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Putting all the wishing and hoping aside, Mo is clear about his position players for 2024.
Infield: Goldy, Gorman/Donovan, Winn, Arenado
Outfield: Nootbaar, Edman and Walker. Carlson #4. O’Neill on the trade block.Not a surprise to many of us.
The @Cardinals will have a new look to their starting pitching this season, but what about the offense?
President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak at the #WinterMeetings:#STLCards | #TimetoFly pic.twitter.com/zOG9tQN9B3
— MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM (@MLBNetworkRadio) December 4, 2023
Solid lineup if we get some bounce backs and steps forward. It does seem odd to basically admit to the world what you want to do, though.
Winn at SS, Edman in CF. Ok, that’s his starting point. Add 2 catchers and we’re at 11 of 13 active roster spots.
Edman has Carlson as the backup CF, and I’d prefer not robbing Edman from the outfield, to fill in on the infield (SS).
Gorman and Donovan have 2B / DH covered. SS depth concerns me. Rather than a Motter type, I’d like Nicky Lopez (CWS) in trade for the UI role, but more importantly Winn needs depth from somewhere. Playable depth as insurance in case Winn needs demoted for an extended period.
Donovan can give 1B and 3B days off to DH. A slick fielding UI does the same for Winn and Gorman, which makes 12, with a 5th OF battle among those with options.
I kind of like Isiah Kiner-Falefa for the bench. He can play SS, 3B, and the OF. Shouldn’t cost too much.
The offense was middle of the pack last year, and with the same people, it seems likely to be again. If we have more lineup stability it could help some. Guys had bad years, so that is an area of possible inprovement. But they could have bad years again, or even worse years. So I think counting on a midle of the pack offense is reasonable.
The defense may not be as dreadful as last year, but it depends on whether Walker improves, how Gorman does and whether Arenado bounces back defensively. Outfield stability would help. Not counting on injury prone O’Neill and then having to scramble to cover will help. Hopefully they can move away from bench players who have limited defensive usefulness.
I’m afraid this news doesn’t move the needle on my Yippee meter.
Not that anything compares to the pitching situation, but the offense was middling and the defense was bad. That doesn’t scream ‘lets announce in December that we are sticking with this next year’.
In the Fangraphs article, Mo discussed the need for improvement defensively. Today, he contradicts himself.
A little odd he skipped catcher. 1B & 3B are also a given, but got mentioned. Did he just leave a little wiggle room?
The lineup has a solid 8 batters, and an unknown at SS. It’s at least an above avg lineup, if not top 10. Last season, up to the Donovan injury, and those injuries that followed, we hovered around 7th best.
Maybe BillyMo think they can trade for something they can’t sign as a FA. By tendering O’Neill, they did guarantee a bigger pool of players to target in trade, vs sign. To be continued.
“Mo is clear about his position players for 2024″…In my view, one of the few things that are abundantly clear is that Johnny is never entirely clear about anything…I often times feel he would have been an excellent choice regarding someone to supervise and control security for the Manhattan Project.
I like that they are planning on keeping Carlson. Not big on Edman in the outfield, but if he can bounce back to his 2022 form that will be fine.
Winn and Walker are a big part of the future and need the reps, be it with the big club or in AAA. If it’s with the big club and they struggle, you might have to throw out the whole “win in 2024” plan and change your tune to “building for the future”. But then that would look odd when you are trotting out aging pitchers four times a week.
We seem a little bi-polar.
Logically we could see a bit of downturn in production from Goldy, Arenado, and possibly Contreras and Edman. But the kids should be better, Gorman, Walker, Winn Donovan and hopefully Carlson. If one of the kids steps up and is a force, that will go a long way to climbing in the standings.
It will be interesting to see where we stand mid-July, and who will still be on the roster after July 31.
If true, I find it interesting that Johnny has the CF position reserved for Tommy Edman. Although I’ve always found him to be one of the all-world maestros concerning the fine art of double talk, Johnny has always impressed me as being way too smart to proclaim that he thought the team he was in charge of could possibly win with an established and way above average middle IF’er as his primary CF’er. I’m a bit disappointed in Johnny’s ability to subjugate and quiet the hungry masses…
I’m not at all convinced that these rotation additions will add 5 games to the plus side. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me too much if things deteriorated a bit more in 2024. I’m near to being entirely convinced that this team won’t win anything at all until a significant change of leadership is put forth and brought to bear.
1TD you very well could be right. I was saying that to be nice. No way this team is a legit contender if Edman is patrolling CF. I’m actually chuckling at the prospect of him out there every day.
We haven’t seen him do it every day. He’s a great utility guy but playing CF is very tough on a player over the course of the season. I’m not sure he holds up and produces at the same clip.
1TD you very well could be right. I was saying that to be nice.
Haha, I just hope 1td wasn’t saying the team might deteriorate by only a “bit” to be nice.
I’m predicting more musical chairs in 2024. Just hope it’s somewhat minimized.
You can eval this roster one player at a time, in a vacuum, and total it all up to come up with some ideas about how you think they’ll do. That’s the way Mo seems to do it. That means very little for this team though, I am afraid. The intangibles of leadership, win-in-October-know-how, and seasoned, proven baseball men setting the tone is still lacking — on the field, in the dugout, and above. This is what will make 2024 a real challenge.
This team can win the Division in 2024 with what they’ve got. But they probably don’t have the pitching to go deep in the playoffs. A few of those pitchers in our top 10 will get some major league innings in 2024, with a few more of them ready by 2025. Also, I don’t think we’ve seen Carlson’s ceiling yet. According to the Cardinals’ website, Carlson hurt his ankle in May of 2024, and had bone chips removed in September of 2024. That makes it sound like Carlson was playing all season long in 2024 with serious pain in his ankle.
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