After the St. Louis Cardinals ate the final year of Adam Kennedy’s contract, they turned second base over to neophyte Skip Schumaker – and it worked!
This story has its origins way back in 1997. That June, the St. Louis Cardinals drafted a pair of players who would be in and out of their picture for the next 13 years. Prior to the selection of left-handed pitcher Rick Ankiel in the second round, the Cardinals made second baseman Adam Kennedy their first pick, 20th overall.
The system’s 1999 Minor League Player of the Year made his major league debut that August. He didn’t remain long however, as he was shipped off to the Anaheim Angels along with Kent Bottenfield for Jim Edmonds during the next spring training.
Six years later, Kennedy came home, signing a three-year contract with the Cardinals worth $10 million. It didn’t work out well for either party.
He batted .219 his first season back, which prematurely ended with knee surgery. Kennedy’s 2008 included a request to be traded over concern that he lacked a defined role on the team. He saw time at first base and made his career debut in right field in addition to second base.
Despite the problems, it seemed that Kennedy would remain wearing Cardinals number seven for the final season of his contract in 2009. Then, on February 9, just days before spring training, St. Louis surprisingly gave Kennedy his release. The club remained on the hook for the $4 million due the second baseman for the season.
A seemingly-crazy idea that manager Tony La Russa hatched and general manager John Mozeliak first floated in the press in late January suddenly became the Cardinals’ “Plan A” for the second base position in 2009.
Outfielder Skip Schumaker would move to second base despite having only a bit of college experience at shortstop almost a decade earlier. It was a Cardinals year-to-year move last successfully pulled off by Red Schoendienst over 60 years prior, in 1945-46. Even experienced Cardinals infield coaches had questions over the likelihood of the experiment’s success.
To his immense benefit, once he got past the surprise, Schumaker totally immersed himself in learning his new position on the fly. I remember a particularly difficult spring training contest when he could have packed it in after a couple of tough errors. Instead, Skip persevered, taking extra fielding practice every day led by devoted coaches Jose Oquendo and Joe Pettini. Skip held the job to start the season and never looked back, seemingly improving his defense all season long.
Almost as impressively, Schumaker maintained his level of offensive performance through it all, batting .300 for the third consecutive season. In fact, his .306 average was seventh among National League leadoff hitters. In an example of how Skip gets the most out of his abilities, he led the entire NL in groundball-to-flyball ratio for the second straight year at 4.01-to-1. Schumaker, a student of former Cardinals slugger and new hitting coach Mark McGwire, is again working out with McGwire this winter in California, joined by keystone partner Brendan Ryan.
Though he made the opening day roster in four consecutive springs starting in 2006, 2008 was Schumaker’s first full season as a major leaguer. As such, he just became arbitration-eligible for the first time. Skip could remain under club control for three more seasons before being eligible for free agency. Kennedy, a free agent, is on his way to his third organization since leaving St. Louis less than a year ago.
No matter what the future holds, Schumaker’s amazing, defying-the-odds transformation deserves to be one of the Cardinals top 10 stories of 2009.
Link to The Cardinal Nation Blog’s top 20 stories of the year countdown
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[...] and Springfield success 12. Duncan’s disc, discord and departure 11. Third base turmoil 10. Kennedy’s final season Skip-ped 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. [...]
Kennedy’s problems fitting in and being productive never made any sense. Some have said it’s that ‘clubhouse’ thing. He found himself on the outside looking in. If so, it cost BDW a lot of money. Lesson learned hopefully.
Glad to see Kahlil landed a major league deal. Rangers are also going for Lowell.
Part of the Schumaker backstory is that he got moved out of the OF to provide room for Rasmus to begin the year as backup for three OF positions. Skip’s move was a way to usher Rasmus into the majors.
It was uncharacteristic for the Cards to eat a salary like that of Kennedy. Being released was a great thing for Kennedy. He did not lose any salary and was fired up to lift his game. Kennedy began the year at AAA for the Rays, did so well he was sought by the As in trade, and had a very strong year with the bat, lifting his value for a 2010 contract. Kennedy may have outperformed Schumaker, illustrating Skip’s move was triggered by Colby, not by the expectation Schumaker would be better than AK at 2B during 2009.
Jumbo, several assumptions and suppositions there regarding motivations I was not comfortable making, not knowing the chicken and egg answers. But we all love happy endings, don’t we?
bb, Vlad Guerrero also signed with the Rangers to be their DH for $5M with an option, I believe. Nice move for both parties. Would seem to hurt Lowell trade odds. I was surprised Khalil got a major league deal anywhere. He was smart to snap it up and not worry about money ($750K).
You can call it a crazy idea that Tony hatched or you can call it a victory for the internet crazies. They had been floating the idea for months. I believe a question was asked about the idea (to either Tony, Mo or Skip – dont remember which) at the Winter warm up last year and given a cold reception. I also think the fact that Tony only told Skip about the idea a few weeks before Spring Training was stupid – are we to believe he hadn’t been toying with? Risking the team games (Shu not as good as he could be defensively) all not to hurt Kennedy’s feelings – not my idea of professionalism.
Dunno, really hard to tell from here. Tough to manage all the people dynamics to keep everyone happy. I have no idea for sure, but I wonder if the last straw for Kennedy was not attending Winter Warm Up. Maybe Skip doesn’t follow the media, but I bet his agent does. It was still in January when Mo started talking about the idea. Still not all that much time to get ready. I really respect Skip’s performance under less than optimal conditions.
Kennedy getting just released rather than some kind of deal suggests the Skip/Kennedy thing didn’t have much lead time. Since the Cards were willing to eat his whole salary, somebody would have given something, but it would have taken some time.
Speaking of the WWU, I notice that the recently blingless Brock and Gibby are not on the itinerary. I spent the biggest part of my lawn-mowing money to watch those guys.
I didn’t notice that both Brock and Gibson are skipping WWU. I wonder the last time that occurred? Leave it to you to focus on bling!
I am trying to decide whether to write about WWU autograph prices as one measure of how the team ranks their players. I did that one or twice before.
Also just saw that Walt and the Reds rolled the dice on Aroldis Chapman. Mixed reports. One says five years, $30 million. Another says as much as ten years. That would be crazy. Better getting him than just signing more tired iron like Houston, I guess.
Well……….. now that we actually have some sort of hindsight about the nature of the relationship between TL/DD and Mo/BD, this situation should be decipherable……….. right?
Tony was delaying a meaningless “spend no money”, solution by the front office when he explained the problems of making Shumaker a competitor for the 2nd base job.(Kennedy)……. He was simple trying to block the poster boy for the youth movement (Colby) from crowding Chris D. out of the outfield. He was trying to force Mo into spending some money (or trading eggs) to solve this problem. Incidentally, this type of move is the major factor in Pujols discomfort with management, as has now been revealed.
I don’t believe Tony ever believed that they would just release Kennedy after failing to trade his 4 million dollar salary. I truth, this is a perfect example of the problem solving mentality of BD. If it isn’t going to cost me anymore than I’m obligated to pay anyway, may as well have it my way.
If you recall they carefully place the onus of the valuation on Tony, which he stepped up and excepted, because he of course inferred that this was a possible solution. Thus, it came to pass, pushing Albert ever farther away………
The excessive number with its trick valuation on the Holiday contract is the same type of deal. They wanted that number, 120/136, for future negotiations. Guess why? Boras does not negotiate differed contracts……..unless you are just giving money away.
My son and I were just debating whether 20 Bernard Gilkey autographs for one Matt Holliday would be a fair trade.
So far, for those keeping score, we have one theory that releasing Kennedy was to protect Duncan and another that it was to open up time for Rasmus…
Westy, if I am following you, the bottom line was Kennedy got ousted so Chris wouldn’t get pinched for playing time. I can believe that, and of course it would be Tony and DD’s doing. But why would Albert be unhappy about it. If it had been Skippy to go instead of Kennedy I could see it.
There is some reason Kennedy was released instead of hanging around camp untill a Lugo type deal could be worked out. One of those hush hush things.
Tony/DD wanted CD to play, and Mo/JL wanted Colby to play, and Skip is an Albert guy so he had to play. When I coached little league and faced the same problem with all the dad’s wanting their kid to get more playing time, the kid whose dad I was sure I could take was odd man out. Maybe that’s it.
LOL. There we have it. Different strokes for different folks. Case closed. Whew!
I stated the reasons why when it was happening. This was before the Chris Carpenter revival, Albert was having elbow surgeries. Tony was just trying to play out his contract. The protectiveness of Chris D. should be evident to everyone at this point. BD was trying to exploit that vulnerability the best he could. He did.
BB, they tried to trade AK. Yes they could have subsidized a trade, but they got what they wanted, which was a high risk scenario attributed to Tony’s leadership. This is how they were working. Bring in no players that would inhibit the arrival of the eggs. They were headed toward a faultless transition to a farm based feeder system. Tony was very unpopular at that time, but he was still part of the Albert equation.
We are now a farm based system again. Either by way of a AP/MH payroll dominance, or the absents of Albert and thus Tony. It will all seem inevitable when it happens………..All teams must pay for pitching…….that’s life.
So BDW decided to keep dewallet closed while the hired hands fought it out at the OK corral. Once the smoke cleared, Skip was at second, CR in center and Luddy in right. Tony and DD on board, having settled up with Mo and JL. Kennedy was up on boot hill shot full of holes, and CD and RA were run out of town.
Something like that. BD started playing loose because he had know choice. B.Obama turned out to be a Chicago politician, not a saint. New ball game. They will set attendance records this year. Don’t be surprised if we “just can’t find another fit”, and save the dry powder, just enough to cover the Lugo deal, for the break……………you can always get what you need there. That is the likely hood.
The Cardinals have their own Halo 3 team. Izzy lives there it seems.
My fear is the rotation will be a train wreck by May 1st. Garcia could be in the 3 spot by then even if he is 1-4. None of the young bucks in the pen have shown they can survive more than once through the line-up and some have shown they can’t. Garcia came up through the same system, why should he be any different.
If we start scoring some run and support the rotation, those guys can dominate. Its based on a batting order that hits. The rotation carried the team last year. Tony can keep the mileage down if we get another arm for the pen. When the starters don’t trust the set-up man and closer, they will again try to finish themselves. That’s a bad habit.
Wow, bb, Garcia is guilty by association?
They don’t make starters like they used to. That puts a lot of strain on the pen. And we normally have a couple guys out there that are useless which doesn’t help. This year, It doesn’t look like we will have anybody that can’t be sent down or released without a big loss.
I assume DD had reason to complain.
If Garcia looked a lot different at Memphis than Walters, Boggs, McCutcheon and whoever, I’m not aware of it.