The minor league season is still eight days away, but we do get two exhibition games this week. Along with those games we will be getting the rosters, or at least very close to correct rosters that may only be tweaked because of the uncertainty with the Cincinnati Reds roster that is all over the place due to all of the injuries this spring. I want to be sure to say that I simply do not envy, not even in the slightest, the group of guys who sit down and put together the minor league rosters. I sat down with the organizational players list and began trying to place guys on the four full season teams. It wasn’t easy and I don’t have to go and tell some of these guys that they don’t have jobs anymore either.
The roster limit for the Triple-A level is 24 players, though the team is able to control more players than that, but can only have 24 active at a given time. This is my best guess at what the opening day Louisville Bats roster is going to look like:
Louisville Bats | |||
Position | Name | Position | Name |
| C | Tucker Barnhart | BN | Jason Bourgeois |
| C | Corky Miller | BN | Kristopher Negron |
| 1B | Max Ramirez | BN | Josh Fellhauer |
| 2B | Hernan Iribarren | BN | Felix Perez |
| 3B | Ruben Gotay | RP | Chad Reineke |
| SS | Ramon Santiago | RP | Curtis Partch |
| LF | Donald Lutz | RP | Jose Diaz |
| CF | Ryan LaMarre | RP | Trevor Bell |
| RF | Thomas Neal | RP | Pedro Villarreal |
| SP | David Holmberg | RP | Lee Hyde |
| SP | Chad Rogers | ||
| SP | Chien-Ming Wang | ||
| SP | Daniel Corcino | ||
| SP | Jeff Francis | ||
The big league roster certainly plays a role in how the Bats roster was formed. I placed Neftali Soto, Chris Nelson, Roger Bernadina, Nick Christiani, Logan Ondrusek and Brett Marshall with the Reds to begin the season and as guys begin to get healthy, do expect most of those guys to find their way down to Louisville.
Louisville does use the designated hitter at times, when they are playing against an American League affiliate. That will help spread out some extra at-bats to guys. Looking at the bench there are three outfielders and Kristopher Negron who can play just about anywhere except for catcher. Usually a team has more infield depth on the bench, but Negron, Iribarren and Ramirez all can play multiple infield positions so I felt comfortable with that bench. If the Reds aren’t as comfortable as I am with that set up you could see Argenis Diaz or even Mike Costanzo fill out the bench to add some infield depth.
The pitching staff was a bit tougher to work with because of all of the question marks on the big league roster that lead to uncertainty at the minor league level. Toss in that Jeff Francis also has the option of opting out before the season begins and there were tough calls all around. As noted above, before long I would expect to see Brett Marshall and Nick Christiani back in Louisville. Christiani is going to wind up in the bullpen, but Brett Marshall is a bit of a wild card in that he could probably work as a starter or a reliever. Rumors had Daniel Corcino moving to the bullpen earlier this spring, but I think with all of the issues on the staff he will take a starters role for now. If Brett Marshall comes back he could push Corcino to the bullpen and we could see some roster movement from there with another bullpen arm.
I would expect the Louisville Bats roster to look quite a bit different on May 3rd than on April 3rd when they first take the field to open the season. The big league roster will likely be adding a few players between now and then and the players will trickle down through the system. As things stand right now, the roster has a decent mix of prospects and veterans. The bullpen looks like the strength of the club right now.