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Cardinals organization (specifically the front office), you need to be embarrassed by this past series with the Cubs. They are simply better than we are, and this is due to your failure to address the lack of pitching, pitching, pitching. Unless I am the only one that sees this, it appears as though you have totally given up on this season, which if this is so, this is a total disrespect being shown to the fans of one of history’s greatest franchises. I for one am sick of the lack of pitching for the last 10-15 years, Mozeliak simply doesn’t understand its importance and at this point now, he needs to be fired and someone new hired that has a vision to go beyond just making the playoffs. If I’m wrong, please let me know. Let me know if you agree. Maybe front office sees these fan forums (highly doubt it though) and get this team some pitching!!!
Fed up Fan
We are not going to have good pitching next year either. BDW and Mo will not do what it takes to have good pitching.
They will not pay the huge contract for the top shelf guys, mostly because of injury risk, which would be a huge hit for the Cardinals. So they go for lesser stuff that comes with less certainty.
When one of those second tier or riskier pitchers doesn’t work out, they will not eat the bad contract and try again. So roster slots are clogged with bad pitchers.
And finally, they will not trade the good stuff to get the good stuff. We just saw that in the context of the catcher situation last winter. We wouldn’t part with the good stuff for Murphy, so now we have Contreras. And we are racking up an historically bad season, but hey, we still have the good stuff.
And they are not going to take the hit with Contreras’s contract, so we are stuck with that for 4 more years.
Mo will trade complementary type guys for second tier pitching supplementing some of the same names we are already losing with this year. Oh, this guy will be fine and that guy will be fine, we will have the laundry list of guys who will be fine. Next year we will still have the good stuff and we will still be losing.
To explain what I mean by not trading the good stuff for the good stuff, I will look at the tradevalue site for player values.
Their method is to estimate the dollar value of WAR projected to be produced during a player’s remaining years of control, and subtract the actual or projected salary to be paid to the player during those years. Maybe that is not the best way, but it provides a list of values for purposes of discussing the point.
Figured by that method, we have 7 players at the top and then a substantial gap down to the next group. The 7 players in that top tier are Walker, Nootbaar, Donovan, Gorman, Liberatore, Winn and Hence.
How many of that group are going to get traded for pitching? Probably none. So we are going to be looking to trade players in the second tier, and nobody is going to give up their first tier for our second tier.
So we will be looking at pitchers in their second tier. For comparison, a pitcher in our second tier is Montgomery. But he only has 0.4 year of control and is projected to provide some WAR in that time. In terms of second tier pitching with years of control left, we don’t have much, as we already know. But we do have some, namely Graceffo, Gallegos and Pallante. That is what controllable second tier pitching is, so that is what we can expect to get for second tier prospects.
We have some guys with no value, or very ittle, because their projecte WAR doesn’t or barely exceeds their projected payroll cost. On that list would be Yepez, Baker, Gomez, Hudson, Woodford, DeJong, Knizner, Mikolas, Arenado and Contreras.
Some, like Arenado and Mikolas, are good players, but the dollar value of their projected WAR over their remaining years of control is less than the money to be paid to them over those years.
I’ve been dreading any trades at the deadline this year will be nothing more than a “Spare Parts For Spare Parts” type of trade.
As General LeMay told President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis….”You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President….”
The same can be said of Mo and the Cardinals. They are in a pretty bad fix.
r/Esteemed Rat
p.s. Kennedy looked at LeMay and reminded him that you are in it with me.
I agree Blingboy,
1. The Cards do not have much to offer in trade vale to capture top notch pitching.
2. Ownership’s past behavior indicates they are unwilling to spend in Free Agency to get the type of pitchers needed.
3. It does not appear there are arms in the minor league system ready to step in a fill the gaps in the rotation. I believe the Front Office admitted as much earlier this year.This places the burden on the Front Office to identify and deliver high value / lower cost pitching similar to the way Tampa Bay does. This is a big ask for the number of quality arms needed to make this team a contender. In addition, the track record of the Front Office acquiring long-term pieces to the pitching staff over the past three to five years or so has not been great.
bling, good analysis, but you skipped over the impending free agents – two starting pitchers and the closer – who have significant value to teams in contention right now. That is not a situation in which future WAR is a major consideration for the buyer. They want immediate impact and may be willing to give up top prospects in return.
No risk No reward ! So sad that the DeWitt’s treat the fans( 2nd best attendance in NL) this way. Maybe the only way they get the message is if we stop going to the games like we did in the 70’s. This moneyball theory of running the team doesn’t work. Any other team would be firing Mozeliak.
I don’t think it’s so much that Moneyball doesn’t work. Science is real after all, and math doesn’t lie. Its more the intelligence with which the tools and concepts are incorporated into the overall scheme. For example, there is no moneyball concept that says you don’t need an experienced top shelf field manager to handle clubhouse intangibles and boots on the ground tactics in the here and now. That’s Moball and that is what doesn’t work.
bling said:
Let’s hope so Brian. Of course, we won’t be the only team selling win now rentals.
True, but the speculation is that buyers currently outnumber sellers and pitching is the hottest commodity. That is clearly better than the alternatives (hitting most in demand and more sellers than buyers).
I will not give them a mulligan if they cannot execute in an environment that favors them. Time to make moves that matter.
That’s the problem with science and math in the sense that they both focus and rely on the constraints of the precise and the exact and in the same sense they’re both hard and somewhat crude, whereas an argument could certainly be made that abstract concepts such as broad intuition frequently transcend both science and math. In my view, practical experience leads to an intuative grasp of abstract intangibles and separates the pedestrian sort of calculators from those that are great managers.
Speaking of the “cubs series”, if they end up being buyers vs sellers, one can point directly to this 4 game set against their arch rivals as to what changed their minds. From many accounts, they were actively looking at dealing Stroman and Bellinger. Maybe this is no longer the case. So if they do end up picking up a piece or two and eek into the playoffs and then get incredibly and unexpectedly hot and then win it all, they can thank the poor play of the St. Louis Cardinals during this series and Game 2’s home plate ump for his horrendous two 9th inning called strikes that were clearly balls.
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