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Gray and Contreras are backloaded, significantly. The return will be minimal, and it should be.
Arenado was on my “dump” list.
Helsley will likely get bundled w/a hard to move salary like Mikolas or Matz, nullifying Helsleys value completly, but it meets Bills tanking agenda.
Gray is backloaded but Contreras’ salary is stable the next three years and not unreasonable.
They should not bundle Helsley. That would not be smart. There will be a ton of teams after him.
Re: “embrace the rebuild”.
I certainly was GS, and I had a roster in place that further embraced the pitching rebuild. Didn’t I.
Tanking is not building. Bill has abandoned the rebuild. This is a money grab, but, it’s his money to manage for the group.
I still want to build a 90 win roster. I don’t want to chase a 10yr fairytell that rarely comes true.
I don’t think it’s likely that the Cards bundle Helsley, either. He’s worth a pretty fair amount on his own, and should bring back a useful player or prospect.
Mikolas eats innings, so he may well be back. Matz could be a trade candidate in the Dexter Fowler mode.
Well, technically there was an exchange of…something. The Cards got something like a million bucks in return, IIRC.
Ptbnl, we paid the freight on Fowler. It was hidden behind the Arenado acquisition. Good PR decision.
I don’t get too involved in trade discussions. I think you should always trade an asset away if someone is willing to pay you more than you think that asset is worth (including the cost to replace it). So if someone comes along and says they are willing to take Gray and all of his contract and give us something in return, I’m listening intently. But as fans, we only ever see the aftermath. We rarely know who the Cardinals are asking for or who they are willing to trade until it’s over. I don’t think we should ever blindly say the team should trade away X player when we don’t know the offer. I know I did say we should have traded Helsley at the deadline simply because I assumed his value was at an all-time high, but I have no idea what offers were out there.
I get worried that the front office has obviously traded away assets forcefully. They forcefully traded away O’Neill and Carlson when they didn’t need to. They told everyone they were being traded away. That’s a way to get the least value, which is what we ended up with. Or when we were so desperate for a big bat and we traded a boatload to get Ozuna. Everyone knew we were desperate. Desperate is bad. I hope we don’t unload players in a desperate attempt to shed salary. But if the right offer is there, take advantage.
I think it’s ridiculous to talk of trading players as if there is an equivalent $25M, $18M, or $27M value in ‘player development’.
What is the point of trading players just to trade them. You aren’t getting prospect value or additional funds to spend on the team. You’re just cutting for the sake of cutting.
I have a question for BRIAN of anyone who feels qualified to answer it. It seems Mo and his boys are throwing Gary LaRocque under the bus as a primary reason for our failures, although they admit they haven’t kept up with minor league advances. What have you seen in the minors that possibly has slowed the growth of our players? I must say, in the next breath, baseball writers of minor league systems still call some of our players among the very best.
For 2025, that is the arrangement, in fact. Mo is running baseball ops as always. On strategic decisions that affect the long run, he will consult with BDW Jr. and Bloom. Bloom runs player dev and performance.
Thats fine and dandy to say that, but when they are going into a rebuild and cutting payroll every decision and move is a “strategic decicision that affects the long run”. And if Bloom is the guy going forward, maybe Mo has to sign off on everything, but Bloom and needs to be the one making the decisions. What incentive for Bloom have to take the PBO spot for 2026 if the guy there now doesn’t set things up for him? I wouldn’t want to be sitting where Bloom is and have the “boss” on his way out making decisions for the future when I’ve got to be the one to clean it up. I think they can say whatever they want to say about who’s PBO or whatever position. Mo and Girsh and whoever else in that front office that still have jobs is completely a “thank you for your years here and successes we’ve had. We won’t fire you, but you’re being demoted for the remainder of your signed contract.” Front office personal can interview to go elsewhere for promotions. Give them a lesser title with us and make a “promotion” to another organization a thing if they want it. Start getting rid of wasting money on all these assistant to the assistants and special advisors to the traveling secretary positions.
What is the point of trading players just to trade them. You aren’t getting prospect value or additional funds to spend on the team. You’re just cutting for the sake of cutting.
Because 83 wins with a -47 run dif isn’t going to cut it. They overachieved by many of the metrics and were closer to being last than 2nd in the division. Cubs and Reds both had significantly better underlying stats than the Cardinals did. And if you’re paying a top 10 payroll, have poor use of money spent through the whole organization, and ownership saying they can’t put more money into anywhere then something has to change. They are playing the same amount of playoff games as the White Sox this year. They aren’t winning, aging, more than a few pieces from making the playoffs, and a thin minor league system. So they aren’t trading just to trade them. They are cutting cost in the roster. Probably will be cutting cost with unnecessary front office positions they seem to have a lot of over the next few years as contracts expire. They will get return for guys, no it won’t be top 100 prospects, but they can make the minor league system much deeper and get pieces for the future to build upon. Boston has the most top 100 prospects right now, all acquired while Bloom was there. He made trades for Wilyer Abreu who was not viewed as a top prospect. The Cardinals seem to have gotten the bad end of a lot of trades the last few years and they’ve got to flip that and can’t afford to be spending on aging player. Hopefully Bloom can get them to be much more cost effective.
It seems that Mo has surrounded himself with weak people who will not challenge him. He fired a good field manager supposedly over a coaching decision. But instead of replacing the manager with an established manager he goes with one of the least exxxperienced options he has. I think both Yadi and Albert would have welcomed a coaching job with the Cardinals. In 2022 in watching the games the young players all went to Albert, Yadi and Waino to talk about their perforomance rather than to Jeff Albert or Maddux.
When you surround yourself with weak people you get a weak performance. If the facilities are sub-par, who is responsible. If our technology is not up to date then I guess Giersch was not the man for the job. Or does DeWitt penny pinch to the point of not letting people do the proper job.
And I wonder why the Dodgers would be interested in Aranado when they have and .852 OPS guy playing third named Muncy. Possibly for defense. I really don’t think we have much trade value on the team and even if we did we certainly have not had an impact of the guys we traded for at the 2023 deadline. Maybe in the future but I am not encouraged by the 2024 performance.
They overachieved by many of the metrics and were closer to being last than 2nd in the division. Cubs and Reds both had significantly better underlying stats than the Cardinals did.
Fwiw, we did finish 2nd in the division.
Re: “embrace the rebuild”.
I certainly was GS, and I had a roster in place that further embraced the pitching rebuild. Didn’t I.
For what it’s worth my idea of a rebuild would also focus on the position player side. The pitching side of the rebuild could be done through attrition since most of the rotation will be out of contract after 2025 or 2026 but apparently the Cardinals are going to cull them now.
The Cardinals FO cannot even be truthful about what is happening. They literally hosted a press conference to talk about reorganization of their player development and when Dollar Bill DeWitt was asked about caused the Cardinals player development to get into such a mess he backtracks and says the player development isn’t bad because they have all of these young guys.
On top of that, they refuse to call this what its going to be. It’s a rebuild. How long the rebuild takes remains to be seen but it’s a rebuild. It doesn’t have to be a complete tear down like the Astros and Cubs did but still a rebuild. I just hate how they refuse to be honest about what has happened.
Also, Mozeliak is their biggest PR problem and they kept him as POBO and GM. I don’t see a lot of fans returning as long as he remains. Sure they can promote their young stars like Wynn, Walker, etc. but as long as Mo remains fans will still away simply because they grew to dislike him and even hate him. Doubling down on him seems incompetent. Chaim Bloom had an entire year to study the system and put together a report, why couldn’t he just be placed in Charge with Mo getting a “promotion”? Heck Mo led the freaking press conference yesterday. Its remarkable just how out of touch the DeWitts are when it comes to their fanbase.
And I wonder why the Dodgers would be interested in Aranado when they have and .852 OPS guy playing third named Muncy. Possibly for defense.
I suppose that might be a consideration although Muncy’s 2024 OPS was achieved only with 237 AB’s because he was injured so we don’t know if his OPS would have been sustained over a full year.
The Yankees and Mets could also use a 3B. There would be someone out there to take him.
Out of curiosity I went to the website “baseballtradevalues.com” to see the value of current Cardinal players. Below I will list several of them.
My observation is that most of the veterans with big contracts have negative trade value so to get anything of value in return we would need to either include sizable amounts of cash or to take back other big contracts. So if we do trade some of them it will be a pure salary dump with little back in return.Winn 38.4
Donovan 29
Herrera 25.7
Nootbar 23.9
Walker 18.4
Scott 15.2
Helsley 15.1
Gorman 11.1
Fedde 9.7
Burleson 9.6Mikolas -6.3
Gray -9
Matz -9.6
Arenado -26.2
Contreras -27
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