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To finalize the 40-man roster, the Cardinals purchased the contracts of outfielder Magneuris Sierra, second baseman Eliezer Alvarez, shortstop Edmundo Sosa and reliever Rowan Wick. You can read prior VEB profiles of each here, here, here, and here.
Sierra, perhaps the most talked about of these prospects, surprisingly won the Cardinals minor league player of the year award in 2014 when he hit .386/.434/.505 in the Gulf Coast League. After a disappointing 2015, he rebounded last year and hit .307/.335/.395 and stole 31 bases in 500-plus plate appearances in Peoria.
In other news from Friday, the Cardinals lost left-handed pitcher Tim Cooney, who was claimed by Cleveland. Cooney, of course, made several promising starts for the Cardinals in 2015 (3.16 ERA, 3.58 FIP in 31.1 total innings) but had his entire 2016 derailed by injuries. Good luck to Cooney in Cleveland going forward.
And let’s check in on our own Joe Schwarz:
Tim Cooney is gone now? Oh heck no.
— stlCupofJoe (@stlCupofJoe) November 18, 2016
Making all this 40-man room to protect players that I'm not sure need protecting. But, if healthy enough, CLE got a steal in Cooney.
— stlCupofJoe (@stlCupofJoe) November 18, 2016
Turns out, we should have seen this day coming when Joe interviewed Cooney back in January of 2015.
If you are a minor leaguer in the #STLCards organization, decline my requests for Q&A's because they never end well.
— stlCupofJoe (@stlCupofJoe) November 18, 2016
Chin up, cheer up, Joe.