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So can they add someone else to the 60 man since season hasn’t started? Was this what your article on the Wake Forest product portending?
Mrperkins asked:
1) So can they add someone else to the 60 man since season hasn’t started?
2) Was this what your article on the Wake Forest product portending?
1) Before or during the season, yes, they can add someone else. In fact, they have two openings because of Hicks opting out.
2) No connection at all.
Each game is 2.7 times more important this year vs a normal 162 game season, so putting him into any kind of a non-blowout situation would have been bad news. Sadly, as much as I want him to succeed, I feel the same about Alex Reyes making the team this year at some point. Add Fowler, Dexter to that list also….
After watching Cecil pitch a few days ago, I commented on one of the threads that it looked like he has dropped a few pounds. Then I just read he had lost 60 pounds when he reported to Spring Training in 2019. Wow, that’s a lot of weight. I guess I didn’t notice then. The weight loss was one of the reasons attributed to him changing his delivery motion.
Cecil started sliding back in his final year in Toronto.
After Cecil and Leone, the Cards should never acquire another reliever coming from Toronto.
CFICT said:
I feel the same about Alex Reyes making the team this year at some point.
Here is the difference and it is a big difference. Reyes has minor league options so he can stay down until ready. No such luxury with Cecil.
Euro said:
After Cecil and Leone, the Cards should never acquire another reliever coming from Toronto.
Maybe getting Chris Carpenter is finally even. 😉
Was the DeWitt (Matt) sent to Toronto in the Hentgen deal a relative of the boss? I didn’t mind a season of unspectacular but dependable of Pat for the nothing we gave up (also lance painter and alberto castillo. Didn’t castillo like to throw from his knees unstead of crouch?)
BW, I agree with that and was in no way suggesting they cut Reyes. I’d just made the point that each game is significantly more important this year than any other year so letting him “work through things” should not be on the table.
Let him start in the other camp and build up some solid starter innings and be ready to be the guy he could be going into 2021. I’m not in anyway down on him, just don’t think throwing him into the fire, after barely pitching for what seems like a decade, would be good for him or the Cardinals long term.
Is Cecil the worst free agent signing in Cards history? $30,500,000 for 100 innings pitched. $305,000 per inning.
There really haven’t been many major mistakes, but Mike Leake immediately comes to mind because of the cost they had to pay to get rid of him.
The best way to answer the general question more definitively would be to do a $/WAR calculation.
Some get upset over Ty Wigginton (2 years/$5 MM) or have already proclaimed Brad Miller ($2 MM) a bust, but those were relatively small risks taken on reserve players. It would be great if the Cardinals would never make mistakes, but that is an unrealistic expectation. You can only hope they are kept to a minimum.
P.S. It is a minor footnote, but the Cardinals do not have to pay Cecil the full amount. 2020 salaries for everyone are prorated to 60 games.
True, BW, but as one poster noted Cecil had been good in 2015 (2.48 ERA / 0.96 WHIP, but had slipped in 2016 (3.98 ERA / 1.28 WHIP. He signed for $30.5 million that off season. Didn’t seem like a very wise signing at the time.
Finally giving up on Cecil. He may not be the worst acquisition the Cardinals have made, but as Dizzy Dean might say, he was “amongst them”. Pitchers carry a higher degree of risk than position players. Sometimes you are going to get burned. The Red Sox bailed us out of signing David Price, otherwise that would have likely been a blunder.
Great point. Consider the free agents they missed out on that would have been over $200 million each – Albert, Price and Stanton. The only thing that saved them each time was good luck.
Please rank the worst FA signings.
Tino Martinez
Peralta
Holland
Gregerson
Leake
Cecil
FowlerDid I miss any?
I would say –
Cecil
Fowler
Martinez
Holland
Leake
Gregerson
PeraltaOf that group I would rank them:
Cecil
Fowler
Holland
Martinez
Gregerson
Leake
PeraltaI rank Holland a little higher because closer is such a visible position and he failed so miserably, even if for one year.
Leake was only a bust because we bailed on him early and had to eat some of the contract. I never thought he was that bad of a pitcher. Not a bad innings eater actually. There must have been some other kind of friction with him.
People underestimate how bad the Holland signing was. I know it was “only” a year but he single handedly cost the team a playoff chance that year, plus cost a draft pick. Not to mention, he became lights out in the second half with Washington.
Holland
Cecil
Fowler
Gregerson
Martinez
Leake
PeraltaBrian’s take was right on.
Baseball Trade Rumors’ Steve Adams had this take:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/07/cardinals-release-brett-cecil.html
Thanks for the reminder, Ny. I had forgotten to post this link.
Peralta was not too bad of a signing. Fowler still has a couple of years, and he was good in ’17 so I don’t see that one as being as bad as some do, at least so far.
Cecil is a very bad one, as was Leake and Holland. At least with Holland it was not long-term.
The “what could have been?” are scary to thing about. I mentioned Price, and then Brian added Stanton and Pujols. Any one of those would have really lowered the club’s ability to make other roster transactions. Course I think had Albert stayed, he would have done better than he has in Anaheim. Less pressure, familiar surroundings, fan adoration. We really do not know, but even a 50% better Albert would have been only 21 WAR over 8 seasons, so it still would have been a disaster.
Gotta disagree with you big time on Albert, Mike. Maybe he was unfamiliar with his new surroundings for a few weeks. But the main reason for Albert’s decline was plantar fasciitis. Given he would not have had the DH position to stay off his feet had he stayed with St. Louis, I cannot imagine his numbers would have been better here vs. there. To put this into perspective, so far Albert has played in 546 games at DH for the Angels – not plate appearances – games. He could never had answered the bell to play all of those games at 1B with St. Louis.
Where we do agree is that him remaining would have been a financial disaster. The salary burned on this one player would have been more than all the others on these “worst signing” lists totaled together (excluding the multiple copies of Fowler on Ny’s list!).
Fowler is the worst, it’s not even a discussion or worth a discussion. The amount of dollars are significant so I doubt if they would even cut him before next season.
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