Today, Wednesday, March 16 is an important day for the over 140 players in St. Louis Cardinals minor league spring training camp. After a week of seemingly endless drills, bullpens, more drills and more bullpens, this is the first day of game competition.
The rosters that will become the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds and Double-A Springfield Cardinals, denoted below as Groups 1 and 2, will play each other at 1:00 P.M. on the back fields of the Jupiter, Fla. complex. Groups 3 and 4, which will morph into the A-Advanced Palm Beach Cardinals and Class A Quad Cities River Bandits will oppose each other.
While the starting lineups are listed below, the full working rosters of all players at all four levels can be found at TheCardinalNation.com for subscribers. Of course, those rosters can and will change as players are moved around. The minor league groups are expected to pick up the official team names following the next cuts from major league camp, likely occurring following the split-squad day Saturday
Details on the status of 13 injured minor league players are also available for subscribers.
Pitchers are listed below with the approximate number of innings they are expected to work, with an inning roughly estimated to be 20 pitches.
| Group 1 |
Group 2 |
|||||
| 1 | Bynum | SS | 1 | Ramirez | SS | |
| 2 | Solano | 2B | 2 | Parejo | LF | |
| 3 | Brown | 3B | 3 | Curtis | 2B | |
| 4 | Adams | 1B | 4 | Cox | 3B | |
| 5 | Hill | C | 5 | Smith | 1B | |
| 6 | Henley | DH | 6 | Rodriguez | RF | |
| 7 | Bogany | RF | 7 | Lara | DH | |
| 8 | Swauger | LF | 8 | DeJesus | CF | |
| 9 | Rapoport | CF | 9 | Castro | C | |
| Walters 4 | P | Miller 2 | P | |||
| Thomas 2 | McGregor 2 | |||||
| Norrick 1 | Castillo 2 | |||||
| Kulik 1 | Diapoules 2 | |||||
| Rauschenberger 1 | Frevert 1 | |||||
| Group 3 | Group 4 | |||||
| 1 | Swinson | RF | 1 | O’Neill | CF | |
| 2 | Taveras | LF | 2 | Melker | LF | |
| 3 | Longmire | CF | 3 | Tartamella | C | |
| 4 | Stanley | DH | 4 | Medina | 1B | |
| 5 | J. Rodriguez | 3B | 5 | Ruiz | DH/3B | |
| 6 | Conley | DH | 6 | R DeLaCruz | 3B/DH | |
| 7 | Stock | C | 7 | Smith | RF | |
| 8 | Cerreto | 1B | 8 | Walsh | 2B | |
| 9 | Castillo | SS | 9 | Tuivailala | DH/3B | |
| S. Rodriguez | 2B | Valera | SS | |||
| Blair 2 | P | Summers 2 | P | |||
| Swagerty 2 | Edwards 2 | |||||
| Moss 2 | Smith 2 | |||||
| Brown 1 | Reid 1 | |||||
| Simpson 1 | McCully 1 | |||||
| Siegrist 1 | Jimenez 1 | |||||
| Bittle 1 | R. Martinez 1 | |||||
| Kiekhefer 1 |
I found it interesting that the leadoff man and shortstop for both of the two highest level clubs are minor league free agent signees, Freddie Bynum and Ronald Ramirez.
The first minor league spring training contests against external competition start tomorrow, Thursday. The full slate of games each day, again provided for subscribers, can be found at TheCardinalNation.com.
As every spring, check back here at TheCardinalNationBlog.com for recaps of all the minor league spring training contests supplied daily by Cardinals farm director John Vuch.
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In case anyone missed it, Marty Marion passed away.
He was the one Cardinal that I wished I’d seen play. I was a gangly, slow, weak hitting good glove shortstop and I always related to him or at least what I’d read and heard about him.
Half of the best ever Cards infield is gone now, with Kurowski having passed some time back. Happily we still have Red and Stan, and both still part of the Cards scene. RIP.
I’ve been told by old timers that Marion was among the better offensive short stops of the era , in addition to being a glove man.
Interesting that “Slats” had an opportunity to own Houston’s major league expansion team.
Also interesting that he was really a year older than the baseball world thought.
“According to his family, Mr. Marion’s birthdate is Dec. 1, 1916 — not 1917, as it is listed on baseball-history websites and as it was reported by the Cardinals.”
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_befd89f4-4fe8-11e0-a6bc-00127992bc8b.html
Shoot. If even Marty did it, why not Albert?
Good to see some more minor league info on this site. Hopefully we can get some good minor league discussion going over here.
Not to worry with me and Westie around.
Don’t see Copeland in any of the groups and not on injury list ?
Welcome, babybirdfan. Copeland is in Group 4.
You can’t really get a good feel for what level players are going to start at based on their groups at this point but I think you can gleam some relative information.
Bogany seems to have jumped over a lot of players in the off season. He didn’t play Winter ball so I wonder how that happened. Maybe they just decided to throw him in at a higher level with a sink or swim attitude due to his advanced age.
Walsh seems to have been jumped over by Starling/Castillo. He played as high as QC last year (and played well) while those 2 where at JC/Batavia.
As rumored several times in the off season, looks like Adams is getting the fast track treatment.
[...] Lineups for the day were previously posted here. [...]