2023 Spring training game thread

Not spun around, just got caught flat footed it looked like. Bad read off the bat, late jump, didn’t close on it effectively then reached up futilely as it was way out of reach. I guarantee we will not see it on the sports report tonight. But, live and learn. JW does not have a ton of OF experience, and even less in LF. Had a GIDP also. Somebody snuck a lump of kryptonite into his pocket.

The World Baseball tournament final is March 21 I think, so potentially some players could be gone until the last week or so of ST. I wonder what their work and conditioning routine will consist of.

Every time I see the name of the player slotted 7th in today’s line-up I’m reminded of Lefty Alou…

Didn’t watch much of it except a couple batters in the 3rd, but heard the announcers say Flaherty looked good. Matz coming in for the 4th.

It wasn’t exactly murderers row he faced, but Matz did look very much in command.

I didn’t get to see him work, but it’s good to hear that Matz pitched effectivley today. We’ll see him every 5th day once the season starts, so hopefully he’s healthy and can consistently record outs. I’d say the overwhelming majority of the question marks for this edition of the Cardinals hover around the 5 man and that Mikolas may be the only member that doesn’t come with a genuine “we’ll see” mindset. Over a long period of time I’ve been accustomed to taking Wainwright for granted, but that same long span of time has negated that sense of comfort. Montgomery pitched well last season, but I simply haven’t seen enough of him to feel entirely confident that he’ll work well enough over an entire season to give his team a chance. The other guy may as well walk out to the mound wearing one of those Riddler outfits.

the performances of Flaherty and Matz were very encouraging

I agree, but for me at least, the bar was not too high for either of them. Don’t get hurt, throw strikes.

It should be noted that Carlson’s homer was from the left side. Good to see that.

I’m still surprised he was hired on for 4 years, but I guess that’s the nature of things now.

I think the situation looming next year, having to find most of a rotation somewhere, really has the front office thinking about ‘the nature of things now”. Matz is the one guy they have signed up for next year, and when they signed him the first thing he did was get hurt. Then all winter they had a front row seat to the current state of the market, in terms of money and years.

They need to find some reliable cost controlled arms in house somehow. The last couple years have been wash outs and Mo has had to find half a rotation mid-season. If that happens again, yikes.

Flaherty is very important if we want to make the playoffs. Like Matz, he needs to stay healthy, and perform much better than last year. Their next few starts will give us a better assessment of their chances.

Well, Flaherty turned in less work than Matz did last season with only 36 innings of work, so I wouldn’t say that a post-season berth hinges on his performance in ’23. Neither he nor Matz were a factor last season and the Cardinals managed to win the NLC, so if either one of those two turn in anywhere near 150 IP’ed, I’d say that’s an improvement. In any case, I expect at least two pitchers who aren’t currently projected to be a member of the rotation to combine for close to 30 starts.

What we need is a Wheeler/Nola combo at the top of our rotation. I guess the front office thinks it is possible that this might emerge from the collection of in house talent. It doesn’t seem like a good bet. The combination of high ceiling and reliability just is not there.

I have never warmed up to Liberatore. I accept that he looks good to the the metrics hounds for whatever reason, but he hasn’t been anything but a .500 pitcher since A level.

I don’t think the front office is making that bet at all Blingboy. That’s a crazy bet. Nola and Wheeler have pretty much consistently been top 20 pitchers in baseball for several years. It’s highly, highly unlikely that our in-house guys will be that good and even less likely that we will get 2 of them.

No, what they are betting on is that they can produce average pitchers that might pop above average or better and that they can keep doing that at a very reasonable cost. They don’t want to pay too market prices for something that often breaks. It’s like paying for marble countertops. Sure, they look really nice, but they break really easily. Why not just get a far cheaper solid surface top that lasts longer and does an effective job? Then, you can spend your saved resources investing in something else to enhance your kitchen that doesn’t break so easily. Maybe double ovens or sleek cabinetry. That’s their strategy. I know some fans don’t like that. But those same fans typically don’t like it when we trade away prospects that turn out to be great (Alcantara, Gallen, Arozarena) or we overspend on pitchers that break (Cecil, A Miller). Because who knows what the future holds – Wheeler and Nola may both get hurt for most of this season. It’s not even all that unlikely – especially for one of them. Sure, knowing what we know today, would we have loved to have Nola and Wheeler signed to a contract 5 years ago? Absolutely! But that’s hindsight. And there’s a whole lot of other elite pitchers that we could have said the same about 5 years ago that are now broken.

So that’s the bet. That we can produce pretty good pitchers. And maybe we’ll try to augment that with one elite signing or trade. They started down this path in 2019 with that draft class. And we’ve seen that strategy since. Those guys are just now starting to get close to the MLB with others still 2 years out. So we will just have to see how this bet plays out. We will learn in 2023, 2024, and 2025.