In early March during spring training, I ran an article entitled, “How many Cardinals minor league cuts may be coming?” My intent was to estimate how many releases the St. Louis Cardinals might need to make across their system to accommodate the draft class of 2012.
To attempt that, I made some assumptions, including a big one – that no external players would be added during that time. That was not practical, but it was intended to try to keep a stable base. What happened in reality is that the number of releases increased to almost exactly accommodate the additions.
| Estimate | Thru 7/22 | |
| Releases | 26 | 47 |
| Additions | 0 | 25 |
| Draft signees | 45 | 32 |
| Inactives | 45 | 40 |
In the table above, you can see that while the Cardinals released 47 players, 21 more than I had forecast, they added 25 new recruits during the same time. So considering the totals, the numbers balanced out pretty closely.
With another three weeks to go in the draft signing season, the Cardinals currently have 32 of their 50 drafted players in house. (Two others signed, but their deals have been voided.)
There is still time for my original estimate of 45, consistent with past years, to be achieved. However, it is unlikely to happen as the Cardinals have said they will not sign as many draftees as in the past.
Interestingly, the Cardinals filled a bit of the gap with free agents. Of the 14 external US players added since early March, six are first-time professionals. They are Sean Watson (pictured), Neal Pritchard, Adam Bileckyj, Garrett Wittels, Logan Billbrough and Eric Binder.
I missed in my estimate of inactive players across the system slightly. Only 40 are currently out of action versus my 45 estimate. That total can be highly fluid.
Here are the specifics.
| Releases | # | Names | |||||||
| March | 14 | Snell | Diapoules | Summers | Squatrito | J Martinez | Goodwin | DeJesus | |
| Beatty | McCully | Jimenez | G Brown | M Tapia | R Smith | Rivera | |||
| April | 10 | C Smith | Castro | Norrick | Bradford | Pimentel | W Perez | Vivas | |
| Bier | A Castillo | Uribe | |||||||
| May | 15 | Moss | Henley | Kulik | Valaika | R Rodriguez | Parejo | Frevert | R Ramirez |
| Matos | Buursma | Guzman | King (claim) | Solarte | Segundo | Rundles | |||
| June | 7 | Bogany | R Vazquez | Cardenas | Biserta | Batista | Franklin | Terry | |
| July | 1 | Zawacki | |||||||
| Total | 47 |
| External adds | # | Names | ||||||
| International | 11 | Flores | Perdomo | D Perez | Negrette | Arias | Godoy | |
| Alvarez | Salazar | L Cruz | Mejia | Torres | ||||
| US | 14 | S Watson | Marte (trade) | Duncan | Todd (claim) | Broderick (return) | Pritchard | Binder |
| Bileckyj | Rundles (resign) | Wittels | Mahay | Boyer | Billbrough | Lyman | ||
| Draft | 32 | Wong | McElroy | Peoples-Walls | Ehrlich | Martini | Miranda | |
| Mills | Jeffries | Maness | Stienstra | Byrd | Williams | |||
| Tra Miller | Deol | Hald | Gillung | Cornelius | McInnis | |||
| Apelian | Sherriff | Bergin | Jacob | Keener | Wyatt | |||
| Rahmatulla | Ca Rasmus | B Watson | Patton | Melling | Knox | |||
| Creath | Baker | |||||||
| Total | 57 |
Remember that for details on all transactions across the entire Cardinals minor league system, check out the Roster Matrix here at The Cardinal Nation Blog.
Updated. Thanks to JumboShrimp for identifying several missed players in the first posting.
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