(photo: Memphis Redbirds)
Tuesday was a bit depressing for me. With the conclusion of the Triple-A National Championship Game, the 2018 Minor League Baseball schedule officially ended. For me, what began in the second week of January with a trip to Florida for St. Louis Cardinals instructional camp drew to a close more than nine months and several thousand travel miles later.
At least the final game had significance. The annual one-game, winner-takes-all meeting between the best of the Pacific Coast and International Leagues offered a rematch from 2017 – the Memphis Redbirds (StL) versus the Durham Bulls (TB).
Manager Jared Sandberg’s Bulls were unable to repeat, however, as Stubby Clapp’s Redbirds struck the ball often and hard, collecting 17 hits on the way to a 14-4 thumping of the IL champs.
While the focus of many was on soon-to-be Major League stars competing in Columbus, Ohio Tuesday evening – led by Durham outfielder Austin Meadows – they were not the heroes in this game. Both on the field and in the dugout, the true standouts were the underdogs – lesser-known talents, whose futures ahead are much less clear.
The underdog starter
Now 27 years of age, Memphis starting pitcher Kevin Herget was St. Louis’ 39th-round selection in the 2013 draft from Kean University in New Jersey. The 5-foot-10, 200-pounder has never been considered a prospect and has never been on the 40-man roster. The right-hander was not even in his Triple-A club’s season-opening rotation.
In fairness, the competition was fierce. Every one of the initial starting five ahead of Herget are now pitching for St. Louis – Jack Flaherty, Austin Gomber, Dakota Hudson, John Gant and Daniel Poncedeleon.
Herget was a constant on a Memphis roster that experienced a record-level of player shuffling this season. 66 different players were with the 2018 Redbirds, with only Herget and infielder Wilfredo Tovar remaining from the Memphis club that fell to Durham last September.
(Tommy Edman had also been added to last year’s playoff team as a replacement player from Double-A, but spent most of 2018 back in the Texas League. The infielder returned to Memphis late in the 2018 season and became co-MVP of the PCL finals, after Clapp decided on the stage that Edman should share the award with teammate Randy Arozarena.)
Once given a chance to rejoin the rotation, Herget ate innings, leading the 2018 Redbirds in starts, innings pitched, and strikeouts. In 28 regular-season appearances, including 22 starts, he was 9-11 with a 4.61 ERA in 138 2/3 innings. He racked up 128 1/3 innings as a starter, during which time he issued just 27 free passes.
That is the clue to his success. Herget does not beat himself. As a starter, he registered the lowest walks per nine innings pitched count in the PCL at 1.82.
It only made sense that Herget was Clapp’s choice to take the ball against Durham. After all, the right-hander also made the starts in the opening game of both the PCL semifinals and finals. An under-sized scrappy player himself, Clapp highly admires Herget, calling him “a bulldog”.
Tuesday night, in front of a national television audience, Herget pitched into the sixth inning, having allowed just one run. He was removed with one out and a runner on first, who later scored. Herget did not walk a man, and struck out four.
The underdog MVP
The offensive star of the game was appropriately named its Most Valuable Player, Alex Mejia. Unlike Herget, Mejia was taken on the second day of his draft from a major program – the University of Arizona – in the fifth round in 2012.
Also unlike the starting pitcher, Mejia has reached the majors before stumbling. The versatile infielder played in 29 games for St. Louis in 2017, but was badly overmatched at the plate. After hitting just .109 for the Cardinals, the 27-year-old was removed from the 40-man roster last fall.
Always known as a plus defender, Mejia made such dramatic progress with the bat this season that on Tuesday, Mejia batted third as Clapp’s designated hitter.
All the right-handed hitter did against Durham was to personally have a hand in eight Memphis runs by going 5-for-5, with three runs scored and five driven in.
Now, in all fairness, Mejia would not have been Memphis’ number three hitter in an ideal scenario. In fact, Mejia did not even start on Opening Day, entering during the contest as a defensive replacement. And when he did get the start in Game 2 of the season, he was written into the ninth spot in Clapp’s batting order.
A different roster
However, that roster churn noted above claimed more than just starting pitchers. It also drained more and more of the production from the Memphis lineup as the season progressed.
During the regular season, Memphis finished with 142 home runs. However, by the post-season, the players who hit 60 percent of them (84) were either with St. Louis, or had been traded out of the organization. Tyler O’Neill (26), Adolis Garcia (22), Patrick Wisdom (15), Yairo Munoz (3), and Paul DeJong (1) are all with St. Louis, and Oscar Mercado (8) and Luke Voit (9) were traded.
Mercado, who was sent to Cleveland, was still the club’s leader in stolen bases and runs scored for the season despite having been traded at the end of July. Three of the Redbirds’ top four RBI men were also gone – O’Neill, Garcia and Wisdom.
While Redbirds players racked up honors in the PCL, there was again the same common thread – they had all moved on by September.
Hudson is the league’s Pitcher of the Year and he and O’Neill were named to the All-Pacific Coast League Team. Garcia was the PCL Player of the Month for July while he and Poncedeleon were named the Cardinals Minor League Player and Pitcher of the Month for July. Gomber had earned the award in April. At mid-season, Poncedeleon, Hudson and Wisdom were all named PCL All-Stars.
Even the Redbirds hitting coach for the last 11 seasons, the highly-respected Mark Budaska, was promoted to St. Louis when the pre-All-Star break managerial change from Mike Matheny to Mike Shildt was made.
The underdog manager
One key reason why the Redbirds kept on winning is Clapp. Proclaimed the “Mayor of Memphis” with the only retired number in Redbirds history due to his wildly-popular stint as the team’s scrappy second baseman from 1999-2002, Clapp was a member of Memphis’ first PCL-title winning club in 2000, which was powered in the playoffs by a youngster named Albert Pujols.
Despite considerable international experience as a player and coach for his native Canada and nearly a decade as a minor league hitting coach, Clapp, 45, previously had logged just two seasons as a manager – in the 2011 and 2012 New York-Penn League.
Still, when the Cardinals needed a replacement for Shildt before the 2017 season, they identified Clapp as an ideal candidate to take over the helm of the Triple-A Redbirds. He was plucked from the Blue Jays organization, where he had been most recently their Double-A hitting coach.
Following this season, Clapp was named the Pacific Coast League Manager of the Year, his second consecutive honor. In 2017, his first season at the helm, he led the Redbirds to a franchise-record 91-50 mark. They won the PCL Championship, winning 97 total games between the regular-season and playoffs and followed that up with 90 wins in 2018 for the best two-year stretch in team history.
As a result, Clapp is sure to be a hot candidate for a Major League bench coach position, if not a managerial job. While St. Louis’ top seat is taken, a return home to Toronto could be a perfect fit.
One good thing to come from this is that the 2018 minors season is not really over. As the Arizona Fall League opens its schedule on October 9, Clapp will be back in the dugout managing the Surprise Saguaros – with a roster that includes both Cardinals and Jays. The latter contingent includes prospects Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio and Bo Bichette.
I look forward to seeing Clapp and his charges down in the desert this fall, trying to win yet another title.
Brian Walton was the 2009 National League Tout Wars champion, scoring the most points in the league’s 19-year history. He also holds the all-time NL Tout single-season records for wins and saves. His work can also be found daily at TheCardinalNation.com. Follow Brian on Twitter.
