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He’s been awful in 2019, no doubt about that. I definitely wish he wouldn’t have been extended. But, we are stuck with him, and we don’t have anyone to bench him for. So I’m hoping things pick up for him.
Looking forward to Gorman.
But I am also realistic. This team, as constructed, isn’t very close to contending. So might as well ride it out with guys we have fond memories of (Carp, Wainwright, Yadi), and then build around Goldschmidt when we come out of bad-contract purgatory.
By the time these team has the financial leverage to make a run with Goldschmidt he’ll be on the twilight of his career as well. There is already $143 million committed to next year’s payroll, which doesn’t leave a lot of room to make improvements to the bullpen, rotation, or lineup. Its a mess.
By the time these team has the financial leverage to make a run with Goldschmidt he’ll be on the twilight of his career as well. There is already $143 million committed to next year’s payroll, which doesn’t leave a lot of room to make improvements to the bullpen, rotation, or lineup. Its a mess.
Absolutely. That is what I have been preaching. These contract extensions we have been giving out like candy are a killer. We can either hold our breath and hope the next two years fly by or we could actually swallow some pride and dump Fowler and Carp to some unfortunate team in the AL who might take them off of our hands with us paying most of the freight. That might save us a few bucks and allow some Memphis guys to play.
Agree about the poor construction of this team. Then again, I remember hearing on here how this team, after adding Goldschmidt, was a 90 win team and a favorite to make the playoffs, if not win the division. I never saw it. This just isn’t a good team, and thinking that Goldschmidt would be the cog that would make us contenders was just another in a whole series of missteps. This is a team that, at best, could sneak into the playoffs. But once there, it doesn’t have anything close to a team that could win playoff series. We do not have good starters. We do not have good relievers. We do not have good defense (at least with how we manage the lineup), and we can’t hit.
As for trading Fowler and/or Carpenter – that probably isn’t happening. We’d have to send prospects the other way just to get another team to take half of their money owed. And I’m not sure even that gets it done.
The team does have a decent chunk of money coming off the books in 2021, but I have no faith in the men that shop for the groceries anyway. They need to rebuild the front office so that they can finally start rebuilding the roster. And, for as much as our prospects get hyped on this site, we haven’t been all that good at producing lasting major league value out of our farm system. We graduate a ton of 1 WAR players that make us look okay in the aggregate, but the only guy who likes anything close to a difference maker in the last many years is DeJong, and the jury is still out on him.
This team is going to take patience. And I don’t see a ton of that here.
Mercado looks pretty good, although the jury is still out on him, also.
I like MO and I hate to say it, but he is just not good at assessing people. He screwed up by giving us 4 years of Matheny….. and Carpenter has made him look like a fool.
Then where is the line drawn on what is expected of your lead off hitter? Carpenter is at .212. Yes he does draw walks, I get that point, however maybe if he would take the ball the other way when the shift is on the hits would start coming on a regular basis. Why not let Wong bat lead off? Drop Carpenter down a few spots and give it a chance.
Then again, I remember hearing on here how this team, after adding Goldschmidt, was a 90 win team and a favorite to make the playoffs, if not win the division. I never saw it. This just isn’t a good team, and thinking that Goldschmidt would be the cog that would make us contenders was just another in a whole series of missteps. This is a team that, at best, could sneak into the playoffs. But once there, it doesn’t have anything close to a team that could win playoff series. We do not have good starters. We do not have good relievers. We do not have good defense (at least with how we manage the lineup), and we can’t hit.
Speaking of revisionist history (and I agreed with you in your spat with BHC)…
It’s not crazy to think that the team that won 88 games last year including a very solid % once we moved on from Matheny would improve by a few games and make the playoffs.
In fact, it’s taken career worst seasons by Goldy, and Carpenter, close to if not the worst ever by Molina, Jmart having his worst hitting year, Gyorko hardly playing, Reyes flaming out again, Hicks missing half the season, Gomber and pretty much all the rotation depth flaming out, and Cmart not making a single start, among other things going wrong, to put the team where they are. If you thought the team wouldn’t be good, that’s a fair assessment, but you’d have to be quite the soothsayer to have guessed all that.
Factually, the offense has been bad in stretches and the rotation is below average but the defense and bullpen have been more than fine. You don’t have to be so hyperbolic to get your point across that the team has underachieved. They have and probably will continue to, but it’s not crazy to have thought they would be a bit better than last year. There’s still talent there and it’s not that far away from being competitive despite a very lot of things going very wrong yet again (feels like payback for the 2011-15 run where everything seemed to turn up roses at every turn).
Using the prior year as a baseline is not a good way to forecast the future. It is the most common way, because it takes very little research, but that doesn’t make it the right way.
You are looking at everything with rose-tinted glasses. You focus on all the things that have gone wrong this year to explain “under-achieving.” Maybe we just had a lot of things go right last year that made us look better than what we were.
I guess we’ve just been the victim of bad luck for the last few years. I look forward to things regressing to the mean next season and us getting back to 100 wins.
Atripleshy wrote:
We do not have good relievers.
We do not have good defense (at least with how we manage the lineup)
In your haste to paint the entire team with the same broad negative brush, the above statements stand out for their inaccuracy.
Cardinals relief ranking, National League
ERA #2 3.83
FIP #2 4.01
xFIP #3 4.18
fWAR #2 3.3Team ranking, National League
Defensive Runs Saved #3 51
Ultimate Zone Rating/150 #3 3.1So in these key pitching and defensive measures, the Cardinals are consistently in the top fifth of the league.
From one critical of others for not doing their research, this is very surprising…
Fangraphs has always been better for defense, and it has us ranked 19th in team defense. I watch the circus that is our outfield and 3B every night cost us runs. And our catchers have been bad this year, too, even if they are throwing well.
As for our bullpen, I guess we’re all set. No need to make 3 moves per week or anything.
In fairness, though, hard to blame our bullpen for pop flies with 5 second hang times dropping in the OF for doubles. So, maybe you are correct on the bullpen.
Equating number of transactions with effectiveness? Really? The rate of turnover of the last spots at the back of the pen is your chosen measure? C’mon, now. The pen is overworked because the rotation is not going deep enough into games, and still they are among the best in the league.
Could they be better? Sure. Everyone could always do better. Are they “not good”? No.
Regarding eye test measures, there can be no debate. We all see whatever we think we see. Fowler and Martinez have a bad game in the OF and now the entire defense is “not good”. That is your opinion and you are entitled to it, just as I disagree.
Neither relief nor defense are the pressing matters with this team. They need more dependable starting pitching and more consistent offense most of all, IMO.
atripleshy, I agree that the bullpen, as a whole, has been good. There are a few RPs that have not done very good and we have played a little musical chairs with a couple of spots. Overall, it has been good.
On defense, there has been some good and some not so good. 1B, 2B and SS have been very good. When Bader played CF, it was outstanding. When you look at Martinez, Fowler and Ozuna, there may not be a lot of errors but they definitely leave a lot to be desired. Carpenter at 3B is another situation where he doesn’t make many errors, but his arm and range are another matter.
Mea culpa on the bullpen. Digging deeper, the core of this bullpen has been pretty darn good. The poor saps they throw in there to cover for the 3 inning starters have had to take one for the team here and there, making their raw numbers worse. Gallegos has been a real find, and Miller is coming around. CMart is an adventure, but has mostly gotten the job done. Brebbia is Brebbia. All he seems to do is pitch well, and still had to right the Memphis shuttle the last couple of years. The bullpen would be better still if it still had Hicks, but you could see that TJ coming from a mile away. Gant was brilliant early, but has slowed, possibly due to overuse. I like the two kids they have recently called up, too.
The question is, are we going to give them a chance to shine. Not if we keep facing starting pitchers will less than 50 innings of MLB experience.
Agreed, forsch31. Regarding defense, that is how MLB goes. No team has Gold Glovers at all positions. Some are clearly better at defense than others.
In the latest SABR Defensive Index (25% of Gold Glove scoring), the Cards have three defenders in the top 10 of the entire league across all positions. However, one is Bader. Mikolas and Flaherty are in the top quarter of pitchers. Wainwright and Hudson are in the top half. Molina ranks in the top quarter of catchers.
Five Cards are among the worst at their respective positions, with negative scores: Wacha, Fowler, Ozuna, Carpenter and Martinez.
Forsch, Bader is elite in CF, and he should play every day because of that. He’s far more valuable an overall player than Fowler or Martinez, even with his inability to hit his way out of a wet paper sack this year (and his inability to use his speed to be positive as a baserunner). Let the guy play and see if he figures it out. You aren’t losing value by playing him over Fowler/JMart.
Goldschmidt is a good, not great, defensive 1B. He’s definitely not part of the problem.
Wong is not having his typically elite year with the glove, but I still have strong faith in his ability to be elite with the glove going forward.
DeJong is the opposite of Wong this year. He has been elite this year, but I do not have faith that he will be elite going forward. But he has at least shown that his floor can be a good glove, with great sprinkled in.
Carpenter isn’t a good 3B, and wouldn’t be even if he had a cannon for an arm. Unfortunately, he looks like a lefty when he throws with his right hand.
Edman doesn’t appear to be very good at 3B, but he looks a lot better at 2B. I think maybe it is a comfort thing, at this point.
Munoz isn’t very good anywhere with the glove, but he is dreadful in the OF. I don’t understand the fascination with putting him in the OF.
People vary on defensive metrics, but Fangraphs has the ones that I trust. And they show us as a well below average defensive team this year. That matches up with what I see on the field. But I guess opinions are like buttholes…
In the latest SABR Defensive Index (25% of Gold Glove scoring), the Cards have three defenders in the top 10 of the entire league across all positions. However, one is Bader. Mikolas and Flaherty are in the top quarter of pitchers. Wainwright and Hudson are in the top half. Molina ranks in the top quarter of catchers.
Five Cards are among the worst at their respective positions, with negative scores: Wacha, Fowler, Ozuna, Carpenter and Martinez.
Remember when I took a shot at the defense and said, “We do not have good defense (at least with how we manage the lineup).” Well, we choose not to play Bader, and we do choose to make all four of the “worst” fielders regulars. We platoon Wong more than we should. Heck, Schildt would probably do the same to DeJong if he had anything resembling an MLB SS.
So that’s what I meant about how we choose to manage the lineup. All three of our elite fielders should only come off the field when they need rest. But we choose to run a circus in the OF every night, and, lately, when we rest one of those guys, we choose to put an infielder out there who is actually worse than the other three.
I like Fangraphs, too, but it has many different measures. It is the source of UZR and DRS as well, which I like to use. You choose to hang your hat on their “DEF” number, however it is calculated. (You also cited MLB ranking when I used NL ranking.) The numbers tell different stories.
Here is the link so folks can look and sort the tables accordingly.
the problem I see with defensive statistics is they don’t take into account how few errors are called in todays game. I remember quite a number of years ago I used to go watch this local college team play. almost any ball that was hit and the guy got on base was called a hit. I was a lot harder on the young kids I coached. no matter how poorly the ball was played, they gave a hit. its almost like that now in the major leagues. plus a lot of balls get down or go for extra bases that shouldn’t with our guys. by statistics, our team is better this year defensively. but that doesn’t mean we are actually that good either.
You choose to hang your hat on their “DEF” number,
That is the stat that Fangraphs hangs their hats on, too, since it is their default ranker for team defense. It is, in a nutshell, defensive WAR.
You are looking at everything with rose-tinted glasses. You focus on all the things that have gone wrong this year to explain “under-achieving.” Maybe we just had a lot of things go right last year that made us look better than what we were.
Not really. I believe I have looked at them pretty fairly. Let me ask you this…if Bryant and Rizzo had career worst years right now, where do you think the Cubs would be at? Not everything can be chalked up to bad luck and I believe the FO needs to be held accountable for the team’s underperformance for at minimum 3 of the last 4 years if this playoff dry streak continues. I’d also like to look at the medical staff because the Cards seem to have a consistent run of more injuries than usual.
What I was defending was against your assertion that the entire team was bad in every facet, which is just not true. I’d also say that my warning before the season was that the lack of starting pitching would burn the team. I even had discussions with Brian here about it. It sure looks like that’s the #1 root cause at this point, even with an offense that can be inconsistent to say the least.
Let me ask you this…if Bryant and Rizzo had career worst years, where do you think the Cubs would be at?
They pretty much did last year, and they finished 7 wins ahead of us.
They pretty much did last year, and they finished 7 wins ahead of us.
Rizzo’s OPS+ last year was within 5 points of his career average. Bryant was 16 points off. So they were not as good as normal but still pretty good.
Carpenter is 46 points below his average and Goldy is 29 points off. If they were “pretty much” as off as Rizzo and Bryant the Cards would be in first place by multiple games. Which, btw, would be pretty much what you might project for two guys at their ages for the year which would have still been an upgrade over last year’s lineup.
My summary: Shildt has “got the back” of his veterans, in this case, Carpenter.
Mike Shildt was asked about Matt Carpenter. Then he was asked about finding playing time for Thomas and Arozarena. So, then I asked him how those two intersect for the #stlcards. Here’s his answer: pic.twitter.com/TPyyPMbvkh
— Jeff Jones (@jmjones) August 19, 2019
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