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I am not too concerned with the over-crowded outfield and middle infield right now. We are not going anywhere in ‘23 so there was not a need to clarify that this time. Mo can work on that over the off-season, as well as the pitching depth.
Meanwhile we have two months for Liberatore and Hudson, and perhaps a couple of other guys to get regular rotation turns to see what we have. But Marmol needs to manage in more of a training mode. By that I mean he needs to allow starters to fail – if they get in a jam in the third inning, don’t go to the bullpen. Let them see what they can so under stress. Best to learn now when the pressure is low.
#1 available starter. #1 available reliever. Decente guys in Flaherty and Dejong. Carson reportedly being available. And we cant get a top 100 prospect?
I think we got a pretty good return on these trades considering we were dealing away average rentals. We weren’t exactly shopping Steve Carlton and Bruce Sutter. But I highly doubt any of the prospects we got will make a significant contribution in St. Louis in 2024. Memphis and Springfield should be much better though.
Obviously Mo and his crew have a LOT of work to do over the winter. We need one elite starter and a couple of two’s/three’s to just begin with then hope what we return can provide adequate depth. There will definitely be some trades and hopefully at least one big free agent signing. I expect Carlson and Contreras to be dealt over the winter and one of Edman or Gorman. Donovan and O’Neill probably stay.
We accomplished nothing, D report card at best, got rid of apples and simply got apples in return. Quit using the free agent thing as an excuse as we constantly do. I know a few of you (hard to believe it would be most though) will disagree with my assessment and fire posts back at me that we did well to get pitching prospects. Problem with this is, we have a history of not being able to judge pitching prospects (position players yes, pitching NO) for the most part and if by a miracle we did judge it this time, the pitching prospects are not going to help us for 2-3 years at best and if they don’t pan out, right back to square one which is the scenario we have been repeating for years now. Some will disagree but in order to truly move forward and be serious WS contenders again, Mo needs to be fired but we all know this is not going to happen. His recent dealings have made the DeWitt’s happy once again. It’s all about the $$ now and not the fans anymore. Sure would be helpful to have an actual Bonafide pitching coach as well. As far as Marmol, will give him a pass to this point as you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Give him the players and if he can’t win with them, he needs to go like all the other coaches in baseball are subject to. But then again, the DeWitt’s play a role there as well and gave him his chance and I’m sure his salary is minimal at best, so all works out, right ? Going to be a very frustrating 2-3 years, longer if our gamble as the future doesn’t happen. If we keep filling those seats guys, nothing is going to change!! I’d wager Goldy is gone next year at some point in the season.
Brock – it’s not a bleak future at all when you have this –
1B – Goldy
2B – Edman
SS – Winn
3B – Arenado
LF – O’Neill
CF – Nootbaar or Carlson
RF – Walker
C – Contreras or Herrera
DH – Gorman
Utility – DonovanThat’s a powerful group of position players.
Let’s wait and see who the pitchers are on the 40 man heading to ST.
Bob Reed – According to Baseball Reference, Contreras has a better WAR, Rtot, Rtot/yr, RF/9, and CS% than Knizner. In fact, Contreras CS% is 9 points ABOVE the league average.
In the categories where Knizner is better it is only slightly better than Contreras with 243 less chances than Contreras has.
If only MO had a looking glass into the future to see what
Herrera was going to do this year.2022 – .268/.374/.396/.770
2023 – .303/.435/.546/.981So he went for the outside catcher who had been an All Star 3 out of the last 4 years (including 2022) and was a part of a 2016 World Champion team.
8-2-23 MLB top-30
This is the revised list with acquired prospects. The list should be further tweaked according to 2023 play on the diamond I would think…. += ScottII-Mautz-T.Baker-Pages-Escobar-Cornwall-Mills-Rajcic-Paniagua-Dunn-Church-Curialle and then there are a handful of guys having poor ’23 seasons.
1-Winn
2-Hence
3-Graceffo
4-ROBY ETA ’24
%-Hjerp
6-ROBBERSE ETA ’24
7-McGreevy
8-SAGGESE ETA ’24
9-PRIETO ETA ’24
10-Mejia
11-Bernal
12-Baez
13-Mautz
14-Gomez
15-Hansen
16-Crooks
17-Paniagua
18-Rajcic
19-Cho
20-Antico
21-Bedell
22-KLOFFENSTEIN ETA ’24
23-SHOWALTER ETA ’25
24-Loutos
25-ScottII
26-ROM ETA ’23
27-Granillo
28-Nunez
29-Baker
30-Pagesbccran–Hitting is not the problem, this year or next. My question is, how many from that proposed 2024 lineup you posted will be around when we get out pitching house in order?
I wonder how much we would have saved salary wise, if we had resigned all these players that were traded? 50 million plus? In Dejongs case I am assuming the teams takes the $12 million option, which likely wouldn’t have happened.
Was interesting to see NYs prospect list. Can’t wait to see Brian’s merged list including 2023 draft picks with prospects traded for at the deadline.
I mentioned on another thread several questions/concerns about the MLB Pipeline list that NY shared.
What we are up here to is that Blake is in the process of writing his in-depth scouting reports on all the new acquisitions, then we will sit down and place them all into our Top 50. The first article in the series will run in the morning (Thursday).
bccran my friend, you have never heard me complaining about position players as we do do a great job seeing talent there. They simply do not possess that same talent recognition when it comes to seeing pitching potential. Haven’t for a good many years now, even before Mo. As I believe you like to say, prove is in the stats. When was the last time we really had a marquee pitcher, be honest now.
From 2015 through 2020, the Cards used their first pick, which gets about half of their signing bonus money, on position players in five of the six years. The only variance was Zack Thompson in 2019.
If you focus on position players, that is what you end up with.
Brian, Blake is in the process of writing his in-depth scouting reports on the new pitching prospects. Isn’t this really a major part of the problem? All those involved with Blake have proven, they are not good judges of prospect pitching talent. They are making their decisions on the money that would need to be spent to acquire impact pitchers and simply are not going to do it. Their Cardinals Way is impact position players supported by an average pitching staff and most likely make it to the playoffs since they are in a very weak division. Doesn’t dawn on them that the reason we usually make a quick exit from the playoffs is due to lack of pitching. Does no good to score 5-6 a game when you are giving up 6-7 . Equates to a loss no matter how you look at it.
Right. We went through many years of searching and searching for impact bats. That’s what led the Cards to deal pitching for Tyler O’Neill and then led to the fateful decision to deal more pitching for Marcell Ozuna. And then probably led to the Cardinals focusing their drafts on getting elite middle of the order hitters – defense be damned. And we as fans are at fault too. We were the ones screaming to acquire middle of the order bats. Now we’re all screaming about top of the rotation starters. And the circle rolls around . . .
BC, you lost me at “catcher”. Contreras glove side is weak, very weak. He does not receive pitches well.
His arm is plus. His bat is above avg, but he doesn’t catch well. It’s like having a 1Bman who doesn’t catch well. It’s their primary task.
Contreras was signed for lineup value and the org admittedly found out about his catching the hard way.
We actually dealt even a little more pitching for Goldschmidt and Arenado although those trades haven’t come back to haunt us (Luke Weaver and Tony Locey and whatever the guy’s name that was a 10th round pick). We needed bats because our offense sucked after Pujols and Holiday left. So we traded from our old strength, pitching. Except we never really restocked the pitching. That was the problem. And when you’re never picking above 15th, and you go 5 of 6 years not drafting a pitcher first, then you get what we got.
2015 – 2018 Hitters Drafted 1st 3 rounds:
Nick Plummer
Bryce Denton
Harrison Bader
Delvin Perez
Dylan Carlson
Scott Hurst
Nolan Gorman
Luken Baker
Mateo Gil2015 – 2018 Pitchers Drafted 1st 3 Rounds
Jake Woodford
Jordan Hicks
Dakota Hudson
Connor Jones – inconsistency
Zac Gallen – traded
Griffin Roberts – injuries and suspensionIt’s a little lopsided 9 to 6 in favor of the hitters. Plus, every first pick here was a hitter. Add on top of that trading Gallen and all the injuries that hit Griffin Roberts. That’s why we are where we are. I don’t think it’s we can’t develop pitchers. We just haven’t had hardly any to develop. After the 3rd round, the success rate of prospects generally goes downhill quite a bit.
This is definitely a choice that we can pin on the Cardinals brass. They over prioritized hitters in favor of pitchers because they had always had a pipeline of pitchers and they had struggled for a long time to produce hitters.
gscottar – Doubt very seriously they would trade Gorman. He’s a big part of the future.
I don’t want him to be traded but we may have to in order to get the pitching we need. They can’t do it all with free agency and we have only so many high caliber chips to trade.
2012 – Wacha
2013 – Gonzales
2014 – Weaver, Flaherty, Gomber, Ponce
2015 – Woodford, Helsley
2016 – Hudson, Gallen
2017 – 0
2018 – 0
2019 – Thompson, Pallante
2020 – Hence
2021 – McGreevy, Graceffo
2022 – Hjerpe, MautzThey’ve gone away to a certain extent of the model that was so successful – draft for pitching and use pitchers as trade chips as necessary for position players.
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