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So many players have just not worked out. Let’s look at them all.
First the pitchers. Jack Flaherty, Dakota Hudson, Alex Reyes. We all thought they were going to be the Big Three in our rotation for years to come. And now all three are gone, having never really come close to our expectations. Liberatore, who was the centerpiece of the Arozarena trade, has not done much at all – at least not yet.
Now the hitters. We need to remember that Oscar Taveras would currently only be 31 years old. Then Carlson was labeled a can’t miss project when he first came to the big leagues in 2020. Tyler O’Neill had one good year (2021) but other than that he was usually hurt. Plus so far Nootbaar is a career .244 hitter.
Throw in two key players that are under-performing in Arenado and Goldschmidt and we are where we are.
They say it’s a fine line between genius and insanity. Sort of a fence straggling situation. That’s just about where the Redbirds are right now. We are on the fence here in 2024. If players start performing we could end up winning 90+ games and the division. If not, we could end up in last place again. I would prefer to win the division myself.
r/Esteemed Rat
Rats – I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. You named 3 pitchers who were derailed by injuries then 2 hitters that have had the same happen to them (plus Noot who has had a bunch of smaller injuries) then compared them with Arenado and Goldy who have been almost entirely healthy. Where are you trying to go with this thread? Are you saying they all haven’t worked out? The last 2 seem to have definitely worked out – just not so much this year. And the 3 pitchers mentioned aren’t here this season so that can’t be the comparison. I’m confused.
I’m just saying that the players I mentioned just never worked out. For whatever the reason. I thought I made that very clear. We would be an entirely different team if these players would have performed liked we hoped they would. But, for whatever the reason, they didn’t.
Without delving into numbers it does seem like our system has not produced anything like they did for quite a few years there. We had top players like Pujols, Molina, and Wainwright (albeit Adam was acquired from the Braves system), and would supplement them with solid contributors like Jay, Freese (again acquired in a trade), Schumaker, Craig, Brendan Ryan, Jaime Garcia, Jason Motte, etc.
Those guys would come up and seemed to contribute right away, maybe not as stars but they would not struggle as much as our more recent guys seem to do. Going back farther, I looked at Vince Coleman’s early 1985 and he had a 4 hit game in his second start of that season.
So I get what Rat is saying – it just seems like we don’t see as many guys that come up from the minors who are able to really help. Nootbaar has been okay – he is one guy that is similar to those other guys. Looks like Winn and Herrera are going to be good, so maybe we are getting back to where we will see some youngsters really take off once they hit the big time. But we have not gotten consistency from many of the guys that we thought we would.
Anyway – hey Rat, you mentioned how your television and computer are different rooms. You can always dial in to TCN on your phone. All of my posts during games are done using my cell phone. Not as easy to type on those as on a computer obviously, and about 2/3 of the time I find myself editing for misspellings and the occasional word that the “smart” phone thinks goes in rather than the word I wanted, but it makes it so you can watch the game and interact with fellow Cardinal fans here on the board at the same time.
The Cardinals are the type of organization that really needs to get impact players from their farm system because they aren’t going to jump into the deep end of the pool with free agents or trades. Sure getting guys like Arenado, Goldy, Contreras, and Gray has been nice but those guys are all on the wrong side of 30 and not exactly still in their prime.
For the Cardinals to contend for championships they need big production from guys like Gorman, Walker, and Carlson, along with a few homegrown pitchers. So far it just hasn’t happened but maybe those guys can turn it around.
If you want a real deep-dive, you would have to define an era where the Cardinals had success, and then compare it to the current era. You also have to limit the analysis to the first round or two, because those are the rounds with the highest probability of success.
There are issues with examining eras, however. Now, there is much more information available about prospects in the high school and even college ranks. Perhaps in an earlier era, the Cardinals were better at scouting, and now their competitive advantage has been taken away.
The Cardinals also used to get multiple first rounds picks (which meant they could miss more often and nobody would notice), now they don’t even get a competitive balance round pick.
Next, you have to look at the development system. How many times have the Cardinals rushed a prospect to the majors before they are ready? Looking at Walker, Scott & Hicks as some recent examples that stand out. I am sure there are others. Hicks, now in a starter’s role, has a 1.61 ERA right now, btw. He appears to have found an organization that is working with teaching him how to pitch, rather than telling him to throw it as hard as he can. I am also not sure Alcantara would have enjoyed the same success if he stayed in the Cardinals organization. The Cardinals didn’t know how to teach him control, something he appears to have found in Miami.
You also have to look at organizational philosophies. The Cardinals have two that get in the way of their recent performance. 1) When they draft college pitchers, they draft more for “pitchability” and pitch-to-contact than they do for swing-and-miss. The exception to this was Cooper Hjerpe, who was among the leaders in strikeouts when he was drafted. But if you look at people like Wacha, Hudson and McGreevy, they were pitchability, not strikeout artists. Once Dave Duncan left the organization, the Cardinals no longer knew how to optimize the performance of these types of pitchers. 2) Strikeout hitters – I have not seen the Cardinals ever fix a player’s strikeout issues (which bodes terribly for Chase Davis). And the organization looks very badly at those who do strikeout a lot. Bader & Grichuk stand out as players constantly getting benched while they were here. But if you compare Bader’s slash line to Edmans when they were here, they were nearly identical. One player would get demoted to AAA and bat 8th in the order, the other would be named leadoff hitter. Anyway, my point is, if the organization has a disdain for high strikeout hitters, and they cannot fix them, then don’t draft them. The alternative is to learn to live with the strikeouts so long as the guy produces overall.
Finally, you have to look at trades. The Cardinals lost badly on the Ozuna trade, and appear to have lost on the Liberatore trade. There are a few other trades that have cost us, as well.
And I forgot about Walker. He did okay his first year. But now he has slumped and is back in the minors. Hopefully he will not be another disappointment.
Hicks is just about in the same boat as the others.
I’m not sure why Nootbar is in your list. You are focusing way too much in batting average of 244. That is right at league average, but Nootbar is consistently above average overall due to his amazing plate discipline. Noot’s numbers are a little down this year, but when you look closer, he has gotten unlucky. He is consistently taking great ABs and is making great hard contact. His expected wOBA is .385 which would be top 30 in baseball while his actual is only .295. Making great contact like that he will start finding the holes and his numbers will jump up.
Yeah I would call Nootbar a great success. All Star level player out of the 8th round. The Cardinals problems aren’t developing late round picks, but getting tip level prospects to fully live up to expectations. There is always going to be some bust with even top prospects, but the team isn’t getting any star level players.
I’m still confused. Goldschmidt and Arenado have been great. Heck, Goldschmidt won an MVP with us. And Arenado finished 3rd. O’Neill had one great year and then was constantly injured. Edman has been really good. Nootbaar, Donovan, and Gorman all hit really well last year (and Walker mostly too). And now they have Herrera who has looked pretty good. Carlson has been hurt a lot and basically been average. Winn looks like he could be real good. It’s not offense that’s the problem. It’s the pitching development. On that side, they’ve developed Helsley and Gallegos (and Gallegos basically was ready when he came in a trade). There have been a few other modest contributors, but that’s about it. That’s the issue.
I think for this discussion, Goldschmidt, Arenado and Gallegos are out of it, since they came over in trades.
The question seems to be – “Why aren’t the Cardinals good at developing their draft picks?” And it probably should be, “Why aren’t the Cardinals good at developing the TOP draft picks?”
Over the past 10 years, how many Cardinals first and second round draft picks have contributed 10+ WAR to the Cardinals? What is that in percentage terms? Should be around 30% for first-rounders, I believe.
This is 2024, and it takes 3-4 years to develop a player. So, you’d have to look at 2010-2019 drafts.
That is how I take it as well – why haven’t we seen these top tier prospects become impact players?
Walker, Gorman, Winn and even Carlson are still young. Let’s hope one or two of them put up 4-5 WAR seasons over the next five years.
2010 – Zach Cox & Seth Blair
2011 – Kolten Wong & Charlie Tillson
2012 – Michael Wacha, James Ramsey, Stephen Piscotty, Patrick Wisdom, Steve Bean, Carson Kelly
2013 – Marco Gonzalez, Rob Kaminsky, and Oscar Mercado
2014 – Luke Weaver, Jack Flaherty, Ronnie Williams, and Andrew Morales
2015 – Nick Plummer, Jake Woodford, Bryce Denton
2016 – Delvin Perez, Dylan Carlson, Dakota Hudson, Connor Jones
2017 – 0
2018 – Nolan Gorman, Griffin Roberts, Luken Baker
2019 – Zack Thompson & Tre FletcherZero stars so far in these picks. Wacha was really good for a short period. Gorman has a solid shot at getting there. Carlson has a very outside chance.
A lot of these guys got traded for other players so I’m not sure this is a perfect science. But Wong, Piscotty, Wacha, Hudson, and Flaherty probably hit the threshold you set and I think Carlson and Gorman will get there. Maybe Thompson.
For whatever reason, the Cards do really, really well in the 3-8 range.
Over the years to me implies like 20. Now if you want to nail it down from 2016 until now it’s a mixed bag.
If anything the reliance on the farm and lack of impact free agents signing has led to the mixed bag of success. Not to say we haven’t signed or traded for guys that haven’t helped but really the guys we’ve relied on coming up from AAA haven’t given us results we’ve needed.
OK.
I did a quick check at 2010, and I see we missed Tyrell Jenkins as a first-rounder, and Jordan Swagerty as a second rounder, but it doesn’t really matter.
I can eyeball the names and see that from 2010-2014, we had some success.
From 2015-2019, we had zero success, other than Gorman. Gorman is in his 3rd season, and he put up 2.4 bWAR last year, which would be on pace. So far this year, he has -0.2 bWAR, but he has hit much better this past week. He has a chance!
Carlson has put up 5.5 bWAR across parts of four seasons, and is currently injured. He has almost zero chance of putting up 10 WAR for the Cardinals.
So, to Rat’s point, we were better prior to 2015, but we also had as many as five first-round picks per year, we now only have one.
So, we can’t say the Cardinals are worse, they may have always been bad at the first two rounds. They were just able to cover it up by having so many picks.
We need to be better at developing or signing players we can attach a QO to when they leave.
Just for fun, I looked at the Cubs. Now this is not a fair comparison because they typically drafted much higher. But here’s the guys who I believe meet your criteria with the year they were drafted and the position in the draft they were taken in parentheses.
Javier Baez (2011, 9), Kris Bryant (2013, 2), Kyle Schwarber (2014, 4), Ian Happ (2015, 9), Nico Hoerner (2018, 24)
So the Cubs never hit on a single 2nd rounder. They do have some big first rounders, but all of those got drafted before the Cardinals ever normally get to pick except Hoerner.
And that is the difference.
Baez has put up 26.6 bWAR to date (21.6 bWAR for the Cubs)
Bryant has 27.9 bWAR (27.7 bWAR for the Cubs)
Schwarber only has 12.0 for his career, and did not meet the criteria for the Cubs (5.8 bWAR for the Cubs)
Ian Happ has 13.9 bWAR for the Cubs
Nico Hoener has 12.0 for the CubsFor the Reds, they have zero. Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, and Jonathan India all may get there. But so far no one they’ve drafted in that timeframe has contributed 10 BWar for the Reds.
I think there is a lot to it but not really easy to pinpoint…..it’s some development, some lineup structure, some losing patience, some rushing players, some hitting instruction
Tyler O’Neill currently hitting .333 with 9 RBI’s with Boston only 11 RBI though
For the Dodgers:
Corey Seager (2012, 18), Walker Buhler (2015, 24), Will Smith (2016, 32)
Three really good picks there. But that is it. Gavin Lux is still a possibility.
For the Yankees:
Zero. Although Anthony Volpe looks like he has a good chance.
It’s just really difficult for draft picks to succeed. The Cardinals are actually pretty great at it and have been for a long time.
So, the Dodgers appear to be much better at it than the Cardinals.
We need to hire scouts and cross-checkers from the Dodgers, pitching coaches from the Guardians.
The Astros would be another great example. Look at the type of players that have been successful in each of these drafts. The vast majority are position players. Teams that have been successful rebuilding are drafting position players in the top 10 picks that have a higher chance of becoming stars. They then draft pitchers in the later rounds and develop them. Drafting a pitcher at the top is just too risky.
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