Dylan Carlson's big night

[Bob Reed]

With his double, triple, homer, and even a stolen base on Thursday, Dylan Carlson unsurprisingly moved up the Texas League leaderboards in pretty much everything. His updated rankings:

Total bases: 1st in the league
Triples: 2nd
Age: 2nd youngest (by five days)
Runs scored: 3rd
Base hits: 4th
RBI: 6th
Doubles: 6th
Fangraphs speed score: 8th
OPS: 9th
Batting average: 10th
wRC+: 12th
Stolen bases: 13th
Walks: 15th
Homers: 17th

Now, bear in mind it is only an eight team league. Still, those are highly impressive rankings — especially once his youthfulness is factored in. Looks like Derek Shore was right and I was wrong; I expected Carlson’s big breakthrough to come in 2020, at age 21. Instead it appears to be happening right now. The kid is playing at a Texas League MVP level.

[stlcard25]

Dylan has seemed to hold his own at every level. This year’s jump has to bode well for his future, and he could be a candidate for a callup as soon as next year.

[gscottar]

This organization has such a logjam of OF’s at AAA and AA. Something has to give at some point with a trade or something.

O’Neill
Adolis Garcia
Thomas
Arozarena
Williams
Carlson

All six of those guys have either played at the MLB level or seem to be on the cusp of it. Ozuna is in a walk year but Fowler, Bader, and JMart probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon not to mention guys like Munoz and Robinson. There aren’t many big league spots for the aforementioned six.

[14NyquisT]

Only Bader and Carlson are Card’s draft picks.

Ozuna, Fowler, JoMartinez, O’Neill, Garcia, Thomas, Arozarena, Williams, Robinson, additionally Capel and Mieses were all brought in to add to all of OF organizational depth that was traded away.

[gscottar]

Not sure what difference it makes if they were Cardinal draft picks or not. They are still potentially in Carlson’s way.

[stlcard25]

Of those guys listed, only O’Neill is really in Carlson’s way. I’m pretty confident that Dylan is higher on the organization priority list than Garcia, Arozarena and Williams, who are 4th OF types, and probably Thomas too, who’s more likely a CF.

[SoonerinNC]

It appears that Ozuna is having a good enough year that he will turn down a qualifying offer from the Cardinals. They could still try to extend him but I don’t expect that to happen. I could see him going as a rental at the trade deadline if we could get enough quality prospects for him. Of course we would have to be out of the playoff picture.

I don’t see the Cardinals giving up on O’Neill because he is a potential 40 homer guy. Also he seemed to be making some progress with the strikeouts until his final game in St. Louis where he got the golden sombrero.

I also expect them to give Garcia a lot of looks before they give up on him. He hit his 11th homer last night but still hitting in the .230’s. But he is the best athlete among the prospects and has the best throwing arm. If he ever gets control over the strike zone he could emerge very quickly.

I suspect that a lot of American League teams are kicking themselves for not grabbing Martinez in the off-season. The Cardinals would probably have let him go for a reasonable offer then but now it would take some serious prospects to land him. He may still go at the trade deadline but again it will depend on where the Cardinals are in the race and how desperate teams are for a better DH for the stretch drive.

Fowler is still the fly in the ointment. He is having a better year but he, Martinez and Ozuna in the outfield is a little grim defensively. I do have to admit that JMart is better and Ozuna has played pretty well after his swan dive off the left field wall but we are light years better on defense with Bader in center field.

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