carpenter verlander
6-3, 2.46 8-4, 3.21
news from the minors:
by now you've heard that jaime garcia got promoted to high-a palm beach. but you might not know that blake hawksworth got moved up to springfield -- that's per the palm beach cardinals' web site (1st paragraph in the feature about nick webber). both moves are as expected. springfield play-by-play guy mike lindskog reports that, to make room for hawksworth, the cards shipped rich rundles to the mets for future considerations. the springfield rotation now has 4 pretty decent prospects: hawksworth, lambert, pomeranz, and parisi.
also moving to double a, from the opposite direction, were carmen cali and travis hanson. cali had a 5.60 era in 27 games (27.1 innings) at memphis in the 1st half; too many walks (19), too many homers (5). hanson, who this spring was named as one of the organization's top 10 prospects by both baseball america and john sickels, had only 1 homer in 223 at-bats for memphis; he swatted 20 last year at springfield. to balance out those demotions, rico washington and rich scalamandre moved up to triple a.
there's been some discussion around here lately about the merits of triple-a starter dennis tankersley, whom the cards picked up as a minor-league free agent this winter. tank pitched in reyes' spot at memphis last night and was nearly as good: 7 shutout innings with 3 hits, 2 walks, and 9 strikeouts. after an abysmal start, tankersley has been pitching pretty damn good:
| ip | h | w | so | era | whip | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| thru may 11 | 38 | 50 | 13 | 21 | 6.16 | 1.66 |
| since | 51 | 45 | 13 | 45 | 2.38 | 1.13 |
i'd rather have this guy starting for us sunday than ponson; he might be the 1st alternate should sidney continue to pitch poorly. for those of you who don't know the back story, tankersley was once grade A material -- ranked #16 on baseball america's top 100 list in 2002, ahead of such prospects as jake peavy, brett myers, and adam wainwright. he has had a few big-league trials with lousy results, so maybe he's one of those guys whose stuff just doesn't translate well to the mlb game. or maybe he just needed a little maturity and a change of scenery . . . . . we'll keep an eye out.