St Louis Cardinals Sign Pegeuro to Minor-League Deal
St Louis Cardinals ink deal that includes spring-training invite.
Today, the St Louis Cardinals signed left fielder Carlos Peguero to a minor-league deal with an invite to spring training. He first signed with the Seattle Mariners in 2005, making his major league debut in 2011 with Seattle. While in Seattle’s minor league system, he was named Wisconsin’s Most Valuable Player in 2007; he was with the Single-A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers at the time.
Minor-league success could not help him in the majors. Peguero has a .194 career batting average and has hit 13 home runs and 37 RBIs in the majors. In the only season Peguero hit over .300, he had six at-bats. The 28-year old is also a strikeout machine: of his 289 official at-bats, 126 of those were strikeouts. Peguero hasn’t had more than 100 at-bats since his rookie season, and has bounced around the league since 2013. During the last two years, he has played for the Kansas City Royals, Texas Rangers, and Boston Red Sox.
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Peguero was designated for assignment twice last season, by both the Rangers and Red Sox; Peguero lasted a little over a month on the former. He had played 30 games in Texas, making 84 plate appearances, scoring 10 runs and hitting four homers, his most since 2011. Those 30 games were not as great as those numbers make it out to be. Peguero struck out 36 times and could only garner a .186 batting average.
His time in Boston was, while longer, was more uncertain. A week after he was picked up by the Red Sox, Peguero was designated for assignment. He rejoined the Red Sox by signing a minor-league contract, and only saw four more major-league plate appearances the rest of the season.
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Whether or not Peguero gets brought up remains to seen. It seems he is, at the very best, a Quadruple-A type player. He has not done well at the major league level despite success at the minor-league level, and the Cardinals aren’t truly hurting for outfielders either. They have guys like Randal Grichuk, Stephen Piscotty and Tommy Pham that can float around in the outfield and play more than one position. Peguero might be an injury option. If one of the outfielders gets injured, Peguero could be the first name on the list of stop-gap measures until the starter returns. Some of the outfielders on the Cardinals are injury-prone, and Peguero could provide some much needed insurance in case of an injury.