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On Twitter someone mentioned that Alcantara and Gallen weren’t really top Cardinal pitching prospects when they were traded to the Marlins. It got me thinking and looking back at Cardinal pitching prospects. Do Cardinals have a problem developing high level starting pitching? It seems like every year the Cardinals choose a fast moving college pitcher high in the draft. Lets look at Cardinal pitching prospects in the last 7 or so years. Were/are these guys dissappointment’s or did we get out of them what they had.
Shelby Miller
Michael Wacha
Trevor Rosenthal
Carlos Martinez
Alex Reyes
Jack Flaherty
Sandy Alcantara
Connor Jones
Junior Fernandez
Tyrell Jenkins
Zach Gallen
Dakota Hudson
Jake Woodford
Luke WeaverAre we failing in some way developing pitchers? not drafting well?
What needs to be done to improve it? I know that Strom left for Houston. He’s in Arizona now and they are playing well. Would love to have him back.
They need to hire some pitching development guys from organizations that are good at pitching development. You hear about the Dodgers, Yankees, Astros and Guardians being good at developing pitchers. Of those, most likely to get somebody from the Cleveland org to come to STL.
When I think of an organization that develops pitching, the Dodgers have been the omnipotent, almighty, surpreme and all knowing deity of pitching for my entire time as a baseball fan. I think of the Astros a little bit and not so much the Yankees and Indians, but the Dodgers should have an illustration of a pitcher on their jerseys…
I have a feeling whoever drafts Paul Skenes will be good at pitcher development in his case.
So many young arms derailed by injury. I don’t buy it, but a lot of people seem to think winning the World Series involves mostly lucky timing to be hot during the playoffs. Are the young pitching injuries mostly bad luck, or is it a case of bad usage and bad development/training regimen?
Some know I have been predicting doom since the smart people left for Houston after 2011, taking the smart computers with them. Mo has been coasting on momentum since then. Well, now we are the bottom of the hill.
Andrew Crause said:
On Twitter someone mentioned that Alcantara and Gallen weren’t really top Cardinal pitching prospects when they were traded to the Marlins.
I don’t see it that way, but I guess it depends on how one defines “top prospects”, because both were pretty highly recognized by then.
Both were 21 years old. Sandy had pitched for StL in eight games of relief and Zac had been promoted twice during 2017, moving up to Memphis at the end of the year and making four starts.
At the time of the trade, we had already started our 2018 Top 50 countdown and had to rejuggle the rankings in progress. Alcantara would have been #7 in the system and Gallen #11 in our 2018 rankings. That vote included me, Derek Shore and this message board community.
Among Cardinals pitching prospects only, Sandy was #4 after Reyes, Flaherty and Hudson. Also ahead of Gallen was Hicks. Just after Gallen at #12 and #13 would have been Helsley and Gomber. Also in the top 20 were Fernandez and Woodford.
(I was higher on Sandy than most. On my personal list, he was #4 overall after only Reyes, Kelly and Flaherty. The community had Sandy and Zac #8 and #9, respectively.)
In other words, the Cardinals had a wealth of pitching prospects at that time. It was very logical that the Cardinals traded from a perceived strength.
I can remember everybody drooling over all the triple digit guys coming up just then, Alcantera being at or near the top of the MPH list. Reyes and Fernandez were soaked with slobber as well. There were a couple others too, maybe not as highly ranked. I don’t remember Gallen so much amongst that crowd. As I recall, they all had trouble throwing strikes, including Sandy.
Wasn’t one of the main complaints was that it was a second time is as many years where Mo had to trade young pitching in a knee jerk manner in response to losing a right fielder. I think it was a year earlier where Miller and Jenkins were traded for Heyward when Oscar died. We couldn’t sign Heyward long term so we then signed Ozuna for Alcantara and Gallen after not signing Stanton like we expected.
Euro- I get where you are coming from with your statement about Skenes. Though the Dodgers mostly have picked at the bottom of the 1st round in the last decade and still develop pitching well. Also looking at our 1st round pitching draft picks they have worked to a moderate level but not met expectations.
Andrew, the Skenes reference was mostly a light hearted statement about the obvious. But those kind of guys get hurt too, which is why I followed up with the more serious 2nd para.
If I were the Cards owner, I’d want the staff to compare our injury results to other teams I respect in pitcher development to know if we have really been unlucky or are on par. I don’t know, maybe that’s common knowledge already out there. Then, if we are more “unlucky” I’d want to know what we do differently. Seems like it has not been unusual for the Cards to change its young pitchers’ roles season to season, on short notice, based on short term needs or voids that don’t get filled in the offseason. If there’s any way some of that is a problem, I’d direct my POBO to quit being so short sighted with our young arms on solving the voids he couldn’t solve in the off season.
If none of that has merit, then there’s another reason. Figure out what it is. Long-term success or failure is rarely due to good or bad luck. Of course, there also has to be an overriding objective to be serious about winning the World Series, and not just merely maximizing profit and market capitalization.
It seems the Cardinals have had success with converting power arm starting prospects to relievers but not giving a full opportunity to see if they can start.
Wacha started in the MLB level as a reliever but I don’t think anyone thought he would stick there.
You have Rosenthal, Alex Reyes, Carlos Martinez, Johan Oviedo, Hicks.
We have gotten success out of each as relievers but does getting affordable in grown relievers outweigh the possibility of seeing of those arms can develop into top of the line starters instead and possibly failing.
bling said:
I can remember everybody drooling over all the triple digit guys coming up just then, Alcantera being at or near the top of the MPH list. Reyes and Fernandez were soaked with slobber as well.
Your hyperbolic memory seems to have been further enhanced by the passage of time. For example, in the 2018 community vote mentioned earlier, Fernandez was just 16th in the system and the ninth-ranked pitcher.
Alcantara was already discussed.
Reyes was an exceptionally talented pitcher who was betrayed by his body.
P.S. A number of experts are suggesting that a significant problem of the 2023 Cardinals is that they LACK strikeout pitchers. With the banning of the shift, strikeouts have become even more important. Maybe you have a way to instantly create them at the MLB level, but what I know is they have to be located, signed and developed. There will be hits and there will be misses. There ain’t no sure things.
Well, that’s why pitchers are so dicey. They’re obviously different than position players in the sense that a career can be ruined or significantly hampered by an injury that occurs while simply carrying out a routine task, which is pitching. The so-called betrayal of their bodies is normally narrowed down to the area extending from the right or left shoulder to the wrist. One delivery and finito.
Maybe the Cardinals need to adopt this approach Pay the pitchers who give up a home run on first pitch
I think part of their problem is their drafting strategy. The institutional mindset seems to be selecting high floor but low ceiling guys, never swinging for the fences. This is largely due to their draft position, but even in international signings, (both pitching and positional), they seem to spread around their cash on a large number of medium level prospects instead of targeting 1 or 2 top players.
The overall problem with pitching seems to be the org thinks if a guy flashes they’ve got something good. Not so. Usefulness on the MLB staff is about consistency, not about how impressive what can be flashed is. It is why a Jake Westbrook was an MLB calibre bottom of rotation guy and Liberatore is not. When Jake took the mound your pen was not going to have to cover 5 or 6 innings and you were not going to have to score 8 runs to win. When Liberatore takes the mound you have no idea what is going to happen. I use Libby only as an example of the org’s mindset with pitching. Hicks is another example. We have many years of experience with him, he flashes, and here he is closing. Him and his 6.0 BB/9. It has been like that for a long time. Westbrook never flashed anything in his life, but he’d be an improvement over almost our whole staff.
Flaherty is another textbook example. You might get 7 strong or you might get 2.1 and be in hole with the pen scrambled for the next couple days. You have absolutely no clue which it will be. So what does that do for you? It puts you right where we are. But he flashes, and lights up the computer like Christmas. Mighty Mo and the Wonktastics get all googly eyed like a gaggle of high school girls when the hunky star quarterback walks past.
Teams like the Rays and Yankees are well known to be very analytically minded. In fact, pretty much every team utilizes the “wonks” to some degree. Their success is either an inconvenient fact or a case in point for some people.
I guess a question I have for you is what starting pitchers aren’t inconsistent though?
The only one on the Cardinals roster or upper two MiLB levels is Montgomery. Mikolas and McGreevy are consistent enough to be helpful. (Whether McGreevy can be helpful at the MLB level remains to be seen). I am talking about reliably going a decent number of innings and seldom getting blown out.
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