- This topic has 599 replies, 32 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
bccran asked:
I just don’t see who VerHagen beats out for a bullpen slot.
You won’t like the answers, but there are a number of realistic possibilities.
For example, Katie Woo had eight with him. Here is another group of eight that include him.
Hicks
Helsley
Gallegos
Pallante
Stratton
VerHagen
two lefties from the group of contendersAll of the guys excluded have minor league options and will be back when openings are created.
Of course, this assumes the entire staff exits spring healthy. That is not realistic. I have Opening Day ILs/DLs back to 1996 and during that time, they have only once (2010) left Florida without at least one pitcher on the IL and more often than not, it has been two or more.
In other words, these roster crunch issues often work themselves out. And when needs are created, pitchers who can be recalled from and sent back to Memphis as needed will become important.
P.S. On one hand, I get the microfocus on Opening Day rosters since those players get to ride in the back of the pickup trucks around the warning track. On the other hand, the roster is never, ever constant for more than a few days at a time, anyway.
Although not entirely etched in granite, you can pretty much be assured that two lefties will man up in the BP. I’d say Thompson makes a good case and although he was at best erratic in ’22, Cabby’s shown in the past that he can be remarkably effective. He was touched up for too many HR’s last season, so the trouble is handing him the baseball with runners aboard. In any event, I can’t hardly forsee a BP that consists of only one lefty.
And BW points out the obvious. It’s been long established that the state of FL. during the months of Feb. and Mar. is extremely hazardous to the primary component of a pitcher’s drive train. All you can do is keep your fingers crossed and try not to spin it up too tight until you get out of FL.
Well, DeJong has entirely reinvented his swing over the winter and is fully expected to rip it up in ST, so you can expect big things from him in ’23. A Goold article in the local paper tells me so.
I think DeJong’s hitting trouble started with attempts to use the science of biomechanics coupled with advanced metrics to optimize his swing. Whenever he’s been quoted talking about it, it comes out like gibberish. I have absolute confidence that he will not be able to keep it straight for any prolonged length of time and will be right back to being a basket case. If he’d stayed clear of the polo shirt crowd he could have had a nice career.
BW, Woodford over Pallante, for me, from your list. Same role, both have options, both near minimum salaries. The difference is base runners (WHIP).
Carioca-
I could hardly do less! But I am hoping that with more breathing room I can hang out here more often.
I consider verhagen to not be a very good pitcher nor can I say he’s been reliable. The Cardinals constantly don’t use the best pitchers possible all because they are constantly trying to micromanage because of the business side of things. Not my be way of doing things but it is what it is
Willie, the FO has so very little invested in this bullpen (VerHagen, Stratton, etc.) that there is absolutely no reason to not play the best relievers.
If you sum our current eight most expensive relievers, you have one closer salary. If the pen is great, then hat-tip to the FO. If there are weak links, the vet salaries are of the DFA variety.
It’s just a matter of finding out what they have early on and adjusting accordingly. McFarland last season would be a suitable example.
In all fairness, I’d never heard of or seen VerHagen prior to last season. Once he landed with the Cardinals, all I could do was take a look at the type of performance he featured in Detroit and you know what that told me. Now, I’ve been led to believe that he realized some genuine success for a couple of seasons in Japan, but our TV package doesn’t offer any broadcasts of the games from that league. I’m reasonably certain they have some good hitters over there who are tough outs, but I’m also reasonably certain there aren’t as many of them as there are in the Big Leagues. In any event, last season the performance he featured with the Cardinals was not at all unlike the performance he featured for his entire Big League career in Detroit. Although he worked only a shade under 22 IP, that limited piece of work is pretty much a mirror image of the same guy he was in Detroit. Maybe he was experiencing health issues in Detroit? I have no way of knowing, but he had issues with his hip last season in St. Louis. I’m happy at being told that he’s taken steps to resolve those issues, but I won’t be led to believe that it’ll change the type of pitcher he’s always been until I see him record some outs in the Big Leagues. This ain’t the land of the rising sun…
jj…Wouldn’t it be fair to say that BP’s are nearly always a work in progress? It’s always seemed to me that a team is very fortunate if the roles are solidly set by early June.
Good post on VerHagen, 1TD. I agree with you. Plus his second year performance overseas wasn’t that great anyway.
The difference is base runners (WHIP).
Baserunners allowed is a real world result, like a W-L record. That sort of thing doesn’t matter except to the unenlightened who are not all in on ‘the philosophy’. Mo and the polo shirt crowd look at the deep metrics, and they want guys with lots of swing and miss. It doesn’t matter what happens to the ones that don’t get missed. I am convinced that the algo has no feedback loop, so results is not an input.
Thompson had a WHIP of 0.981 (which coincidentally is exactly the same as Alcantara’s) and only got in 22 games for 34 innings. He may not even make the team.
Neither of Pallante (14.4 K%) or Woodford (13.8 K%) had swing and miss stuff from the pen last season.
Oviedo from the pen (25.6 K%) was shipped out. So if you want to blindly follow the FO lip service, and join the sheep mentality, just realize it’s not being applied in the “real world”.
I am going to skip commenting on VerHagen further since we already had this same discussion on pages 18 and 19 of the Hot Stove thread.
Oviedo from the pen (25.6 K%) was shipped out
Shipped out is interesting terminology for traded for a starter we needed.
It’s just a matter of finding out what they have early on and adjusting accordingly. McFarland last season would be a suitable example.
McFarland was awful last year yet the Cardinals kept him on the roster until August 10 when they finally DFA’d him (and actually re-signed him two weeks later). Why? Because they owed him $2.5M. I suspect VerHagen will get the same treatment. The Cardinals are going to stretch those pennies as far as they can.
Every time I see Pallante’s name mentioned, I’m reminded that the baseball was placed in his hands while a situation existed that was undoubtedly the single most crucial and high pressure point of the entire ’22 season and the 23 yr. old rookie got precisely what was called for. A tailor made GIDP ball. Segura was entirely hoodwinked on that 2-2 offering as he nearly tossed his bat at it to make contact and produce a GB that just barely bled through the right side of the IF dirt to reach the OF and push the tying and lead runs across HP. In the fraction of a nano second that it took for me to see that baseball come off the bat from the camera angle on my TV, I genuinely thought my favorite team had avoided an utter catastrophe, but it wasn’t meant to be. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I’ll also say this. I’ve been a little tough on the Cardinal field manager as a result of that game, but I also thought that one of my favorite Redbird players, Edman, should have possibly handled that play or at least smothered the baseball to prevent the lead run from scoring. At any rate, Eddie publicly acknowledged that, he too, thought he should have had it covered and possibly tried to do too much with it. I’m getting a little windy here, but I can’t but help to have a lot of confidence in Pallante’s ability to perform under pressure as a result of his last appearance in the ’22 postseason. Maybe there’s a silver lining to be realized after last season’s NLWC.
Verhagen might possibly be less bad, depending on how much his hip issue contributed to his bad results. Hopefully, he will be playable since he will be playing regardless. (2.8 million reasons) Lets hope for the best.
gscottar said:
McFarland was awful last year yet the Cardinals kept him on the roster until August 10 when they finally DFA’d him (and actually re-signed him two weeks later). Why? Because they owed him $2.5M.
While the start is accurate, the end could be a bit misleading. McFarland had been very good in 2021 so everyone seemed glad he was re-signed for 2022 for his age 32-33 season. Then he struggled. He was put in the IL in June with COVID. When he was released in August, his salary was already sunk cost. So he was resigned (to a minor league contract) for depth at Memphis.
The chatter concerning VerHagen and McFarland reminds me that the Redbirds haven’t enjoyed much consistent success with lefty members of the BP for a pretty long while now. The last guy that I can recall who was reasonably effective for more than a season or so was TLR’s old friend Steve Kline…Come to think of it, I can’t come up with too many names over the long haul. Everyone remembers Hrabosky, and K. Daley was certainly an outstanding lefty out of the BP, but before him all I can come up with off the top of my head is J. Hoerner. Anyone else recall a decent Redbird member of the BP who was a LHP?
Kevin Siegrist comes to mind. He was very good until overused and prematurely used up, done in MLB at age 27. In those days, the only reliable arms in the pen were Siegrist, Rosenthal and Maness and they all burned out.
Thanks BW…The name looked familiar, but I still had to look him up and yeah, he had two really good seasons as a Cardinal and even collected 9 saves during that time. He’s recent too. I can recall the color of dress that my 5th grade sweetheart wore in class, but can’t find my carpet slippers…Haha!
Ray King had one good year as a loogy. 2004. 86 appearances, 62 IP, 5-2, 2.62 ERA, 1.081 WHIP. Had some effective outings in the World Series.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.