- This topic has 1,013 replies, 37 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 3 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Williams profile seems that of a DH who occasionally plays the outfield. His defense in spring training seemed shaky at best.
Carp – .603 OPS
O’Neill – .643 OPS
Thomas – .518 OPS
Carlson – .458 OPSShould have kept Ozuna and Arozarena.
bccran, don’t tell me you are turning on your favorite OFer.
BTW, I don’t think 25 PAs is enough to make a judgement on Thomas. If it is, then he has a lifetime OPS of .888.
In the 1st game today, Forsch –
4 hits and 11 strike outs. O’Neill, Bader, and Thomas had 1 infield and hit in 8 plate appearances and struck out 5 times. Tough to win with that kind of performance from your outfield.Oh my, jj. Hate is such an ugly term. Way too strong. How about unpleased with their overall performance. O’Neill is playing in his 150th major league game. He’s struck out 34.27% of the time. Are you satisfied with that? Not exactly a small sample.
bccran, did you ever point out when Carlson had a bad game? Or did you just point out that he was in a situation that you didn’t feel he should have been put in….and then turn around and say he should have been playing?
Carlson was given a chance to inject some offense into that lineup when Thomas went out and O’Neill and Bader struggled so badly. Plus Carp was pretty much a zero.
Dylan tried, but with so little time at AAA, the 21 year old wasn’t ready for major league pitching. I’m glad he got some major league at bats so he knows better what he needs to work on. Mo’s extraordinary risk with so many unproven outfielders obviously hasn’t worked out so far.Carlson was given a chance to inject some offense into that lineup when Thomas went out and O’Neill and Bader struggled so badly.
Bader wasn’t struggling when he was benched in favor of Carlson. His OPS was 400 points higher than Carlson’s.
Mo’s extraordinary risk with so many unproven outfielders obviously hasn’t worked out so far.
Yeah, it’s horrid. They’ve lost one of their starters before the season even began (Mikolas), nearly half of the roster to COVID including the closer, future Hall of Fame catcher, All Star shortstop, starting RF, former All Star starter, and several promising relief arms. Then they lost what was looking like one of their best starters to a freak illness. If you’re counting, that’s three starting pitchers, three starting position players and two impact relievers who have missed significant time this season.
They’re still in playoff position. The OF hasn’t been as good with the bat as we’d hoped. It’s been great with the glove (6th in DRS with far fewer innings than those in front of them, 1st by a good shot in UZR/150). We will see how it turns out down the stretch.
Some batting averages –
Bader – .224
O’Neill – .183
Carpenter – .178
Thomas – .130I sure hope they improve, 25.
The team ranks 24th in slugging percentage and 29th in stolen bases. Dull offense.
A 2-1 win counts the same in the standings as a 10-9 win unless MLB is now awarding bonus points for runs scored.
“Just win baby”. Al Davis
gscottar – one game above 500. Would Al Davis be happy with that?
In the bottom 1/3 in MLB in both runs scored per game and fielding percentage.
bccran, what does fielding percentage have to do with the offense?
Are there any more changing stats you want to point out to make the team look bad? It seems like every time you point out how bad they are in a stat and it turns around, you have to look for a different one to point out.
This is the same team whose OPS just 7 days ago was ranked 17th. The same offense whose OBP is 6th. The same offense whose batting average is 16th.
If you want to use runs per game, take into account the number of double headers the Cardinals have played. Based on the number of innings that the Cardinals have batted this year, they would have played 31 games 9 innings long plus another game that was 7 innings. Using 32 games, they have scored 4.78 runs per 9 innings. That is a much better looking figure.
gscottar – one game above 500. Would Al Davis be happy with that?
He would be happy that we would be qualified for the playoffs because at that point each team’s record is 0-0.
Playoffs are about pitching, primarily. Besides the Dodgers, who else has better pitching? I also like the defense, despite the fielding percentage. If the OF gets to 20% more balls hit than the average OF but commits 1 extra error every 100 chances, that’s a net plus. I think that’s what the UZR/150 accounts for.
We are still in small sample size for the offense. The rest of the year will be small sample size. It’s impossible to make long term proclamations based on 1/5th of a season, or even 2/5ths.
Back in March I was confident that at least one of the young OFs would live up to their potential and provide a solid bat in the order. And I think that the FO felt the same. Well we are into Sept. in a crazy season and still no one has stepped up at the plate. Its has to be disappointing for Card fans that none of them has given us what we sorely need and its not that they haven’t been given the opportunity.
I feel that disappointing is the one word that tells it all. So far, Edman has been the only bright spot as far as batting and creating speed on the paths. He is second in team hits and third in runs scored.
Gotta get a kick when a poster says we are using a small sample size. Bader is hitting .235 after 996 major league plate appearances. O’Neill has had 397 major league plate appearances and is hitting
.239. His OPS for a left fielder is
.726. That’s simply not very good.To be honest I doubt that Mo had supreme confidence that O’Neill, Bader, Thomas, Carlson, and Fowler would be a great outfield. There was a lot of hope involved. So if he knew this was a risky plan why didn’t he simply bring Ozuna back or acquire another proven OF? Why not choose the path with more certainty?
Well the answer is money obviously. So I am saying that DeWitt was was just too cheap to give the Mo the money he needed right? Well no, I am not saying that. DeWitt authorized Mo to spend $168M in pre-covid dollars on our payroll, which is plenty to build a good team. For comparison the Twins checked in at $127M, the A’s at $95M, and the Rays at $72M. Three pretty good teams right?
The problem is that we aren’t spending that $168M efficiently, some due to bad decisions and some due to bad luck. We were obligated to pay Mike Leake $4M to pitch elsewhere, although he opted out which left us off of the hook, but we didn’t know that when it was time to make a decision on Ozuna. We are spending $7.25M on Cecil to sit home in under the air conditioning, Mikolas $17M to sit home with a bad arm, Carp $18.5M to hit .178, CMart $11.7M for 7.1 innings of work thus far, A. Miller $11.5M for 7.1 innings of work so far, Wong $10.25M to hit .274, and Yadi a whopping $20M because of his overall career.
Again, those dollar figures cited are pre-covid dollars and have been pro-rated down but still the bottom line is we aren’t getting the bang for our buck. It really makes no sense to me to say we should have paid Ozuna to stay or paid some other veteran OF to come here. The money has already been spent! The budget was issued to the FO and they allocated it accordingly. Mo knew well in advance of this year, as did several of us on this board, that we weren’t going to have money to spend on the OF or any other big bat so why should it be such a big surprise now or such a big talking point? When in doubt look at the budget. It is always about the money.
That makes a ton of sense, Gscottar. But did Mo really explore the possibilities of a trade that wouldn’t have increased the payroll that much? Look for guys in their arbitration years (preferably with lower budget teams). Heyward made $7.8MM with the Cardinals. Ozuna made $9MM his 1st year with the Cardinals. It can be done and squeezed into the budget.
That makes a ton of sense, Gscottar. But did Mo really explore the possibilities of a trade that wouldn’t have increased the payroll that much?
I don’t know the answer to that but I imagine to find such a cheap bat with a lot of production would have been extremely costly prospect wise and the front office probably didn’t want to pay the price prospect wise either. That would have been a Theo Epstein move, which can have negative ramifications later.
The bottom line is that the players we have or don’t have on the roster today are directly correlated to decisions from the last few years and it is going to take a little while longer for that to be corrected.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.