By Rick Hummel
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JUPITER, Fla.âThe Cardinalsâ projected five-man rotation shrank to three with the news that lefthander Kwang Hyun Kimâs back stiffened three days ago, near the end of a bullpen session while he was preparing for what would have been his start Saturday night here against the Miami Marlins.
Daniel Ponce de Leon received that start instead and made mostly a favorable impression. Ponce de Leon threw a Cardinals spring-high 68 pitches as he left the game having blanked the Miami Marlins into the fourth inning. A two-out wild pitch by reliever Roel Ramirez allowed a run to score but Ponce de Leon otherwise pitched around four hits, a walk and a hit batsman.Â
Grading the 2020-21 Marlins offseason
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Miami Marlins-Handout Photo
There’s nothing novel about the “grading the offseason” exercise, but I have taken it to an extreme that will hopefully resonate with you. To me, the Indians claiming outfielder Harold Ramirez on Wednesday marked the end of the 2020-21 Miami Marlins offseason. How well did they do? Let’s use an 100-point scale.
Grading the offseason (0-100 scale)
Max 10 points for handling of club-controlled players
Max 25 points for MLB/MiLB free agency
Max 25 points for trades
Max 10 points for international free agency
Max 5 points for Rule 5 draft
Max 5 points for winter ball
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JUPITER, Fla. Doubters? Miles Mikolas yawns at them. High-upsiders? Mikolas drafts them. PFP championships? Mikolas wins them.
“I expect excellence out of my group,” Mikolas said, “and that’s exactly what we delivered.”
Mikolas’ battalion of Jordan Hicks, Tyler Webb, Matthew Liberatore and Tommy Parsons a group with “youth and some bounciness,” their captain said came out victorious on Wednesday in one of the Cardinals’ most anticipated days at Spring Training: the pitchers fundamentals tournament, also known as PFP championships.
The competition is a field day of sorts, with six teams of five drafted by select captains rotating among stations and earning points based on how they perform at the basics of being a pitcher outside of the actual pitching.