The St. Louis Cardinals are down to their final six games of the Grapefruit League and the roster questions off the bench have yet to be fully answered.
Pete Kozma (17-36, .472) has done nothing to discourage the thought he will have at least one of those spots, but that leaves two other spots to be claimed.
In his first 20 at-bats, Ty Kelly hit .300 (6-20) with five walks. Since then, Kelly has batted .077 (1-13) with 2 walks. Meanwhile, Dean Anna started with a .083 (1-12) average and a walk. He has hit .375 (3-8) with three walks since then.
Kelly is just shy of 100 innings (99.1) played this spring, tops on the Cardinals. Anna checks in at 67.0 innings played. And more so than the total played is the versatility–Kelly has spent time at first, second, and third base plus left and right field. Anna has covered shortstop, second and third base.
Peter Bourjos has also had more results at the plate of late. The outfielder has hit safely in three of his last six at-bats after just two hits in his first 29 at-bats.
Randal Grichuk has hit .263 (10-38) and leads the Cardinals with four home runs and nine runs batted in, but there is still the question of finding enough at-bats for him on the big league roster versus playing everyday in Memphis.
Tommy Pham still has a .412 average–but hasn’t played in a game since March 13th when he strained his quadriceps going after a line drive in left field.
Both Grichuk and Bourjos are in the starting lineup today as the Cardinals play in Lakeland, FL against the Detroit Tigers.
Jon Jay, CF
Kolten Wong, 2B
Randal Grichuk, RF
Matt Adams, 1B
Jhonny Peralta, SS
Mark Reynolds, 3B
Scott Moore, DH
Tony Cruz, C
Peter Bourjos, LF
(Lance Lynn, P)
