Poll-A-Palooza: Prospect you’re most eager to see?
DOWNTOWN — One of the best aspects of spring training is the access each day to the backlots — the scattered fields behind Roger Dean Stadium that host drills, batting practice and some scrimmages, and that the prospects call home. Each day it’s possible to go back there and see Colby Rasmus step-in against, say, Jason Motte or Daryl Jones shag flies beside Jon Edwards. It’s not game speed, but it does allow you see the prospects in their element. Helps to put a face and some tools to the numbers and signing bonus.
What the St. Louis Cardinals have done starting last year is bring the backlots to the majors. Part of the Cardinals’ promotion — and, yes, packaging — of their minor-league system has included bringing more prospects to major-league spring training. (And also more prospects to Winter Warm-up.) Last year, that included Clayton Mortensen — a pitcher, who upon further review, was the first first-round draft pick to be invited to the next spring’s big-league camp since Chance Caple in 1999. The Cardinals have yet to make their invitations to big-league camp final, but first-rounder Brett Wallace is expected to receive one.
On Wednesday, Baseball America will reveal its Cardinals’ Top 10 prospects. I will be conducting a chat tomorrow at the Baseball America site. (Check out that hyperventilating tsunami about Faberge eggs, natch!) If you’ve followed the Bird Land Community Top 30, you already know the top three:
- Colby Rasmus
- Brett Wallace
- Chris Perez, who is still eligible
The rest may contain some surprises. But the chat won’t be confined to the Top 10. Expect plenty of talk about who is the Top 30 that will be released later and lots about the system as a whole. Which brings us to the question that continues today’s shotgun blast of polls: Who of these prospects are you most eager to see/hear about this spring training? When you hit the backlots, who are you looking for?
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Personally, I can’t wait to see Brett Wallace hit on a regular basis.
The obvious answers are Raz and Wallace. We will see them play in the bigs soon enough regardless since the are can’t miss prospects supposedly plus they have been “marketed” by ownership for sometime. I think Jones and Freese are the guys to watch. Both have flown under the radar in terms of exposure compared to the above yet are likely critical to our competitiveness in the coming years.
Rasmus = Prospect fatigue.
Wallace = New entity, on which we can project all our hopes and dreams.
Agree on prospect fatigue with Rasmus. He’s too close to majors now, Wallace and Daryl Jones for position players, Mortensen, Todd and Walters for pitchers.
I’ll take a different perspective on this. I voted for Daryl Jones because he is an exciting athlete with great speed whose baseball ability and IQ is only getting better. I’m looking forward to seeing him play left field and bat leadoff someday, not this season but someday, in St. Louis and think about Vince Coleman in his prime.
I almost went Reifer for the reported raving scouting reports. I’ve nver seen him so curiosity has been raised. Jess Todd had such a good year in 2008, it will be interesting to see if he can translate against major league bats. All the hitters will be fun to watch also.
But, instead….
… I’m going to go “other” again and vote Clayton Mortensen. Jeff Lunhow was literally gushing over Mortensen when they drafted him in 2007. Even BA said he could be the sleeper of the draft. I want to see if he is going to be the ground-out machine his 2007 numbers projected.
We probably wont see Wallace this year unless he is a september call up. Personally Im very excited to see Jess Todd pitch in the majors this year. He has dominated every level of the minors in his short career. As long as he can transfer that success to AAA then we’ll see him no later than June.
As soon as there’s a Rasmus jersey available, I’ll be purchasing it.
I went with D. Jones. I agree with Scriven. He is a toolsy player who made tremendous progress last year. I am anxious to see what the future holds for him starting this year. If he continues to improve, does he make another of our incumbent outfielders “available” on the open market as we look for that illusive difference making starting pitcher?
And lastly, these polls are FANtastic.