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Would it be possible for Josh Baez to hit two home runs with only one swing of the bat? What about if a pitcher with big hands threw 2 balls in one pitch?
Before today the team was 15-12 in so called blowout games.
They are 22-20 in 1 run games.
They however have had 3 months where they’ve been outscored.
On a good note……
The Cubs were one out away in the bottom of the 9th at Seattle.
Double
Single
HR by Arozarena
5-4 Mariners your happy final.Cubs lose another game to Milwaukee.
And to think I stayed up half the night to absorb that thrashing. Ouch!
We’ve rebuilt into a mediocre team so far. We need to appreciate the occasional flashes and grit our teeth for the next coupla seasons. I hope we don’t grab on to the tail of the wild card business. As Red told Andy Dufresne, hope is a dangerous thing.And to think I stayed up half the night to absorb that thrashing. Ouch!
Far more notable than a thrashing:
A couple injuries and we are pitching Pedro Pages and looking at bringing up a starter with less than 50 innings above A level and rule 5 guy is back to bolster the pen. But hey, we have a top ranked farm system! lol. I detect a reality detachment.
Here’s the “reality”, my ever-negative friend. Building a system takes time and most of the players in the pipeline are not yet MLB-ready. You know this, yet you act like you don’t understand this basic fact.
The concept I am putting forward is that our system is potentially top shelf, which is different from being actually top shelf. The sole reason for existence of the farm is to provide a resource to the ML team. A talent resource which can supply the ML team with what it needs, either directly or via trading a resource which the ML doesn’t need for a different resource which it does. A system able to accomplish its purpose is top shelf, and a system which cannot is not.
I would agree the system has potential. Players working their way up can get better, they can get worse, they can plateau short of MLB, they can get derailed by injury, they can become hampered by the cumulative effects of injuries. What matters is the result. Right now the ML team has needs which the system cannot meet because it has neither the talent needed nor the talent to trade for what is needed. It is unable to fulfill its purpose and is actually woefully deficient. If that is the measure of ‘top rated’, the system is not. Obviously, you could devise a different way to measure quality, one that our system could ace. I don’t dispute that our can system ranks well, depending on the criteria used for the ranking. I suggest, though, that the criteria should relate more directly to the purpose and results obtained.
The only player the new player development system has drafted or traded for so far to reach MLB is Blaze Jordan (unless you count Ferguson, which you probably shouldn’t). Time is needed to get everyone ready.
They could push Doyle or Franklin up now to fill innings and they might be ok. But that wouldn’t give us the best version yet of who they can be or maximize their 6 years of MLB time. The message all year is we are rebuilding. The players have outperformed expectations. Bloom has tried to support them with players who were nearly ready, but he’s not willing to fill clear holes with players who aren’t ready. That takes a certain amount of courage given the pressure from fans.
But you are right. The system does not have ready prospects to fill all its holes . . . yet.
That is all valid and was already understood. I don’t see where anyone has a “reality detachment” though.
You apparently want a new, different, narrowed kind of ranking system that only reflects MLB readiness RIGHT NOW. That is only a part of what today’s farm system rankings entail.
I dont think the fact our farm system isnt ready to support the mlb team should not be a surprise. It really only recently has been put back together. Injuries even in good times can be problamatic. Patience and some bliss are essential to being a good reasonable fan. Im sure the same applies to being a gm. Bloom should stay the course, and reasonable fans will as well.
All farm systems are “potential”. There is no actually. Roughly a third of top 100 prospects crash and burn in the big leagues.
On the roster matrix thread it was mentioned that our system ranked #1 in 2013. I pointed out that in the ensuing 12 years, through 2025, the ML team only made post season 6 times, succeeded in winning a Division series twice and nothing beyond that. There was bad luck, very bad, but luck is sometimes bad. There were trades that didn’t pan out, which happens. The #1 ranking was largely based upon the top handful of prospects being standouts. 5 of the 6 had good careers. But the system did not provide enough. Other systems were producing better role player types and our ownership did not go out and buy enough of the talent which the other systems had produced. I see a possibility that the current system might be the same. The ranking system is probably the same as in 2013. It could be looking at a handful of top prospects with little regard to what else is there. It is the what else that is going to determine how well the system can fulfill its purpose of supplying the ML roster going forward, and I do not think that is being factored into the ranking. For right now, a so called top system cannot even supply a middle relief pitcher. Again, I agree there is potential. But potential is not the same as results. How many times have I tried to remind everyone that lots of guys look good in The Texas League? How many times that putting minor league mistakes into the parking lot is not the same as confronting ML pitching? How many times that it doesn’t matter how great a pitching prospect’s stuff is if his body cannot tolerate what it takes to deliver that stuff? The point of all that is that potential and end result are two different things. The objective of the system ranking should be to gage how well that system will feed the ML roster with what it needs, and I have no confidence that is current reality.
Farm system rankers are not Nostradamus reincarnated. No one can accurately “gage” how well a system will produce productive major leaguers.
Back in 2013, everyone was sure Jurickson Profar was going to be the next great thing. Same with Andrew Benintendi in 2017.
Sometimes top prospects pan out and sometimes they don’t. You can have 10 Jurickson Profars and 10 Andrew Benintendis in a farm system and think it is going to be the best farm system ever known.
One of my favorite quotes is from a writer named Anne Lamott who said “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen”
Or there is also the great philospher Forrest Gump, who said “S**t happens”.
bling closed with:
The objective of the system ranking should be to gage how well that system will feed the ML roster with what it needs, and I have no confidence that is current reality.
That sounds all well and good, but again, the only for sure needs are about TODAY.
Teams will also have needs next year and the year after, but no one knows now what they will be. One can only look ahead at the chances of players in the system becoming difference makers later.
I look forward to seeing the details of your new ranking system. There aren’t many people in the world who can assess (and then compare) the detailed needs of all 30 teams (now and in the future) as well as all the players who might fill them (now and in the future).
As a result, here in the imperfect real world, folks look at the latter – quantity and quality of talent in the pipeline.
I asked my phone’s AI feature to list the players on the active roster who ever appeared on the MLB Pipeline list of 100 top prospects.
This is the list: JJ Wetherholt, Jordan Walker, Masyn Winn, Matthew Liberatore, Nolan Gorman, Joshua Báez, Alec Burleson. Obviously, Gorman is not on the active roster and there could be another mistake or two. But my point is that most of the active roster are players of the type that probably don’t factor in to system ranking. We hopefully can agree that the handful of former top 100s is not the problem with the ML roster. The problem is the rest of it.
Interesting that you singled out a specific thing in my post while completely missing the larger point.
The expectations you have about farm system rankings are impossible to meet.
I don’t view the Cardinals as stuck in the middle. They were when Mo was here but not now. When Mo was here they were actually trying to win but couldn’t. This year they weren’t really trying that hard yet have still been able to field an average team on a much lower payroll while considerably beefing up the farm system. We are in a much stronger position than we were 2-3 years ago.
I would like to see a ranking of the systems with all players on the top 100 list excluded from factoring in.
Allow me to summarize.
This whole dialogue began with concern that the Cardinals have/had Fernandez and Hjerpe as perhaps the best pitchers available in Memphis right now. We all agree the Cardinals have more potential help down the line. There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement about that.
It morphed into an abstract treatise on the shortcomings of farm system rankings because of one poster’s expectations that said rankings should equate to the ability to satisfy immediate MLB needs.
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