- This topic has 2,485 replies, 69 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
As to this winter, it probably doesn’t make any difference anyway. I don’t think BillMo want to lay out big bucks for 5 or more years for a pitcher, so we won’t be getting either of them. The top end guy(s) will come via trade IMO, and have lower potential to end in a big contract fiasco. FA acquisitions will be the next rung dowm IMO.
It would be worth a pizza and beer bet on which has a better 2024. But actually, I don’t think we ever squared up on our last pizza and beer bet, and I don’t even remember what it was or who won.
I don’t think so either and I don’t blame them. Too risky of a proposition to commit to paying a large sum of money to a pitcher over an extended amount of time no matter how much of a name brand he is. One pitch could douse his lights for a season or more. In my view, trades and rolling the dice on low grade FA’s is the best way to go. Might get lucky with a FA signing along the lines of Chris Carpenter.
Equal value trades don’t make a roster better. Low value FA’s (like Matz) don’t make a roster better. “Try to get lucky” is why we are in the cellar. That is a blueprint for failure, 1td, again.
If BillyMo doesn’t sign a top tier SP FA, they don’t deserve the fan base they have.
There is 45mil of this seasons payroll available this winter, WITHOUT raising our payroll rank from 16th. The difference between 16th and 10th is another 35mil (2023).
We will see if Bill has the stomach for it. The opportunity to get better is in signing additional players to the current core, not equal value trades subtracting from the roster.
Well, not that I wouldn’t like to see them unleash a lot of money for a marquis name, but I just don’t think they’ll do that and if they don’t, I can’t bring myself to complain too much because it’s such a risky thing to do. Besides, at this point it’s my view that the total lack of leadership is the primary contributor to the utter failure of this year’s edition. I’m not sure they could win with a rotation similar to the Braves of the mid 90’s with the circus clown that currently occupies the top step. As long as he’s the field manager of this ballclub, it’ll be a second rate team.
The Cardinals have proven to be reluctant to eat a bad contract. You have to be willing to do that if you are going to play the buy a title game. Eat the bad contracts and try again. You end up with a high payroll and a lot of it is not doing you any good. Isn’t the whole reason to embrace Mo’s money ball type analytics approach to avoid the slippery slope of the buy a title game? Is Mo going to tell BDW this whole thing isn’t working, I want to buy what we need?
Itd, avoiding the “risk” of spending big on FA pitchers, due to fear of failure, is an extremely non-competitive mindset.
I can only hope BillyMo doesn’t build a scared roster with the funds available.
Fortunately the Chiefs season is about to begin, and the Cardinals offseason belongs to the FO. BillyMo’s actions will describe their level of competitiveness.
Measuring the FO success this off season by how much money they spend can be a foolish thing. It not how much, it’s how.
I agree that how the money is spent is the biggest thing. However, this offseason, the Cardinals need to spend a good amount of money on pitching or they will have another season like this one in 2024. They tried to “luck out” on their staff and it failed. They better learn from their mistake.
jj-cf-stl
Pads, so the proposal is:Q and Senga for Donovan, Herrera and Carlson?
It got kinda confusing with Monty mixed in, but he’s a FA, so is the above correct?
Yes.
If they aren’t competing in 2024, then it’s a situation where you’d look at all the FAs to be at that point, Senga excluded.
Perhaps we could trade for Raley and Ottavino from them for instance. Both have a year left so wouldn’t be in their 2025 plans.
Those 4 would add about $40M in payroll though and we would lose just a few million. But we would get two good starters and two good relievers. The Mets would be under the luxury tax and they would have some good players for 2025 and beyond. (Herrera is probably not someone they’d want, but Liberatore could replace him or something)
bccran said:
Measuring the FO success this off season by how much money they spend can be a foolish thing. It not how much, it’s how.
The issue as I see it is that some assume the Cards can search the bargain bins and hope for in-house options to fill the gaps. That has been the general strategy, but coming off 2023, most see the need to be more aggressive. Even Mo admits that.
Some others may want to spend like the Padres or Mets, which isn’t The Cardinals Way. However, the facts are the facts. The Cardinals are no longer a top 10 spending team and are not even close. They are losing ground against the competition in both spending and results on the field. These facts are indisputable.
Many feel the right spot is somewhere in the middle but exactly where is impossible to gauge. But a change in course is needed.
510 posts and the subject grinds on. It kind of feels like those old dentist’s drills when I was a kid, dead slow and they went on and on and on, sometimes hitting a nerve, sometimes not. And the offseason awaits with more of the same. Perhaps we should talk about baseball movies, or baseball expressions (can of corn, etc), or what’s the best seat in Busch Stadium. Rah Cardinals!
I’m glad you replied before I did BW.
Well said.Now if we can avoid those foolish lists of 30 names this offseason, that were supposed to show how deep we were in pitching for 2023….
I’ll let this seasons pitching results show just how uninformed those lists were.
We have a middling budget and get cellar dwellars results. The “how”, by this FO is in question, because they are working off of a major fail.
The “how”, by this FO is in question,
There are endless examples of how not. Yankees, Mets, Bosox, Angels, etc.
When their big FA contracts blow up in their face, they spend more on different guys, and try again. My question is this: If this winter’s contracts blow up in Mo’s face, then what? Or are we living in make believe land where that can’t happen? Because, presumably, Mo and the gang are better than those guys.
The Angels may be the all-time mystery puzzle. How do you explain a team that’s not been able to enjoy even a modicum of success with names like Pujols, Trout and Ohtani? And to further fuel the enigma, the only WS Championship that team’s ever had was ochestrated with names like Glaus, Spezio and Eckstein who are certainly not going to receive a plaque anytime soon and who all eventually ended up in a Redbird uniform with the latter two names being key components in the Cardinal’s ’06 WS Championship run. At any rate, Trout, Pujols and Ohtani seems like it ought to pay some type of dividends. But nothing…Zilch.
I would not dismiss Thompsons chances. He has twice the stuff of Steele.
That is quite the compliment C27. Steele is going to get some serious CY Young consideration this year.
Besides, at this point it’s my view that the total lack of leadership is the primary contributor to the utter failure of this year’s edition. I’m not sure they could win with a rotation similar to the Braves of the mid 90’s with the circus clown that currently occupies the top step. As long as he’s the field manager of this ballclub, it’ll be a second rate team.
My view is that a combination of Whitey Herzog, Tony LaRussa, Joe Torre, Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver, Jim Leyland, Bobby Cox, Terry Francona, Bruce Bochy, Walter Alston, and Connie Mack couldn’t have won with this pitching staff. They probably would have figured out how to squeeze out a few more wins but there is some old saying about blood and turnips.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle though. I think it is safe to say that just about everyone involved in the Cardinal organization has had a hand in this debacle. DeWitt, Mo, Marmol, Blake, and numerous players.
As I have stated before I don’t think the Cardinals are an organization that should ever hire a rookie manager yet we have done it three times in a row and none of those three managers hired themselves.
Cleaning up the OF and MI roster spots should be a goal as well.
I can’t imagine them not signing at least one of the top SP’s and trading for another.
COT’s seems to typically be the closest as far as payroll, with current contracts and Arb/pre arb salaries they would be around $140 for 2024. Adding just 5% to the $176M this year puts them around $185M for next year.
That’s plenty of room to sign a Nola type and trade for a top starter and several BP pieces.
I see Knizner being a solid chip also.
Obviously I get my pick of cherries, gscottar, but in ’06 TLR and his lieutenant Dave Duncan won it all with six SP’ers. Those six SP’ers and their respective ERA’s that season consisted of Chris Carpenter/3.09, Jeff Suppan/4.12, Anthony Reyes/5.06, Jeff Weaver/5.18, Jason Marquis/6.02 and Mark Mulder/7.14. Mulder was long gone by June with a bad rotator cuff. The great Chris Carpenter “only” won 15 games that season. Reyes was 5-8 with an ERA north of 5.00. Weaver was scavenged a couple of weeks prior to the deadline, and Suppan wasn’t anything more than a 4th or 5th guy of any 5 man rotation, although he did receive the NLCS MVP for his outstanding performance vs. the Mets during that ’06 post-season. Obviously I’m not a fortune teller, but no one will ever be able to convince me that if the Redbirds had a manager and pitching coach with half of the baseball experience and knowledge of TLR and Dave Duncan, the Cardinals would be 10 to 15 games better this season. And I’ll even comfortably state with conviction that if TLR and Dave Duncan currently occupied the Cardinal dugout my favorite team would possibly still be in contention for a post-season berth this season. That’s how bad I view the current leadership of this ballclub from top to bottom. I’ve never seen it worse and I’ve been watching for a minute or two.
1td, no doubt that 2006 was a magical finish although TLR only managed 83 wins in the regular season with that bunch. We certainly got hot at the right time though.
Then the following year in 2007 TLR could only muster 78 wins with the rotation led by Adam Wainwright, accompanied by the illustrious Braden Looper, Kip Wells, Anthony Reyes, Joel Pinero, and Todd Wellemeyer. That was a really bad pitching staff.
Maybe Tony could get 78 wins out of this group but I doubt more than that.
What did we give up to get Goldy? Weaver, Kelly, and Andy Young. What did we give up to get Arenado? Gomber, Gil, Locey, Montero, and Sommers.
Those are the types of trades I’d like to see in the off season, but for several pitchers to improve our rotation.
There are lots of possible trade chips – Edman, Donovan,
Knizner, Burleson, Baker, Gomez, Herrera, Prieto, Saggese, Dunn, McGreevy, Graceffo, Hjerpe, Mautz, Antico, Bernal, Crooks, Scott, Davis, Rajcic, Cho, etc.The bullpen can be bulked up with FAs.
We should all be grateful we got to watch on the worst Cardinals in history this year.
The Cardinals have DFA'd Taylor Motter for the 3rd time this year.
Here's where he ranks in Cardinals history among players with 80+ PA!
25 wRC+ (720/728)
.211 SLG (720/728)
2 RBI (717/728)
3 R (723/728)
37.8% K% (728/728)The nightmare! pic.twitter.com/4nAigBnbF9
— Reek (@CardinalsReek) September 5, 2023
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.