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@gscottar wrote:
[T]his organization has muddled itself into a quagmire of mediocrity and there seems to be no way out unless they do something outside of their comfort zone. Those options could include one or many of these actions:
1. Make changes at the highest levels of the front office.
2. Make a managerial change after giving out an extension.
3. Raise the 40 many paroll closer to 220M instead of 178M.
4. Jettison high priced veterans to restock the farm.
5. Stop signing FA’s with a QO that prevent us from maximizing from the draft.
6. Do a deep dive on our player development system and figure out why our players stagnate here.
7. Commit to an actual rebuild instead of being stuck in the 75-85 win total that gets you nowhere.Those options don’t all go together which is kind of the point. The Cardinals need to figure out which way they want to go. Open up the pocketbook and try to spend their way out of their problems or retreat and try to rebuild it a piece of a time. This idea of building a half*** team in hopes of snagging the final wildcard spot is driving everyone crazy.
@gscottar, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of the fundamental tension between various competing objectives and strategies, and the need for some hard, perhaps uncomfortable choices.The way I think about it, the Cardinals have publicly stated at least three primary objectives:
1. Compete every year;
2. Maintain a payroll commensurate with revenue (which now places them at roughly MLB-median); and
3. Build around/through the farm system.Since about 2017–when I thought they had kind of petered out and were due for at least a soft reset–I’ve always thought that ultimately they need to pick two of those goals. Given the obvious internal tensions, it just seems unrealistic to me to purse all three and attempt to have it all–especially when the farm system isn’t extraordinarily productive. But they don’t seem to see it that way, at least so far.
Wow. Thin-skinned much? You pimp Burleson tirelessly but when he fails, you point at the rest of the team. Hint: Burly isn’t the savior or answer.
He would be a serviceable 25th-26th bench piece on a balanced team. While cheap and young.
RBK, I don’t necessarily think the Cardinals have the wrong plan. I think they have the wrong people trying to execute the plan. They just make too many mistakes in personnel decisions and have gotten stale. The deck needs to be shuffled.
As best I can tell, the plan is to continue to pursue all three objectives simultaneously, which is why they didn’t hit the reset button a little harder at the deadline last year and during the off-season. That means more (false-) precision targeting of 85-88 wins and a lottery ticket. I just think that choice is unrealistic unless they have a massively productive farm system (which means significantly better international free agent acquisitions and infrastructure, better drafting, AND better development of all of the above).
That Burleson for Goldschmidt at 1B suggestion in the article I referenced seems a little more intriguing after tonite. Burleson is as good of a hitter as the Cardinals have right now. He should be hitting ahead of Goldschmidt and Arenado in the current lineup.
LOL, less than 3 hours ago in this very same thread you were saying you were “very disappointed in Burleson’s offensive development.”
Human weathervane.
So perspectives change. Burleson looked like an All Star type hitter tonite. Great to see. Don’t you think?
RBK, I’ll take Burleson at the plate against a RHP, right now, over Goldschmidt and Arenado. Would you?
Shady, I would not. Arenado is outhitting Burleson in every way against RH pitching. Check out their splits for 2024 at Baseball Reference.
The general idea of being a draft and develop team reinforced by a few free agents and trades while maintaining a payroll near the top 10 can be a consistent winner if executed properly. That means you have to draft the right players, actually be able to develop your players instead of watch them instantly do better elsewhere, sign the right free agents, and trade for the right players, and hire the right manager and coaching staff.
Are you always going to get it right? Of course not that isn’t possible but the Cardinals have whiffed too many times in too many areas and it has finally caught up with them. I just keep wondering how many chances are these guys going to get to get it right.
This thread isn’t about Burleson, so I’m going to stop right here as I know this is just the usual Burly-bait.
This organization must get better at 2 things to show major improvement!
Player Evaluation
Player Development
Both have been a solid F the last 4 years are so
We will trade a few big names at the dead line but who will we get? It much based on the last 4 years
We MUST get rid of Mo and the rest and hit the reset buttonAnd I really chuckle when I read that all we need to is fire the manager. Ok, this is a manager who was not only hired by this front office but then they doubled down and gave him an extension. These are the guys that are making every decision throughout the organization and you trust them to do that? Ok….
It does not matter who the manager of this team is right now – you could put the best manager in history in charge and this is still a sub .500 team.
@gscottar, I’m on board with building through the farm system (assuming meaningful changes), but their revenue (pre-DSG disruption) was closer to the Rockies’ (the median) than the top 10–the distribution of local revenue has continued to skew rightward toward the larger market teams, so the median is now meaningfully lower than the mean/average. Being a top-10 payroll team may no longer be viable based on the team’s stated parameters. So the combination of building from the farm system plus a roughly median payroll probably means they’ll have to be more patient than permitted when one is trying to “compete every year.”
I’m not sure we really know where the Cardinals rank in revenue. I know that other teams have bigger and more stable tv deals but I also know that the Cardinals have ranked top 3 in attendance a huge majority of the last 20 years. I suspect they could have a top 10 payroll if they wanted to. Regardless they have to make better decisions elsewhere than just payroll. How can teams like Tampa, Cleveland, and Milwaukee be so consistently good on a very modest budget?
To me, one of the areas where they are lagging the most is international free agency (acquisition and development). And the handful of guys they have signed and developed over the last 10 years or so were traded away. When was the last homegrown international FA signing to make a significant contribution for the Cardinals? Carlos Martinez in 2015-2017? He was originally signed in 2010.
Per Forbes only 9 MLB teams are assessed as being worth more than the Cardinals. Also per Forbes, the Cardinals are thought to have an operating income of $57.1 M. In any case, none of MLB teams will ever fully disclose the sorts of profits they realize. Not even to the Govt…
Fixing a baseball organization through the draft / trading for prospects is a long, long term plan – and you can miss much on picking and developing your acquisitions.
I think you have to assume 3-4 years for most guys to start appearing in the majors and making an impact don’t you?
I think Mo should step down. It’s broken and he knows it. He’s gave it his best shot, within Bills parameters. He’s seen both the highs and lows, and it’s time for a new perspective, from the top.
His contract and severence pay is up to them. You know Bill will take care of him. It’s time Mo, step down, move on.
I agree JJ. BDW should ask Mo to step down while honoring the financial terms of his contract, appoint Bloom as PBO, fire Marmol and replace him with Clapp or trade for Schumaker, then start preparing to remove the dead weight at the deadline, then start thinking about 2025. It is really the only way. We simply can’t keep doing the same thing over and over with the same people.
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