The Cardinals have promoted top outfield prospect Dylan Carlson to Triple-A, per an announcement from the club’s top affiliate. That puts the 20-year-old switch-hitter right on the doorstep of the big leagues. Carlson turned in a strong .281/.364/.518 batting line with 21 long balls and 18 steals over 483 Double-A plate appearances. It’s not clear whether the club has any thought of a late-2019 MLB promotion for the talented youngster.
More from the National League …
- MLB.com’s Mike Petriello provides an interesting examination of the feast-or-famine experience hitters have had this year against Brewers lefty relief ace Josh Hader. It really is a curious situation, as Petriello explains in full detail. In essence: Hader is harder to make contact against than anyone in baseball. But when batters have put bat to ball this year, they’ve tended to make loud sounds and often ended up trotting the bases. Petriello identifies a few potential causes/fixes for the Milwaukee southpaw. In particular, it seems Hader can work on reducing first-pitch predictability and tightening up his command at times. You’ll certainly want to read the entire piece to appreciate it.
- As he continues to produce middling overall offensive numbers, Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer is showing increasingly yawning platoon splits, as MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell writes. It’s simple enough, in theory, to spell him against southpaws. But that’s tough to do given the club’s mammoth investment in Hosmer. Skipper Andy Green made clear it’s not an immediate possibility. That makes sense, as the Friars have to hope that Hosmer turns a corner and can afford to give him the leash to work things out. But if it comes down to it, the extreme platoon situation actually ought to make it easier in the long run to deal with a contract that has simply not panned out.
- Diamondbacks shortstop Nick Ahmed has long been lauded for his superlative glovework, but has mostly remained an obscure player. Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic highlights the growing value of the 29-year-old, who is now finally marrying his excellent defensive performance with much-improved hitting. With torrid recent streak, Ahmed has reached league-average offensive levels for the season as a whole. Piecoro provides an excellent look at Ahmed’s thus-far successful efforts to avoid chasing pitches out of the zone and make better contact when he does offer. Ahmed, who is earning $3.663MM this season, is entering his final season of arbitration eligibility.
Hosmer has been hitting well this year though… much better than 2018.
Currently, a 1.1 oWAR 1B thru 119 games (0.5 total WAR). Definitely bottom of the well.
Not like he could have done much worse than a .720 OPS.
1 homer and 16 RBI’s this year against lefties and last year hit .179 against lefties. 144 mil for average 1B nice signing AJ
Padres has no choice. They have to make one bad signing every off season in order to comply with the secret deal amongst owners.
Talent just seems to be endless for the St.Louis Cardinals. How do they keep grooming top MLB prospects. Pitching and position players both. The future never looked better.
Is this sarcasm?
Flantery Hudson Helsly Dejong Wong O’Neil Hicks it just goes on and on. Definitely not sarcasm!
Last time they made the playoffs windmills weren’t causing cancer
and how many teams have won the world series since then?
Helsley has done what at the MLB level? O’Neill 40% K rate. Grichuk Jr. Hicks is hurt. Wong has been in the league like 6 years now with below league average in OPS and OPS+. Don’t feed me his defense. 2B now is a hitter’s position now that the league has made it easier to play with nobody coming at you at 2B and the shift to make your job easier to field. So, let’s try this again.
Congratulations you just named 7 decent players. Not one of those guys is someone to build a team around, besides maybe Flaherty.
Cards dominated from 2000 to 2015. Getting ready to dominate again very soon. Never had a 110 year drought like one team did.
Quit living in the past. I could throw a fastball 94 mph in high school 20 years ago. It doesn’t mean I can now. The same goes for the glory years of the Cardinals in the era you listed. Too bad Edmonds, Pujols, Molina, Wainwright, Rolen, Renteria, etc aren’t still 28 years old. Move on. Times change. Other teams have passed your precious Cardinals in scouting, analytics, development. That is a FACT that can’t be disputed. It’s backed up by 3 years of missing the playoffs with a 4th year possibly looming. Unless they get to play their remaining 40 or so games against Pitt, KC and Cincy?
Cards back in it for awhile. All teams go through some down time. Not many have a winning tradition like the St Louis Cardinals. They will once again return to domination. Always in competition and never tanking. Not many can hold there head high like the Cardinals. He’ll even the Yankees have had a few struggling seasons but they always come out of it also.
Dejong was an all star, Hudson is having a great year in his first year as a SP, as you mentioned Flaherty who I believe is having the best second half of any pitcher in the MLB, Hicks got hurt but come on you would want him on your team….so I would say any of those players you would want on your team…Wong is having a great season because he is finally getting regular playing time…did it take Wong a long time? Sure but he is becoming one of the best second basemen in the league…it’s so funny how people say quit living in the past lol…the cardinals have picked low in the draft since…???? Geez I can’t remember when they had a high pick in the draft…they haven’t had a losing season since 2007…how many teams can say that…say what you want but it’s just pure jealousy…and they are tied for first place with a team that had to tank in order to be good….I think that says a lot
Great post Cards 81. The only thing you forgot to mention to really get under the skin of plot thickens and Nick Stephens, who are the same person, is how good Mo has maintained one heck of a fantastic franchise for the Dewitt’s over the years.
Arguably the 3 best players in baseball are Trout, Yelich and Acuna, Jr. Trout drafted 25th pick. Yelich 23rd. Acuna was an amateur free agent signing.
they dont seem to have many superprospects, but they tend to develop a lot of talented big leaguers with impressive regukarity. Carlson, for example, wasnt expected to be drafted in the first round, but looks like STL made the right pick. credit where it’s due.
The Cardinals haven’t had a top 20 draft pick since 2013 and haven’t had a top ten pick in this century, so it’s not really that surprising that they don’t have the sure-fire hyped up guys a lot of teams do. They are above average at finding and developing what they have available to them, but they are picking from a less-impressive talent pool than a lot of teams. I think it’s easy for a lot of people to forget that.
Actually the Cardinals have picked 19th the last 2 years! So they have picked in the top 20…just saying lol
It also helps that they get extra picks every year worh the bogus “competitive balance” pick they receive every year. When you get more picks it just makes sense that you would create more young decent prospects.
They get one extra pick and it’s still a low pick?…come on
Prospects are nothing more than guys that some think have a reasonable chance of having an MLB career. They fail constantly to do so. I wouldn’t start congratulating the Cards for all this talent until they actually do something in the big leagues.
The Cardinals haven’t drafted well since the Astros changed their password.
Lmao
That is a brilliant comment. Thank you.
Quit living in the past, as you so eloquently wrote earlier.
That’s not living in the past. That’s me laughing at a great joke.
Laughing at something that happened several years ago IS living in the past.
Cardinals fans talking about living in the past is a little rich. When was the last time you won the series? No, when did you last make the post season? Seem like Astro-gate was when they starting trending downward. Just saying.
Cubs haven’t played well since one stopped beating his wife and also one who couldn’t hang on to his wife probably because he was a cub, idk…also I assume a lot of the cubs players of different race don’t want to play for a racist owner…just saying
Cubs have ONE world series ring in the past 110 years, and ONE world series appearance in the past 74 years. Why are you even speaking?
I guess I need to stop watching old comedy movies, because who really needs to laugh anyway?
The cubs haven’t played well since Russell stop beating his wife
Aj writes that piece on hosmer and then gets ripped apart the next two days. Hosmer went 4-5 against lefties with a homerun
One or two games is useless for any kind of analysis. In Mike Trout’s last game he went 0-3 with 3 SOs. Does that make Trout a bad ballplayer?
Yeah. DFA Trout. You’ll have 29 other teams in line to take him.
Even the rays would find a way to take on trouts contract and his contract is higher than their payroll
People talk about the bad Brandon Belt contract, but compared to Hosmer’s, given their comparable offensive numbers, Belt’s looks like a bargain, even including this season’s performances.
And glad to see nick Ahmed getting some love. Not a D’back’s fan, but enjoy watching him play the game when I can..Nice ballplayer.
Let’s not forget about Hosmer’s trash defense. I literally hold my breath on every popout or throw to first base. Just a horrible signing by AJP.
Yaaa so that’s probably a bridge too far
10 errors skills eroding
I still don’t get how he won 4 gold gloves. Not once has he had a positive dWAR in a season.
11 now
People need to relax on Hader a bit. Hes coming down to earth after last seasons dominance. He is fine lol. I agree that he is too predictable though. Catchers need to start calling more sliders first pitch and stop pounding fastballs..everyone knows its coming. If you look, hitters are selling out first pitch heater and are hitting him hard if its not a perfectly placed pitch. He needs to become more of a pitcher instead of a thrower and realize he does not need to strike everyone out all the time. He just needs to work on the offspeed command a bit and he will be fine. Does not help that CC thinks hes a robot that can go 6-7 outs every time he pitches. Haders got a lot of pressure to get big outs late in the game. Losing Knebel was so big imo along with the decline of Jeffress. Hader is legit asked to go through every big hitter late in the game and its unfair to put that on a kid. I also dont think hes a closer. On the brewers he is pushed in to that role but he would thrive better coming in in the 6/7/8 and playing matchups. Last year we could do that because of JJ and Knebel. Without them, theres a ton of pressure. I just cant stand the fans who completely turn on a guy after some blown games after all hes asked to do and all the times hes saved us, when our starters go 4 innings at the most these days
The brew crew have abused him the last few years. They need to watch it or he will be added to that awful list of flame out closers who fell from grace quickly. I’m a huge fan of his and I hope it doesn’t happen to him
I think Mike Petriello missed the true cause of Hader’s change of fortune. First, Hader never had the very fastest fastball. He often struck out hitters with 94 – 95 fastballs, making hitters look fast worse than they ever did vs 97,98,99 fastballs from other pitchers. And he never had consistent pin point command. Brewer fans have seen him make great hitters look terrible on 3 pitches in a row, all right down the middle.
There’s something in his delivery that has made his pitches nearly impossible to gauge out of his hand. Suddenly now they’re catching on. Division rivals have seen him often but devastating homeruns by the A’s & Twins make me think hitters are watching a ton of video and have come up with a plan that, for now, is working.
They’ve adjusted to him, now it’s his turn to make some adjustments of his own.
His command has been pretty poor. his up and in fastballs have either been wayyyy up or right at the belt. they kinda asked to get crushed. Especially when he only throws a fastball. his sliders do not go for strikes so hitters sit fastball and when he misses he misses right down the pipe. it’s easy for major leaguers to hit a ball when they know the location and pitch type. he doesn’t move his fastball around much either.
agreed. Command has been a huge issue for him. He should be used in some non leverage games this week to get some off speed command as well. Take some pressure off him. Hopefully the brewers have some lob-sided games this week so he can come in and work on his pitches and get some confidence back. you can tell that his confidence has taken a hit
You should be a pitching coach, or at least in the front office. but with the length of your post, maybe a fiction writer.
Sorry you’re an idiot. Maybe he should include pictures so you can understand what he’s saying
I like to see Hosmer manning 1st base for the Angels. How about Calhoun and Bedrosian and reunite the Pads with Upton.
Are the Angels trying to collect turds to play first base for them? Pujols and boor, and you want Hosmer in there too? that’s an expensive position
Boor as you call him is history. Pujols won’t be playing much 1B after this year. DH baby
Good thing they got a young two way player on their roster who is their dh
That would be the most expensive team ever put together that would never reach a postseason. Truly is a shame that Trout is on the Angels who are barely competitive. We all want to see what this kid can do in a postseason series with the lights on him.
That’s what Angels need another overpaid underproductive pitcher
why are we suddenly dumping on Hosmer now that he’s getting paid? he’s hitting a lot better then people say, and these defensive metrics so many people live by are suddenly ignored when speaking about him. I was never much of a fan in KC, but how come he’s dumped on at every turn?
Agree up to a point. He is a decent ballplayer, both as hitter and defender. The criticism I have is his ridiculous contract. As I pointed out previously, people complain about Brandon Belt’s contract. But Belt, despite a horrendous 2019, still has a 120 OPS+ to Hosmer’s 107. Belt is owed $34.8M over the next 2 years, where the Padres are on the hook for $102M over the next 6 years for Hosmer.
Bingo
hes a decent player but not/never was elite. His agent deserves a hell of a raise for getting him the contract he got, he sure is not living up to it. Good player, not a superstar
That’s a Preller special loves overpaid Padres it’s nice to bury team with bad contracts
Hosmer has a lot more fans than his performance warrants, actually.
He gives you a reasonably professional at-bat, but he’s a mediocre hitter with really bad defense. Even in a platoon he wouldn’t be that good — 115 WRC+ against RHP,
It’s not hard to imagine him being the worst hitter among the 2020 Padre starters. Even if he beats out Margot, Mejia, Urias, or Myers with the bat, his D and baserunning has a good chance to make him less valuable.
I can’t believe people are complaining about Hosmer as a 1B. Please, send him to the Tigers. They have no one there. Heck, send Bour…
I know this is typically the opposite approach but does anyone thing Hosmer needs to add a little weight and try to free his swing up I saw the homer he hit the other day on MLBN and he just looked really skinny and he was having to swing harder than he’s ever had to drive balls. He needs to go back to trying to be a great hitter not a power hitter who cares if you drive in 90 with 40 bombs or drive in 120 with 20 and 40+doubles and hit .310
For a first baseman, you probably would like to see more power output than what Hosmer brings. As for driving in runs for RBI’s, nobody really cares how many you drive in because RBI’s are a reflection of your team’s ability to get on base.
Simple. When a player signs a big contract he’s expected to exceed his previous stats. But in reality a player is actually getting the big contract for what they did prior. Just ask Pujols.
What the heck is “increasingly yawning”?
It’s stupid words to fill his article. I don’t know how MLB lets that kid write content for their website. Not only is he having a solid year but he’s not getting “killed” by lefties. He hasn’t had good power numbers but is still hitting .261 on the season. Josh Bell is hitting .237 against lefties. Anthony Rizzo is hitting .210.
Just because that kid doesn’t think there is a ton of VALUE in his contract doesn’t mean his numbers are bad.
I love reading alot of the articles and comments on this site but they need to seriously re-evaluate who writes for MLBTR. In many articles, it is tough to get through with the grammar and organization. And no im not being an internet grammar cop, but im a firm believer of “If you are getting paid to do a job, then do it right”.
Are they getting paid?
Well some shouldnt the way they write lol
Bell and Rizzo both have something that Hosmer doesn’t, an OPS above .700 vs LHP. Especially Bell. Plus, do you really think Hosmer is providing a lot of value with his .5 bWAR for $21 million?
Halfway thru August and Hosmer has 0.6 fWAR. That’s 17th among 1b. Some other ranks:
17th wRC+
18th wOBA
18th HR
There are only 22 qualified 1b.
For most of those categories, the players who are worse than him are old / injured — Pujols, Cabrera, Belt. .
He may be a great teammate. He doesn’t give away at-bats. He might hit better in a future season, and maybe stop making so many bone-headed defensive plays. But this year, and last, there’s no argument at all that he’s been one of the worst 1b in MLB.
The meaning of “yawning” is not necessarily confined to the physical act of involuntarily opening the mouth. Per dictionary.com iIt can also mean a gaping opening, like a yawning chasm. The usage is correct even if it is somewhat stilted and awkward.
People like CrewBrew only want to put other people(who are obviously more successful than himself) down because they posses something they don’t…in this case a job writing about baseball that they don’t have…just a chip on his shoulder, ignore ignorance
Hosmer looking like the offensive player from the 2017 Royals but defensively hes taken a step back and his WAR numbers show it.
Here’s an idea: Leave Meyers at 1b where he a damn near allstar.
Really dude couldn’t field and hits like pitcher
He was good in 16 & 17 before AJ took a giant steamy dump all over his confidence when he signed our light hitting former World Series winning 1b.
We had finally found a spot where this top prospect could stay healthy.
He’s a misfit at 1B
Carlson is going to beast in Memphis, hitters park and league. I still think they’ll wait until mid season next to promote him. He won’t be promoted and ride the bench like Thomas
Also: AAA plays with the juiced balls and AA doesn’t, so this will be interesting to see what he does for Memphis.
lol outside of one year Hosmer looks like the same player as ever. They just overpaid him, not him fault.
Dylan Carlson is going be the next talk of baseball. Just another great looking prospect in the Cards organization. They just keep churning them out without the embarrassment of tanking. Year after year decade after decade.
And all that leads to is missing the playoffs year after year…
All teams have a little hiccup. They went to the playoffs about 20 years in a row before this last little hiccup. Don’t you worry Goat. They’ll be back better than ever. No team goes to the playoffs every year. I’m sore the Cards have went to the playoffs more than most since the start of this century.
Y’all sure do talk a lot for having ONE ring in the past 110 years.
Lol year after year…it’s been three years…not over a hundred years to get a ring
JD we are Blue Jays fans. How can any Blue Jays fan chirp at the Cards? If any team misses the playoffs year after year it would be the Blue Jays with the exception of two seasons since 1993. Jays have far more work to do than the St Louis Cardinals who know how to play over .500 baseball.
Lol that’s rich…JD is a Blue Jays fan and he is talking smack about the cardinals missing the playoffs
The same guy that crapped on Blue Jays fans like myself for being critical of a mediocre organization. Yet he disses a Cardinals organization that many have attempted to model themselves after. Defies logic.
Ankiel, Reyes, Wacha, Rasmus, Taveras, C.
Kelly, Tyler Greene….
The Cardinals are always at least competitive. It seems they have an endless supply of MLB players in their system. They draft and develop well..fact.
Dylan Carson plays CF. Where does that leave Harrison Bader? Bader is one of the best defensive CFs I’ve seen in many years.
I agree…which is why I don’t understand why they didn’t pull the trigger on the trade with the Mets for Wheeler…they said it was because wheeler didn’t project much better than Wacha but it still seems weird…the Mets wanted Bader…not only Carlson but also Lane Thomas can play CF….as good as Bader? No but they can hit way better
Hosmer’s a fully respectable ballplayer and a “professional” one at that. However, yeah, he’s been mediocre offensively and definitely isn’t making up for it on defense.
One good thing about Hosmer though, is that he’s still fairly young–2020 will be his age 30 season.
A side note–it’s crazy that SD, a team that hasn’t seen the postseason since 2006, has 3 huge contracts on the books already (Myers, Machado, and of course Hosmer). I think Machado is going to end up being a good move when it’s all said and done, but SD definitely hasn’t spent it’s money too wisely.
They didn’t sign Hosmer to hit they signed him for his “ Leadership and winning ways”.
What a joke