With Troy Glaus looking to be out for approximately the first three months of the season, no one can really say for sure yet, the third base position is open to the highest bidder.  As of right now, all the talk seems to be around St. Louis native, David Freese.

David attended Lafayette High School in Wildwood, MO which is located at the western end of St. Louis County.  He lettered in baseball all four years at Lafayette.  David currently ranks second at Lafayette in both career runs scored (76) and hits in a season (45 in 24 games).  In his senior year, David was named first team All-Conference, All- Metro, and All-State.

Freese then moved on to Meramec Community College where he hit .396 with 41 RBI’s and 10 home runs over 46 games during the 2004 season.  He then transferred out to the University of South Alabama.  There he became teammates with future Cardinals’ pitching prospect, P.J. Walters.  As a junior in 2005, he led the Jags with a .373 average and 81 hits.  David was then selected by the San Diego Padres in the ninth round (273rd overall) of the 2006 First-Year Player Draft.

The 2007 season was spent entirely at Lake Elsinore Storm (A) of the California League where he led the team with 128 games played, 152 hits, and 69 walks.  He ranked third in the league with 104 runs scored and 69 walks, while also ranking fifth with 246 total bases.  He was elected as both a mid-season and post-season All-Star where he went 1-for-2 with two walks, two runs, and two RBI as the starting third baseman.  He topped all qualifying third baseman in the league with a .958 fielding percentage and led the league with 310 total chances and 238 assists.  His season was highlighted with a pair of 13-game hitting streaks, from 5/26-6/7 (.418, 23-55) and 7/11-24 (.411, 23-56).  He also collected at least one RBI in six consecutive games from 6/21-27 (eight RBI total).  During the month of May, he batted .351 (37-104) in 27 games.  His best day of the season was most likely on 7/15 at High Desert where he went 4-for-6 with a season-high six RBI.  When it came to crunch time, Freese was one to count on.  He batted .351 (54-154) with runners in scoring position and .385 (25-65) with runners in scoring position and two outs.  During the Storm’s 12 postseason games, David drove in 10 runs and went 10-for-50 (.200) with a pair of home runs.

Then came the 2008 season.  David probably got one of his biggest breaks.  Jim Edmonds, the Cardinals’ gold glove center fielder at the time, knew his playing time was most likely going to be reduced that season.  So to help out the Cardinals, he announced he would be willing to accept a trade.  Wish granted!  The Cardinals traded Jim Edmonds (agreeing to pick up a portion of his 2008 salary) to the Padres for David Freese.  Freese was quite happy to hear this being he had grown up a Cardinal fan.  Also, there were a few road blocks ahead for David in the way of third base in the Padres organization (Kevin Kouzmanoff and Chase Headley, mainly).  In regards to Edmonds, he was later released by the Padres early in the season and picked up by the Chicago Cubs where he played a key role in their playoff bid. 

The 2008 season treated David quite well.  He skipped AA, spending the whole year at the Cardinals’ AAA organization of the Pacific Coast League, the Memphis Redbirds.  There, he hit .306 with 26 homers, 91 RBI’s and 83 runs scored.  He was really beginning to make a name for himself.  On April 16th, he hit two homers with three RBIs.  David had a seson-high 10-game hitting streak from July 12-24 where during that streak he also hit homers in back-to-back games.  He duplicated the back-to-back homer games again on July 27-28.  If that wasn’t enough, he figured he would do one better by hitting the ball out of the park three games in a row from August 16-18.

Come Spring Training 2009, David is being mentioned both internally from the Cardinals and externally from many baseball analysts as the guy to simmer down the hot corner come opening day at Busch Stadium.  Yes, he will have his competition during spring training, but he does hold the upper hand.  Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, will also be taking a look at 2008 first-round draft pick Brett Wallace.  Wallace has a nice bat, but still needs a bit of work on his defense.  With Wallace’s build, Freese also has the upper hand in speed and range at the hot corner.

According to Tony La Russa in regards of Wallace “He’ll get some playing time,it’s hard to decide how much. To me, a guy like Wallace, he’s going to come in, he’s going to get a head start on his season as far as preparation. He’s going to get a really good camp. And the at-bats you give him, I don’t think he’ll get enough at-bats to where it will be that important. … The big thing is that he get a really good teaching spring and get set up for the Minor League season.”

So it sounds like La Russa has Freese as his favorite without coming right out and saying it.  It should be an interesting spring and I look forward to hopefully seeing Freese do well for himself in St. Louis.  My best also goes out to Troy Glaus on his recovery.

On a personal note:  I was able to meet David Freese at the Cardinals Winter Warm-Up this year.  He was very pleasent to talk with, smiling all the time and answering all your questions as you came up to him.  He signed an 8×10 photo for me, where i asked him to include the inscription “Acquired for Jim Edmonds”.  When he did, he busted up laughing and said it would be no problem.  Hopefully this year he’ll break out as more than just “The guy acquired for Jim Edmonds.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Baseball, NL, NL-Central, St. Louis Cardinals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.