Once the final out of the Memphis Redbirds’ loss in the Triple-A Championship Game was secured on the night of September 22, the St. Louis Cardinals announced that four players would be joining the major league club the next day in Houston. Coming into the final month, the team had made it clear they would not disrupt the eventual Pacific Coast League champs if at all possible while they were still playing and lived up to their pledge.
The four promotions represent the smallest September call up total for the Cardinals in recent years and not coincidentally, it was Memphis’ first championship since 2000. With just ten games remaining in the 2009 MLB regular season by that point, there seemed little reason to add a boatload of extra players at the first city of the three-stop final road trip.
The four added are infielders Tyler Greene and David Freese (pictured), right-handed reliever Josh Kinney and catcher Matt Pagnozzi. The former three had been with the major league club during the season while Pagnozzi was first required to be placed onto the organization’s 40-man roster.
Other Memphis contributors sent home included infielder/outfielder Allen Craig, second baseman Jarrett Hoffpauir, left-handers Jaime Garcia and Royce Ring and right-hander P.J. Walters. All except Craig have MLB experience. Of them, there seemed to be the greatest fan uproar over Craig, Memphis’ top hitter for most of the season, but a player without a clear home defensively.
Given all the gnashing of teeth of these moves and non-moves, I thought it would be illustrative to look back to see how much action the four call ups actually received in their ten big league games in late September and early October.
| G | GS | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | |
| Pagnozzi | 6 | 0 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0.000 | 0.250 | 0.000 | 0.250 |
| Greene | 7 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.333 | 0.500 | 0.333 | 0.833 |
| Freese | 6 | 1 | 12 | 12 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0.583 | 0.583 | 0.833 | 1.417 |
| G | IP | ERA | PA | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | R | SB | CS | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | |
| Kinney | 2 | 3 | 0.00 | 12 | 11 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.182 | 0.250 | 0.273 | 0.523 |
As you can see, there really isn’t much to talk about. The three position players were given a total of just two starts and 21 plate appearances, 18 official at-bats.
Pagnozzi went hitless in three at-bats, though he did coax a walk and scored. Greene went 1-for-3 while Freese saw the majority of the time. The third baseman experienced feast or famine with seven hits in 12 at-bats, including a home run, five RBI, but also fanned four times.
Kinney tossed three scoreless innings, a major improvement over his 10.95 ERA coming into the call up, which had been accrued over 15 earlier outings.
With the limited amount of playing time available to these players once Memphis’ season was over, there isn’t much more to say except that Freese looked good – other than perhaps during his first professional appearance behind the plate, that is.
At this early point of the off-season, Freese is the on-paper leader to start at third base next season, while Greene and Pagnozzi could compete for reserve roles. Ditto for Kinney in the bullpen, though none of the latter three are locks to make the major league squad in the spring.
One footnote is that it was rumored that the Cardinals would have liked to find a way for Freese to join their NLDS roster, a move I had earlier predicted. However, with no injured players heading into post-season action, the club had no eligible players to be replaced by the third baseman.
But (noted orthopedist Dr. James Andrews) said, ‘Hey there’s nothing wrong with your ligament. We don’t have to talk about that. We’ll clean it up and you’ll be ready to go in a few weeks.’ If I had the Tommy John, I would have had to miss half the (2010) season. But with the (minor) surgery they did, I’ll be ready to go by spring training, so I’m excited about that.”
This took a while to surface. I would say Albert/Tony have put the ball firmly in Mo/BD’s court. Everyone is happy now……………….so who are we?
I’m a little surprised that no one noticed some of the storyline faults in the witch hunt articles. The good one is ” we were able to match player with test results using information found on a Long Beach laboratory computer”. Apparently someone wasn’t telling the truth about anonymity safeguards. The time line says a bunch about political motivations, and I would speculate that the late developing “chastising leak of A-rod’s name” is a clear indication of some special MLB interests having a hand in this. I always thought it was a slap on the hand against NY for breaking ranks with the salary collusion understanding by spending 250 million on 3 players. I see now that I was wrong. It was a final chastisement against NY from the Bush nasties for almost blowing the wonderful financial strategies used to hide tax free money in the new stadium scam. The Yankee owners were so greedy in the end they were inviting a full federal investigation of their ball park financing. If you wrote a piece on this Brian, you probably get famous, or dead.
If anyone should know about storyline faults, its you Westie! kkkkkk
The more quotes and interviews and soundbites I see the more I think MM should just keep his mouth shut.
You are likely right BB. His history is so “compromised”, why even start down that road.
” Yeah I experimented with some of things that other players were trying. It wasn’t illegal at the time. I’m happy about baseballs new fair play guidelines, and I encourage all players to abide by them” Enough said.
Didn’t we ruffle each others feathers enough over this issue Brian? Is this your way of saying; ‘I told you so!’
My feeling is that you take the best possible team into the playoffs if you want to keep going. Tony has always been too loyal to his vets to go against that. This year was a perfect example. Our bench was horrible; Tony had a chance to upgrade with Freese and Craig but didn’t and look what happened. You could say….the expected. Our offense fell on their faces and no one was their to back them up.
So while you still claim to be right that more callups wouldn’t have gotten a chance to play; I still claim to be right that others should have been given the opportunity to upgrade the team. Let’s just call this a stalemate and move on. ((: