going to go out there and try to get a job and make a difference.”

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From My Seat Sports

Defeats: Glorious and Not So Much …

It had to be the most rewarding loss in at least two decades of Memphis Tiger football. And it will be talked (and written) about for the next two weeks with language you won’t hear (or see) in many recaps of a defeated team. Justin Fuente’s Tigers did, indeed, fall to UCLA last Saturday night at the Rose Bowl, 42-35. But if you envisioned this Memphis team trading punches with a top-15 program from the Pac 12, you haven’t been to the Liberty Bowl in a long, long time.

The fact that the game was played so late locally, and with such limited TV coverage, gave it a modern word-of-mouth quality. Twitter seemed to red-line with astonished (#gotigersgo) reactions, eyes and minds opening 140 characters at a time. Whether you were packed into a bar with a feed of the game on a flat screen or listening to Jarvis Greer hyperventilate next to Dave Woloshin on the radio broadcast, you experienced the football version of that first Rocky Balboa-Apollo Creed affair. By the fourth quarter, when the Tigers tied things at 35 on an interception return, I honestly expected Greer to scream into his microphone, “Cut me, Mick!”

When’s the last time a Memphis football team benefited from a huge penalty call? The Bruins had a touchdown taken off the board in the fourth quarter on a personal foul penalty. That kind of break doesn’t happen to the football Tigers. Well, that kind of break didn’t happen to the football Tigers. And that’s the catch: There’s a past-tense quality to misery in this program.

The best part of the next two weeks — as the Tigers prepare to host their nemesis from Middle Tennessee — will be how dissatisfied the Memphis players and coaches act. They lost. UCLA may or may not reach college football’s first playoff in January, but the Bruins were good enough to edge the Tigers, and the goal around here is to no longer be “edged.” By anyone. There won’t be 70,000 fans at the Liberty Bowl when the Tigers return to action on September 20th, but every fan there will look at the team in blue differently after the events of September 6th in Pasadena. For the time being, Memphis football fans can be forgiven if they relish a defeat.

• Does winning matter in minor-league baseball?

This question has been debated for years, often over a $7.00 beer and heaping basket of nachos. So let’s end the debate, once and for all. Performance on the field — wins and losses — means squat when it comes to drawing crowds in the minors. Just take a look at this year’s Pacific Coast League playoffs.

Despite winning 79 games (third-most in franchise history), the Memphis Redbirds finished ninth in the 16-team PCL with an attendance average (tickets sold) of 5,693. (Note: AutoZone Park lost five dates this season to inclement weather.) And the Redbirds’ figure is tops among the four teams in the PCL playoffs. Omaha averaged 5,628, Reno 5,270, and Las Vegas finished dead last in the league with an average of 4,640. Then you have the Albuquerque Isotopes, third-worst team in the PCL with a record of 62-80. The Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate averaged 8,066 tickets sold, third-most in the league. That beer must be extra cold in New Mexico.

Need a broader view of attendance, relative to the Redbirds’ on-field success? Check out total attendance for two seasons since the economic collapse of 2008. In 2009, Memphis finished 77-67 and won its second PCL championship. Attendance that season was 474,764. Three years later, the team was dreadful (57-87), but sold 493,706 tickets.

And how does the parent club, the St. Louis Cardinals, feel about things? Pitcher Tyler Lyons won six straight starts for the Redbirds during the team’s playoff push this season. Instead of starting a game for Memphis in the PCL playoffs, Lyons has sat in the Cardinal bullpen — part of the club’s September roster expansion — and pitched a total of one inning this month.

The day after Game 1 of the Redbirds’ series with Omaha last week (a Memphis loss), the Cardinals recalled first-baseman Xavier Scruggs, the team’s steadiest bat over that two-month drive to the postseason. (Scruggs started that night for St. Louis in a win at Milwaukee.) As Omaha was eliminating the Redbirds last Saturday night at AutoZone Park, a total of 46 Memphis home runs — hit by Scruggs and outfielder Randal Grichuk — sat on the Cardinal bench in Milwaukee. If major-league clubs don’t care about winning games in the minors, should you?

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From My Seat Sports

St. Louis Cardinals Mid-Season Report

Matt Carpenter

You could have won a bet or two last March had you suggested Jorge Rondon, Eric Fornataro, Nick Greenwood, and Marco Gonzales (who??) would each pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals before the 2014 All-Star break. (The next time someone suggests a baseball team has too much pitching, stifle laughter and take the conversation elsewhere.) Injuries have compromised what appeared to be the deepest pitching staff in baseball, sending three Cardinal starters — Joe Kelly, Jaime Garcia, and most ominously, Michael Wacha — to the disabled list and leaving the fate of the defending National League champions all the more on the right arm of ace Adam Wainwright.

But even with the I-55 pitching shuttle from Memphis, (don’t forget Sam Freeman or Tyler Lyons), the Cardinals’ current crisis of confidence has more to do with the men trusted to score runs than with those tasked with preventing them. Even with a 1.89 ERA (through Sunday), Wainwright has four losses. Before going down with his mysterious shoulder injury, Wacha lost five games despite a 2.79 ERA. Near the bottom of baseball in runs and home runs, the Cardinal batting order no longer intimidates.

After St. Louis lost the 2013 World Series to Boston, Cardinal general manager John Mozeliak decided to part ways with a pair of veterans — rightfielder Carlos Beltran and third-baseman David Freese — to open playing time for a pair of recent Memphis Redbirds: second-baseman Kolten Wong and first-baseman Matt Adams. This transition required a pair of position moves by a pair of 2013 All-Stars, with Matt Carpenter shifting from second base to his natural spot at third, and Allen Craig moving from first base to rightfield. Whether or not it’s related to the position switch, Carpenter and Craig have underperformed, and dramatically when compared with their 2013 numbers. After leading all of baseball in hits last season, Carpenter has seen his batting average drop from .318 to .282. Worse, he’s striking out far too frequently (65 times) for a leadoff hitter (he went down 98 times all of last season). As for Craig — a metronomic .300 hitter throughout his professional career — the drop in production has been precipitous. He’s currently batting .249 (compared with .315 a year ago) and slugging .365 (compared with .522 just two years ago). With Craig signed through 2017 and Carpenter through 2019, these are numbers that need to take a turn for the better. Taken together, they’re a tipping point.

Solutions? The Cardinals hope one is Oscar Taveras, the hitter scouts and Cardinal fans have been breathlessly anticipating for two years now. After a 2013 season compromised by an ankle injury, Taveras homered in his Cardinal debut at Busch Stadium on May 31st. (To this point, it’s the highlight of the Cardinal season.) But after struggling (.189 batting average) through 11 games, Taveras returned to Memphis, where he resumed mashing pitchers in the Pacific Coast League (.318 batting average, .502 slugging percentage with the Redbirds). The challenge for St. Louis is finding Taveras a regular spot in the batting order (he was recalled to St. Louis last week). The Cardinals have been resistant to playing Taveras in centerfield, so he’ll have to share time with Craig in right or veteran Matt Holliday in left if he’s to make anywhere near the impact the Cardinals hope he does. (As a left-handed batter, he could theoretically platoon with either of the other two right-handed corner outfielders.)

Beyond Taveras, the Cardinals will at least dip their toes in the trade waters this month (the non-waiver deadline is July 31st). And this is where current Redbird prospects like Stephen Piscotty and Randal Grichuk could come into play. If the Cardinal system has a surplus anywhere — it’s not pitching, remember — it’s in the outfield. Could a run-producing third-baseman or second-baseman be found? (A shoulder injury recently sidelined Wong, who homered in his return to St. Louis Sunday .) Bottom line: for the first time since the Cardinals acquired Mark McGwire during the 1997 season, their offense is without a marquee slugger. The highest-paid hitter remains Holliday, whose current averages (.263 batting, .378 slugging) are shades of his career figures (.309, .523). In some respects, he’s the face of this season’s struggles. For an offense that leads the National League in double plays, Holliday has hit into the most: 13.

The Milwaukee Brewers are for real. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds are back in contention after sluggish starts. For the first time in years, the St. Louis Cardinals are fighting for relevance, not so much among World Series contenders, but within their own five-team division. Take comfort, Cardinal Nation, in the Chicago Cubs.

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From My Seat Sports

St. Louis Cardinals Outfielders: Too Much Talent?

Matt Holliday

It’s a surplus of riches unlike any other in professional baseball. Between their major-league roster and that of their Triple-A affiliate here in Memphis, the St. Louis Cardinals have seven outfielders willing and able to claim they belong in the Cardinals’ everyday lineup … now. So why does the Cardinal outfield not feel right? As the season hits the quarter pole and the defending National League champions hover around the .500 mark, here’s a look at “the seven who would be three.” With apologies to Shane Robinson and Joey Butler, who would rank no better than eighth on this list. (Players are listed by age, descending order. All statistics are through Sunday’s action.)

• Matt Holliday (34) — Holliday has been a steady presence in leftfield since the Cardinals acquired him from Oakland in July 2009. A three-time All-Star wearing the Cardinal uniform, Holliday has been a part of four playoff teams with St. Louis, though if you had to name his signature postseason moment, it could be the dropped fly ball that cost the Cardinals a game at Dodger Stadium in 2009. Holliday is signed through 2016 (with a team option for 2017) and earns $17 million a year. But no player is untradeable. As the Cardinal outfield’s game of musical chairs continues, factor in the possibility of leftfield opening up if the right deal presents itself.

• Allen Craig (turns 30 in July) — Craig pulled off the impossible and replaced Albert Pujols at first base for the Cardinals in 2012. But with the emergence of Matt Adams — who can play first base and first base only — Craig moved to right field this season following Carlos Beltran’s departure to New York. Craig’s hitting has been metronomic throughout the Cardinals’ system, and he hit a jaw-dropping .454 last season with runners in scoring position. Which makes his start this season (.221 batting average, .357 slugging percentage) all the more puzzling. He’s signed through 2017, with a team option for 2018, earning $2.75 million this season, but $9 million by 2016.

• Jon Jay (29) — He doesn’t hit for power. He’s not fleet of foot (though he led St. Louis with 10 stolen bases in 2013), and will never win a Gold Glove. Jay has simply helped win a lot of baseball games, first in Memphis (where he manned center field for the 2009 PCL champions), then in St. Louis, where he took over in center after Colby Rasmus was traded, then delivered a key hit in the Cardinals’ epic comeback victory in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series. He played in 157 games for another pennant-winner last season. Yet the Cardinals traded fan favorite David Freese last fall for another center-fielder.

• Peter Bourjos (27) — He doesn’t hit for power either. But Bourjos is about as fleet as they come, bringing an element to the base paths and center field that St. Louis hasn’t seen at least since Ray Lankford’s prime in the late Nineties. That speed was enough for Cardinal general manager John Mozeliak to sacrifice Freese, gambling that the former Angel could win games even as a .250 hitter. (In his one full season in the majors — 2011 — Bourjos hit .271 with 11 triples and 12 homers.) He’s shared time with Jay this season and has struggled to make an impact at the plate. He did deliver some big hits in Atlanta and Pittsburgh last week, though. You get the feeling center field (for now) is his position to win.

• Stephen Piscotty (23) — If you met Piscotty wearing a coat and tie, his 6-3, 210-pound frame would tell you he’s an athlete. The former third-baseman has a big-league arm and appears bound for a corner outfield spot in St. Louis (or elsewhere). Playing primarily right field for Memphis, Piscotty is hitting .311 and has driven in 24 runs (second on the team) in 35 games. He slammed a pair of home runs onto the left field bluff at AutoZone Park last Saturday night. He’ll be playing in the major leagues in 2015.

• Randal Grichuk (22) — Part of the deal that sent Freese to Los Angeles, Grichuk made his Cardinal debut last month, but saw action in only nine games (three hits in 21 at-bats) before returning to Memphis. Grichuk earned one of three Gold Gloves awarded to outfielders throughout the minor leagues in 2013. Redbird manager Pop Warner prefers him in center field, though Grichuk seems to have the kind of bat (.566 slugging percentage in Memphis) that could land him comfortably in right or left. He has brought “abundance” to the Cardinals’ outfield surplus.

• Oscar Taveras (turns 22 in June) — Whatever happens to the six players above, mark this down: Taveras will be playing every day — presumably for St. Louis — in the majors next season. His tools at the plate, while still being refined, can’t be taught: full coverage of the hitting zone, gap-to-gap power, and speed out of the box. After losing most of his 2013 season to an ankle injury, Taveras is hitting .293 with the Redbirds and leads the team with 27 RBIs and 22 runs scored. A lingering question seems to be whether or not he can play center field in the big leagues. If he’s the kind of hitter scouts remain convinced he will be, room can be made in any outfield.

The one intangible shared by all seven of these outfielders is the certainty they’ll be happiest — and presumably, most productive — when they’re playing every day with two cardinals on their jersey. For what it’s worth, I can see a 2016 Cardinal outfield with Craig in left, Taveras in center, and Piscotty in right. The beauty of the current surplus, though, is that I could be wrong at every position and the Cardinals may still have a superior trio roaming the pasture at Busch Stadium.

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News The Fly-By

Boardwalk Umpire

CREDIT: Allison Rhoades | Memphis Redbirds

In 1997, the times were a-changin’ when it came to Memphis baseball. The Flyer ran a piece in the January 30th issue regarding a proposed new baseball stadium. At the time, the city’s baseball team was the Memphis Chicks — short for the Chickasaws — before they left after the season for Jackson, Tennessee.

Former Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout had jumped on board with the stadium’s proposed downtown location but with some reservations.

“I personally feel that you probably would get more attendance in a suburban ball field,” Rout told the Flyer in 1997.

Dave Woloshin, a former talk radio host for 600 WREC-AM, had been talking about the issue of whether or not to keep the proposed stadium downtown. (He now works at Sports 56 WHBQ.)

“I’ve been absolutely amazed at the support for downtown,” Woloshin said in the story. “I’ve gone on the air saying it’s the biggest mistake they could make.”

Construction began on the AutoZone Park project in 1998 to the tune of $80 million, mostly paid in bonds, in order to house the new Memphis Redbirds minor-league baseball team. The stadium was built to major league standards with luxury suites and more than 14,000 seats.

The first year AutoZone Park opened, more than 800,000 fans walked through the gates into the downtown stadium. Attendance remained high until 2007 — when the economic recession began to take hold — and a steady decline left the Redbirds with only 462,041 fans going to games in 2010. For the next three years, the minor league team would see a small, but steady, rise in attendance. Last season, the team saw 498,362 fans.

“We’ve got to keep in mind that we’ve got a guy in the form of Dean Jernigan, who brought to the table something no one else brought, a Triple-A franchise, and come to the table with a creative idea that no one else had in the nation [making the new Chicks team a nonprofit],” Rout said in 1997. “And he said that he’s got most of the funding.”

Jernigan, who was one of the major forces behind the development of AutoZone Park and the Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation, parted with the Memphis Redbirds in 2009 when the foundation missed a bond payment.

The organization owned both the Redbirds and AutoZone Park until recently, when the St. Louis Cardinals began the process of purchasing the minor league team in November 2013. That deal finally closed last week. The City of Memphis purchased the park in January for $24 million. Before the Memphis City Council voted to approve the city’s $24 million purchase of the park, hundreds gathered at a rally in January at AutoZone Park to show their support for the city takeover.

Now, the Redbirds will move forward with a newfound attachment to the Cardinals and the city, staying put in its mainstay downtown location.

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Cover Feature News

The Redbird Way

CREDIT: Allison Rhoades

When the St. Louis Cardinals were swept by the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 World Series, exactly one of their everyday players had come up through the Cards’ minor-league system. (He was first baseman Albert Pujols, a diamond in the rough, to say the least.) Fast forward to October 27, 2011. When Allen Craig caught a fly ball off the bat of Texas Ranger David Murphy to clinch the Cardinals’ 11th World Series championship, seven of the nine players on the field at Busch Stadium were farm-raised (and played in Memphis for the Redbirds).

This season, for the first time since the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate moved to the Bluff City in 1998, four of the Cardinals’ five starting pitchers on opening day were former Redbirds. (Adam Wainwright, Jaime Garcia, Lance Lynn, and Shelby Miller have combined to win 29 games through Sunday, despite Garcia being on the disabled list since May 19th.)

From Last to First

In 2005, the St. Louis farm system was ranked 30th by Baseball America. (That’s dead last.) As recently as 2010, the system ranked 29th. But now, in 2013? The Cardinals system is ranked first among all major-league clubs.

How has such a large collection of managers, coaches, and players — the Cardinals system features seven minor-league teams — made such a dramatic and positive transition in so short a period of time? The change began, ironically enough, after the Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers to win the 2006 World Series. That team snuck into the playoffs with an 83-78 record, then played its best baseball of the season in October. But the supporting cast around Pujols — veteran stars such as Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, and David Eckstein — had grown old. St. Louis followed up its championship with a dud of a 2007 season (78-84). Edmonds, Rolen, and Eckstein departed and general manager Walt Jocketty was replaced by John Mozeliak. A franchise famous for the first extensive farm system in the game (in the 1920s and 1930s) shifted its core philosophy back to player development.

When the iconic Pujols departed for a 10-year, $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels after the 2011 championship season, the Cardinals gave his position to Craig, an 8th-round draft pick in 2006. (Craig was paid $475,000 in 2012 and drove in 92 runs, 13 fewer than Pujols did for the Angels.) When former Cy Young winner Chris Carpenter was forced into retirement by a nerve condition in his pitching arm this spring, the Cardinals gave his spot in the rotation to Miller, the club’s top pick in the 2009 draft. Farm-grown talent is inexpensive (until free agency arrives after six seasons in the majors), but can it keep a proud franchise among pennant contenders one year after another?

John Vuch is the Cardinals’ director of minor-league operations and has been with the franchise since 1979. He relishes the Cardinals’ climb up minor-league rankings but says it starts at the top. “There was somewhat of a philosophical change,” Vuch says, “in terms of taking our lead from the major-league staff and developing continuity — doing the same things in St. Louis, Memphis, Springfield, and all the way down to our Gulf Coast League teams and our Dominican academy. Players go from level to level, and they know what to expect. No surprises. That’s helped a lot.”

The first half of the 2013 season has accentuated the value of the Cardinals’ farm system, as one pitcher after another has either struggled on the mound or been forced to the disabled list by injury. In early May, veterans Mitchell Boggs and Marc Rzepczynski, having been knocked out of the St. Louis bullpen, were demoted and replaced on the Cardinals roster by Seth Maness and Carlos Martinez (a 21-year-old flame-thrower promoted from Double-A Springfield). Maness and Martinez each pitched a scoreless inning in relief of yet another rookie (Shelby Miller) in a May 3rd victory at Milwaukee. Then when veteran Jake Westbrook was forced to the DL with elbow inflammation, John Gast filled the rotation slot and won his first two big-league starts. (Gast opened this season with an astounding 32 consecutive scoreless innings for Memphis.) When Garcia was shut down for the season on May 19th, Tyler Lyons left the Memphis rotation and won his first two starts for the Cardinals, retiring 17 Kansas City Royals in a row on May 28th. Home-run hitters may sell tickets and boost TV ratings, but pitching depth gets teams to October and playoff baseball.

“A few years ago,” Vuch says, “[former Cardinals pitching coach] Dave Duncan wanted us to develop more power pitchers. So we talked to our amateur scouting department and our pitching instructors. It’s one thing to have power arms, but Dunc’s philosophy has always been quality strikes, down in the zone. It’s not so much what type of delivery a pitcher uses, as long as he gets results.”

“The Cardinal Way”

The cover story in the May 27th issue of Sports Illustrated presented the St. Louis Cardinals as Major League Baseball’s model franchise, from the top down. If anyone is familiar with “the Cardinal Way” (as SI put it), it’s Ron (Pop) Warner, the Redbirds’ second-year manager. Warner was drafted by the Cardinals in 1991, played for the original 1998 Memphis Redbirds, and has coached or managed in the Cardinals system since retiring as a player after the 1999 season.

Warner acknowledges talent is the fundamental and most obvious factor in the revival of the Cardinals system. But he points out a less tangible factor that may come closer to revealing a philosophy … or “way.”

“We’re finding players with really good make-up,” Warner says. “If you get high make-up guys, they grind, they compete really hard. When you get guys like that, you find successful people … not just at baseball, but life. Combine that with talent, and you’ve got something. It makes it a lot easier for us to develop players.”

And how exactly can “high make-up” be recognized in a prospect? “It’s tough,” Warner says. “You look into a player’s background and find as much information as you can about them. We’re drafting guys who perform well in college. And usually when a player is performing well in college, there’s a reason: They’re tough, they compete. They may not be the most skilled players, but they figure out how to get it done. High aptitude: They listen, they want to learn and get better. And they actually try to apply what you teach them.”

Warner’s job is to prepare players for the major leagues, whether it’s over several seasons or as an emergency injury replacement. He’s also preparing future Cardinals, emphasizing the details in game-day preparation — that “way” again — that translate into wins at Busch Stadium. Even with the high roster fluctuation, the details have made a difference in Memphis, too, as the Redbirds are leading their division of the Pacific Coast League.

“You show up every day, and you’re a professional on and off the field,” Warner emphasizes. “It’s a privilege to wear this jersey. There’s a lot of history behind wearing the birds on the bat on your chest. We teach through fundamentals. We’ve never tried to find an identity. You make sure the little things that come along in a game are taken care of and play a hard nine innings. If we execute better than the other team, we know we have a chance to win.” Warner notes cases where a player may get “sideways” with his game-day preparation — swings in the batting cage, soft-toss, a baseball player’s grunt work — when he has to step in and remind the player that details matter in the climb up a minor-league ladder.

Three members of the 2013 Redbirds haven’t needed much reminding.

Second to None

For a franchise that has won as consistently as the Cardinals have since 2000, second base has been a remarkably volatile position. Since Fernando Vina went down with a hamstring injury during the 2003 season, St. Louis has turned to the following gaggle of infielders — one of them originally an outfielder — to man the position: Bo Hart, Tony Womack, Mark Grudzielanek, Ronnie Belliard, Aaron Miles, Adam Kennedy, Skip Schumaker, and Dan Descalso. This season, a natural third-baseman — Matt Carpenter — has been learning the less-than-natural art of turning a double play from the right side of the infield. The franchise that gave us Rogers Hornsby and Red Schoendienst has found itself challenged at securing a steady second-baseman.

Along comes Kolten Wong. At 5’9″ and 185 pounds, Wong’s size all but precludes him from playing anywhere except the middle infield. Good thing he plays second base so well. Drafted in the first round by St. Louis in 2011, Wong has already won two championships as a pro, with Class-A Quad Cities (Midwest League) in 2011 and Double-A Springfield (Texas League) in 2012. Wong was a Texas League All-Star last season when he hit .287 and stole 21 bases. According to Baseball America, Wong is the 84th-ranked prospect in all of baseball and tops among second-basemen. The 22-year-old native of Hilo, Hawaii, has hit .321 (through Sunday) for the Redbirds and was named the Cardinals’ minor-league Player of the Month for May.

“Kolten’s better defensively than I thought he would be,” Warner says, “this being just his second full season. Smooth. I thought we’d have to work on turning double plays. He’s pretty polished. His hands work with his feet. And he stays in a good hitting position.” Could Wong be a long-term solution for the Cardinals at a position that’s long been a game of musical chairs? “If he keeps developing the way he has so far,” Warner says, “I see no reason he can’t be that guy someday.”

Wong has fully embraced Cardinals culture, that much-talked-about “way.” He’s relished the wisdom handed down by veteran teammates like Rob Johnson and Brock Peterson, the small tips that paint a big picture for rising prospects. “You know how to win,” Wong says. “You know how to carry yourself and the expectations on the way to St. Louis. You’re constantly trained that this is a winning organization, and nothing less is expected. It’s a mindset, and it rubs off on every player. No shortcuts. Do whatever you need to do to be ready for the next level.”

“He Was Raised Right”

Redbirds pitching coach Bryan Eversgerd was raving about Michael Wacha before the big righty threw his first Triple-A pitch, and it really didn’t have much to do with his arm. “You can tell he was raised right,” said Eversgerd in early April. “He’s got his head on straight. So mature, great in the clubhouse.”

Drafted by the Cardinals in the first round of the 2012 draft after a stellar college career at Texas A&M, Wacha caught the parent club’s attention this spring when he did not allow an earned run in 11 spring-training innings. He was leading the Pacific Coast League with an ERA of 2.05 (nine starts) on May 30th when he was summoned to St. Louis to fill the rotation spot vacated when Gast was sidelined with shoulder discomfort. Wacha somehow met the hyped anticipation in his debut, holding Kansas City to two hits over seven innings. (The Cardinals’ bullpen allowed three runs in the ninth to cost Wacha the win.)

During spring training, one veteran umpire described Wacha’s changeup as the best he’d ever seen. (Disclosure: The umpire was Angel Hernandez, now infamous for having missed a home-run call this season, even after the help of video review.) As impressive as his pitching arsenal may be, Wacha’s maturity and comportment on the mound have caught the most attention throughout the Cardinals system. (Wacha turns 22 on July 1st.)

Warner describes a game earlier this season when Wacha pitched against a PCL team that liked to run early in the count. They had a conversation before the game about the importance of the pitcher holding his stretch position a bit longer to disrupt timing and stall those baserunners. By pausing in his stretch and extending glances, Wacha proceeded to shut down that running game in a Memphis win.

“When you talk to him, he looks you in the eyes,” Warner says. “He’s listening to you. That’s something I always look for in a young player. Most guys, when a game heats up, they’ll start worrying about the situation at hand. But [Wacha] can slow things down. He doesn’t scare at all. It’s one of the keys to this game.”

The Prodigy

The most common comparison is with Vladimir Guerrero, the Hall of Fame-bound outfielder who hit .318 with 449 home runs, 181 stolen bases, and nine All-Star Game appearances over 16 major-league seasons, primarily with the Montreal Expos and Los Angeles Angels. Like Guerrero, Oscar Taveras hails from the Dominican Republic and, like Guerrero, Taveras has displayed — in bold fashion — a batter’s most revered skill: putting the thick part of the bat on the baseball, wherever the ball is pitched. Connect with the ball on a bat’s “sweet spot,” and good things tend to happen.

“Oscar can hit an assortment of pitches,” Warner says, “and they don’t have to be strikes. But he can hit them. At some point, he’ll have to shrink [that strike zone] some. But we don’t want to take away that talent of his: centering pitches that other hitters simply can’t.”

Taveras is the third-ranked prospect in minor-league baseball, according to Baseball America. Since 1990, he’s only the third non-pitcher in the Cardinals system to be ranked so highly (J.D. Drew was number one in 1999, Colby Rasmus number three in 2009). Taveras does Wong one better with three pro championships to his credit (he helped Johnson City to the Appalachian League title in 2010). He was named Texas League Player of the Year for Springfield in 2012, when he led the circuit in batting (.321) while hitting 23 homers and driving in 94 runs (in 124 games). The only thing keeping him out of the St. Louis outfield this season is sensitivity to his young age (Taveras turns 21 on June 19th) and his “free agency clock” (the earlier a player starts his major-league career, the earlier he’ll be eligible for the fat contract of a bidding war between teams).

Taveras recently missed almost a month of action with a lingering right-ankle injury, so his numbers — .315 batting average, four homers, and 20 RBIs — aren’t what Cardinals fans might have expected. No matter. As so many young players have shown after recent stints (long or short) at AutoZone Park, it’s the numbers produced with two birds on their jersey that will be long remembered.

Categories
Opinion

AutoZone Park and the Steroids Era

mark_mcgwiremilk.jpg

AutoZone Park is the Mark McGwire of minor-league baseball stadiums.

Like the former St. Louis Cardinal slugger, the park is gigantic and juiced.

This week the national media rediscovered a story that has been around for more than a year about the likely future of the ballpark and the Memphis Redbirds. My colleague Frank Murtaugh interviewed John Pontius a year ago. Frank also wrote this story about the park’s financial plight before other local and national media jumped on it.

McGwire was juiced on steroids when he hit 70 home runs in 1998, setting the all-time single-season record, and when he appeared in Memphis with the Cardinals at the opening of AutoZone Park in 2000. The ballpark was juiced on hype and an unsustainable financing plan.

AutoZone Park has more than 14,000 seats plus a left-field berm and right-field picnic area and cost $80 million. It was a thrilling sight to see when more than 15,000 people came out to see the Cardinals and McGwire open the stadium with an exhibition game in 2000, just as it was thrilling to watch McGwire break Roger Maris’s home run record and match Sammy Sosa home run for home run during the 1998 season.

By the same token, it was sad to see the crowds decline to a couple thousand or so, and McGwire descend into disgrace.

Thirteen years later, AutoZone Park is still a beautiful sight but too big and expensive by half. There are 44 luxury suites, many of them rarely used, whose leases expire after next year. Meanwhile, newer minor-league parks have no suites. The math on $80 million simply doesn’t work.

McGwire was a very good ballplayer who juiced to become a muscle-bound behemoth and a great home run hitter. The ballpark failed its bondholders. McGwire failed his fans, and fell well short of the number of votes needed to get into the Hall of Fame again this year.

A no-juice major-league hitter does very well to hit 35 home runs year in and year out. A no-juice minor-league baseball stadium does very well to draw 7,000 fans per game year in and year out. Double those numbers and something’s not going to add up.

The Memphis Redbirds open the 2013 season tonight with a double-header and, Murtaugh says, a line-up of future stars.

AutoZone Park was a case of Memphis thinking big but not being able to meet expectations; FedExForum was a case of Memphis thinking big and rising to expectations. Some of the credit for the latter must go to the former. The optimism was contagious, and spread to an ownership group and pursuit team determined to build a major-league stadium and attract a major-league team and a city and region willing to support it.

AutoZone Park was part of a development package that included the apartments to the east, the downtown elementary school, and the renovation of the William Moore office building. It replaced a blighted empty building, a porno theater, a mule barn, and parking lots on the corner across from The Peabody, downtown’s most enduring commercial landmark. Sooner or later, the city will make a deal to buy the ballpark for a fraction of what it cost, as it should.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

FROM MY SEAT: Is the Redbirds’ Colby Rasmus a Proper Heir?

Few positions in Major League
Baseball have been as consistently productive over the last 30 years as
centerfield for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Throughout the 1980s, Willie McGee patrolled the largest (quite plastic) pasture at old Busch Stadium,
gaining World Series fame, the 1985 National League MVP, and three Gold Gloves
in the process. During the 1990s, Ray Lankford was among the most underrated
players in the game, five times hitting 20 homers and stealing 20 bases in a
season, and becoming only the third Cardinal to hit 200 home runs. For the first
eight years of the current decade, Jim Edmonds was the star, winning as many
games with leather (six Gold Gloves) as with his bat (241 home runs) for a
Cardinal team that won two pennants and the 2006 World Series.

While Rick Ankiel has performed
capably in centerfield this season, 21-year-old Colby Rasmus — the
marquee name on the current Memphis Redbirds roster — appears to be next in the
chain of hard-hitting fly-catchers for the Cardinals. A muscle strain has forced
Rasmus to the disabled list (and out of what would have been his second straight
All-Star Futures Game), but the Alabama native has gained some traction after a
slow adjustment to Triple-A pitching. After hitting only .210 in April (and .218
in May), Rasmus batted .333 in June with a stellar on-base percentage of .441.
With a silky swing from the left side of the plate, conventional wisdom is that
Rasmus merely needs to see pitching before he starts turning it inside out.

Among the adjustments Rasmus has
had to make for Triple-A, he notes the professionalism of the clubhouse as the
chief difference from Double-A. “It’s more like a job here,” he says. “It’s
harder to just have fun. There are older guys who’ve been around, with lots of
experience. It was hard for me to [adjust]. But I’ve gotten used to it; you just
go about your business.”

Rasmus credits veteran catcher
Mark Johnson for setting a major-league example, even with a minor-league
franchise. (Johnson has been playing professionally since 1994 and has 322
big-league games on his resume.) “Anything he says, most of us young guys
listen,” says Rasmus. “How to carry yourself on the field. He doesn’t talk a
whole lot, but it’s how he plays, how he works.”

Rasmus didn’t exactly grow up a
baseball fan. “Every time we went to a game, even a big-league game [in
Atlanta],” notes Rasmus, “I wanted to play.” He confesses to being not all that
familiar with his centerfield predecessors in St. Louis, though he admires
Edmonds. “I liked Ken Griffey Jr. And I was a pitcher when I was younger, so I
liked Randy Johnson, too.” Rasmus’ father played in the minor leagues and
remains a valuable guide for a young player aiming even higher. (“Dad asked me
if I wanted to make the big leagues. When I said yes, he said it ain’t gonna be
easy.”)

As for when exactly he’ll get a
second cardinal on his jersey, Rasmus feels like he’s already behind schedule.
“I felt like I was ready in spring training,” he says. “If I had gone to St.
Louis, I think I would have been fine. But it didn’t work out. When I struggled
up here, I started pressing some. Early on, I was hitting the ball hard, but
right at guys.”

Gaining a grasp for what a
Triple-A pitcher is throwing — and importantly, when — is a priority for Rasmus,
however much time he has remaining in Memphis. “Pitchers up here are smart,” he
says. “They don’t just throw you fastballs inside; they come after you.

There’s no guarantee that a
franchise’s top-ranked prospect is going to make an impact for the parent club.
Rick Ankiel (the Cards’ top farmhand in 1998 and 2000) has worked out, though
the pitcher-turned-outfielder’s rise couldn’t have been forecast by the most
astute of scouts. But for every J.D. Drew (1999), there have been “can’t miss
kids” like Bud Smith (2001), Jimmy Journell (2002), and Blake Hawksworth (the
Cardinals’ top-ranked prospect in 2004, Hawksworth is 2-6 with an ERA over 6.00
for the Redbirds this year). For what it’s worth, Rasmus pays no attention to
the tag.

“That’s no big deal,” says
Rasmus. “I just play. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what
Baseball America says. It’s what you do between the lines.”

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Rick Ankiel’s “Ruthian” Journey

With 19 home runs through June 21st, Rick Ankiel has been the offensive star for the 2007 Memphis Redbirds. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Joe Strauss calls Ankiel’s transition from the pitching mound (where he won 11 games for St. Louis in 2000) to the outfield “Ruthian.”

High praise, indeed, for someone who makes his living playing baseball. Read Strauss’ profile here.