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Wrong, willie. The time has not passed. The time may be coming. If the Cards can trade for Goldy and Arenado, and now have the position players pretty well set with the signing of Contreras, they can trade for a top line starter who’s going to get expensive in the next year or two and pitches for a low budget team.
All you have in an infinite number of starters are guys with a pulse. The question is…are they any good? NOT…oh they have so much potential and their ceiling is a mile high. Are they good NOW and can help in 2023.
Bccran, what top line starter do you think they are going to get. Plus when have we traded for a top rotation starter this early. The only way I see it happening is if there are injuries early on in spring even then I’m not sure. First they would have to give up some great players a lot of people don’t want them to get rid of, plus that pitcher would be worth more later this season if hes had a good season.
bccran said:
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 Cardinals may have said that, but it isn’t my opinion. They are using it as justification for not adding any outside pitching this off-season.
I don’t want them to add more back end starter competitors. They have plenty of them. What they don’t have is a no. 1. My view is that any team could always make room for a true ace. No matter what you say, they don’t have one now. Cherry picking the one good year out of five is inherently biased. Depth and high end talent are two different things.
Dakota Hudson was sent to the minors when he struggled late last season and could be again. That makes five. They could have traded one of the back end guys in part of a deal for an ace. Or they could have signed a free agent ace and traded away one of their starters. Or they could temporarily put their back end starter in the pen until an opening surfaces.
The point is that there would always be a way to accommodate a star player. Stating the rotation is full counts noses, not talent level, and is a way to try to justify not doing anything.
Read my post again. I’m not justifying doing nothing. The Cardinals want to see how this plays out for awhile and if necessary could look at a deal similar to the Goldy and Arenado deals, but this time for a top of the rotation pitcher. That’s what Mo alluded to at Winter Warm Up.
To the best of my knowledge, Mo said nothing about adding at any specific position later, let alone a true top line starter. He made a vague statement about spending the budgeted money they had not this off-season. You seem to be hearing what you want to hear, but if I missed an important quote like that, please correct me by sharing the specifics of what he said.
He said that it’s a long season and moves can be made along the way. My recollection is that it was when he was being queried about a top line starter and overall rotation depth.
I don’t see how we are better off pitching wise than we were last year! We still need a solid 1 and 2 and we have neither! Everyone HOPES that Flaherty and Mikolas have great years and become a dominant 1 and 2 but I think most on here would agree that is highly unlikely! Most likely we will be good enough to win a weak division and then get tossed in the first round of the playoffs! Eventually the poor playoff play will cause more and more people to call for change! I for one hope that soon we will buy or trade for a number one starter! Things will start to change after we do that IMO!
Well, Flaherty and Matz have been advertised as healthy and the Cardinals, barring a freak ST’ing injury, will begin the season with Montgomery as a member of the 5-man, so I’d say that’s an improvement. And although both Mikolas and Wainwright are a year longer in the tooth, I’ll defer as to whether or not either one will be adversely affected by the advance in age until we get a look at a handful of turns. Hudson or Pallante could emerge into the rotation mix, but you simply don’t know at this juncture. But I’d have to say that the net bottom line is that the Cardinals are better off looking forward than they were last year at this time in regards to the rotation.
To my knowledge we have not added a single pitcher since the day we lost to the Phillies in game 2! The only move we made was letting Quintana go and you could make a solid argument he was our best pitcher down the stretch last year! Don’t see how that makes us better but to each his own! I like Matz and Montgomery! I think they can be solid 3 and 4 guys if healthy!I have a hard time seeing Flaherty and Mikolas as a solid 1 and 2! I hope I can come on here in June and say how wrong I was about them! Time will tell!
From my seat there’s no question that Quintana featured the best work from the rotation during the second half. Furthermore, the turn he took as the SP’er in game 1 of the NLWC was not only near flawless, but also foolishly wasted. However, I expect him to revert to the type of SP’er that he’s well established himself to be. I didn’t at all expect the almost unheard of situation consisting of three LHP’ers as members of a rotation and I wasn’t too awfully disappointed when the Redbirds didn’t put forth an aggressive attempt to keep him here. Whether or not he’ll be sorely missed is a case of only time will tell…Precisely as you pointed out!…Haha!
I am a realistic fan of my team. I do not believer things will happen just because I want them to. Thinking some of them CAN become mood is hope as a strategy , which the great Mo declared unusable years ago. But that is all the Front office uses is hope, which is why the team never goes anywhere in the playoffs and never will with the present business model.
1td. I also was okay with Quintana going elsewhere because I assumed we would do something to strengthen our pitching! We didn’t! I agree with Nathan that hoping people will just suddenly do better is not really a strategy! If you compare our pitching staffs to other contenders you can make a decent argument that our depth is as good as some others! Where you can’t argue is the top of the rotation! We simply don’t have the horses at the top! I wish we did and I hope someone comes through big but I feel silly to predict that will happen! Most likely it won’t!
I agree with Nathan that hoping people will just suddenly do better is not really a strategy
‘Hoping guys will suddenly do better’ sounds like a pretty pathetic strategy. But if you say ‘hoping guys will play to expectation’ it sounds all scientific and rational.
What is not said is that the front office is assuming their expectation is accurate so that playing to it is probable. That is where the problem lies. As to our pitchers at least, the expectation is not accurate so playing to it is not probable. But Mo and the FO can’t or won’t accept that anything is wrong with their method of arriving at what the expectation is, so they stay the course regardless of the results achieved.
The FO spent 28mil this winter on Wainwright, Flaherty, Hudson and Stratton. None of that 28mil was guaranteed, it had to be offered this offseason.
They also spent 17.5 mil AAV on Contreras, when they could have signed a 5mil catcher and put another 12mil toward pitching.
These were the decisions they made.
Again, I’ll take Mo’s comments at Winter Warm Up at face value. He said there are conversations between teams taking place 12 months out of the year. He has some very good trading chips in the system to pull off a major trade for a pitcher if needed.
I’ll never understand why fans assume the active roster on opening day will be the same roster the Cards go into the playoffs with.I would have taken Quintana over Waino, but I understand their thinking. Waino brings a lot more to the team than what he does on the mound.
jj-cf-stl
The FO spent 28mil this winter on Wainwright, Flaherty, Hudson and Stratton. None of that 28mil was guaranteed, it had to be offered this offseason.
They also spent 17.5 mil AAV on Contreras, when they could have signed a 5mil catcher and put another 12mil toward pitching.
These were the decisions they made.
Who is this $5M catcher? Closest you get to that is Tucker Barnhart (worse than Knizner) who went to the Cubs for 2yr/$6.5M. Christian Vazquez signed for 3yr/$30M. Narvaez signed for 2yr/$15M.
Secondly, the Cardinals backloaded Contreras’ contract so that he only gets $10M this year and deferred Wainwright’s contract so that he only gets $7M this year. For the Cardinals, thats a total of $17M rather than $34M.
Without payroll going up, you can get close with Rodon, who will make $27M a year, and Narvaez as the catcher, depending on how you count backloaded and deferred payments.
The other ‘ace’ options were DeGrom (5yr/$185M ~ $37M AAV) and Verlander (2yr/$86.6M ~ $43.3M AAV). Then you drop to the Senga and Bassitt area.
Mind you, that’s what they signed for. You would have to beat that to get any of the 3 FA starters.
bccran wrote:
He said that it’s a long season and moves can be made along the way. My recollection is that it was when he was being queried about a top line starter and overall rotation depth.
In other words they are going to do exactly what I wrote in an earlier post, which is to coast through the first 4 months of the season at .500 and try to make a push at the deadline to get over the top in the division. Again, this only works because we are in a weak division but it doesn’t help us beat the really good teams in October.
PadsFS wrote:
Who is this $5M catcher?
I think he was referring to Sean Murphy, who was traded from Oakland to Atlanta.
bccran wrote:
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.There is depth then there is proven quality depth. Not the same thing.
The cards are what they are…..their owner is more in it for $$ in his pocket than winning WS titles an he has proven that time and time again. Sure he wants to make sure they can at least compete for the division beyond that he has no wants of spending anymore $$ to put them over the top. The team this year is case i point, sure they are a solid to good team and favorite to win the division, but don’t stand a chance in post season with their current rotation. There is nobody in that rotation that scares anybody at all.
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