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The Cardinal Nation Blog top stories of 2010 #19: New farm director and minor league improvement

Brian Walton — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:07:11 +0000

The Cardinals promoted a new farm director and filled key open positions following a minor league season of improvement on the field.

Though he is not the headline of either my number 19 or 20 stories of the year for the St. Louis Cardinals, team vice president Jeff Luhnow is a common thread between the two.

After a winter in which the Cardinals farm system was ranked at or near the bottom of several prominent national prospect watchers’ lists due a perceived dearth of high-ceiling talent, the summer of 2010 brought solid team play up and down the organization.

Five of the Cardinals’ seven US-based affiliates made the post-season, with one league champion crowned, the Appalachian League’s Johnson City Cardinals.

Yet almost to a man, staffers remind anyone within earshot that their primary mission is player development, one of three leadership roles Luhnow previously held. The Cardinals felt that asking one man to manage the entire minor league system, lead scouting – a hands-on role, as well as run the draft, was asking too much.

On September 16, John Vuch, a member of the organization since the late 1970s, was promoted to farm director. He now oversees all aspects of player development under the direction of Luhnow. Vuch, formerly director of minor league operations, is well-prepared for the job. He is assisted by long-time MLB executive Gary LaRocque who serves as senior advisor to player development, reporting to Mozeliak.

Vuch’s first hires include a pair of internal promotions, filling key jobs that had been vacant in recent years.

Two-time George Kissell Award winner for player development excellence, former Cardinals bullpen coach and minor league manager Mark DeJohn was named minor league field coordinator. In addition to hands-on coaching, DeJohn’s new mission includes supervision of all the Cardinals minor league teams during the season as well as running minor league spring training and extended spring training plus the fall instructional league, if held. The field coordinator job had been open the past three years since the departure of Jim Riggleman following the 2007 season.

Derrick May has taken the role of roving hitting coordinator after serving as the hitting coach of Double-A Springfield for the past four years, and the two before that with Palm Beach (A-Advanced). Dan Radison, now on the major league staff of Riggleman’s Washington Nationals, last held the Cardinals hitting coordinator assignment. The job was unfilled during the 2010 season.

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The Cardinal Nation Blog top stories of 2009 #19: Minors coaching turnover

Brian Walton — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:35:21 +0000

An unusually high number of coaching changes were executed across the Cardinals minor league system following a 2009 season in which there were several notable occurrences.

The organization’s three Class A clubs each won fewer games than the year prior, missed the post-season and a number of the emerging prospects did not advance as well as hoped.

Perhaps it was just coincidence that the Cardinals’ three Class A managers were replaced for 2010. The contracts of Quad Cities’ Steve Dillard and Palm Beach’s Tom Spencer were not renewed and Batavia manager Mark DeJohn is moving into an organizational role in 2010 as the senior roving field instructor.

In addition, during the summer, major league pitching coach Dave Duncan publicly aired some internal dirty laundry with comments critical of how the minor league instructional staff prepares their pitchers for the major leagues.

Maybe it is just business as usual, a normal position rotation, that seven of the nine minor league pitching coaches will be new in their jobs for 2010 along with four of the nine hitting coaches. Maybe not. All seven of the newly-assigned pitching coaches already worked in the organization as did two of the four hitting coaches.

Several of the jobs remain open, including the Palm Beach manager and the Quad Cities and Gulf Coast League hitting coaches’ positions. The Venezuelan Summer League skipper position is also unfilled.

2010 minor league coaching assignments, St. Louis Cardinals (changes in bold)

	Manager	Pitching Coach	Hitting Coach	Trainer
Mem	Chris Maloney	Derek Lilliquist	Mark Budaska	Chris Conroy
Spr	Ron Warner	Dennis Martinez	Derrick May	Jay Pierson
PB	TBD	Bryan Eversgerd	Jeff Albert	B. Puchalski
QC	Johnny Rodriguez	Tim Leveque	TBD	M. Kuwazuru
Bat	Dann Bilardello	Arthur Adams	Joe Kruzel	Eric Bauer
JC	Mike Shildt	Doug White	Ramon Ortiz	Mike Petrarca
GCL	Steve Turco	Henderson Lugo	TBD	Tim Steinhaus
DSL	Claudio Almonte	Bill Villanueva	Rene Rojas
VSL	TBD	Dernier Orozco	Jesus Laya

	Sr. Roving Instr.	Mark DeJohn
	Jupiter Pitch Coord	Blaise Ilsley
	Not renewed mgrs.	Tom Spencer
		Steve Dillard

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Top Cardinals minor league managers – 1966 to present

Brian Walton — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:05:12 +0000

As I sat down to write an article commending the excellent managing job done in 2009 by Memphis’ Chris Maloney, I couldn’t help but recall the last time the Redbirds were in the playoffs.

Here is a reminder just how long ago it actually was. 20-year-old Albert Pujols hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 13th inning to sink Salt Lake and make Memphis the 2000 Pacific Coast League champions.

Here and now, Maloney not only did a superb job leading his club into the playoffs for the first time in nine years, but he did it while shipping players to St. Louis at a rapid pace as well as losing arguably his best hitter, starter and reliever among others via mid-season trades.

At this point, I expected to link to a series of articles I wrote prior to the season about the history of the St. Louis Cardinals farm system as well as its best managers. Specifically, I wanted to point to my Maloney article during which I highlight him being the winningest Cardinals minor league skipper in at least the last 40 years.

There was only one problem. I discovered that I only posted the team-oriented half of the series. Apparently distracted by my annual trip to spring training and everything that followed, I never got back to the top managers articles.

So I am going to fix that starting right now. To be consistent with the rest of the series, all the records mentioned and listed are through the 2008 season. I will look to do some kind of update over the upcoming winter.

With that, I am ending what has to be my longest introduction ever…

Over the 43 baseball seasons from 1966 through 2008, the St. Louis Cardinals employed at least 71 different individuals to lead their various US-based farm clubs. They managed all or parts of 295 individual seasons.

During this time, the Cardinals averaged between six and seven minor league clubs per year. Their high-water mark was eight, from 1988 through 1994, with a low of five, from 1974 through 1976 and again in 1979-1980. Their current count is seven.

Of the 71 leaders, fewer than one in four, only 14 of them precisely, managed for six or more years in the Cardinals system. They are the focus of this report.

We will look at several measures, including time in the job, number of clubs and leagues managed, won-loss percentage plus frequency of playoff participation and championships.

The data that follows is ordered by regular season winning percentage. Note that several managers’ marks have asterisks. That is due to them either taking over jobs or being replaced in-season. In a handful of cases where partial won-loss records were unavailable, the entire season’s results were credited to all managers. Any playoff results were assigned to the final skipper that season only. Finally, in any leagues with no playoffs, any regular-season first-place club is considered the post-season champion.

Here are the top St. Louis Cardinals minor league managers since 1966. The categories led by each are in bold. I will profile each of the six leaders in subsequent individual posts.

Manager	Years	# Yrs	Cities	Lvls	Win %	Playoffs	Playoff %	Champs	Champs %
Chris Maloney	1991-96	14	8	6	0.519	3	21%	1	7%
	1998-2001
	2005-08

Gaylen Pitts	1981-82	16	7	5	0.515*	5	31%	2	13%
	1985-90
	1997-2002
	2007-08

Dave Bialas	1982-92	11	4	4	0.513*	5	45%	0	0%

Jack Krol	1966-76	13	7	4	0.511	3	23%	3	23%
	1992-93

Tom Burgess	1969-1975	7	4	4	0.509	2	29%	2	29%

Nick Leyva	1978-83	6	4	4	0.507	2	33%	0	0%

Jim Riggleman	1982-88	6	2	2	0.506	1	17%	0	0%

Mark DeJohn	1986-91	13	9	5	0.503	5	38%	2	15%
	2002-08

Roy Majtyka	1968-75	8	5	4	0.497	1	13%	1	13%

Steve Turco	1992-99	8	1	1	0.4855	1	13%	0	0%

Joe Rigoli	1981-87	6	4	2	0.4854	1	17%	0	0%

Joe Cunningham III	1992-94	12	7	4	0.480	2	17%	0	0%
	1997-2005

Danny Sheaffer	2001-06	6	3	3	0.475	1	17%	1	17%

Joe Pettini	1989-96	8	4	4	0.454	2	25%	1	13%

Three of the 14 are managers in the Cardinals system today – Maloney, DeJohn and Turco. Two others, Pitts and Rigoli, are also still under the Cardinals employ. The former is a roving instructor and the latter serves as a professional scout.

Related articles:

“Cardinals minor league franchise census since 1974”

“Cardinals in the Gulf Coast, Arizona and Pioneer Rookie Leagues”

“Cardinals in Triple-A – 1977 to present”

“Cardinals in Double-A – 1966 to present”

“Cardinals in the Florida State League – 1966 to present”

“Quad Cities: Cardinals top minor league club has a long history”

“Cardinals in the Appalachian League – 1975 to present”

“Cardinals in the New York-Penn League – 1981 to present”

“A quarter century of Cardinals minor league results”

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Cardinals in the New York-Penn League – 1981 to present

Brian Walton — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:03:10 +0000

Since the origin of this work was the 2008 championship season of the St. Louis Cardinals’ current New York-Penn League affiliate, the Batavia Muckdogs, it also seems a fitting place to begin my in-depth looks at the Cardinals organization’s six highest-level franchises over the last 25 years.

The Cardinals organization joined the NY-Penn League in 1981, historically using the club as the initial stopping-off point for their recent college draftees. They first located their club in Erie, Pennsylvania, where they remained for seven years, not once making the playoffs.

Though the original focus of this series was the last quarter century, I am including the records from the first three Erie seasons for completeness. The farther one goes back in time, the closer one gets to an aggregate .500 mark. The overall win rate of the Cardinals in the league over their entire history is .492.

Cardinals SS-A	Year	Pct	W	L	Division	Playoffs	Manager
Team record	81-08	0.492	1037	1072		3
25 year record	84-08	0.488	921	966		3
Ten year record	99-08	0.479	360	391		1
Batavia	2008	0.622	46	28	1	WC	Mark DeJohn
Batavia	2007	0.419	31	43	5		Mark DeJohn
State College	2006	0.520	39	36	3		Mark DeJohn
New Jersey	2005	0.487	37	39	4		Mark DeJohn
New Jersey	2004	0.547	41	34	2		Tommy Shields
New Jersey	2003	0.425	31	42	5		Tommy Shields
New Jersey	2002	0.513	39	37	3		Tommy Shields
New Jersey	2001	0.461	35	41	5		Brian Rupp
New Jersey	2000	0.408	31	45	6		Jeff Shireman
New Jersey	1999	0.395	30	46	8		Jeff Shireman
New Jersey	1998	0.453	34	41	4		Jose Oquendo
New Jersey	1997	0.473	35	39	3		Jeff Shireman
New Jersey	1996	0.373	28	47	5		Scott Melvin
New Jersey	1995	0.461	35	41	3		Luis Melendez
New Jersey	1994	0.573	43	32	1	WC	Roy Silver
Glens Falls	1993	0.481	37	40	3		Steve Turco
Hamilton	1992	0.737	56	20	1	L1	Chris Maloney
Hamilton	1991	0.455	35	42	5		Rick Colbert
Hamilton	1990	0.395	30	46	5		Luis Melendez
Hamilton	1989	0.421	32	44	5		Joe Pettini
Hamilton	1988	0.480	36	39	3		Dan Radison
Erie	1987	0.480	36	39	5		Joe Rigoli
Erie	1986	0.481	37	40	2		Joe Rigoli
Erie	1985	0.564	44	34	2		Fred Koenig
Erie	1984	0.581	43	31	2		Rich Hacker
Erie	1983	0.493	37	38	3		Joe Rigoli
Erie	1982	0.479	35	38	4		Joe Rigoli
Erie	1981	0.595	44	30	2		Roger Freed/Sonny Ruberto

WC = won championship

L1 = lost in first playoff round

For the 1988 season, the Cardinals took their NY-P entry to the Great White North, Hamilton. Ontario. While they would remain there only five seasons, the fifth and final in 1992 was most memorable. Chris Maloney’s club put together the best record in the entire Cardinals system in at least the last 25 years.

That club won 56 and lost just 20 (.737), but fell in a one-game first-round playoff. 65,584 fans came out in 1992 to see the Redbirds. The team and league’s co-lead in wins were shared by then-future MLB pitcher T.J. Mathews and long-since forgotten Dave Oehrlein. Oehrlein also paced the league with 99 strikeouts.

Following is the subset of Cardinals system records over the last decade and quarter century held by this franchise. While the NY-P entry has experienced two excellent individual seasons, the overall picture is less positive. Their 17 losing seasons in the last 25 is the poorest across the system and their total of three playoff appearances is tied for the fewest. The complete list for all clubs is in the initial article of the series.

Cardinals system records

Last ten years (1999-2008)	Level	Mark	Record	Years	Club
Best single season	club	0.622	46-28	2008	Batavia Muckdogs (SS-A)
Most league championships	club	one			4-way tie: Mem/PB/QC/Batavia

Last 25 years (1984-2008)	Level	Mark	Record	Years	Club
Best single season	club	0.737	56-20	1992	Hamilton Redbirds (SS-A)
Most losing seasons	club	17			Bat/SC/NJ/GF/Ham/Erie (SS-A)
Fewest playoff appearances	club	three (tie)		92,94,08	Bat/SC/NJ/GF/Ham/Erie (SS-A)

Upon leaving Hamilton, Glens Falls, New York served as a one-year stopping point for the franchise in 1993, as the new ballpark in Sussex, New Jersey was not ready. The club drew a league-best 78,725, but finished third in their division.

The new New Jersey Cardinals got out of the gate quickly, taking the organization’s first New York-Penn League title in 1994. They would not even reach the playoffs again until winning the crown in 2008, however.

Among the many skippers to have led the club over the years was Jose Oquendo in 1998. It remains “Secret Weapon’s” only regular-season managing experience in professional baseball. More recently, he has managed in winter ball and for Team Puerto Rico.

In fact, look again at the early managers of the franchise. Including Oquendo, six of the former New York-Penn skippers are employed by the Cardinals today. They include Steve Turco, Joe Rigoli, Maloney, Dan Radison and Joe Pettini. I find that quite amazing.

In recent years, the facilities in New Jersey had begun to fall behind standards and ownership sold the franchise to a Pennsylvania group prior to the 2006 season. The buyers also owned the Altoona Curve, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Double-A club. The New Jersey Cardinals became the State College Spikes for 2006. The ballpark, located on the Penn State University campus, was brand new.

The handwriting was on the wall from the very start and the new owners formally strengthened their ties with Pittsburgh as soon as the Cardinals Player Development Contract (PDC) expired. In came the Bucs and out went the Cards following that one season in State College.

The Cardinals wanted to remain in the league for 2007 and beyond. After considering several destinations, they took over for the departing Philadelphia Phillies in Batavia, New York. While this is their first affiliation with the Cardinals, Batavians are most familiar with the New York-Penn League as the town is the only original member of the circuit, founded in 1939.

The 2008 Muckdogs capped a 46-20 season by taking the league championship, the first to be celebrated locally since 1963. It was the best record in the Cardinals system at any level in the last 15 years.

In recent years, local ownership has been on tenuous financial footing, but established a promising management agreement with the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings that is heading into its second year. In terms of supplying players, the Cardinals are committed to Batavia through the 2010 season, having extended their Player Development Contract last fall.

The club’s manager all the way back to their final season in New Jersey in 2005 is veteran minor league skipper and former Cardinals major league coach Mark DeJohn. “DJ” will return for his fifth consecutive season in 2009, extending his own franchise record.

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Links to Cardinals “Best of” Lists

Brian Walton — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:53:45 +0000

To help pass the time over the various off-seasons in recent years, we compiled lists of some of the top current Cardinals minor leaguers and past major leaguers as well as engaged in some very interesting debate as a result.

Following are the links to these lists:

Top 20 Cardinals Stories of 2011

Top 20 Cardinals Stories of 2010

Top 20 Cardinals Stories of 2009

Top 20 Cardinals Stories of 2008:

Top 20 Cardinals Stories of 2008: #16-20

Top 20 Cardinals Stories of 2008: #11-15