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It will be interesting to see how Mo handles the upcoming flood of free agency among the starters. I suppose, first, it will be interesting to see if it is Mo who will do the handling, as he will be free agent after this year as well.
I like the home grown, build from the farm system approach for filling out most of the line up.
When you get to the point where you think most of the pieces are in place (like right now) then you go add the 2-4 players that you need to have a complete team. The players you need to get from good to great.
Why have and pay Goldschmidt and Arenado (who were acquired not brought up from the farm btw) and then not add SP1 and SP2 to give what should be a really strong line up a real chance in October?
Sure Flaherty and Mikolas and Montgomery all might stay healthy and all have career years but recent history tells us – probably not….say one of the three does; ok, now what? I think the Cardinals have plenty of 3, 4, and 5 SPs but no for sure front line guys.
Do you try to rent a star pitcher for the stretch run and playoffs?
If wishes were horses; beggars would ride.
bccran said:
Mikolas and Flaherty have top of the rotation potential.
You overvalue your team’s assets.
Mikolas is a steady innings eater, but he has never had top of the rotation potential and it isn’t coming in his age 34 season. His last two full seasons, skipping his injured 2021, he had 2.4 and 2.8 fWAR, respectively. Solid, but not top of the rotation.
In his five years in MLB, Jack Flaherty has delivered more than 2.3 fWAR just once and that was four years ago, in 2019. So he’s had one ace year (4.7 fWAR) and four not ace years (just 3.8 in total).
These are facts.
For comparison, here are three who were available this winter as free agents, DeGrom is projected to deliver 5.5 fWAR in 2023. Verlander is 4.0 and Rodon is 4.5, per Fangraphs. These are examples of top of the rotation pitchers.
Fangraphs projects Flaherty + MIkolas to deliver 3.3 fWAR combined this coming year. See the difference?
Mikolas and Wainwright combined will make about as much as DeGrom in 2023. One could imagine a different allocation of payroll dollars, rather than purely an increase in payroll. What if Mo had contrived to somehow not be paying Mikolas and Wainwright, and instead hired DeGrom. Another among our gaggle of hopefuls would get a chance as well. Not saying could have or should have, just that perhaps the sticking to the model is unnecessarily limiting.
I place Mikolas as shade or two below a guy like Lance Lynn and a shade or two above a guy like Jake Westbrook. With the glaring exception of ’18, which was his first Big League season back from a 3 year hiatus, Mikolas career reads average at best. He’s been reliable and takes the baseball every 5th day and he’s also capable of working a very nice turn. However, I don’t think he qualifies for what could be termed a front end of the rotation SP’er and at this phase of his career, I don’t guess he ever will.
FO: get to the post season… get hot…. win a couple of games by 1″ (many game are won or lost by a crucial play by 1″ or so…. or one split second.) Then there’s calls by an umpire that could mean a win or loss. Call it fortunate, call it luck, call it fate or call it divine intervention by the gods of the game. How many times are the top-seeded teams beaten that way?
Just get to the post-season and then see what happens…. its like that for all of the play-off teams. IMO its a solid plan A.
Seems like a forced analogy between baseball and politics when it comes to spending.
One thing that seems to be true in both is complaining about spening other people’s money. If you dont like the product dont go. You are not a shareholder of the club. And you cannot make decisions beyond your own at the turnstiles to effect the club. Do that en masse – and you will have a st louis without a baseball team.
Do that en masse in “forward thinking” states (leaving california/illinois/ny etc) and you win. Yet those who remain are stuck with the bill.
Those who spend in large cities have to compete more per dollar of entertainment. We dont. And thats the market. Maybe soccer will help with that in st louis.
Yeah, I’d say that every game’s outcome is ultimately decided by a single event, but many times it’s difficult to determine precisely what that single event is. Fate is a mysterious and complex concept, so I guess that’s why they use a relatively simple formula that consists of tallying up runs to determine the outcome…Haha!
Graysport…Yeah, I understand precisely what you’re driving at. If I think about it for a second or two, I realize that baseball is closely connected to political affiliations…Dem or Rep? Ford or Chevy? NL or AL? Redbirds or Cubbies?
But if the Cardinals were to add another player right now, where would that player play? A starting pitcher? We already have 6 of those. Can’t stack bodies on top of bodies.
Outfield? We’re stacked there. Infield? We’re stacked there too. Bullpen? We’re deep there and in addition have 6 guys who can spot start. So if you want to increase payroll, what are your thoughts?bcran, only an extreme optimist would believe that we have enough proven pitching right now. We go through this exercise every year. We list the five starters we have in STL and the five starters we have in Memphis and declare we are fully stocked. Then reality sets in and we get hit by injuries and underperformance and realize we do not have enough pitching. Rinse and repeat.
The Cardinals know that they can afford to skimp on the pitching and try to survive the first four months before bringing in reinforcements at the deadline because they play in a weak division. They figure as long as they are around .500 on July 31 they can bring in some more pitchers to get us over the top in the division. That business model currently works but I don’t think that will last forever. The Cubs can and will outspend us by a large margin when they are ready to and they will be difficult to deal with in the next year or two plus there is no doubt that the current approach does not well equip us to deal with the likes of the Mets, Braves, Phillies, Dodgers, Padres, and Giants in the playoffs. In order for the Cardinals to hoist that 12th WS trophy they will have to get outside of their comfort zone.
The Cardinal’s ’22 regular season W/L record against those 5 teams was 18-22. Certainly nothing to boast about. A little aside is that the Cubs ran the table vs. the Phillies in ’22 at 6-0.
There has been some hopeful optimism that the pitching staff will be healthier this year, and that some guys will perform better. I hope so too. But obviously it is possible that the opposite happens. Even more injuries and even more performance breakdowns. That would really be ugly, and it is hard to see Mo digging out. We are living on the edge.
Some of you have a short memory.
Mikolas in his first year as a Cardinal starter –
Starts – 32
IP – 200.2
18-4
ERA – 2.83Those are facts. And it was said he had never shown top of the rotation potential?
The same with Flaherty. When he was healthy –
Starts – 33
IP – 196.1
11-8
2.75 ERAThose are facts. He doesn’t have top of the rotation potential?
Please, please don’t say the potential is overrated. It’s simply not so. Talk about age or health, but the potential is certainly there.
Buying starting pitching at the deadline is risky business, and the buyer cost is player capital. There’s good reason “deadline cost” is a real thing.
Availability of an ace through trade at that time is extremely limited and the competition for him/them will be intense.
Last season was a best case. We acquired a couple solid starters to plug the holes in the rotation. Expecting that outcome every deadline is not realistic. 2023 could be a re-do of Happ and Lester, it just depends on availability.
Long story short, if we don’t develop an ace, we won’t have one. Mo might nab a Montgomery, but not a Gerrit Cole. Lopez was on the block, Alcantara wasn’t, etc.
So if every Cardinal starter is healthy and pitched up to his potential then we will be in good shape. No argument there except that the likelihood of that happening is low. We have to live in reality instead of fantasyland. Spending more money doesn’t guarantee victories but it does increase your odds of withstanding the inevitable setbacks. This is all bout playing the odds.
Those numbers are impressive crany, but I don’t think what happened 5 and 4 years ago is compelling, given what has happened since then. We can hope and pray, though.
Again, gscottar, you can’t just pile starters on top of the starters we already have.
We have really nice depth of starters going into 2023. Better than past years.
“Potential”
an unrealistic excuse word for a player who is underperforming his outlier career year, by playing at his career norm.Again, gscottar, you can’t just pile starters on top of the starters we already have.
Why not? We know the likelihood of all of our starters being healthy and productive at the same time is very low.
We have really nice depth of starters going into 2023. Better than past years.
We do? Proven depth or roll the dice and hope for the best depth?
Gscottar – Brian made the point some time ago that they have stated that they have 6 starters already, and can’t just stack more starters on top of that. It just doesn’t work that way.
The nice thing about the depth is that it’s “starters in waiting”.
Guys who are just wanting for a chance – Liberatore, Thompson, Pallante, Woodford, Hudson, Thomas, etc.This argument is moot. There arent any good options now unless you find someone willing to trade but I don’t see it happening. We don’t have a top of the rotation starter. We got guys that can be good. We got some guys that have to rely on good fortune and luck. The time to do something already passed. With a weak division can we still compete and maybe make a deal midseason, yes. We could also be down there with the reds and the pirates. One thing to consider is goldy. He’s getting older now, struggled down the stretch and in playoffs. One thing for sure is it will be interesting.
Woodford isn’t getting a shot. He’s pitched great the last two years and basically got nothing to show for it. Best thing for him to happen is for him to get traded or released. I guarantee another team will give him a real shot.liberatore I haven’t been impressed with at all. From what I’ve seen, he was overated when we made that trade. Pallante I like a lot but can he be a full time starter, I’m not sure. Time will tell, I still like him in the bullpen.
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