The industry remains split on whether Stewart is a starter or a power sinker/slider reliever, but I still don’t see a good reason to remove him from the future rotation, as he’s a four-pitch guy who can miss bats and get groundballs. Stewart will pitch in the low 90 mph range but touches 96, and his fastball has both sink and tail to it. His slider is his best offspeed pitch, tight at 83-87 with good tilt, and he commands the pitch well, throwing it to both sides of the plate. His changeup improved substantially as the year went on, 81-85, straight, but with excellent arm speed. His curve has good depth but he doesn’t command it well and it’s not as tight as the slider.

He stays over the rubber before driving forward with a long stride, although his arm action is a little long in the back and he pronates relatively late in the delivery. His fastball movement has limited his control, and he’ll have to work on cutting down on free passes, but there’s No. 2 starter potential here, No. 3 at worst, as long as he can throw enough strikes

As I said – all BA projections for Johnson state his high-upside is as a back of the rotation guy or a long reliever. K’s at High-A and AA don’t mean squat if you don’t have the other pitches to go with the fastball that Johnson has been using.

More importantly, all I know about him has been gleaned from his numbers and from reading the scouting reports. I’ll go to Bowie sometime before the season is over with and check him out first hand.

I’m not too caught up in the fact that the Bell/Johnson deal is “ranked” well because I know Johnson projects to be an org. prospect (and is related to former O/tv personality Dave) and Bell has a ton of questions (dude reeks against LHP).

Now, if I were a Cards fan, I’d be happy, Holliday is hitting now, and the object is to win the games now, isn’t it? Just make Mr. Pujols happy…mmm…Jones-Markakis-Pujols-Wieters…mmm