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Mo is grasping at straws right now. The go to move of firing a manager or coaches is more of a mid-season/post-season thing. Plus it’s been done so much in recent years, it will start to cast him in the image of the larger problem. Even his supporters might start wondering if he’s as bad at evaluating managerial/coaching talent as he is with pitching and outfield talent. More clever and meaningless moves incoming.
Mo needs playing time for his trade deadline outfielders. Walker isn’t getting traded and Mo had every opportunity to trade Noot and didn’t.
It’s O’Neill (salary), Carlson and Burleson who Mo wants to play regularly and hopefully at least one raises their production and trade value. Walker just complicated this.
Seemed like a silly move to me but who knows, maybe this will jump start him and they can bring him back quickly. Motter is another thing all together.
This doesn’t mean the Walker demotion wasn’t justified. He’s been forced to play out of position, and his D is not mlb ready as an outfielder.
I made the comment before his demotion, that I’d rather hide Walkers glove at DH rather than Gormans. For me, no contest, and Gorman is no glove first 2Bman.
Walker finished his first call up with an overall .718 ops and 101 ops+, respectable, with a couple offensive red flags.
His first 12 games he posted a .849 ops on a .382 BAbip. His next 8 games a .481 ops on a .294 BAbip. He cooled off, and Mo pulled the plug while his overall was at least respectable. It was the right call.
His BB/K stands at 3/20, which is a 24/162 pace over 162 games. It’s a 6.67 K per BB. Not mlb ready in this area.
His GB% is 58.5%, a rate we would praise our pitchers for.
His demotion says nothing about his future, absolutely nothing. He has the opportunity to make some adjustments. His maturity at such a young age convinces me he will make them, given an appropriate amount of time, and be better for it when he returns.
Glass half full thinking…. As long as he’s down there 3 weeks or so, the Cards control him an extra year
As long as he’s down there 3 weeks or so, the Cards control him an extra year
And that’s all that matters to.the clowns running this franchise. Winning be damned.
His first 12 games he posted a .849 ops on a .382 BAbip. His next 8 games a .481 ops
It took opponents a couple weeks to figure out how to get him out. They did. MLB is not the Texas League.
Fans and media are supposed to whoop it up, and we had the Walker hype train barreling along. The Cardinals organization is supposed to know what they are doing, and maintain sobriety while doing it.
Walker’s outfield D is so far from MLB ready it is shocking the Cardinals thought it was. The combination of the too big swing and open stance facing the pitcher isn’t going to work. We saw that. He can tie into mistakes, but that’s it. Sliders and anything away made him look silly. He has no idea how to hit advanced pitching. Lots of guys look good in AA, the organization desperately need a responsible adult in the room.
A lot of players have had a bad eight-game stretch. Drawing bigger conclusions from small data blocks can lead to faulty conclusions. As a reminder, Walker’s season offensive numbers were far from the worst in the Cardinals outfield when he was sent down. In fact, only Nootbaar had a higher OPS. Lower were Burleson, O’Neill and Carlson.
I would bet a dollar to a donut that if the Cardinals were winning, Walker would still be playing with St. Louis. But they believe they cannot afford to let him grow while in the majors while the team struggles. That makes complete sense, but no one else in the OF is yet to step up.
As we have seen, the team has not improved since Walker left. Since we like small sample sizes, here are the OPSes of the outfield in the last week:
Carlson .955
Nootbaar .885
O’Neill .646
Burleson .368Maybe Carlson is getting going, but he had a long way to go. If they just play him against lefties, he can contribute, but his season OPS vs. RHP is still just .534. That screams platoon player on the short side. The others are continuing as they were before Walker went away, with Burleson currently slumping (1-for-16). Based on the numbers, Walker would still be the second best outfielder on this team offensively.
But since Walker has the most upside, he can work on improving at Triple-A. Maybe it will be better over the long haul. But in the early assessment, this “clarity in the outfield” hasn’t been effective where it matters most – winning games.
That is an excellent assessment, Brian. I felt all along that Walker should be given time at Memphis to hone his skills, especially given that we were supposed to be a winning club.
Management felt he was ready after the impressive Spring, then Nooty got hurt so there was an additional vacancy too boot. But he is obviously still a little too green.
I am not concerned about Walker’s offense. He will make the proper adjustments and be a big time MLB hitter. It is his defense that needs a ton of work. If he is giving up more runs than he is creating then he needs to be in Memphis to get that corrected.
As I have said before the Cardinals have too many players who can’t play defense. Randy Flores deserves a lot of credit getting the Cardinal farm system back into the top 10 but one of the weak spots has been drafting defense.
Gorman- average defender at best.
Walker- weak defender right now.
Burleson- weak to average defender.
Yepez- weak defender right now.
Baez- question mark but not close to MLB yet.There is only one DH spot. We need to do something with some of these guys who can’t play in the field.
Walker will see more mistakes in AAA than he did in MLB. Hopefully that doesn’t persuade the org that he doesn’t need to fix what ultimately isn’t going to work. Next time he comes up, he won’t see what he saw the first two weeks because now they’ve seen him. He will see what he saw the last couple weeks when he was OPSing .481, and he is going to have to handle it, and do so well enough to compensate for the D.
I agree they would probably still be playing Walker if they were winning. What they could do now is play Carlson every day. He might get better vs RHP. O’Neill is not going to get better, but he is going to get more expensive, so that is a dead end street.
Motter is fair game on this thread since he was swapped in for Walker. We need a fifth middle infielder like a hole in the head. Yepez would be useful as a bat off the bench. He has nothing to gain in AAA and we know he can hit some in MLB. It would be interesting to know what that Motter nonsense is all about. The only thing that makes sense to me is they thought they were about to trade away a middle infielder so he was backfill. They didn’t, though.
Fair point, but interesting you left off Winn, who according to many is a future defensive star.
I haven’t forgotten about Winn but that doesn’t change the fact that we have too many players to try to squeeze into one DH spot. As Mo would say we need some clarity.
bb said:
What they could do now is play Carlson every day. He might get better vs RHP.
Bad idea, IMO.
When is enough plate appearances to call a dud a dud? Carlson has almost 1000 career PAs vs. RHP and his OPS is almost 200 points worse than against LHP. Further, the gap has widened every year. He has been pretty consistent vs. LHP, but is steadily doing worse against RHP over time. Not a good trend, to say the least.
Never say never, but the volume of evidence is getting high. And prospective trade partners have access to this data, too.
gscott, you made two points. One is that there are a lot of DH types wearing OF gloves. On that we agreed.
You also noted that a Flores weakness is drafting defenders. On that general point across all positions, I do not see enough data to agree. The Cards have had a very good defense for some time and it isn’t Flores’ fault that the most of the recent Gold Glovers came before him or via trades – Yadi, Goldy, Arenado, O’Neill, Wong, Bader. He is responsible for two recent GGs in Edman and Donovan plus Winn could join them down the road. Infield has been good, but no plus defender OFs close, though.
Well yeah, I can’t argue with any of that. I will mention that DeJong and O’Neill fall into the ‘from bad to worse” category too, and we keep playing them.
P.S. See tonight’s lineup. :-/
Mo has his own agenda, and it’s about getting one or more of Carlson, O’Neill and Burleson hot so he can thin the OF ranks at the deadline.
I like a future OF of Noot, Carlson and Walker. Now Carlson has a better opportunity to claim CF as his, or fail, and the org moves on.
I wasn’t in favor of Walker making the roster. His ST BB/K was very similar to his mlb BB/K, but, he helped sell tickets and Mo avoided the pushback of demoting him after ST.
That BB/K defines every batters ability to be selective and competitive in the strike zone. Walker wasn’t ready, and he proved it quickly, which resulted in a small sample size.
As BW acknowledged, we can just as easily lose without him, as with him.
Brian, five or so years ago the Cardinals decided that the farm system was not producing enough bats so that is where they focused in the draft. Flores was tasked with finding boppers and he succeeded, but in my opinion, too many of them came without a glove. Perhaps with a lot of work they will get better over time. Edman and Donovan have good gloves but aren’t really boppers or power hitters.
To summarize, I am saying that the desire to draft power came with price of sacrificing some defense but I know it isn’t easy to get both.
To amplify the discussion here about Carlson, I just wrote and posted the following. Thoughts?
Should “Clarity in the Outfield” Mean Playing Dylan Carlson More Often?
Most of the discussion seems to be centered around offense but defense can’t be discounted. In fact, if forced to choose, I would choose pitching and defense over offense every time. Based on what we have on the current roster I think he should be an everyday player and perhaps he could become a RH hitter only.
What are the odds Carlson could improve against RHP by hitting RH only? For now, they have what they have, but maybe trying to acquire a true CF should become a future priority. Hey, Bader will be a free agent… 😉
It is not necessarily bad to sacrifice defense for more offense. But the thing is, you have to get more offense out of it. So far, we have sacrificed defense and gotten to return. Guys like Walker and Burleson need to hit up a storm and they haven’t. That’s why I’ve been thinking, just go back to O’Neill-Carlson-Nootbaar. They aren’t going to hit noticeably worse and the defense will be good. You could platoon Carlson, but that involves shifting multiple guys around defensively and probably in the lineup, which I think has been part of the problem. I don’t think the platoon would be worth it.
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