For the fourth straight year, we’re taking some time in that time between the end of the season and the winter meetings to discuss each player that made an appearance on the St. Louis roster this season. Whether they played almost every day or never actually got into a game, they get covered in this series. All stats are exclusively their time in St. Louis. Just think of this as them stopping by Mike Matheny‘s office for a quick evaluation before heading home for the winter.
Player: Ed Easley
Season stats: 4 games, 7 PA, 1 RBI, 1 K, .000/.000/.000, -100 OPS+, -0.1 bWAR
Hero/Goat: None
Overall grade: D
Positives: Got some time in the big leagues, which is always the goal….got his RBI June 8 with a sacrifice fly against Colorado in an 11-3 loss….hit .251 with four homers in his second year in Memphis….also had 12 doubles as a member of the Redbirds.
Negatives: Travis Tartamella got into more games after his call up (3) than Easley did in the same span of time (2)….had an OPS of .682 in Memphis, which isn’t known as a pitcher’s park….hit worse in 2015 in Memphis than he did in 2014, which is not a good trend in what should be your prime years.
Overview: Ed Easley made his major league debut this year. That right there is a reason to applaud him. Player upon player in the minor leagues would look on those seven hitless plate appearances with envy because they came in The Show. Not only that, they came for a first-place team. While he didn’t get to go into the postseason with the club, he got to be part of a 100-win team with players like Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, and Carlos Martinez. Those few days, scattered throughout the season, will be likely the highlight of his career, stories that he’ll tell family and friends from now until they put him in a nursing home.
It’s just too bad that all of these stories are going to be about someone else. Save that sacrifice fly, it’s not like Easley will have a lot of stories that he was directly involved in. Perhaps what it was like to catch Wainwright, which he did in the Atlanta series. That might be worth retelling over the dinner table somewhere. Other than that, though, it’s more about what the big leagues were like than what he did there.
Outlook: With Tartamella seemingly passing Easley on the depth chart, it seems unlikely that the club brings him back to be Memphis’s catcher, unless he has some cache in the organization as a potential coach down the line. More likely than not, he’ll get his release and wind up in someone else’s camp with a minor league invite. (EDIT: Since this writing, the Cardinals have released Easley from the 40-man roster.)
