St. Louis Cardinals players reported to Jupiter, Fla., last week to kick off spring training 2013, but that first week was full of contract talk instead of baseball talk, an unfortunate situation that has become the norm at Cardinals camp in recent years.

The Cardinals even went bigger than usual in the first week this year by having three contract announcements, but at least two of those were positive announcements. The organization picked up the option on manager Mike Matheny’s contract for the 2014 season, and it signed general manager John Mozeliak to a three-year extension.

The other announcement wasn’t so joyful. Adam Wainwright and the team said contract negotiations with the pitcher are not active at the moment, and there is not a timetable for when that situation will be put to rest.

All of these are necessary procedures for a Major League Baseball organization, but it takes away from the excitement of spring training and shifts the focus away from what we all want to enjoy: players on the field preparing for the upcoming season.

Unfortunately, early spring training workouts have been an afterthought in the past three seasons.

In 2010, Albert Pujols arrived at spring training camp in much the same situation Wainwright walked into camp this year. Pujols was headed into the final year of his contract with the Cardinals, and people spent an incredible amount of time talking and analyzing Pujols’ situation, nevermind the team was actually preparing for a season that would end with a World Series championship.

Spring training in 2011 wasn’t as bad, but that’s more because the result turned out much better for the Cardinals. Pujols had left the Cardinals and signed with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in December 2010, but the Cardinals had another important part of their team heading into the dreaded final year of a contract.

That important player was Yadier Molina. People were already speculating about him joining Pujols in Anaheim after his contract expired at the end of the year, but Molina and the Cardinals squashed that talk early in spring training when he signed a five-year, $75-million extension to stay with the club.

Then came this year, and the Cardinals are again stuck in contract negotiations with a star player. It’s anybody’s guess how Wainwrights contract situation will play out, but that’s what keeps people talking about it even though we are less than a week away from the start of actual spring training games.

Understandably, high-profile contract negotiations are part of the way of life for Major League Baseball teams these days as salaries rise to the next astronomical amount and the performance-enhancing drugs topic refuses to go away.

However, the quality of life for teams, players and their fans might be better if people spent more time talking about exciting new players or position battles instead of off-the-field issues.

Spring training is a seemingly magical time of year when teams go to the tropics to work on aspects of their game so they are ready to debut for an excited fan base when they return home for Opening Day.

Baseball is great when it is little more than those quaint storylines. It’s too bad much of that gets overshadowed by the modern realities of the sport.

Royals Draft The Youngest Player In Baseball History
Alfredo Escalera projected to stand out despite his young age

Press Release: FOR INMEDIATE RELEASE
Released on: June 06, 2012, 8:00 pm (ET)
Author: Globalize LLC

Bradenton, FL – The Kansas City Royal’s baseball organization announced yesterday the selection of Alfredo Escalera as KC’s number 8th pick in the 2012 First- Year Player Draft. With this selection, the Royals opted for the youngest player to ever be drafted since the insertion of the MLB Amateur Draft in 1965 based on the research of publicaly recorded date of birth of the players selected.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Escalera moved to Florida to join the IMG Academies Baseball program in 2008. At IMG, Escalera was able to excel in both the athletic and academic aspects. Escalera, a National Honor Society student got committed to attend (D1) Stetson University and was presented with several athletic awards throughout his high school years. “I am fortunate to be given every opportunity possible to show my abilities, not only at IMG where I joined the Varsity team when I was 16, but also in the Puerto Rico 18U Palomino Summer League in which I played at 15”.

Escalera’s young age seems more relevant after most MLB organizations became more aware about the benefits of drafting young talent. Last year, Dr. Rany Jazayerli presented a research study in which he concluded that the very young players return more value than expected by their draft slots. In Jazayerli’s study, he looked at the statistics and broke high school draftees up into 5 distinctive groups based on their age on draft day. Dr. Jazayerli’s define a “very young” players are those who are younger than 17 years and 296 days on draft day. Escalera was only 17 years and 114 days old on draft day. Despite the fact that the study was limited to the top 100 draft picks, its conclusion seems to apply across the board. “I truly believe that by drafting me, the Royals are mixing their highly regarded top-ranked minor league system, with my athletic ability and youth, expecting that this combination will produce an extraordinary positive results” affirmed Escalera.

The main concern when drafting a young talent is how these athletes will handle the physical and mental challenges typical of professional baseball. This does not seem to concern Escalera, a 6’2” and 175 pound who is seemingly a mentally mature individual. It is evident that when it comes to physical development, Escalera has a high ceiling to get stronger. He has a loose angular body built outstandingly fit but without a mature muscular depth. This has not affected Alfredo’s competitive abilities. At the age of 16, Alfredo achieved the highest score in the Combine 360 among all the high school Florida’s baseball players tested, and was able to be in the top 10% of all the athletes tested including those in basketball, football and tennis.

“I see some of my older peers and I get impressed because they really look big and muscular, but that has motivated me to work harder during the summer and the off season” affirmed the young player. It seems that his effort paid off, he has a low tension swing, backed by a high level bat speed which causes the ball to jump hard giving him power potential. His offensive power, speed and arm strength competes very well with other top players of the remarkable 2012 class.

On the field, his physical ability has consistently matched and commonly surpassed his older peers as evident by his accomplishment at the IMG Academy where the level of training and competition was extremely demanding.

Alfredo realized that in order to achieve his goal as a professional minor league player, it is required that the development of his already remarkable athletic skills as well as a strong mental conditioning. “Baseball is an unforgiving sport which challenges ones mental toughness in each at bat and with every play…I truly believe that I am ready to face any challenge,” stated a confident Escalera. In a letter dated last year, his Varsity Coach Jason Elias described Alfredo’s aptitude by stating that, “he understands the ups and downs of the game and handles adversity well. He understands what it takes to be successful and has the mental component of the game in his grasp”.

You can take a look at some videos of the young draft pick by clicking here.

ROYALS TO HOST KIA TIGERS OF THE KOREAN BASEBALL ORGANIZATION IN SURPRISE, ARIZONA

KANSAS CITY, MO (January 12, 2012) — The Kansas City Royals announced today that the club will host the ten-time Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) national champion Kia Tigers at its complex in Surprise, Ariz., from January 16-February 19.

The Kia Tigers, the most successful team in the 31-year history of the Korean Baseball Organization, will bring 50 players to Arizona to prepare for their regular season. The club will be housed in the Royals minor league facilities and train on the back fields of the complex. The Tigers will share the facility with Royals Fantasy Camp during the week of January 30.

Many in Cardinal Nation railed against the marginalization and eventual trade of Brendan Ryan. No doubt this was a personnel (personal?) move, not a baseball one. After all, no sane baseball organization would find it fundamentally sound to preach “pitch to contact” to its staff then trade away the best defensive shortstop in the league, right?

But that is exactly what happened, and not because a better shortstop was biding his time in the minors waiting for his opportunity or because the Cards had a new defensive whiz for second base. No, the Cardinals had already acquired their new starting shortstop in Ryan Theriot, and they are keeping Skip Schumaker at second. Theriot and Schumaker are, in many ways, mirror images of each other. They both have the stats to be OK leadoff options. Theriot has a little more speed; Schumaker has a little more pop. And both are considered tough-minded, focused, hard-working gamers.

That’s where Ryan fell short. He was flaky. He talked too much. He was often tardy, whether it would be to practice in Spring Training or the now-famous incident with Chris Carpenter in the middle of a big game in Cincinnati. The Cards were able to win the NL Central in 2009 with him as their starting shortstop, so the “clubhouse cancer” branding can be thrown out the window. But by all accounts, Ryan had become persona non grata with the St. Louis Cardinals—skill set and low salary be damned. The team was simply tired of his act, so they moved him for next to nothing…which is a nicer way of saying they dumped him.

And that’s where they may be disingenuous. David Freese remains penciled in as the starting third baseman and will be given every opportunity to prove himself worthy of the role in 2011. Why does he get yet another chance, while Ryan was shipped to Seattle for a virtually unknown prospect?

Freese has a past that is easily more checkered than Ryan’s. Before the 2009 season, Freese wrecked his car on the way to a fundraiser. The accident injured Freese’s ankle, which would eventually need surgery. Initially some eyebrows were raised when Freese failed to notify the team immediately (his agent called them a couple of days later), but the front office brushed that off as a rookie mistake. Fair enough. Then in December of 2009, Freese was arrested for driving while intoxicated. Freese was given the benefit of doubt, went through counseling, and remained the heir apparent to the starting job at third for the 2010 season. But only a couple of months in, Freese injured his other ankle during a game. Injuries happen, right? And this was only a bruise, nothing serious. That is until he dropped a weight on his foot while rehabbing, which led to another surgery and ended his season.

So on one hand we have Ryan, the starting shortstop for two seasons (plus significant time in two more). He has never proven to be much with the bat, but he is near the top of the league defensively. And his personality was just too much for the team to handle, so they willingly accepted a downgrade in the field to unload him and his goofy, distracting presence.

On the other hand we have Freese, who has survived the last two seasons on potential alone. When healthy he plays well, though not well enough to survive the stellar 2009 platoon of Joe Thurston and Brian Barden. In 2010 no one stood in his way and he only managed to stay on the field for 70 games. Freese has had multiple ankle surgeries; is it too soon to attach the “injury-prone” label? What about dropping a weight on his foot; is that just bad luck or a lapse in concentration/attention? And yes, everyone makes mistakes, but the DWI is still a serious lapse in judgment…more so than being a minute or two late to take the field, one would think.

The team has done little to address depth issues like they had at third base in 2010. If Freese is unable to contribute a full season yet again and Ryan makes noise as the Seattle Mariners’ starting shortstop in 2011, the Cardinals will need to seriously reevaluate what they believe to be a detrimental presence in the clubhouse.

Chris Reed is a freelance writer from Belleville, IL who also writes about the Cardinals for InsideSTL on Mondays and Bird Brained whenever he wants. Follow him on Twitter @birdbrained.