Second-Round Pick Kelly Hits at Busch Stadium at LinesMaker

ST. LOUIS (MLB/Newsfeed) — Car­di­nals man­ager Mike Math­eny said that usu­ally when a young prospect takes his first swings in Major League bat­ting prac­tice, the club’s coach­ing staff will make a bet.

How many times will the kid hit it into the top of the cage his first time out?

Car­son Kelly, the Car­di­nals’ second-round pick in the 2012 First-Year Player Draft, made the trip to Busch Sta­dium from his home in Port­land, Ore., on Fri­day to offi­cially become a mem­ber of the organization.

After pass­ing a phys­i­cal and agree­ing to a sign­ing bonus of $ 1.6 mil­lion, accord­ing to a source, Kelly took bat­ting prac­tice and fielded grounders dur­ing the Car­di­nals’ pregame work.

With Math­eny, hit­ting coach Mark McG­wire, and the rest of the St. Louis squad on hand watch­ing his swing, Kelly stayed calm and blended in while hit­ting lin­ers to the gaps and a hand­ful of balls over the wall.

“He beat the over/under,” Math­eny joked. “He went his whole first round hit­ting line dri­ves up the mid­dle, so you could tell he’s got some matu­rity. Most kids come out here and just start launch­ing them. They take a huge swing and walk out of there with their head hang­ing low.”

After mulling over a dif­fi­cult deci­sion between pur­su­ing a career pro­fes­sion­ally or attend­ing the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon on schol­ar­ship, Kelly decided ear­lier this week to sign with the Cardinals.

“I took every­thing into account: The money, the oppor­tu­nity to go to col­lege and play for coach [George] Hor­ton and the Ducks,” Kelly said. “This was just a very, very tough deci­sion. The way it turned out, I’m happy with it.”

The Car­di­nals have a lit­tle more than $ 9.1 mil­lion to spend on their first 14 picks as a result of rules in the new Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Agreement.

As the 86th over­all pick in the Draft, Kelly had a rec­om­mended sign­ing bonus of $ 574,300. But by draft­ing other play­ers in the first 10 rounds who could be signed for below the rec­om­mended slot, the orga­ni­za­tion was able to get aggres­sive in offer­ing Kelly much more.

“I think as you see from Day 1, how we allo­cated our money, that allowed us the flex­i­bil­ity to then go after some­body like Car­son,” Car­di­nals scout­ing direc­tor Dan Kantro­vitz said. “Car­son was top on our list of guys to pur­sue in that cat­e­gory. It helped make our Draft to land some­body like him on Day 2 in the sec­ond round. We val­ued him as a first-round talent.”

Kelly said he had a “wait-and-see-what-happens” men­tal­ity through­out the whole Draft process, and added that the nego­ti­a­tions with the Car­di­nals went smoothly.

“I was very opti­mistic with the process, that’s just the way it went,” Kelly said. “It was a long process, but in the end we came to an agree­ment, and I’m just happy to be here.”

Kelly will join the Car­di­nals’ rookie affil­i­ate in John­son City (Tenn.), which begins play on Tues­day, and will play third base. Kelly has not played a game since his West­view High School team was knocked out of the Ore­gon state play­offs about two weeks ago.

Kelly took ground balls with Car­di­nals sec­ond base­man Tyler Greene on Fri­day, who gave Kelly tips and advice on how to develop a plan to make it through the grind of the Minor Leagues.

While Kelly said he would like to speed through the farm sys­tem and join the Car­di­nals as soon as pos­si­ble, the 17-year-old is keep­ing the process in per­spec­tive and will take the jour­ney one step at a time.

“I’m just going to keep work­ing,” Kelly said. “Hard work pays off, and we’ll see what hap­pens. But I’m going to con­tinue to keep work­ing and hope all goes well.”