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Baseball’s seven worst teams (Rockies, White Sox, Marlins, Mets, Angels, A’s, and Astros) now have a winning record against the Cards this year at 11-10.
Against all other opposition the Sucky Seven are 150-265*. These Cards, even with an almost flawless closer at the back of the bullpen, still find a way to lose more often than not — regardless of how dreadful the opponent. Sometimes it’s baserunning, sometimes glovework, most often poor performances at the dish, in the clutch. In the midst of this mediocre morass, the Redbird manager keeps doing just barely enough to keep him job, and the rest of us are poorer for it.
*This is a very close approximation. I did not care enough to calculate through tonight’s games for all teams.
Bob it is only the apparently anomalous hot streak that keeps it from being the sucky eight with the Cardinals right there amongst them. It would stand to reason that they would play more or less .500 against each other.
With Gray pretty obviously not right for a few turns now, it bears thinking about how much worse things could be.
Does the 150-265 record include Sucky Seven(TM) playing each other?
Id bet the record is even worse if those games are removed…
The Cards are a mediocre team with a mediocre future unless the front office and ownership group can find a way to be a lot more innovative than they have been in the last 10 or so years. There was a time when they were on the cutting edge of player development, but that time is no more. Unless the next Pujols comes out of nowhere to save the day, it could be a rough few years.
For a large number of seasons the cardinals have feasted on those bottom teams because we were generally better teams than them. Now that there isnt that much if any distance between them and the cardi als, stands to reason we would be about even with them. Sometimes you are what you are.
Love Bobby Reed posts! Well, with only 4 NL teams playing .500+ ball, our Cardinals are not alone with their uninspiring and underperforming play. The AL must have a pretty dominant record vs NL foes……though our Cards seemed to have faired pretty well against AL opponents, except for those pesky White Sox.
In my view, the roughly 20 years of tremendous Cardinal success were a lingering product of the emergence of 2 HOF’ers into the Cardinal system and the astute judgement of Walt Jocketty who not only was the driving force that placed TLR on the top step of the Cardinal dugout, but who also took a chance and signed Chris Carpenter for $300K and orchestrated trades for 3 key players…HOF 3B’man Scott Rolen, a pretty decent CF’er in the person of Jim Edmonds and a 200 game winning SP’er named Adam Wainwright. Jocketty was jettisoned as the Redbird GM in the fall of ’07, but I feel his legacy lived on in the form of Cardinal success until at least 10 to 12 years after he was fired. That legacy has finally run out of steam and no longer affords Johnny and his crew any equity.
We used to beat those teams with our Sunday lineup. In all fairness, how good would those Cardinal teams have been with Goldy and Arenado the way they’ve deteriorated instead of Albert and Rolen?
Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d take Scott Rolen over Arenado and Albert Pujols trumps any RH’ed hitter I’ve ever seen play baseball.
Unless the next Pujols comes out of nowhere to save the day, it could be a rough few years.
Like 1TD alluded to I think it is very possible that Pujols, TLR, and Duncan boosted this organization much more than we realize. In the decade or so since their departure we have slowly been sinking, with the occasional sign of life. When your organization is full of mediocre staff and mediocre players there is a good change you will get mediocre results.
I neglected to mention Dave Duncan, gscottar. Yeah, Pujols is a once in a generation sort of player with Molina being somewhat near to the same. In any case, when you list names spelled, TLR, Carpenter, Wainwright, Rolen and Edmonds and conclude that the driving force behind all those players playing in StL. was Walt Jocketty, I don’t think there’s any question that he was the primary architect of all those years of success.
Pujols bombing in Anaheim wasn’t just a disaster for the Angels. It convinced people that Mo and Bill knew what they were doing. They don’t. They were simply lucky.
Yeah, they performed back flips trying to sign him and were devastated when they failed to do so. I’ll also say that although I obviously can’t provide any tangible evidence, I’ve always felt that Pujols would have performed significantly better had he remained in a Redbird uniform.
Pujols bombing in Anaheim wasn’t just a disaster for the Angels. It convinced people that Mo and Bill knew what they were doing. They don’t. They were simply lucky.
They were also trying to give huge money to Giancarlo Stanton, Jason Heyward, and David Price but we dodged those bullets.
Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball came out in 2003 and Bill DeWitt hired Jeff Luhnow in 2003, what an amazing coincidence.
But the story actually started in 1995. Mr. DeWitt hired Jockety from Colorado, and Walt’s understudy and former batting practice pitcher, John Mozeliak, came along to St. Louis. As has been mentioned, a lot of wonderous things happened with Walt as GM and Mo with increasingly important jobs in scouting and player acquisition. Talent evaluation. Pujols, Molina, TLR and Duncan, Rolan, Edmonds, Chris Carpenter, etc, etc. All was well until Moneyball and Mr. DeWitt’s decision to bring in Luhnow in 2003. Luhnow brought in others like Sig Mejdal and was successful, but so much so that Jockety and Mr.DeWitt parted ways. It seems Our Mo stuck his finger in the air, determined which way the wind blew, and became a proponent of analytics. And when the smart people, like Luhnow and Mejdal left, I think Mo imagined himself an analytics whiz, and convinced Bill that he was an analytics whiz. He had 100 years of momentum behind him, but that was all he had, and its been a long slow coast down off that hill. But he is at the bottom now.
Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d take Scott Rolen over Arenado and Albert Pujols trumps any RH’ed hitter I’ve ever seen play baseball
110% On both counts
Bling said:
“I think Mo imagined himself an analytics whiz.”
(updated)
More unfounded speculation by our resident anti analytics poster. A boss hiring people to do a job does not mean the boss is representing himself as a whiz in that area.
Or if you can back your assertion up, please do so. Thanks.
P.S. in my many interactions with Luhnow, I don’t think he represented himself as an analytics wizard, either. He hired good people (except Chris Correa maybe) to do the heavy lifting.
, I think Mo imagined himself an analytics whiz,
See how different that looks when it’s not quoted out of context.
Fair enough KCB. I will correct my post to include “i think”. That omission was sloppy on my part. However, that doesn’t change the request to understand why he feels that way.
FWiw, I have interacted with these people in real life and did not see this. But I am not everywhere and I don’t know everything. Always willing to learn.
Brian-I will answer that as if I was the author. We don’t know any of these people. We don’t know any of the people we chat with in these rooms. We form opinions without really knowing them. Mo might be the most humble, welcoming guy you could ever meet in person. But his intreactions with the media leave you with a condescending, arrogant feel. I get why someone would think, without knowing him,that he would consider himself an expert at something that maybe he isn’t really any good at.
In summary, because we don’t like the guy and we don’t like analytics, he must act like an expert in it.
We don’t have agreement on whether the Cards have too much, too little or the wrong use of analytics. They may have the wrong staff people and skills or the wrong staffing levels or the wrong measures or bad implementation. Or some combination. In my view, these matters seem more relevant than the perception of the general arrogance level of the boss.
Maybe it will take a new boss to change the course but again, I don’t think there is agreement here on the desired end result.
Brian I clearly stated “I think” to flag it as an opinion. It is what I think happened over the years and continues to this day. I have previously said I think Mr DeWitt was sold a handful of magic beans, and nothing good can happen until he comes to recognize that. We don’t all have to tip toe around naming names and placing blame.
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