Cardinal Blogger Appreciation Month: FutureRedbirds.net

Welcome to the fourth installment of Cardinal Blogger Appreciation Month (BAM!). This time, we'll visit with Erik from FutureRedbirds.net. Before you email me saying how dumb I am, please note that they changed from ".com" to ".net" earlier this month. So I'm still dumb, just for other reasons.

During the past three BAM entries, I've done a good job of sucking up to our interviewees, but being the prospect dork that I am, I honestly love Future Redbirds. Very informative when it comes to Cardinal minor leaguers and the draft, and they do a great job with all that research and hard work that we are allergic to. Some blogs would resort to taking pictures of Jack Clark on their TV screen for a laugh; not these guys.

I threw some of my patented hard-hitting, deep-thinking questions at Erik, and he held his own. I've really been trying to find someone else to talk about my Alex Cole and Brian Barber memories, and I think I found "the one." They ought to make an eHarmony for dorky topics like that. Okay, no they shouldn't. Here's the interview. Enjoy!

1) Token first question: Why did you start blogging about Cardinals prospects?

I had blogged about the Cardinals before but I guess I just felt more like an echo and less of a voice. There are so many good Cardinal blogs out there like Viva El Birdos and Fungoes, and while I liked sharing my 2 cents, it just was hard to be original. I kinda felt like I was back in high school art class, and I'd be looking at my scribbles and feeling pretty good, only to see the person next to me have drawn the Mona Lisa. The Cardinal organization seemed to be wanting to build more from within, and it was something I wanted to learn more about. So I figured what the hey, why not learn more about the minors by blogging about it? No one else really was covering the farm a whole lot. And so Future Redbirds was born.

2) Another BertFlex writer and I did a live blog for this year's draft (even taking half days from work; very hardcore of us). We were shocked when Lance Lynn's name was called by the Cardinals instead of Tim Melville. Would you have taken Tim Melville there in the supplemental round (or 2nd, or 3rd) and paid him the bonus money he was looking for?

It's always fun to play with pretend money. I would've liked him in the later rounds but he still wanted top 15 round money and his lackluster results against high school competition is pretty alarming. Apparently he had hired a private pitching coach before the draft who messed up his delivery, so if I had enough faith in my coaches that they could fix him, than yes, I guess I might take a chance on him. But it's not a slam dunk decision.

3) Here's your chance to call out other members of your site: Who would be the best Major League GM of the five members of FR? Who would you put in charge of a draft?

To give the politically correct answer I think all of them would be a good GM, but if I had to pick one person it would be roarke. He's got a strong professional background that would help him, and I think he's a great listener, a good people person and an eager learner, so he'd be sure to hire people that would compliment his strengths and weaknesses. (Does it sound like I'd fix him up with my sister...if I had a sister?) I'd no doubt hire fewgoodcards to be over the draft, he has a handle on draft prospects better than any one of us. He participates in about every pre-draft mock up he can find on the web, and how he finds some of them is beyond me. In the few that I've seen, his pretend farm systems look a lot better than most teams real ones.

4) As a scrappy youngster, i was always rooting for guys like Craig Wilson and Alex Cole. Who was your favorite Cardinal prospect growing up?

I'm not sure exactly, though I always liked rooting for the guys with the funny names-Esix Snead, Basill Shabazz. I liked Dmitri Young but he reportedly didn't work hard and once punched a guy in the stands for heckling him while he was in the Texas League. Plus he went from being drafted as a shortstop, then moved to third, then left field and eventually first base because of his supreme love for Garlic Fries. And like I said, I love funny names, so it's hard not to root for a guy whose nickname is D'Meathook. He went from being a supreme athlete to D'Meathook in a Cardinal jersey, something I'm quite proud of.

5) Enough of the serious journalism questions. What was going through Brian Barber's mind when this photo was taken?

That's a great photo! I think Barber is imagining he is weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny little seahorses.

6) What headline would you rather see in tomorrow's paper: "Drunken Rays GM deals Price, Longoria to Cards for Mulder, Reyes, and Cody McKay" or "Future Redbirds writer stranded on island with Johansson, Biel; urges you not to help." I'm ashamed to admit what my answer would be, how about you?

I'd rather have the Rays GM loses his mind headline. Helps me more in the long term as a fan, and as a family man I have a pretty nifty wife that keeps me happy at home, and would like to keep it that way.


Thanks again to Erik for helping us out!