Brett Wallace promoted to AAA; David Freese on DL
DOWNTOWN — St. Louis Cardinals first-round pick and top prospect Brett Wallace is headed to Class AAA Memphis less than a year after the Cardinals drafted him with the 13th pick. Wallace, who leaves behind a .281 batting average at Class AA Springfield, will be the starting third baseman for the Cardinals Triple-A affiliate.
Wallace’s promotion was necessitated Friday when the club decided to place David Freese on the disabled list. Freese continues to experience soreness in his ankle — and injury related to a January car accident and that same injury that limited his playing time early in spring training.
Freese opened the season on the major-league roster, and he was hitting .244/.298/.372 for Memphis since being optioned there to get more playing time.
Wallace finished last season at Class AA. After cranking a couple home runs and driving in six runs on opening day for the S-Cards, Wallace slowed. He recently hit walk-off home runs on consecutive nights, and he has elevated his batting average with a .293 turn through his past 10 games. The lefthanded-hitting infielder has five home runs and 16 RBIs in 128 at-bats. His batting line for the S-Cards is .281/.403/.438.
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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. 
I am really curious to see what kind of ceiling Wallace’s talent has
Very pumped about Wallace. Only reason he was not taken higher was because he is not built like you prototypical 3B. I believe the Cardinals nailed this pick and Wallace will turn into a great hitter. His college stats are off the charts.
Derrick, do you have access to Wallace’s fielding numbers at Double A. I was unable to find anything searching the ‘net. Thanks!
i feel sorry was brett wallace he would have been better off being drafted by an american league team and i think the cardinals are wasting his time and as long as he is with the cardinals he will never reach his full potential.
In 30 games at 3B Wallace has made 2 errors, has a .975 fielding percentage and a range factor per game of 2.63. Admittedly a small sample but not bad and an improvement over last season.
Hope they aren’t pushing him too fast. That said, I’m going to a AAA game in June when they’ll be in Des Moines and I’m psyched that I may get to see him play.
The Cardinals FO appears to be intent on giving Wallace every opportunity to play 3B in STL this season. TLR didn’t seem to even want him around in spring training, sending him down almost immediately because he “has a long way to go” defensively. I haven’t seen him play much. For those of you who have, what’s your evaluation of his defense?
.281 at AA. That’s not exactly a dominating performance. We’ll see how he does at AAA.
I’ve watched him play quite a bit down here in Springfield. First I’ll talk about him at the plate. He’s not getting pitches to hit, the league has been very good at forcing him to go after marginal pitches. He’s going to need to learn to be more selective and take his walks; much like Rasmus has.
In the field he’s interesting, he does a great job moving vertically and charging the ball, but doesn’t move horizontally much at all. His arm is above average. For his build he seems to be very athletic in the field, but he’ll always need a plus range, plus arm, and plus glove shortstop to his left.
Unless he really improves his defensive game, .281 average will not be good enough. In my opinion, St. Louis needs Wallace to be a *great* hitter - not just a *good* hitter.
Although this promotion is great, I hope Cardinal fans are not penciling him in at third base for next year…..He is still a very young, inexperienced player.
mookie, that 120+ difference between his OBP and his BA indicate that wallace already knows how to take his walks. if that line is his “slumping” line i’ll take it every day of the week.
you’d like to see a bit more power and lateral range, but wallace has spent all of two months in double A and hit pretty well there. If wallace is up this year the carinals have problems, but he does catch the stuff hit to him and he’s probably a better hitter than thurston or barden right now. He’s in expereinced sure, but this isnt a high school kid we’re talking about. Wallace is 23, and he’s almost ready to play in the bigs.