Reliever Luis Perdomo, left unprotected by the St. Louis Cardinals this past winter and subsequently selected by the San Francisco Giants with the sixth pick overall in December’s Rule 5 Draft, has been claimed off waivers by San Diego and will join the Padres’ major league bullpen.
Perdomo, the Cardinals’ entire take from Cleveland in the dump trade of former top prospect Anthony Reyes last summer, then pitched for Double-A Springfield last season. The 24-year-old seemed to have assumed Reyes’ role as a prime organizational enigma, while the original, Reyes, can now be found in the Indians’ starting rotation.
In 2009 major league spring training, Perdomo did a credible job for San Francisco, and seemed to have made the team. Instead, he struggled in his last couple of outings and ended up being a surprise late cut.
When not making the Giants and before being able to return to the Cardinals, the right-hander had to be placed on irrevocable waivers, where he was nabbed by the Padres. The Dominican republic native is still required to remain in the majors for the remainder of the 2009 regular season or the waiver process will be repeated.
San Diego has been a popular recent destination for Cardinals relievers that appeared with Double-A Springfield. In addition to Perdomo, now-injured Mark Worrell and Luke Gregerson headed West in the Khalil Greene trade.
Given the struggling status of the Padres, if Perdomo pitches as well for them as he did with the Giants, he has a very good chance of sticking with the West Division club, winners of just 63 games last season and projected by some to be just as bad or worse in 2009.
Cardinals GM John Mozeliak was recently quoted as saying that given the opportunity, his organization would take Perdomo back and assign him to the Triple-A Memphis bullpen. Despite Perdomo not being required to be placed on the 40-man roster if returned, the Cards say they would do it, anyway.
That statement implicitly acknowledges the mistake made by the Cardinals in not protecting Perdomo in the first place. If he is good enough to be placed on the Cardinals’ 40-man roster now, why wasn’t he back in December?
There was room on the roster at that time, just as there is today. The Cardinals protected Matt Scherer, who was one of the first cuts in spring training camp, while Perdomo has proven to be an asset valuable enough to have been wanted by at least two other organizations to compete at the major league level.
If the Cards felt the two relievers were worthy, why weren’t both kept? At a minimum, it is clear that Perdomo had trade value that was wasted by the organization. Instead, all the Cardinals have to show for Perdomo (and therefore, Reyes) is the paltry Rule 5 sum of $50,000.
Other than closer Chris Perez and perhaps recently-converted starter Jess Todd, Memphis seems short of right-handed relievers that could be considered major league ready, a statement that excludes Scherer at this time. Therefore, to suggest Perdomo was redundant or unneeded seems inconsistent with reality.
Note: For those interested in where former Cardinals major and minor leaguers are landing in 2009, make sure you check out Cardinals Best News Links daily.
I totally agree with you Brian. It just doesn’t make sense.
One reason this could be seen as a “mistake” is the cult status of Anthony Reyes. Anthony was the top prospect, and indeed distinguished himself in Game 1 of the 06 WS and was listed yesterday among the fine low hit performances for a great game pitched against the White Sox right after Mulder and Marquis had been incinerated. Many will have wanted to see Perdomo as a worthy new source of hope after Anthony had to go elsewhere. The reality could be Reyes had little trade value by last summer and yielded pocket change (Perdomo).
It was odd the Cards deliberately chose to leave Perdomo unprotected, because they had about 4 open roster slots at the time. Its not like they had 40 other guys to protect. One possible reason is the Cards had not, by mid November, pulled back on spending plans, as they may have later done. They may have still been seeking the “low hanging fruit” by acquiring guys early for whom they needed roster capacity. They may have had some bids out on southpaw relievers and did acquire K. Greene. If they had intention of acquiring more veteran ML players, this could explain going into the Rule 5 draft with so many open roster slots.
The Cards have Chris Perez, Jess Todd, and Mitch Boggs at Memphis, even Mortensen and Hawksworth. Todd, Boggs, Mortensen, and Hawk could enter the majors via a bullpen assignment, as did Wainwright in 2006. The team could view them as ahead of Perdomo in the queue for a ML trial. The Cards did view Scherer as having more short-term readiness than Perdomo, hence the preference for Scherer with roster protection. We do not know yet if this was a mistaken choice.
Right-handed set-up reliever is one of the most abundant skill-sets in the game. We can find more such guys, if we need more. We will grow more this summer, in our minors. Could Casey Mulligan or Franciso Samuel or Elvis the Mosquito excel? Quite possibly.
Could the Padres benefit from 6 years of Mark Worrell and Luke Gregerson, and now Luis Perdomo? I very much hope these three guys enjoy success, going forward. Worrell was caught in a logjam with the Cards. Gregerson could become a Jeff Lahti type, a guy who rides a great slider to ML success. But the jury is still very much out about Perdomo. He may turn out poorly for the Padres. He did not star in a short trial at Springfield last August.
When Mo gets asked if he would like to get Perdomo back, the only answer Mo can give is yes, because if Perdomo does in fact later get returned to the Cards, the GM does not want to be on record as having wished otherwise.
For very differing reasons, the Padres and Giants have each had a shortage of right-handed relievers. This is giving Perdomo an earlier shot than he would have had with the Cardinals, a good deal for him. Its too bad we were unable to land a hard throwing Loogy prospect for Anthony Reyes. If so, he might have been protected from the Rule 5 draft.
Jumbo, I fully expected you would summon all your powers in an attempt to craft a positive spin, but even I did not imagine such a detailed tome would result.
I still disagree with you, however.
Permit me to offer some more positive thoughts….
Appropos of JRock’s web site, mentioned above, he pulls together a great deal of information, some off the beaten track and very informative. He does a fantastic job.
Two, from a scouting and player development viewpoint, its nice to be able to find players like Worrell and Gregerson. Worrell was a notable FL prospect coming out of high school (ie., for years, not just as a college junior) and it reflects well on scout Steve Turco that the Cards selected Worrell in the 2004 draft; a good value 12th round pick. The discovery of Luke Gregerson in 2006 was a nice find too; he went to an NAIA school in Orland Park, IL, a Chicago burb; it has a good baseball program. Gregerson was RF and closer. The Cards must have scouted him and decided he had an outpitch in the slider. They got him at a bargain bin draft round circa 27. Its not easy to uncover upside players down at Division III and NAIA. The Cards are trying to cultivate ML players. If some turn into trading chips, in order to land a fine ML SS in his prime, its a benefit to the team, and gives ML playing time to Worrell and Gregerson, a win-win.
This past off-season, it is generally accepted the Cards deliberately placed OF Cody Haerther on the AA roster, so he could be grabbed by another team at the low price of $4,000. The Cards must have thought they had a log jam in the AAA OF and wanted Haerther to get a better opportunity to collect AAA at bats with another franchise. This showed empathy for Haerther by helping him try to get ahead. This suggests some careful thinking goes into November roster choices. What makes the Perdomo case unusual is there were a bunch of free roster spaces at the time, such that the Cards could have protected Perdomo, if they had elected to do so. Since Reyes had been traded for Perdomo, this raised Perdomo’s visibility with other teams and made him a more likely Rule 5 selection than otherwise. This Cards should know this, yet left him available anyway.
Rule 5 picks tend to be AA players, because teams tend to favor protection of AAA, so if you want to help yourself via the Rule 5 draft, it often requires selecting lower than AAA. Hector Luna was a AA guy with the Indians. Brian Barton had few at bats at AAA. When the As drafted LHP Tyler Johnson, it was after his first season at AA and Beane later returned Johnson as not yet ready. Perdomo had less time at AA than Luna, Barton, and Johnson, and went unprotected.
I agree it is incongruous that the Cards would scout Perdomo in the minors of the Indians, trade for him, and then leave him unprotected, when they had roster space to have prevented his loss via Rule 5. This could appear to be a mistake, but it could have other possible explanations too.
Brian, Besides Jumbo outlining the obvious, recognizing that something is “funny” here, is only natural. I’m going to reserve my theory now, but I will say this, “watch and wait long enough, and you will see the Bigfoot”. You have to be looking though. This isn’t a struggling Mo trying to impress.
At the onset of the season, there may be a natural tendency , after a long winter, to form impressions though theere are few tea leaves to read. Already some fans have doubts about Jason Motte, though they championed him all winter. Pendulums swing.
Scherer was an early cut, as was Freese. It was said Scherer had some early soreness that he has seemingly now worked past, much like Freese’s heel has improved a bit. Sherer may turn out fine.
In point of fact, Perdomo could not make the bullpen of the Giants and his performance for the Padres will only become known in time.
It is likely Mo would consult with the AA manager, Warner, who could presumably report he did not see ML-ready performance out of Perdomo last August. And the Cards may have had some other ideas for roster slot useage, even if these did not later come to pass.
Thats plausible Jumbo. It is unlikely though to be true. How much do you figure it costs to develop a MLB ready pitcher? 50 thou ? The business plan I believe projects player salaries. Reyes wasn’t in the plan. In a plan like this, a players success can also be a public relations problem. It has nothing to do with Baseball operations Logic, which was not in play here. Reyes was disposed of. Perdomo was a waste product, now dealt with. No complaints. No job losses. Just an uncomfortable moment when someone witnesses you littering.
Reyes was given an opportunity to start over in another town. Strictly in terms of public relations, it would have behooved the Cards to add Perdomo to their 40 man roster last November. Then, if Perdomo happens to turn out poorly in 2009 or is injured, Mo could say, he seemed promising, but things did not turn out as we hoped. That would be the P.R. approach to roster decisions. It can be inferred the Cards did not care to cultivate PR in this instance.
Another theory is that after finding a team interested in giving a chance to Reyes and scouting Perdomo, the Cards had a brain-failure and did not realize Perdomo was Rule 5 eligible, so left him unprotected. This is the bone-headed mistake theory. The problem with this theory is the Cards had just scouted and traded for Perdomo, so its hard to imagine they forgot all about him by November. Some careful thinking goes into player recruitment ideas, why we ended up with Ludwick and Thurston, and how we helped Haerther move on. I dont think we just forgot about Perdomo.
So I am left with my theory that the Cards saw Perdomo as having some worthwhile potential in the future; gambled Perdomo would not ready to stay on a ML roster all season (which he has yet to establish, btw); and had other ideas on how to use the open roster slots, though these did not come to pass.
I would remind you Jumbo to inspect the consequences of the Kennedy move. Same scenario whose only consequence has been to give Rasmus an opportunity. No logic save to fulfill the business plan. Tony’s on field explanations, while understandable, aren’t about having a more successful team. His moves present the only tactical solution to the personnel he’s been left with.
BD is going somewhere with this plan. Guess where. I’m coming to respect Billiam more each day. He’s pretty good.
Kennedy was released to position change Skip (because we like him and would be loathe to trade him) and to enable Colby to be mentored by Uncle Tony.
Skip and Colby are unrelated to Anthony Reyes and Luis Perdomo. Reyes had the worst season by a Cards starter in the team’s long history. He had to try again elsewhere. Of course, Anthony did not command a big prospect in a trade, just Perdomo, a set up guy just up from A ball. Perdomo did not excel in the early going at AA, so the Cards reasonably did not protect him. The Padres gutted their team to save money, so have roster slots to audition iffy guys, at least right now. The Pads can return Perdomo if they do not like what they see and make $25,000. Its a no downside gamble by a team going nowhere in 2009.
WC, what does paying Kennedy $4M to NOT play for the 2009 Cardinals have to do with your “business plan” idea?
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the Cards’ staff realized there was no room for Schumaker in the Cardinals outfield this year. By the time the decision was made to cut Kennedy, they surely had solid reports about the health of Ankiel and Duncan and had monitored the strides made by Rasmus and Mather.
This outfield unit has a chance to be one of the best this team has ever seen. Lucky for us we didn’t cut Ludwick as you had wildly predicted.
I’ll be watching Perdomo with keen interest. While I wish Anthony Reyes the very best with the Indians, I’m not buying into the theory that he was ruined by the Cardinals. The Baseball Encyclopedia is littered with players that flashed talent over a short span but never really panned out.
jumbo,
thank you for the kind words, much appreciated.
To finish my thoughts about Schumaker moving to second base, TLR intimated that the friendship between Sch and Kennedy would be detrimental in an open competition for Kennedy’s job in Spring Training.
While Shu’s bat doesn’t measure up to what a healthy Duncan and Ankiel might offer, he did have the second highest batting average in the league vs. right handers in 2008 and is a threat at the top of the lineup. The second base job was his to lose. So far, he has done pretty well there and the Cardinals defense looks pretty darned good to these old eyes.
No room? They tried to trade Ludwick and Shumaker twice. Makes plenty of room for something. Three middle infielders in and Mather out leaving one right handed batter in the OF maybe to leave a bit of room. Tony wants Shu to lead off, BD wants Colby to play. Kennedy was tossed, his salary was wasn’t going to be an obstacle to the plan. Yeah, Tony said that was the only to give Shu a chance, so BD surprised him and did it. It was guaranteed money, lost anyway. Lets see if Shu is playing second on Tuesday when Carp is up. I have a hunch. This is the way it went down. Lets hope it jells.
Perdomo was very strong in the Indians system before being picked up by the Cardinals in the Reyes deal. He didn’t do well at Springfield or in the winter leagues which is probably why the Cardinals didn’t protect him.
However, I don’t understand the logic in not protecting anyone there is any kind of risk losing as long as there is room on the 40 man roster. No way the Cardinals were going to fill the open spots with trades.
I think that once a player is added to the roster they have to run them through waivers to get them off. Maybe they didn’t want to do that with the group that will probably have to be added at the end of this season.
The other thing that is an issue early in the season is the struggles out of the bullpen in Springfield. None of them have any previous AA experience and they are getting hammered. Losing Perdomo, Gregerson and Worrell has taken a toll of the Cardinals bullpen depth early on.
Perdomo would have helped Springfield this year.