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Thanks very much for the Mo interview link, Brian! I had no idea there was a regular radio gig at 11:30 Sunday mornings. I’ll have to start tuning in.
Two strongly positive things struck me.
1) Zero mention of Marcell Ozuna at all, from either Ackerman or Mo, when discussing the outfield picture moving forward. Maybe I missed something that was edited out, but to my overjoyed ears it sure sounded like Mo was ready to give the young guns the chance to prove themselves.
2) Mo tacitly accepted that the Jeff Albert Way was a flop. Which of course it was, and a dismal one. I’ll elaborate on that in a minute.
But first, speaking of hitting coaches, let’s recap the past two seasons:
In 2018 with John Mabry as hitting coach, the team posted an OPS 8 points below the N.L. average. Then, after Mabry was replaced midseason by a pair of highly respected, albeit old school back-to-basics organization men in Mark Budaska and George Greer — and despite two fine hitters (Pham, Voit) being traded away around the same time — the Cards skyrocketed to an OPS 31 points above the N.L. average.Then in 2019, with Astros boy genius Jeff Albert brought in as hitting coach, and with the tremendous (and tremendously consistent) bat of Paul Goldschmidt added to the everyday lineup, and with Tommy Edman providing a lightning bolt out of the blue, the Cardinals staggered to an OPS 16 points below the National League average. (Budaska and Greer, oldsters both, were of course fired.)
Summary:
In 2018, with Mabry and a full roster, a bit below average team hitting.
In 2018, with Greer & Budaska, but no Pham or Voit, elite team hitting.
In 2019, with Jeff Albert, plus Goldy & Edman, quite poor team hitting.So, the Jeff Albert Way was a flop. But Mo acknowledged it! He specifically said that the team “tried to run before walking,” and that this year the ongoing transition to Jeff Albert’s methods would be handled differently. (Now, if it were up to me, I’d have probably just gotten rid of the guy. Especially since we now know that at least some of the Astro hitters of at least the past three seasons are frauds to an unknown extent, much like the New England Patriots of the Belicheat years.)
But for some crazy reason the Cardinal brass did not seek my advice, so Jeff Albert endures. At any rate, as frustrating as 2019 was, it is nevertheless quite encouraging to hear Mo admit the gaffe publicly. That’s truly admirable, in its way. (From the outside looking in, though, and with the admittedly incomplete information that implies, it still feels like the discarding of the two wise and wizened hitting coaches was rather shameful. Maybe the Coen Brothers should write an adaptation: No Cardinals For Old Men.)
Bob, I don’t share your interpretation. I believe he was referring to the widely reported rift between Albert and Budaska, which ended with the firing of the latter in early August. They tried to blend new and old regimes – and it did not work. The hitters were essentially split into two camps based on which hitting coach they were working with. The minor league hitters were being led by Greer, as before.
Had the organization soured on Albert, they would not have fired Greer after the season and replaced him with Russ Steinhorn to run minor league hitting instruction. Steinhorn is in his 30s and has a similar philosophical outlook on hitting as Albert, I am told.
At this point, there is no connection between Albert and the Astros cheating. He was not on the major league staff in 2017. However, he was among the more than 50 people interviewed, so it is still unknown if he will be punished. He told his bosses there is nothing to worry about. Yes, he could be lying. That is what due process is for. Fortunately, here in America, people are not presumed guilty (and lose their jobs and professional credibility) unless there is real evidence against them.
IMO the only “hitting regime” we can make a confident call on is the old Mabry one. Even then, there are so many factors that go into a team’s success that it’s difficult to pinpoint just the coaches. Both the interim hitting staff and the Albert group have Incomplete grades, IMO. Hopefully we will see some improvement in 2020, and I really suspect that we will.
Jeff Albert is probably on the clock in 2020. Mo can brush off the lack of offense in 2019 as a lack of communication or execution of Albert’s strategy but if it happens again this year it will be more difficult to justify.
<STLCard25 wrote: IMO the only “hitting regime” we can make a confident call on is the old Mabry one.>
WOW remembering back to when MLB had pre and post comment boards for every team, the Cardinals board always had nothing but hate mail for Mabry. He seemed to be truly despised as was Matheny. I never quite took a side on that one as it is awful hard to tell just how much influence a hitting coach has on a player especially when the player can’t hit the side of a barn.
I don’t think it’s fair to use OPS when discussing the Cardinals offense. The Cards had a wRC+ of 95 last year, good for 7th in the NL, league average was 94.
Meanwhile, by OPS, they were 11th in the NL with .737, with league-average being .754.
They were also 4th-BEST in the NL in both 2017 and 2018 by wRC+.
Looks like Bernie is positioned to criticize (I mean praise!) what happens with Ozuna either way. 😉
.@miklasz believes that if the #STLCards interest in retaining Ozuna is real, they will reveal how they really feel about their young outfielders:
"If all of these things are true about all of these young outfielders, then why would you invest multiple years in Marcell Ozuna?" pic.twitter.com/nSvSE6GHeX
— 101 ESPN St. Louis (@101espn) January 6, 2020
Just amazing that this organization after an entire year of nobody hitting does NOTHING. Talk about pig headed.
Houstonlarry24,
They are banking on players rebounding from bad years. Goldschmidt, Carpenter, Fowler, DeJong, Ozuna, and Bader. That’s taking a big risk there.But, hey, if they don’t make it to the playoffs in 2020 they can talk about their 2019 success.
r/Esteemed Rat
That’s not bad bccran. But his batting average was WAY below his average. I know some think that batting average doesn’t mean much anymore but you can da~n well bet it does to me!
r/Esteemed Rat
Goldschmidt’s OPS+ was the lowest of his career. For many players, it would have been good, but not against his own standards. I went into detail here in this free article.
TCN St. Louis Cardinals 2019 Top Story #3: The Underperforming Core
Bob, I don’t share your interpretation.
Had the organization soured on Albert, they would not have fired Greer after the season and replaced him with Russ Steinhorn to run minor league hitting instruction. Steinhorn is in his 30s and has a similar philosophical outlook on hitting as Albert, I am told.At this point, there is no connection between Albert and the Astros cheating. He was not on the major league staff in 2017. However, he was among the more than 50 people interviewed, so it is still unknown if he will be punished. He told his bosses there is nothing to worry about. Yes, he could be lying. That is what due process is for. Fortunately, here in America, people are not presumed guilty (and lose their jobs and professional credibility) unless there is real evidence against them.
——————-I see what you’re saying, Brian, and I guess my earlier remarks lacked some necessary nuance. I should have said that (to me) Mo acknowledged that the transition to the Jeff Albert Way (or J.A.W.) was a failure. And furthermore that things would be done differently in 2020 than they were in 2019, when indoctrinating batters into the J.A.W. Again, paraphrasing Mo’s words they “tried to run before learning to walk.” Which I took to mean that the transition to the J.A.W. was too abrupt — but NOT that Albert’s methods in and of themselves were in any way inferior.
Jeff Albert could be the best hitting coach since sliced bread. It’s too soon to say. But it’s not at all too soon to say that the Cards as a team underachieved at the plate in 2019. (Good news is, the various forecasting systems expect numerous Redbird bouncebacks in 2020.)
Regarding the other thing, the Astro thing. I apologize for the confusion. I did not mean to imply that Jeff Albert might be crooked. I don’t think he’s crooked, and I don’t think his job is in immediate jeopardy. Not at all. What I was trying to say, though, was Jeff Albert might be the new Jeff Pentland. Remember him?
The following is excerpted from a Chicago Tribune article by Teddy Greenstein in 2001.
In his first spring training with the Cubs, in 1998, new hitting coach Jeff Pentland challenged Sosa to join baseball’s “upper echelon” of hitters.
After a season in which he batted just .251 and struck out 129 more times than he walked, Sosa was open to suggestions.
Pentland convinced him to lower his hands, to utilize his legs as a power source and, most importantly, to eliminate the “springiness” in his swing.
“Sammy always seemed like he was in a hurry to hit the ball,” Pentland says. “Everything was fast and hard and he didn’t have much finesse.
“If you watch boxers, they’re always trying to loosen their arms. Relaxation makes you quicker. Tension makes you slow.”Pentland cues up the videotape showing the 471-foot homer that Sosa cranked Saturday off future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him swing this good,” Pentland says. “His swing is so short and his knowledge is so improved, it’s incredible. He’s getting better with age, like a fine wine. As long as he stays healthy, I don’t see him having any downside.”“Pentland’s a genius!” people exclaimed. Of course, we found out later that Jeff Pentland had little or nothing to do with Sosa’s almost magical transformation as a hitter. Like Jeff Albert, there’s no reason whatever to think Pentland was crooked. But Pentland also was not the primary cause of Sosa’s success. And similarly, it is very hard, well nigh impossible in fact, to accurately interpret the success of Astro batters over the past several seasons.
———————————
“I don’t think it’s fair to use OPS when discussing the Cardinals offense. The Cards had a wRC+ of 95 last year, good for 7th in the NL, league average was 94.
Meanwhile, by OPS, they were 11th in the NL with .737, with league-average being .754.
They were also 4th-BEST in the NL in both 2017 and 2018 by wRC+.”Those are fair points, Pads. The Redbird home park has played at a 97 and 98 Park Factor over the past two years, so that distorts things a little. And OPS isn’t as good as wRC+, since on-base percentage is more important than slugging and raw OPS obviously does not reflect that.
I only sought to compare Cardinal hitters to themselves, relative to how they performed under the guidance of Jeff Albert, John Mabry, and Budaska/Greer. I know their wRC+ was mediocre in 2019, but I don’t have Mabry/Greer/Budda splits for wRC+ in 2018. So I just used OPS relative to league norms.
Given how much numerous Cardinal batting averages plummeted in 2019, I cannot imagine anyone would characterize the club’s season hitting line as anything other than an organizational underachievement.
————————————-
“They are banking on players rebounding from bad years. Goldschmidt, Carpenter, Fowler, DeJong, Ozuna, and Bader. That’s taking a big risk there.”
It’s a risk, Rat. No doubt. But I think it’s a good gamble, and so far the available forecasting models agree. Specifically, there are three publicly published forecasts that I know of (Steamer, Marcel, Clay Davenport), and on average they expect big bouncebacks from many Bird bats.
Again, before I list these, bear in mind that this is the average of the three available forecasts. This isn’t me. This isn’t the optimistic version. This is a trio of coolly objective systems, taken in aggregate. Nothing could be more even-handed, I don’t think. So here’s what they say.
Matt Carpenter will improve by 75 points of OPS.
Harrison Bader will increase his OPS by 61 points.
Paul Goldschmidt will be 40 points better.
Paul DeJong will see a 37-point improvement.
Yadi Molina will get a 30-point boost.Now, of course there are some less rosy forecasts too. Kolten Wong and Dexter Flower are each expected to decline by roughly 20 points, and Tommy Edman don’t even ask. Okay, an 83-point drop. But taken as a whole, and factoring in the knowledge that Edman was unlikely to get full-time at-bats anyway, this projects to a two or three game improvement in the standings.
While Albert may not have participated in the Astro’s cheating scheme it would be naive to think that the success of Astros players at the major league level was not a consideration in his hiring. To what extent their illegal sign stealing contributed to that success will most likely always remain undetermined.
One way to at least get a feeling will be to watch the Houston hitters’ stats in the next few seasons and compare them to the “cheating” year(s). Then again, if MLB changes the baseball again, one might have to compare to league average or something. As 2019 was a record-breaking year, offense may dip across the board in 2020.
2 possible contributing factors for Goldy and Carp? –
1.) Often when a player is traded, his production goes down the first season. He is acclimating to his new team, new manager and coaches, different environment, etc. Plus sometimes he presses too hard to justify the trade.
2.) With Carp, they had him working on a new swing much of the season to try to beat the shift.
In 2020 he’s going back to just grip it and rip it. Plus he hopefully will be more injury free.I am not so sure if a couple of the Cardinals had the pitches forthcoming spelled out in lights on a billboard would be able to hit it, especially the low and away slider. Astros are probably the same. Be interesting to see if anybody goes to jail like Correa. Doubtful since no laws were broken.
<2.) With Carp, they had him working on a new swing much of the season to try to beat the shift.>
He sure didn’t appear to be working on anything to beat the shift. His whole trouble seemingly started when he announced he was going to be more aggressive and improve his launch angle. Launch angle at that time had never been much commented on at the time but, in either case, he had temporary success followed by complete failure. Yes Brian, Carp is not my favorite player. Never was probably because of all the hype he got from McLaughlin and company. Telling us how he loved to have two strikes and had the best eye in baseball (even better than the HPUs) certainly was not the way to encouraging him to improve. Well McLaughlin’s king fell on his sword and Danny Mac didn’t have much to say about it. It seems he has some sort of spell over the FO when you consider that they have announced him as the 2020 starter at 3B after a disastrous season. Pumping him up – maybe but I think his salsa sales are in the dumper….LOL
Mo is the one who said that he’s going back to his grip and rip it style. It may be an improvement. And there was an article in the PD about his changing his off season routine to get his strength back. He had some injuries and was weakened in 2019. Let’s see how he comes out of the chute in 2020. Could be another All Star year. You just never know.
Carpenter has been trending downward for years now. Is anyone really expecting him to rebound and have a good year this year? I’d take .250/20 from him and be extremely happy.
r/Esteemed Rat
Rats, you could at least check the stats before making these kinds of statements.
In 2018, Carpenter had career peaks in home runs, slugging, OPS and OPS+. He had his second-best RBI year and finished in the top 10 of the National League MVP voting, also his second-best placement ever.
OPS is likely Greek to you, but many agree it is the best measure for overall results by an offensive player.
Carpenter seems to be overly challenged by the shift both production-wise and mentally. He must feel discouraged by the shift taking too many well stroked singles and turning them into outs. You can see that when it occurs in the body language of Carp.
Is anyone really expecting him to rebound and have a good year this year? I’d take .250/20 from him and be extremely happy.
I expect that. Of course, it won’t matter to you unless he strikes out 50 times or less, but I suspect he will have a 120 wRC+ or better, which would be a solid improvement over last year and will be a 3ish WAR season.
Mlb.com mentions today that Ozuna has said his preferred destination is St Louis, and that it is likely down to STL and Rangers with Reds bowing out. If this happens, and that doesn’t excite me, I hope that it means we are getting him at a fair price, and preferably a short contract. Have there been any articles promising that with the winter of rest his throwing arm will be good as new? I need to delude myself before the inevitable news.
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