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By outfield I mean Centerfield for the most part. Bader has been showing those flashes for how long now? O’Neill could be on his way. Or he could fall flat on his face. Alan Craig? Carlson showed a lot. But? Need a consistent proven stick that can get on base in that OF. This offense needs help. That and SS are the spots Rank 10th of 15 teams in runs. Getting a wild card spot should not be the goal. Winning the whole thing is all that matters.
Bader is a career 4.5 WAR/600 plate appearances. You aren’t going to find too many center fielders that are upgrades.
Contrast that with we only had two pitchers with greater than 2 WAR last year.
Starling Marte, Chris Taylor come to mind. Canha, Castellanos? Not that hard to come up with better. Move Carlson to Center. Allen Craig was a career 5.7 war. Arenado was 4.1 last year. Is Craig a better player? Is Arenado worse? Or a misused overrated stat.
Paul Dejong has a 3.9 war. Are you for keeping him at short? Bader 3.8 (don’t know where you came up with 4.5) Bader has yet to have 400 at bats in a season. Reason? Speed galore. Why doesn’t he steal bases? You Bader fans say the same things every year. And every year he scuffles. The eye test means something. Very good fielder, not great. His diving catches are fun to watch. But when he comes running in and dives and misses they aren’t called errors. Trying to please the crowd and be damned the consequences isn’t helping the team. (Does that show up in his war stat? ) Meanwhile the ball rolls to the wall and runners advance. The only thing he is consistent about is striking out. He went on a hot streak and bumped his numbers tremendously. Good time to trade him. I hope he proves me wrong and becomes the player you see. But I don’t see it happening. Bader and Dejong need to go.
I do agree about outfielders diving for balls. Too much of it going on in the game today. 75% of the time the outfielders don’t need to dive for the ball. But, for some reason, they do. It’s another part of the game that somewhat sickens me.
And as far as Bader goes, he appears to want to be on the 1970s Cardinal teams with all of that long hair. He seems like he is more interested in being cute and pretty than he is being a hard nosed tough player. Unless he continues to really produce his act is going to get old in a hurry.
r/Esteemed Rat
Talk about a mischaracterization of Bader’s talents. Sheesh. He’s not amazing and I’ve gone on record as saying that he’s someone I’d consider trading, but it’s not like he’s an AAAA hacker out there.
For the record, your ignorance is forgivable but to answer a few of your points:
Yes, WAR does take into account misplays, errors and extra bases taken or avoided by plays in the outfield. It’s actually pretty decent at doing so.
Bader doesn’t scuffle “every year.” He’s had 3 above average years with the bat in his 5 years in the league. He’s no world beater, but he’s more than playable as your CFer with guys like O’Neill and Carlson around him.
Carlson is not a CFer. He proved that this past year. So…just, no. I’d move O’Neill there well before Carlson.
I’ll give a big huge double no to noted PED cheat Starling Marte as a suggested replacement. He’s aging, not likely even a good CFer anymore, and did I mention that he completely screwed his team over with his PED use in Pittsburgh that blew up right before the start of an important year? I’ll take 9 Baders out there before that guy.
We do have to remember that our offense stunk most of the season. Probably some guys will get better and some will get worse. We are probably not going to have a good lead off hitter again. We had some catcher defense issues that we aren’t used to. That will probably be even more frequent. It doesn’t look like anything will be done about any of that. Let’s hope the pitchers who haven’t stayed healthy in the past will stay healthy.
@kscardfan – Bader’s career WAR is 10.6. He has 1451 plate appearances. If you normalize those plate appearances using 600 plate appearances = a full season you get that Bader produces 4.38 WAR per 600. This includes his 2019.
This past year, Bader produced 3.9 WAR in 401 plate appearances. That translates to a 5.84 WAR run rate had he been healthy the whole year.
Starling Marte produced 4.7 WAR in 526 plate appearances. That is equivalent to 5.36 WAR over 600 plate appearances.
So, if you factor in defense, Bader was actually more productive when on the field. Let’s not forget Bader is 5 years younger and will cost several million dollars per year less than Marte (yes, teams have budgets).
Of the players you mentioned:
Nick Castellanos had a .949 OPS, but only produced 3.2 WAR in 585 plate appearances because he is a butcher in the field.
Starling Marte had an .841 OPS.
Bader had a .785 OPS
Taylor had a .782 OPS and produced 2.6 WAR in 582 plate appearances.
Canha had a .746 OPS and produced 2.5 WAR in 625 plate appearances.
I’m not seeing an upgrade there, especially when you factor in the cost to sign Marte.
Also, Dylan Carlson was not good in CF.
So now you have Bader better than Castellanos, Marte, Taylor, and Canha. Are you related to him? I’m done with this.
LACardFan
@kscardfan – Bader’s career WAR is 10.6. He has 1451 plate appearances. If you normalize those plate appearances using 600 plate appearances = a full season you get that Bader produces 4.38 WAR per 600. This includes his 2019.——————————————–
With Bader, you can’t project a full season for him. It hasn’t happened, plus I don’t like how much WAR values OF defense. We went through the same thing with Heyward. I like Bader and I am wouldn’t change our OF at all, but he’s just above-average for me.
@Pads – this is the first year Bader has been injured for a significant period of time. Early in his career he was benched in favor of guys like Dexter Fowler and Jose Martinez. The managers who made those decisions are gone.
And I agree, I think WAR gets jumbled when it comes to defense. That’s why I look at it as a push with Starling Marte (until you factor in cost).
But he is clearly better than Canha and Taylor.
@kscardfan – WAR was created to stop the type of arguments you are making. Yes, defense is part of the game. Bader’s offense was 16% better than league average last year, and his defense is elite. That makes him more valuable than an elite offensive player who is one of the worst defenders in baseball.
Castellanos in right and Carlson in center takes our outfield defense from elite to poor.
If you want to make the argument the Cardinals should sign Castellanos as a DH, that is fine. Though I think the Cardinals prefer Yepez at $20 million less per season.
To argue Castellanos improves our outfield is a terrible hill to die on.
And if people want to argue the value of WAR, I am right there with you. We should really be reading WAR as “Bader’s WAR was 5.8/600 +/- 2 WAR”.
Same for every other player. There is enough of a difference I feel comfortable saying Bader was better than Canha and Taylor.
The only one that would give me pause is Marte (until I look at the cost).
Reading the discussions over several threads, posters here seem to be certain that the DH is a done deal for the NL next season. I’m not privy to the inside stuff going on in the NL or the various front offices and I’m curious to know what this certainty is based on. Can anyone enlighten me?
The.mets owner blasted matz for signing with Cardinals, is this some kind of pay back.
I was thinking the same thing. The Mets owner seems like a petulant brat so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Reading the discussions over several threads, posters here seem to be certain that the DH is a done deal for the NL next season. I’m not privy to the inside stuff going on in the NL or the various front offices and I’m curious to know what this certainty is based on. Can anyone enlighten me?
Off of the top of my head I couldn’t cite one specific quote but over the last couple of months I have read several articles in reputable publications citing “industry insiders” that this is the direction things are going.
By adding Matz our current payroll is around $147M. No one really knows what the Cardinals budget is but I am going to assume it is around $160M. What else can we add with $13M?
We could do a low hanging fruit starter like LeBlanc or Kim for 1 year/$3M, maybe a low hanging fruit LH bat like Brad Miller for 1 yr/$4M, then look to add a bullpen piece like Chafin or Melancon on a 2 yr/12M deal. That would put us around $160M.
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