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With Liberatore warming up, who starts the Monday game? I really hope it is not Thompson. He would line up for it and so would Robberse. With both on the 40 man, I would rather see with Robberse has instead of seeing Thompson again.
Quinn turned it into a fairly good start over 6.1 innings with 8Ks and 1BB. With him still pitching at A ball, I am curious if the Cards A: don’t think he is ready B: aren’t ready to push an A+ SP out of the role, or C: don’t want Quinn playing for a bad A+ team.
May as well pack up the bats and go home when we have runners on base. It feels like we should be dead last by a long shot on BA with RISP, but CWS have us beat for 30th
Edmonds comment is what I have said a lot about our team – why guys don’t attack the fastball on hitter’s counts. I see us watch a lot of 2-0, 3-1 pitches go by. Goldy seems to be the one that takes a lot of hittable pitches.
Yeah a lot of our players watch the best pitch of the AB go by when we are 0-0 or hitters counts. It is good to take pitches, but sometimes they can be too passive. That is Noot’s biggest weakness, although he is looking much better the last few days.
The Brewers have been doing a really good job tonight of jumping on first pitches that are hittable and drilling them
Thompson is just weird. He cannot throw strikes at all in AAA, but he somewhat can at the MLB level. I wonder if the automated balls and strikes system is really hurting him in AAA as he pitches may be in that gray area of not technically the strike zone, but the area umps commonly call strikes.
I don’t feel like that can completely explain the difference though.
Thanks Brian. Glad to see he has put on a little weight. He looks like he could still put on more as well especially in the legs.
Some have Robberse chiseled into the ML rotation after 70 AAA innings
I by no means have him penciled into the rotation, but I do want to see some of the young guys get a chance with a few starts. Our staff is OLD, and we will lose Lynn and Gibson after this year (wouldn’t want either back anyway), with Mikolas and Matz the next year but neither by no means screaming they deserve a rotation spot. We will have to have a couple of veterans to bring in to fill some of those spots, but we need to find a young SP to take 1 for next year and another for 26 or maybe 25 based off Matz and Mikolas. I would much rather give those young pitchers innings before next year to see who actually has it and who doesn’t rather than just penciling the rotation spot without a glimpse of the player.
His ERA is up to a very pedestrian 3.60 now, so it looks more like he’s a couple of years away from helping out.
I don’t think one bad start changes much as it happens to everyone. But even before this he was probably in a timeline to maybe be a mid to late year callup next year.
Does anyone know if Paniagua really is 6’1″ weighing 151 lbs? TCN’s scouting and MILB have him around that weight. He must have absolutely no muscle mass if that is accurate. Seems like a candidate to add velocity just from gaining some muscle. However he is already 23 so you think he would have put that muscle on already.
Goldy needs a mental reset. I don’t think he physically has a problem, but his confidence is so low and he looks lost at the plate.
Man, Mikolas lost it in a hurry. Wonder if he will be the next to go on the IL with some sort of ailment?
He hasn’t looked hurt to me when watching him, but maybe they will come up with a phantom injury. Mikolas just hasn’t kept up with the hitters the last couple of years.
Wow I’m glad I swapped it over to the Cubs game to watch Imanaga pitch instead of Mikolas. Mikolas has been a very frustrating pitcher to watch since his pitches are just so hittable. It doesn’t matter if you avoid walks if your pitches are basically batting practice.
Here is a great article about Imangaga and how he is succeeding without great velocity. It is still very analytics driven and the Cubs have been working with him to take advantage of the data. He also throws a splitter which as I have noted recently is one of the best pitches in baseball at the moment.
https://www.mlb.com/news/shota-imanaga-surprisingly-dominant-fastball
Following up to some comments with my thoughts.
I don’t think it’s all analytics….i think they have had too many holes in their lineup for about 5 years now…and they are always short on starting pitching….that is personnel decisions
Analytics drive personnel decisions and good organizations are using analytics to build quality rosters. Analytics also go into the day to day gameplans as teams can use the new data to understand hitter and pitcher matchups better than ever before.
Someone tell Kyle Gibson to quit throwing quality starts (5 in 7 starts). He doesn’t throw hard enough (FB velo 91.3) and his K/9 is too low (6.8
I certainly hope I am wrong, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that Gibson will end the season with a 4.75+ ERA. Respectable with good innings, but not nearly as good as he is doing now. Every metric indicates he has been getting lucky in batted ball data and he will regress to his prior years ERA in the 4.5 to 5.5 range. He is pitching to a little better defense this year than last with BAL, but he also is missing less bats, getting hitters to chase less, and walking more.
Why would an organization want all of their pitchers to pitch a certain way? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have some high K pitchers and some control artists to keep the opposition off balance? Why not have both? Why does there have to be an organization wide “formula”? The formula should be to know how to get outs without running up a high pitch count or blowing your arm out. Each pitcher goes about that a little differently depending on their strengths.
I agree with this in general. You don’t want everyone to pitch the same way or hit the same as varying looks is good. The problem with the Cardinals pitching philosophy and organization the last few years is we have been too much on the control artist, GB pitcher side even though those pitchers are losing effectiveness as the game evolves year to year. Mikolas is an example of this as he was great a couple of years ago, but now he gets hit hard consistently as the league is much better at hitting that type of pitcher. The Cards are certainly behind the 8 ball in terms of pitching standards though and need a philosophy change to out compete hitters still.
What it all comes down to is everyone wants to follow the herd, but you don’t get ahead following the herd, so it just goes round and round and there is nothing worse than being behind the curve.
The Cards are certainly behind the curve, but I don’t think the solution to that is to stay behind in analytics and hope you find yourself in a good spot. More information will beat less information and if you aren’t keeping up with the latest in analytics or making developments there yourself, others will be much quicker to adapt and out compete you. Now hopefully the Cards can use advanced analytics to find a new style of pitching focused on control artists that are GB machines, but that will look different in many ways than it did in the past whether it is pitch mix, location, sequencing, etc and analytics can hopefully help them find that niche.
In general, I think the trackman data has really helped orgs that are quick to adapt out compete other teams as the sheer amount of data and the quality of it is rapidly changing the game. The next wave of rapid changes will likely be from biomechanics analysis (although I bet some teams are well into this already) and we will see the game change again. Let’s hope for the average fan there are more Logan Webb or this year’s Ranger Suarez type pitchers in that future as it is simply more enjoyable to watch a pitcher go 7+ innings dominating than a bunch of random RP throwing 100+.
Realistically, other than Contreras, do we have any hitter actually deserving of a #2-#5 lineup spot? I don’t think so. Arenado is playing much better and is probably getting there, but he needs to start hitting for more power.
Regarding analytics, I do think MLB could very much use a different perspective than the Ivy league grad running the orgs. Every one of those guys have the same background and likely have the same thought patterns. Analytics are very useful, but having people learn them in an atypical manner with their own philosophy and mindset is how the Cards can try to find a new market inefficiency. Who knows, it could be targeting fast players to get more SB given the rule changes, but only time will tell where the game goes next.
My thoughts on what the team is doing wrong is probably the inverse of what many here feel. Many seem to state the team has gotten too involved with advanced analytics, but everything I have read about the team seems to indicate they are always a few years behind the game in analytics. Look at our pitching staff and how we have targeted contact oriented pitchers. Mo finally came out and said we are changing to go to a more K% focused strategy, but we are what 6+ years behind the rest of MLB on that? I believe other teams are using thew new trackman data and other advanced data quicker and more efficiently that the Cardinals to scout the Cards and find our hitters weaknesses and to target them. We don’t appear to be keeping up with understanding that data ourselves and helping our hitters to adjust.
Regarding the pitching style, I myself have only recently started to come across to the more K% approach. In 2021, I very much wanted the Cards to draft McGreevy as he was a control artist. I remember reading experts thoughts and seeing they thought it was a very Cardinals pick but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. In hindsight, unless McGreevy adds velocity or changes his pitch mix up significantly, he will not be anything more than a up down #5 type starter with maybe some good years looking like a #4. If you look at the teams that are consistently developing great pitching like Milwaukee and Seattle, they are very analytics focused and are targeting pitchers with great stuff and trying to teach them to pitch. It is much easier to teach someone to throw strikes than it is to teach someone to have big stuff that fools hitters. Cleveland is a contrarian there though and is taking guys with some stuff and control and getting them to throw harder.
There are certainly times you should take the control artist if they are overvalued for where you can draft them, but if you want to develop stars, you need guys with big stuff and tools. It is a risk/reward spectrum and Stl has very much favored the safe bet side but with a lower ceiling. Good organizations like Milwaukee and the Dodgers are doing a good job of mixing high ceiling type players with more sure bets and then doing a great job of developing them.
A specific area I really think the Cards need to improve is in the international FA market. Stl tends to take the quantity over quality approach and it quite obviously isn’t paying off well. Cleveland, Texas, New York Y, Milwaukee are swinging for the fences with IAFA and getting great players on their roster from it. It also doesn’t help we got rid of a DSL team in what I assume was a cost reduction effort. I could understand that a little more if we took the quality over quantity approach, but we are doing quantity and with that quantity we need more roster spots to have those players get experience and to develop.
@thejager, the game is constantly evolving. You say the game is the same as it was in the 80s, but it isn’t even the same as it was 10 years ago. You can go look at most stats going back the decades a steady trend of change such as HR rate and K rate. In anything that involves competition, the competitors have to continually adapt to the ever changing environment to out compete. If you aren’t willing to change, then you will lose. It isn’t that hitters don’t want to hit 300, but MLB pitchers throw so much harder with more spin today for pitches that are very difficult to hit. Defenses are much smarter too with shifts (although shifts were heavily ran back in older baseball as well and to success).
Sometimes innovation can be cyclic as the shift was really popular a while back. It just is a constant game of cat and mouse between hitters and pitchers. A decade+ ago, the down and away sinker was the best pitch in baseball as hitters swings were tailored to hit mid and upper pitches. Hitters adapted and started optimizing their swing paths to hit the low pitch much better. Look at Contreras and how he consistently smashes the low pitch for a HR now. Now the go to location for a pitcher is up to target that hole in the average hitters swing. We will probably see it change again in the coming years as well.
In general, I think people by nature have a tendency to want to watch sports the way they were in what I will call their “Golden Decade”. Many of the posters on this site were young men and women during the 80s and came to know and love the game in the style it was played then. You also had the Cardinals being an above average team then and many fans associating Whiteyball with a winning formula. I do not fault anyone for this as nostalgia is a very strong emotion and completely understand people wanting to see the game played in that way. But the reality is that sports are always changing and that style at the current time isn’t competitive as others have gamed the game to find more efficient strategies of winning. This isn’t isolated to MLB either. Look at the NFL and NBA and how drastically they have changed in the last decades.
Roycroft’s ERA has been fantastic, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in his stuff for the big league level given his K% and BB%. Definitely need a fresh arm though so the move makes sense. They will probably DFA him when someone comes back from the 60 day IL.
While I think watching small ball is really entertaining, it doesn’t win in today’s game. The overall talent level has increased in the game and if small ball still worked, there would be clubs doing it today. Unfortunately a team hitting home runs will be much better at racking up wins throughout the regular season than a small ball team. Now small ball can work in close games to up the odds of winning a single game, it just doesn’t hold up over a whole season any more.
Part of me wants to just leave Gio in there and say figure it out you already blew it, but you don’t want the game becoming unwinnable. Plus we want to conserve RP today.
What does Noot have to do to get a ball to hit a gap? He keeps hitting nice fly balls but they don’t quite make it out and are toward a fielder.