Redbirds look to repeat 2017 championship run
Mix and match 62 different players in various lineups, win 97 games and a championship in fan favorite Stubby Clapp’s first season as a Triple-A Manager. So what do the Memphis Redbirds do for an encore?
“Win 100 games, and hopefully do this again,” said third baseman Patrick Wisdom, MVP of last year’s Pacific Coast League Championship Series, and Memphis’ first All-PCL team selection since 2013.
Bringing back most of the players who spent multiple September evenings bathed in champagne is a good start. Seventeen of the 25 players who open 2018 Thursday night at Round Rock were part of last year’s title run. Five spent part of last season with the St. Louis Cardinals. Ten have major league experience, including former Cardinals All-Star closer Edward Mujica. Eleven of the Cardinals’ Top 30 prospects (Baseball America) are on the roster. Two more – RHP Jack Flaherty and OF Harrison Bader – are already on injury call ups in St. Louis and may – or may not – be back in days.
“Look in that locker room and you see a bunch of guys who have big league time – and the rest are knocking at the door,” Clapp said.
The outfield alone is potential AllStar caliber with Tyler O’Neill, who hit 31 home runs at Tacoma and Memphis last year jockeying for time with fellow Top 30 prospects Adolis Garcia, Oscar Mercado and, for the moment, Randy Arozarena – called up Tuesday when Bader was summoned by St. Louis.
“That’s four potential big league outfielders no matter what combination is here,” Clapp said. “We’re going to have to keep rotating them to let them all develop.”
He said that speed on the bases with the likes of Mercado, Garcia, Arozarena and infielder Wilfredo Tovar could be the Redbirds’ biggest area of improvement.
Wisdom, starting his third season in Memphis, had a breakout year with 31 homers and 89 RBI. But he hit just .243 with 149 strikeouts. He’s been unprotected, and unpicked in the last two Rule 5 major league drafts.
“You get frustrated,” Wisdom said. “But I know I have to work on being a more consistent hitter, controlling the (strike) zone more … you just play the game you love and play it hard. You get complacent you go downhill.”
O’Neill, acquired from Seattle in a mid-season trade, had his hopes of making the Cardinal roster sidetracked by a spring training injury.
“Everybody gets injured, and unfortunately it happened for me at the wrong time,” O’Neill said. “But you can’t go back and change it so you just build off it and see what happens.”
One of the feel-good stories on the roster is starting pitcher Daniel Poncedeleon, who was 2-0 with a 2.17 ERA when a line drive fractured his skull in a May 9 game at Iowa.
The four-inch scar from surgery is there for the world to see, but he limits its effect to the visual.
“Just like every other season … You build off last year, and hopefully add some different looks,” he said.
Does his ordeal make this Opening Day sweeter? “I’m way past that point,” he said.
Carson Kelly, the minors’ top catching prospect, is back in Memphis after the Cardinals determined they didn’t want him sitting behind Yadier Molina, as he did the second half of last season.