SID Blog #35
It’s been fun the last two weeks to read what folks are saying about former Rock baseball standout
Matt Adams as he begins his Major League Baseball career as the St. Louis Cardinals’ starting first baseman.
Compliments paid to the 2009 Division II national Player of the Year by former MLB slugger/current Cardinals hitting coach Mark McGwire were especially noteworthy.
“My read is that he's at a place where he belongs,” McGwire told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last Sunday after Adams hit his first major league homer off Phillies veteran right-hander Chad Qualls, had a double off Phillies ace Roy Halladay and had another extra-base hit taken away by Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino. “He belongs here. ... He's good, and he's going to be really good.”
The praise from McGwire takes on added significance when you consider, as was stated last week on
www.stltoday.com: “As a big-boned slugger at Slippery Rock University, [Adams] made scouts yawn. He was just another thick catcher/first baseman lacking athleticism. … Experts never regarded Adams as an elite prospect, but he hammered Midwest League pitching, skipped over the Florida State League and continued his offensive assault in the Texas League, the Arizona Fall League and the Pacific Coast League.”
“Like it is with most kids, it's all about the strike zone,” McGwire said. “But the one advantage ... he has over a lot of young players is that he doesn't have a lot of moving parts (in his swing). So his adjustments to off-speed pitches and different pitches are going to be quick adjustments.
“And he knows the strike zone. … He's gone out of the strike zone a couple of times. But he's regrouped and done quite nicely.”
You had to chuckle when you read Adams received the traditional silent treatment, where teammates ignore someone who hit his first big-league homer — at least for a few seconds. Even manager Mike Matheny took part in the ho-hum, did-something-significant-just-happen “celebration.”
But once that ritual was completed Matheny also urged him “to hop up on the top step and give the fans what they want.”
His first Major League Baseball curtain call “kind of shocked me,” Adams said in a
St. Louis Post-Dispatch story. But he quickly added, “I enjoyed it.”
Adams said he was “speechless” when he saw the home run ball disappear. “It felt good off the bat and I hoped it would carry,” he said.
Defensively, Adams has had ups and downs, but the Post-Dispatch reported Matheny and McGwire, who won a Gold Glove at first base in 1990 with the Oakland Athletics, have been impressed with that side of Adams' game, too.
“He's got soft hands,” McGwire said. "I know he's made a couple of errors, but it's nothing that can't be fixed. As comfortable as he's getting at the plate, he's going to get just as comfortable defensively, too.”
Adams’ time with the big-league Cardinals could come to a close soon, at least temporarily, with the anticipated return of Cardinals first basemen Allen Craig and Matt Carpenter off the disabled list. But that doesn’t seem to bother the big guy from Philipsburg.
“I hope I stay up here as long as I can,” he told the Post-Dispatch. “But if I get sent down, we'll go after it in Memphis.”
The Post-Dispatch article went on to say, “Matheny didn't even want to contemplate what to do when the first-base corps swells again. ‘It's too early to go there,’ he said. ‘We've got a pretty good first baseman in Allen Craig and we've got to try to figure out a way to get him in the lineup. We've seen a nice sample of Matt Adams, and ... there's more to be seen, too.’ ”
Like the rest of Rock Nation, we will closely watch what transpires in that situation.
In the meantime, here are some numbers to crunch:
• Adams began the day Friday with a .317 batting average, .512 slugging percentage and .378 on base percentage, five doubles, one home run, five RBIs, four bases on balls and eight strikeouts in his first 11 MLB games (41 official at bats).
• Adams had four multi-hit games in his first eight career games, tied for the fourth-highest total in Cardinals history. Bo Hart (2003) leads the list with six multi-hit games, followed by Stan Musial (1941) and Hal Epps (1938) with five.
Other news and notes of interest:
• Former Rock men’s basketball assistant coach
Jareem Dowling (left) was recently named as an assistant coach at Division I Southern Mississippi. The top assistant to Rock head coach
Kevin Reynolds from 2008-11, Dowling was an assistant coach last winter at Morehead State University and followed former MSU head coach Donnie Tyndall to USM.
• Former Rock men’s basketball student-athlete
R.J. Rush will serve as USM’s men’s basketball graduate assistant, Reynolds reported last week.
• Former Rock women’s soccer standout
Emma Wright was recently hired as an assistant coach at Division I George Washington University. She joined the Colonials’ staff after serving the last three years as club director for the Fort Worth (Texas) Panthers of the third-tier Women’s Premier Soccer League, two seasons as assistant coach at Southeastern Louisiana University and two seasons as assistant coach at Division II Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn.
• 2006 SRU graduate
Steve Struble was recently named as Division I Winthrop’s director of men’s basketball operations. He served last season as video coordinator for the University of Delaware after working as a graduate assistant at Xavier University for two years and four seasons as an assistant coach at St. Mary’s College in Maryland.
Until next time ...
GO ROCK!!!
Bob McComas
Sports Information Director
