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Speaking of King, years later somebody speaking at some sports banquet here in St. Louis, joked that when the Cards traded for King, Wainwright came along as the throw in guy.
I’d have to say that one of the primary things that makes baseball so great is the tremendous contrast of the different types of players through the years. On one hand you’ve got the Gibsons, Musials and Pujols, and then on the other, the Klines, Kings and McFarlands. Where else can you get a little fun out of discussing obscure lefty members of a BP?…Haha!
I wrote this in August 2016.
Heavy Workloads Catching up with Rosenthal, Maness and Siegrist
Same outcome for Reyes, GG and whatever that lefties name is that got demoted after he lost his K stuff.
We rode them hard due to a weak pen built around them. Burned them up.
What proven “swing and miss stuff” have we acquired this offseason? None.
You can quote the FO all you want but it’s just lip service until they actually practice what they preach.
The most “intriguing” signings were the signings of Cecil, Miller, and Holland. VerHagen and Brooks aren’t aren’t too far behind that.
1TD, I thought Edman had Segura’s grounder also, but he whiffed on it. He wasn’t alone, Arenado also retreated on a 2-hopper and olay’ed it.
Yeah JJ, the ground ball to the left side was even worse than Segura’s 2 run single. I’ve mentioned before that Arenado plays 3B like he’s a creature from another planet. We’ve all seen him make plays that no human being is supposed to be able to complete. However at this juncture, I still remember feeling more comfortable when the baseball was hit in the direction of Scott Rolen. Nado sometimes makes decisions that can be called questionable. That ground ball was hit right at him. At any rate, that half inning is right up there with the home half of the 9th of game 6 in KC on the list of my worst baseball fan gut shots.
Bccran…To me, Cecil was the absolute abyss. He was paid around $15 MM for the two years he was in StL. If someone told me that he never recorded a solitary out in those two years, I’d believe ’em…If he did, I never saw it…Haha!
1td, what’s a few million among billionaires, but Cecil drained the Cards for closer to $30 million. His contract was for over 30, but he lost some of that I suppose due to the covid-shortened season. Not only did Cecil record an out, he recorded a save on July 17, 2017. I guess Redbird fans can always look back fondly on that as the $30 million save.
Haha! All that money may as well have been salt rubbed into an open wound every time I watched that guy take the baseball into his hand. When they first got him I saw what they paid and thought to myself, “This guy must be pretty good”…It didn’t take too very long to conclude that he had to have been the genuine epitome of the term brutal.
Free-agent left-handed reliever Andrew Chafin in agreement with Diamondbacks on one-year contract, sources tell @TheAthletic. The deal, which is pending a physical, is expected to be in the $6.5M range with a chance to increase to mid-$7.5M range with incentives.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 11, 2023
While that is a good amount for a single year, I was expecting him to be holding out for a 3 year deal in the 15-20 million range. It seems like we could have met this ask and still had plenty in reserve for a future starter trade. Maybe the Cards see his skills diminishing or maybe they just want the roster flexibility of all the guys they have with options?
Thompson needs to be in the AAA rotation, in hopes that we are developing a future ace. Maybe they will. Now imagine the pen without Chafin or Thompson.
A modest one year deal, for a Proven reliever, must have been too much for Bill to stomach.
Maybe a similar offer was made, we don’t know. Maybe Chafin didn’t care to play for St. Louis. Maybe he preferred to play for Torey Lovullo and Brent Strom, who together have about 30 times more MLB coaching experience than Ollie and Dusty. Maybe hard core analytics driven coaching and management is not his thing. We don’t know if there was any communication or what was said. Maybe the Cardinals is a hard sell these days. We don’t know, and its not likely anyone would tell us anyway. What we do know is, other than the catcher we enticed with a 5 year deal, we didn’t sign anybody.
The Cardinals have added a number of players. It just that the only one to get any publicity was Contreras.
Are any of the additions beyond Contreras good enough to even make the team? Maybe depth if someone gets hurt, but the regulars are the same guys as before. Quantity does not equal quality.
Regarding hard sell, we need to be honest. Just this winter, Mo admitted he couldn’t sign a left-handed bat because they didn’t want to come into an unsure playing time situation. In the past, other players have expressed concerns about coming to StL. These are well documented. Not every spot is right for everyone.
My point above was not to support particular theories, but only to emphasize that we don’t know facts and so are running with our established narratives. Players would universally love to play for STL and would jump at the chance. Therefore, the fact that more impact players did not sign means ownership is cheap. Well, not necessarily.
The desirability of STL as a destination is well established over a long period. But I am sure it never applied to every player faced with an array of choices to pursue. And I am not sure if there could be a cross current in play right now causing players to hesitate about STL. From an outsiders perspective what they see is a winning manager was fired, apparently without any knowledge that there was a problem. Replaced by an organizational insider with no experience in the role and whose team flat lined in post season. Then at the end of the year the experienced and professional key coaches bolted, replaced by more insiders without experience in the roles. We do not know what is said or thought about all that amongst those in the game, but a cross current could be in play right now, making things difficult. We should not just assume we know enough, and we should not just assume that our favorite narratives must of course be true at the moment.
As to Chafin, what he signed for is not exorbitant by current standards. It is possible that an extra year could have enticed him like it did Contreras. Maybe the less urgent need was not enough to get Mo to do that again. Maybe the narratives did not pan out at all in this case.
Mo made a mistake with the Alcantara and Gallen trade. He may have made a mistake with the Arozarena trade. And he probably shouldn’t have let Garcia go. So now he’s going to ride with Carlson, Gorman, Nootbaar, Yepez, Burleson, Libby, Gomez, Herrera, etc. for a little while to see what he really has with them. Walker, Winn, and
Hence are probably untouchables.I don’t think there’s any question that Johnny cringes and looks away every time he sees Alacantara’s name in print, but at the time the consensus was that a productive RH bat was needed in the OF and Alacantara’s performance in the Redbird farm system hadn’t indicated he’d become a dominant CYA winning pitcher. I also don’t recall too many Cardinal fans or media types criticizing that trade when it was unhatched. In any event, I’m not here to console Johnny, but sometimes when the hand is eventually revealed, all you can do is read ’em amd weep.
IIRC, which I may not, the Cardinals system had a gaggle of young flamethrowers at the time, Alcantara being notable, but not without peers. I don’t really blame Mo for trading one of them for a bat. I do think he whiffed on which one to trade and which bat to get. That is hindsight to us, but he and his wonksters get paid to get it right and they got it oh so wrong.
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