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I get than different fans want different things. Stepping back, it all gets down to the Cardinals’ primary motivation. Is it?
Cut payroll
Rebuild the farm system
Remain competitive in 2025 (to keep revenue up)If they try to satisfy more than one of the three, they will get less than desired. Trying to balance all three will likely lead to high levels of fan frustration.
So far –
At the ML level they’ve let aged FAs walk and made a couple underwhelming tweeks to Marmol’s staff. Below, they seem to be filling out one or more added levels of management between the unltimate decision makers and the point of contact with players. There could be other stuff going on out of the public eye. So basically, we are waiting for something to happen. Anything would be welcome.
I expect that every one of the player development hires will be at the “point of contact” with players. Attending spring training and workouts would be very informative as to how they are hands on. And we don’t see what happens in non-publicly accessible areas such as training rooms, cages and clubhouse.
Any speculation that they are suits sitting in a second floor office looking down at the players through the window would almost certainly be erroneous.
Player development changes and MLB players leaving may be the highlights of this winter. Someone on social media noticed the Cardinals are the only team to have not signed a major leaguer this offseason to date.
The motivation for trading Arenado is 90% salary relief and 10% opening up 3B for Gorman. It has nothing to do with getting a solid return. They would probably take a Single A backup shortsop if they could get rid of him and be thrilled with it.
The dilemma for Mo is that he could get in a time crunch to implement Plan B if moving Nado proves to be impossible. BDW wants more salary cut so at some point Mo needs to pivot by trying to move Fedde, Matz, Helsley, and perhaps Gorman or Noot. He doesn’t want to get stuck holding the bag.
I hope you are right about all that Brian. I wonder if the guys in charge of PFP and bullpen catchers will be Coordinators or Asst. Coordinators.
If they try to satisfy more than one of the three, they will get less than desired. Trying to balance all three will likely lead to high levels of fan frustration.
I doubt if Mo is worried about the fans frustration. If he doesn’t cut more payroll he is going to be worried about BDW’s frustration.
The Cardinals can win the Central if they try.
That has been more or less true for years. But rather than try for that, the FO aimed to be competitive, which is cheaper and requires only minimal competence in maintaining a pipeline, and which they managed to do until recently. Now, lacking that minimal competence, and pleading poverty as a smoke screen, they have backed off competitive for the time being.
The last time the Cardinals won the NLC both of their corner IF’ers pushed 100 runs across HP. One of them collected a NL MVP award. They also had two veteran players on the roster who are both reasonably good bets to be first year eligible HOF’ers. Who do they have now besides an ingenious whiz-kid manager? I don’t look for them to win as many games in the upcoming season as they did in ’24.
I wholeheartedly agree. It’s baseball and anything can happen, but looking at the names and faces on this Cardinal team as it currently exists, I have to hope that the upcoming season doesn’t take on the look of a dark and dismal tragedy. It could get really gruesome to the degree of having to look away.
gscottar said:
I doubt if Mo is worried about the fans frustration. If he doesn’t cut more payroll he is going to be worried about BDW’s frustration.
Agreed on both counts. I was just trying to get folks to think about the conflicting objectives and appreciate that what we may want the team to do isn’t necessarily their priority.
Yep, like I’ve been saying for weeks, even before Arenado turned down the Astros, he (and the 3B market) is waiting for Bregman.
I am not counting on Mikolas to even make it through the season.
He has been getting increasingly hittable for a couple years and it could easily become batting practice. He could very well get his head knocked off out there.
If Arenado and Godlschmidt were both hitting like they should have been hitting, the Cardinals would have won the weak NL Central Division in 2024. And I’m not blaming Arenado and Goldschmidt alone, the Cardinals front office knew what they were getting. They just didn’t anticipate that both players would stop producing the way they did. The Cardinals and their fan base did not get burned that bad. Some of these other big spending teams are going to get scorched before this is all over. The times have changed.
The big spenders all get scorched to a degree, but with an extra 200mil to spend, why should they care? They are trophy hunting, and it works.
The LAD recently signed Teoscar Hernandez (3/66mil) after they had already passed the 110% luxury tax threshold. Next up, Roki Sasaki. The big spenders in mlb are spitting on the cap, Muds.
The Cardinals are deliberately weakening the team in order to save money for rich people, preferring to offend the fan base and suffer criticism to doing the necessary to compete. And if the fans don’t like it, as they say in Moscow, toughski shitski.
I went back and looked at the last three seasons win totals and opening day payroll totals (Cots) for Milwaukee, Cleveland, Tampa, and St. Louis.
Win Totals:
Mil- 86,92,93
Cle- 92,76,92
Tam- 86,99,80
Stl- 93,71,83Payroll:
Mil- $131M,$118M,$104M
Cle- $68M,$89M,$98M
Tam- $83M,$73M,$98M
Stl- $154M,$176M,$175MBill DeWitt looks at those two sets of numbers and tells Mo and Bloom “I want us to be like those other three teams. Make it happen.”
Ideally, Bill would say he wants to have that development pipeline, while also spending in line with the success of the team and devotion of the fan base. There’s no reason you have to spend like markets whose revenues are 20% less than St Louis, at best.
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