- This topic has 599 replies, 32 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 2 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I guess we are going into 2023 with a lot of hope and prayers:
Hoping Mikolas returns to his age 29 season at age 34. He is 41-34 with a 3.46 ERA in his Cardinal career.
Hoping Flaherty returns to the form he showed in 2019 when he finished 4th in CYA voting.
Hoping Montgomery pitches like he did for the Cardinals in 2022 when he was first traded rather than the last 4 regular season starts when he went 1-3 with a 6.64 ERA.
Hoping Wainwright has 1 more good season in him at 41 years old and that the last month of 2022 was due to mechanical problems.
Hoping Matz at age 32 suddenly reverts to the promise that made him a top 15 prospect in all of baseball in 2016.
If one of them don’t work out, we can hope that Hudson proves that 2022 was an outlier in his return from TJS and he reverts back to his form before the injury.
And to top it all off: if they need a starter because all this doesn’t work out, they can pull off another trade at the deadline (without giving up their top prospects) to acquire a top notch starting pitcher or 2.
So we have 0 starting pitchers that we have no concerns about. I think that summarizes our current situation.
I have no confidence that Flaherty will be a top of rotation guy. He’s always up and coming, but never arriving. I think the front office will let him walk at the end of the season, if they don’t trade him before that.
Hudson had an off year last year because of his coming back from TJ surgery, and because of the lack of coaching during the contract negotiations. When he first came up, he would walk too many guys in the first inning or two. But when he settled down, that sinker of his would produce ground ball after ground ball. The thing that bothers me a bit about Hudson is that it seemed like he was making excuses at times for his bad pitching in 2022.
Given his contract, it probably won’t happen. But I’d like to see Matz in the bullpen. The bullpen could use another left-handed pitcher.
The organization did in fact ‘grow their own’ top of rotation guy. But they squandered his talent in the Ozuna trade.
Hopefully, there’s another Alcantara in the group of promising arms that are almost ready.It will be interesting to see if Pallante is used as a starter in spring training. There was a time when starting pitchers almost always spent a year in the bullpen before getting a crack at the rotation.
Sorting out the young pitching will be interesting. There’s a lot to uncover.
Really, Forsch? Are you seriously concerned about Mikolas, who had a 3.29 ERA in 32 starts in 2022? Or Montgomery, who had a 3.48 ERA in 32 starts in 2022? Or Matz, who had a 3.82 ERA in 29 starts against the tough AL East teams (with the DH) in 2021?
Forsch31…There’s always a lot of hope and prayers…I’m aware that this sounds petty, but during the 6th game of the ’11 WS you would have thought I were the Pope…Haha! Heck, I was hoping and praying that Pallante would induce a ground ball last Oct. He did and it still didn’t work out! Anyway, prayer never hurts…”Please, please, just ONE more OUT!”…Haha!
bccran…I’m not near sold on Matz. Before he went down last season I saw him take a turn or two in which he allowed more taters than the state of Idaho…
Maybe, just maybe, the Cardinals know what they’re doing and can assess talent better than internet posters.
After the 2021 season, forum posters had totally written off Ryan Helsley as an effective reliever. Trashed him. He had an ERA of 4.56 and a WHIP of 1.415.
In 2022 he he had an ERA of 1.25 and WHIP of 0.742. He made the All Star team and came in 12th in the Cy Young voting.
So do posters really want to predict with assuredness that none of the Cardinals young starters won’t develop into a top of the rotation pitcher?
See bccran you don’t want to have discussions you want us to agree with you. I agree with Forsch assessment. The pitching has a lot of questions.
I’m genuinely not sure, bccran. It was during the first month or two of the season well before the mishap which occurred on the weak ground ball to the right side at 1B. I don’t mean to create the impression that I’m handing down judgement based on those couple of early season turns, but I’m yet to be convinced he’ll perform like he did for a single season in Toronto. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m still of the view that the Redbird bosses may well have made a mistake in the form of honing in too closely on that one season of his career.
A lot is being made about how we need top of the rotation pitchers to be winners in a playoff series. And the evidence is mostly that the Cardinals have not been good in recent playoff series. And that means that if this team wants to win a World Series it either has to spend money on a top of the rotation guy or just get really hot (lucky) during the playoffs. After all, look at our recent performances. But something inherently has bothered me about this line of thinking. First, and most obvious, baseball is a team sport. Your job is to outscore your opponent. So if we can just have a better offense, then we can still win with average pitching. Heck, the difference between a top of the rotation guy with an ERA of 3.00 and our guy with an ERA of 4.00 is only one run per nine. But second, as I laid out earlier in a comment, I was thinking that it’s really been our hitting and not our pitching that has failed us in the moment. So I looked to see if what I remembered being true was actually true. Since 2019, the Cards have played in 15 postseason games. Our record is a dismal 4-11 in those games. But you know what, we scored 0 or 1 run in 8 of those games. So in those 8 games, it would not have mattered if we had Gibson with his 1.12 ERA pitching because we didn’t score more than the requisite 1.12 runs in over half of those playoff games. And, if we exclude the 13-1 shellacking of the Braves in our game 5 NlDS win, we scored just 39 runs over 14 other playoff games (and 9 of those runs came in one other game). On the pitching side, our pitchers mostly performed well. In 10 of the 15 games, our opponents got 4 runs or less.
I’m not sure that I’m taking any side here. I just do think that for whatever reason, our offense tends to get very tentative in playoff games and I think that’s the reason that we’ve lost a lot of them lately. And I don’t really know why that is. Maybe it’s just in our head? Maybe we need the right leader to snap us out of that and get our hitters to be comfortable? Maybe we just need hitters who perform better in the clutch? I don’t know. But I do know that one pitcher doesn’t fix this. Not even 1968 Bob.
I’m having discussions, Oliver. And citing examples. And reading really well thought out posts from 1TD and Jnevel.
They can’t hit and the can’t pitch in the post season. They are doomed. Allowing an avg of 4 runs is not going to get done.
I’m in entire agreement with you, Jnevel. When both the ’68 and ’85 WS were extended to a final 7th game, on the eve’s of those two games both fans and the media heralded that with Bob Gibson and John Tudor being handed the baseball it was a given that the Cardinals would emerge as victors. Well, the baseball gypsies, Mickey Lolich, damp CF turf, Bret Saberhagen and Royal’s hitters all had different ideas concerning what the outcomes of those two games should be. I certainly wish things would have worked out differently, but when I think it over for a second or two, I realize that if I knew what what was going to happen, I wouldn’t bother watching.
I want to reiterate my point above. If we had 4 1968 Bob Gibson’s on our playoff roster (probably each making $40 million per season) for the last 4 playoff years and they all threw complete games while allowing 1.12 runs in each game (I realize 1.12 is not a real number of runs), we would still have lost over half of those playoff games. So our problem is not as simple as just spending money. Sometimes things are far more complex without easy solutions. And there’s no sure thing. But I personally still really like the way the Cardinals have found a real nice balance going into 2023 and I like their odds, even if Vegas doesn’t.
I thought Forsch’s post was as well thought out as was his namesake’s idea of the pitch that drilled Jeffrey Leonard as he stood in the box during game 3 of the ’87 NLCS. That HBP genuinely seemed to inspire his Redbird teammates insofar as during the very next inning they began to rally back from a 4-0 deficit to ultimately win that ballgame by a score of 6-5 at Candlestick. Leonard had it coming and Bob Forsch was the type of pitcher to deliver it to him. I’ll never forget the look on the big righthander’s face after he nailed Leonard and then stared in at him to signal that he had entered the game to battle.
Jnevel In some of those 8 games you mentioned where we scored 1 or 0 we faced some pretty good pitchers
Annibal Sanchez
Max Scherzer twice
Steven Strasburg
Aaron Nola
Doesn’t surprise me our offense struggled! Those guys led there teams to the WS for a reason!bc, yes I have concerns about both Mikolas and Montgomery. I do expect a sub 4.00 ERA and keeping us in games from Mikolas, but if I want him to be an ace then I have to hope. Montgomery is in the same situation.
Also, bc, do I need a single season of results to prove a point or do I need a recent number of years of results or do I need a career of results? It seems to change based on what side of the argument you are on. Flaherty last year had a 4.25 ERA with a 1.611 WHIP. He is projected to be an ace by you.
That is not a true statement Oliver. This 2023 team is very different than the one in 2019. And very different than 2020. It is a little closer to 2021, but still significantly different. It is very close to 2022 but that was just 2 playoff games- one of which we almost won. So really small sample size there. Plus, even compared to 2022, we are still quite different because each of our very young players will have another full year of experience under their belt, which can make a huge difference. And our aging veterans have another year under their belts which may make them older and slower. The team is very different. And the circumstances will be too. Is my faith in this team based on hope and gut feeling? Yes, unequivocally yes. But that’s part of being a fan. I certainly agree this team can get better and improve their chances. But I still like their chances as is now.
Not sure about Sanchez on that short list, Steve60. However, yeah, I will acknowledge that he’s the sort of pitcher that can lay a deceptive trap for any team at any given time.
Sanchez was a top pitcher on 2 different teams that made it to or won the WS! He could be dominant! Struck out 18 or 19 I think one game as a Tiger! He is not now but was in the 2010’s pretty dog gone good! My point is when your facing a great pitcher it shouldn’t come as a shock that the offense does little! That’s when you need your aces to step up and throw a shit out! Kinda like Carpenter in game 5 of 2011! We only scored one run in that game! But alas we don’t have a Carpenter so when we face an ace we have to hope we get 4 or 5 runs and that is kinda hard to do!
I never projected that Flaherty would be an ace in 2023. I said he had the potential if he’s finally healthy. That’s all.
Well Steve, like I mentioned, he certainly has always been the sort of pitcher that can trip a team up, but the net bottom line is that he’s a sub .500 pitcher for his career at 116-119 with a career ERA a little North of 4.00. Run of the mill and ordinary at best, and in my view doesn’t belong in a class anywhere near the other three guys. But yeah, he can certainly lay a boobie trap for any line-up on any given turn.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.