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OK, Euro. But I still believe the waiver period length doesn’t matter in the context of the Garcia discussion.
Steve – I totally get why you might choose Arozarena and Garcia over Carlson and O’Neill (although O’Neill has been worth about equal value as those other 2 and Carlson is 4 years younger) but why on earth would you choose Lane Thomas? Even with hindsight now are your side that seems like a terrible choice. He’s now over 30 and has 6 career BWAR and just one average season under his belt. O’Neill is worth twice that and is 2 years younger. And Carlson has 6 years (before he turns 30) to put up 1 more WAR to pass him.
why on earth would you choose Lane Thomas?
Even with hindsight now are your side that seems like a terrible choice.
Checking MLB Trade Values, Thomas is 10, O’Neill 5.5, Carlson 5.6.
Admittedly, that would be a measure of relative value as of now, rather than as of when the Cardinsls FO made the decision. But decisions made concerning which young players to stick with is all about evaluating what the future will look like. Another whiff by Mo and the gang.
So Bling, you’re saying that the Cardinals front office 4 years ago should have known that Lane Thomas was going to be crappy until 2023, but that he would be a good player in 2023 so they should have held onto him? But that Dylan Carlson has no chance of being a good or better player in his ages 25, 26, 27, 28, or 29 seasons coming up?
Or are you saying the Cardinals should have maybe sold high on Carlson 2 or 3 years ago but kept Lane Thomas around and paid him to be bad for an extra few years so that he could finally grow his value to $10 million?
By the way, the trade value site also lists us having Tre Fletcher available to trade and he’s valued at $1.7 million.
Mo likes to stick with guys being terrible for a few years, but he chooses the ones who get worse and offs the ones who get better. You guys better order another bale of free passes before you run out. You do know you are furiously defending a FO that has turned things into a last place team and a lowly rated system?
On Garcia and his defense while he was in the Cardinal system, my recollection is that he was a decent defender with a great arm, but maybe not as highly thought of as some of the other OFers. So I went back to TCN’s prospect rankings to search it out. Here’s what Girsch himself had to say in the 2019 ranking:
“We use the term five-tool player a lot but he has got all the tools,” Cardinals general manager Mike Girsch told the media. “He can run, he’s got a big arm, he hits for significant power and he’s a good defender. The only question is his hit tool, making contact.
Likewise, here’s our former analyst Derek Shore (wonder how he is now?) in the 2020 rankings:
From a scouting perspective, Garcia has not changed since 2018. He can run, he has an 80-grade arm from the outfield, he hits for significant power and he’s a good defender. The big question mark is his hit tool, making contact.
So it was not thought that he was a poor defender, and in fact it sounded like his defense was a bit better thought of than most of us recall. Still, the general consensus is that he was considerably down the pecking order of the young OFers, and would probably be traded.
The problem is that he was not traded. He was given up for cash considerations. How much cash? What was the cash used for? It is really hard to determine what kind of value we received in return without another player involved but I am assuming the cash we received is not equal to the 11 WAR he has given Texas.
gscottar, good questions. I’ve wondered the same. It makes you wonder what is behind the scenes with some of these decisions — kind of like Gallen’s suspicion the Cards moved him because he didn’t attend a voluntary offseason camp.
Some people really believe Arozarena’s fate was sealed with his infamous locker room livestream. Sometimes behavior off the diamond matters, but I doubt that was the sole reason because he hadn’t received the reps I thought he should get even prior to the livestream.
On Arozarena, the video might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. It definitely showed poor judgement and it embarrassed Shildt and the organization.
On Garcia, does anyone think the Cards purposely took less for him (cash) from Texas than some other team would have paid? What would be the purpose of that? When they DFAed him, they formally made him available to all teams and almost certainly took the best (maybe only? since it seemed modest) offer.
That is the first of the two times when any organization could have had Garcia for very little. The second was 15 months later when the Rangers DFAed him again, as already discussed.
Jnevel, at first I was gonna say I would take Thomas over O’Neill or Carlson right now and then it dawned on me because of something you said! I bet either O’Neill or.Carlson goes on to become a success after they leave the Cardinals! So the question becomes, why does this keep happening and why aren’t people losing their jobs because it keeps happening! We are NOT developing the players we have to their fullest potential and they go somewhere else, develop and produce!
It is so obvious it’s ridiculous! We NEED new leadership that can help develop these talented kids and make them stars for us instead of someone else!Gorman, Donovan, and Nootbaar all look like good development. Walker and Winn are still incredibly young but extremely promising on the development side. Herrera also looks very promising. We also developed Burleson quickly into a major leaguer, although his defense in the outfield is poor due to his size (he needs 1B but Goldschmidt has that covered) and Baker into a big power threat that obliterated AAA. We’ll see how that carries over to the majors with more consistent playing time. And they did develop Carlson and O’Neill as well who had a lot of injuries this year but are at least average players when healthy. We’ve developed a lot of offensive talent. Young offensive talent that is all younger than the pique 27-31 ages. That means that by 2025, a lot of these guys may be great. Maybe anyway. What we haven’t developed lately is pitching. Almost none of it. At least not impact pitchers. And that’s because they quit focusing on drafting them and they got a bit unlucky on the ones they did draft at the top (Gingery and Roberts with injuries). I’m more than ok with blaming the FO for that. It’s 100% their fault. And chasing a middle of the order bat also netted us Ozuna for Alcantara and Gallen. Again, that ended up as a disastrous mistake – especially when combined with the previous mistake of not focusing on pitching. 100% overly aggressive mistake by the front office.
But Garcia isn’t at all their fault. Sometimes guys just bloom late and finally put it all together. I’m happy for him. I’m not sure it continues. But this year really was tremendous considering where he came from.
Jnevel, you are probably more an expert than I am! I just watch and hope! But, it seems like we have spread a lot of talent around baseball lately and I guess my thing is, if we would have kept the ones we let get away and let go of some of the ones we hang onto we would be a lot better off right now.
Sure every team loses some good ones and make mistakes but this current FO has made so many mistakes lately that we are currently the worst team in the worst division in baseball!
It seems like some still want to defend Mo and Ollie and the others but I just don’t see it! As we drop further and further into the pit I think they will become less and less defensible!
From Goold’s chat today on the players who got away…
All teams experience this. Yordan Alvarez is one of the most-feared hitters in the game and an October powerhouse for the Astros. The Dodgers traded him to Houston for Josh Fields. Imagine if Alvarez was batting after Betts and Freeman in that LA lineup? The Cubs writers for years liked to point out how the Rockies got D. J. LeMahieu in a deal that sent Ian Stewart and Casey Weathers to the Cubs. Heck, Gallen came to the Diamondbacks in a straight up deal for Jazz Chisholm Jr., and that’s OK because if you look back it was the Tony La Russa D-Backs who traded Dansby Swanson to Atlanta for … Shelby Miller. These are all anecdotal, and we can flip the story too — remember the days of Cardinals’ “Devil Magic” and some national outlets called it, because they always seemed to make a deal or signing or waiver claim and get a Ryan Ludwick or Abe Nunez to emerge. Each team deals with this. And the Cardinals are in a spot where, currently, the ones they’ve missed on are shining in October — and they aren’t even present.
All teams experience this.
Congrats to Garcia on two more homers in game 7. He’s having an Arozarena-like post season for sure. Good luck to him in the WS.
The truth is the Cardinals have been pretty average to below average beginning with the all-star break in 2015.
Until all the wheels fell off this year, what they have done since 2016 is play slightly better than .500 baseball and then go on a late season run – after many teams throw in the towel on the season – to squeeze out a playoff spot or just miss.
I guess the financial model has worked out really well – the baseball side not so much.
The Cardinals were far from favorites to win the WS in 2006 and 2011. The stars will have to align perfectly for them to win another one.
All teams do go through the situation where they make what turns out to be a bad deal. It just seems that the Cardinals have recently given away several top players instead of one here and one there.
My fear is we are going to do it again. I get the sense Mo & Co. will make a Mulder-Haren/Barton type deal where they send a young pitcher like Liberatore or Woodford along with a Dylan Carlson and a top prospect for a proven starter. Then in two years the proven starter will be on the shelf, while the pitcher we sent is a 1 or 2 starter and one of the position players is better than the guy we are using in that spot.
Most of the time I do not like deals where you send three or so younger unproven guys for that one piece you think you need.
Cub fan here, I don’t think the Cardinals can beat themselves up about Garcia, some things you just never know. Need I bring up Lou Brock?
I am a little biased because I was a big Garcia fan and was not critical of the Cardinals international splurge where they picked up Garcia, Arozarena and Oviedo.
But Garcia clearly had two high tools. Power and throwing arm. A key would be who did they keep on the 40 man roster. Today’s roster (probably far from set) includes Naile, Rodriguez, Suarez, Zuniga, Querecuto and Siani. How many of them have big tools.
And why did they give Ravelo and Drew Robinson major league time in 2019 and not Garcia.
I am sure that part of the reason to give up on Garcia was the need to protect others. Wonder how many of them had two above average tools.
In the last 6 or 7 years Mo has come up on the short end of free agent signings and trades even with the addition of Aranado and Goldschmidt.
Add to that 11 international players first signed by the Cardinals played in the major leagues this season. Those 11 players have accumulated a WAR of 81.6 Unfortunately only Herrera remains. Net WAR of those 11 players in 2023 was 16.2 including Alcantara (3.4), Arozarena (3.5), Garcia (4.2), Oviedo (2.0) and Solalno (1.9). Total net WAR for the Cardinals for 2023 was 24.8.
Rationalizations could be made for each of them. Just like people are doing with Garcia. But he was in our organization from day one and we saw him all day every day. We had vastly more opportunity to gage his skills, advancement, competitiveness and makeup than anybody else. The argument that 29 other orgs that had a fraction of our look passed misses the point and amounts to a lame smoke screen. A comparable argument can rebuff whatever excuses and free passes people want to make about the FO/org’s incompetence. Spending some money this winter is a band-aid that will fall off soon enough.
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