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Rick Ankiel was one of the most talented pitchers I have ever watched in person.
When he was coming through AAA in Memphis I watched him throw 95 mph fastballs and 58-59 mph change ups. For strikes.
He was THAT good. Then something got to him mentally. I was watching the playoff game where he threw all the wild pitches.
Had that not happened I think he would have been as good or close to as good as Ohtani.
The Cardinals and Marlins finally swap offense for pitching
The Cardinals trade OF Tyler O’Neill to the Marlins for LHP JesusThat’s one way to save our season.
Edman is the last player that you get rid of. Why trade a fast, gold glove 2B/SS that is a switch hitter?
Tommy is a good player, but not critical to the future. The middle infield is going to be Gorman and Winn, possibly as early as 2024, and maybe even late this year.
And Edman has value, which is why he can bring a player or two that we need – namely pitching.
As the old saying goes, to get value you have to give up value.
The Cardinals and Marlins finally swap offense for pitching
The Cardinals trade OF Tyler O’Neill to the Marlins for LHP JesusThat’s one way to save our season.
I did not even know Jesus was a left-hander. But if there is one way for this team to pull off a miracle, this would be it. 🙂
I agree 100% that the Cardinals have strayed too far away from their core values of pitching and defense and it is costing them dearly. My theory is that I blame it on Theo Epstein. During the Cubs rebuild 10 years ago he drafted and traded for all of those power bats like Bryant, Baez, Schwarber, Rizzo, Soler, etc… which led them to winning a world series in 2016 and pounding the Cardinals silly in the 2015 NLDS. I think Schwarber hit a 500 foot HR off of Kevin Siegrist.
Mo watches this and says to his scouting department “This is what we need to be developing internally.” So hence comes Gorman, Burleson, Walker, Yepez, Baez, etc…. And I love the potential power those guys bring to the table but they are all defensively challenged and there is only one DH slot so simple math tells us that is a problem.
The most creative idea I’ve seen yet, but tell me this. Why wasn’t he able to elevate the Marlins? 😉
I bet the song, “Jesus Was A Lefty” will be on Wainwright’s new CD…
I am assuming that Ny was referring to Jesus Luzardo. Trading O’Neill for him actually wouldn’t be a bad trade for the Cardinals but I doubt the Marlins would do it since Luzardo has more team control remaining.
Cardinal pitching splits, compared to the MLB average, and presented without comment.
1st inning .921 OPS allowed. (MLB avg. .774)
2nd inning .980. (MLB avg. .725)Low Leverage .683 (MLB avg. .720)
High Leverage .925 (MLB avg. .758)Late & Close .990 (MLB avg. .682)
And one more set of splits:
Redbird pitchers with Contreras behind the plate, 5.16 ERA and .824 OPS allowed (200 IP).
Redbird pitchers with Knizner behind the plate, 3.53 and .690 OPS (80 IP).It helps to know the pitchers and the system. If that last one still looks like that at the end of the season, we’re going to have problems the next few years.
Nostalgia, but not the good kind.
the last time the Cardinals were thirteen games under .500 was 08/26/97, here’s a throwback to the lineups that day pic.twitter.com/Z2rm0ojoi4
— Stew (@StewStilez) May 6, 2023
97-98 is a good comp for this year’s team. Good offense with potential for more, but the pitching is a complete anchor and not in a good way. I could see this version ending the same way…under .500 followed by a “rebound” to the playoff periphery before the F.O realizes they have to do things differently.
Thank God for the Kansas City Royals and Oakland Atlethics, two of the three worst run franchises in baseball, because they are the only thing currently keeping your collection of misfit Cardinals from being the worst team in the league right now. So what would I do? I’d clean house from top to bottom.
I’m with the ‘let’s just let season play out crowd’ as far as players go.
I think the best line I read was something like, ‘why give up prospects to make a run at 80 wins?’. I have to agree.
We now need to just hunker down and see if the Cardinals play themselves back into the division race or not.
If the team goes on a massive winning streak and plays .700 baseball long enough to get 10-12 games over .500 then Mo can make the same types of moves he made last season.
If they play marginally better but end up sliding back / spinning their wheels with a couple more 2-8 or 3-7 stretches mixed in then – as was said – why mortgage the future just to be average this year?
If the team stays bad and just never really gets out of the blocks then we will be on the other side of the equation and will be sellers at the trade deadline. Looking to trade some immediate help to a contender or two for a stockpile of young potential.
Yes, this would be an actual rebuild but we haven’t had one of those in a long time and it might beat being stuck watching more or less average baseball year after year after year.
Look at what’s really happened since the all star break in 2015…
If we are sellers in late July, you gotta think Matz, Mikolas and Contreras are the most enticing contracts to move. You want to get back some quality prospects for those guys, but right now I would start to think about what I can get for those three. Obviously Matz especially needs to step it up or he will not be wanted by anyone. I do not know the “no trade” status of any of those guys, so that could be a hinderance where you would need to get a guy to waive that perk. But if a guy sees a chance to be on a potential champion, maybe they would do it.
DeJong is another guy, but at least his albatross of a commitment ends after this year and he will likely be gone next year anyway. Edman could be one who brings back some quality. And most likely we will throw in one of a group from O’Neill, Carlson, Yepez, and Burleson. Any one of those guys will likely do better in a new scenario than they have done here. They all have the ability to be better than they have been anyway.
Arenado is another guy we are on the hook for, but I think he will still produce and is a guy you want to keep in a rebuilding effort. We may be looking at a rebuild of sorts, but not a complete overhaul like the Cubs did.
Then maybe you play August and September this way, depending on who is still here:
Herrera/Knizner, c
Goldy/Baker, 1b
Gorman, 2b
Winn, ss
Arenado, 3b
Walker, lf
Carlson/Mercado, cf
Nootbaar, rf
Yepez/Burleson (if either are still here), dhGoldschmidt is 35? He could bring in a haul. Why keep him for a rebuild?
I think you keep Arenado as he is young enough to see the other side of a rebuild and still be productive.
None of these decisions has to be made today.
Get to mid-June and see what the record is. Then Mo can decide to either buy, sell, or stand pat.
As far as Marmol goes: He probably needs to go to a sensitivity & public relations seminar. Yes, he has made some seemingly strange decisions but in his defense he’s trying to make chicken salad out of chicken s**t.
For me, at this point I don’t care if they keep him or can him like tuna.
The team is so bad I can’t really tell if he is holding them down or not.
For now I’d say just keep him because unfortunately at the present time he is the most entertaining thing about Cardinal baseball.
Here’s a sobering thought.
If the Cardinals start playing .700 baseball tonight that means every 10 game stretch (so call that 11.5 calendar days) they would claw back +4 games against .500.
So it would take 34-35 calendar days to get back to within a game of .500.
It would then taken another 34-35 days to move to 11 games over .500.
If they get started tonight playing .700 baseball it will take about 10 weeks to get to 11 games over .500. So that would occur right about the middle of July.
I’m so confounded at this point that with every loss the I can only picture the 2024 Cardinals. The semi-rebuild has become the clearest route to take. Let’s see what kind of player values we have at the deadline and find some younger guys with solid potential. Its very difficult to speculate but we have some good suspects to look at. Geez…. I hope that we’re left with no one to dangle at the play-off contenders. Who will be exempt will be younger guys with potential to fit into a new-look team.
Who fits into that category?…. and who will be on the hook? Thoughts.
ps… IMO, surely there is no sense in pondering the “even ifs”.
I see that our soon to be manager was the starting CF against the Reds that day back in 1999.
As for the upcoming rebuild, at this point, I don’t think anyone should be off the table for trade. If the asking price is met then go for it. I would be very tempted to trade Arenado for a massive haul then slide Gorman over to 3B.
Would the methodology used to choose which players to get be different that that used to choose the players we’ve got?
I don’t know bling but the Cardinals are entering territory they haven’t seen in a long time, which is being a seller. I honestly can’t remember the last time we were sellers. I mean if the Cardinals actually try to be buyers at this deadline that would be one of the most absurd things I have seen, barring some miraculous winning streak. It would be a face saving move trying to hide the fact that they blew it with this roster.
I agree.
BenFred: Riding the Tyler O'Neill roller coaster must be growing tiresome for Cardinals https://t.co/3RgkcSq5DA
— STL Cardinals News (@STLCardsNews) May 6, 2023
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