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Some great examples for Mo getting excused. Poor guy makes so many great decisions that, through no fault of his, turn out poorly for his team. Someone give that man an extension!
Panic just seemed like a nicer word than stupid, though I agree it’s probably not accurate. It was a trade to make a trade. I’m not sure how it benefits (or benefited) the Cardinals other than to open up playing time for lesser players. I hardly see that as a benefit. Trading Pham is something that was a result of the terrible Fowler signing. These were both deals that were criticized at the time (just not by the Mo enablers), and many seem to forget that.
No has made some good deals, there is no doubt about that. But they do not even come close to making up for his bad deals and his inability to put together something resembling a balanced, complete team.
To pretend that the overall trajectory of this team has been positive on Mo’s watch is just self-delusion by egotistical people who have dug in and decided Mo is the hill they’re gonna die on.
I give Mo’s leadership team about 2 years before it bottoms out and we have a team that doesn’t even look like a contender from a distance if you squint really hard – which is where we are now.
This is a team without direction, a team that doesn’t have a plan, and a team without accountability from the front office on down. They are enabled by an excuse-making faction of the media that covers it and amazing fans that love their team and will be loyal no matter what. Those fans deserve better than what they are getting.
Seeing Cabrera in person will give us a nice view of the panic trade that was made a year ago to acquire him. They guy we traded away is playing at an elite level, and Cabrera was a large percentage of our return for that.
Wonder if he might catch the same mental illness that Fowler did when he was hitting below the Mendoza line.
Fowler seems to have been cured of his issues. They must have some prescribed some pretty good meds.
April 23, 2019 at 8:14 am in reply to: What is wrong with Dexter Fowler and what should be done? #88493Very consistent train of thought on Pham and Fowler.
The Dependable Four.
April 23, 2019 at 7:48 am in reply to: What is wrong with Dexter Fowler and what should be done? #88490Obviously, his numbers on 4/23 will hold up through September. Show some patience before you pass that crow across the table.
I agree entirely with Bob Reed.
And I will add – the minute he has positive value, trade him.
I am glad he is helping us win games, but I’d rather move forward without someone who is better at running from accountability than he is running from 1st to 3rd on a single.
I worry about Miller. His stats are bad this year, but he’s pitched worse than his results indicate.
It will be sad day for me when Yadi retires. He’s definitely not what he used to be, but he’s still good enough for me. And him in his prime was a sight to behold.
Yadi in 2023 might need a walker to get to 1st base.
Brian, by that do you mean it will be a personnel issue?
Edit: Sorry, I asked before you clarified.
If it is just a matter of luck in what happens later, we can probably save a lot of money on front office salaries.
Was Mikolas just a lucky thing working out last year, or can we give some credit to the front office guys? I think they should own their wins and own their failures. If Ozuna can continue to put up huge offensive numbers, he will be a huge win. If he has another season like he did last year (him leading the team in RBIs doesn’t move the needle much for me), then it will probably be a wash (we didn’t trade away much, if any, value, but he does make enough money that there is a little opportunity cost).
Holland was a major fail due to the wasted payroll, but even more to the loss of the draft pick.
All front offices will have wins and losses, ours is no different. But when they come up short, it should be owned – not explained away due to bad luck.
My bottom line (which is entirely meaningless outside of message board discussion) is that Mo and his front office need to start showing improvement on the field. This team has not trended well for 8 years. Even if you want to assign the failures to bad luck, at some point you need to try to change your luck. I’m of the opinion that it is time to clean house, but that day is on the horizon if things don’t turn around. Here’s hoping this year will be that turn-around.
Patience!
Well we have been notoriously patient at the trade deadline the last several years when it comes to making impactful upgrades. How has that worked out?
Seeing as how we had a ton of dead payroll sunk into non-productive players (and still do), I for one am glad we haven’t gutted our farm system. We are getting a lot of contributions from minimum contract guys – because we have to.
Sometimes patience works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes aggressively going after a deal works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But I’m not one of the ones in this thread claiming we only had one option – aggressively pursuing a deal. We could have done either. We chose to pursue the deal. The Brewers chose patience.
What does that tell us? Probably nothing. But I’m not going to admonish Cardinals fans who watched us go 2-5 against the Brewers who really wish we had been more patient. And I’m not going to troll them with memes and jokes. Just like I can’t fault the people who wish we hadn’t aggressively gone after Fowler. It is a reasonable point of view.
Yes that is an option but is it a good option for a team that at the time of the Ozuna deal had missed the playoffs two years in a row (now three)?
I believe that Milwaukee had missed the playoffs six years in a row, and they chose to do nothing when we traded for Ozuna, and that worked out fine for them. They chose not to bid against themselves in a panic move for Dexter Fowler, and that worked out for them, too.
Sometimes patience can be a good play, especially when you are talking about guys with track records of being decent preceding one outlier year of being really good.
The idea that the Cardinals could not have been more patient, or that it would have been a bad idea is not supported by facts.
Defend the Ozuna trade on its own merits (and it holds up), but don’t make up a fictional scenario where the Cardinals had to be impatient. That is the exact sort of things that lead to Fowler deals (and I fear Miller deals).
My apologies for using trigger words in the past. I haven’t posted here much, and I didn’t realize it would cause me to be viewed as an aggressor.
I’m just an outside observer to the broader discussion, and I see what I see. I’m not hurt by anything.
I just think that there are many fans who see that the Cardinals got out-maneuvered by the Brewers last offseason, and it can’t hurt to just let them vent instead of pretending that the Cardinals were just the unfortunate bystanders of bad luck. The Brewers played by the same rules as the Cardinals and just did better. No need for spin. We aren’t going to win them all.
How could not continuing to try to improve the offense after that be viewed as a good option?
This is the sort of disheveled thinking that leads to contracts like Fowler’s.
As I’ve said many times, I’m fine with the Ozuna deal. I’m not fine with people like you talking down to others by saying nonsensical things along the lines of “we must do something!”.
Justify the Ozuna deal on its own merits. Don’t resort to bad groupthink that leads to bad deals – we’ve seen enough of those to last a long time. Doing nothing is always an option.
I suppose the Cardinals could have waited and waited but there would have been a huge risk of them going 0 for 3 on the Marlin OF’s, which would have caused a huge backlash, so they decided to make the move for Ozuna instead of coming up completely empty.
Do people really think that the front office makes moves to appease the fans? I sure hope they don’t.
To be clear, I don’t have a problem with Ozuna or the trade for him. I have no reason to doubt the narrative that Yelich was untouchable when we did the deal for Ozuna.
What I have a problem with is the front office and their parrots using a straw man to counter the people who say we should have gone for Yelich instead of Ozuna. We did not have to make a trade for an OF in December. In fact, we didn’t have to make a trade for an OF at all. So the counter about Yelich not being available in December is nothing more than a distraction. Also, it took no one by surprise that Yelich became available later.
It should be enough to say that we liked the value we got in the trade for Ozuna. That’s fine. But acting like anyone who says Yelich was the better target at the time (he was) is an idiot for making that statement just comes off snarky.
Ozuna is playing great, and we should all hope that continues. It is too bad that Yelich ended up with the Brewers, and it sucks that he’s absolutely killed us. Life is unfair. I can live with that.
Brian, I never implied anything of the sort that you claim I did. I never said Yelich was available when they traded for Ozuna. I said they got outmaneuvered by a division rival because they impatiently traded for a guy who had four years of mediocrity and one year of excellent hitting. They had far more outfield depth than they want to admit now, and they did not need to make a move in December just because fans would call them names. You keep falling back on that straw man spin that has nothing to do with reality. They didn’t have to make a move in December. That’s the point. They could have been patient. If someone had beaten us to Ozuna, we would have been fine.
But the argument that Ozuna was the best they could do at the moment just ignores the reality that they didn’t have to do anything. I am not in the camp that we should be anything but patient with Ozuna. He’s ours. I hope he stays hot. I hope he earns a qualifying offer this offseason.
But let’s stop countering one myth with another.
Yelich and Ozuna came up together in 2013. Yelich was consistently a better player than Ozuna, and a superior hitter (I’m not sure why people think a team needs “power” more than they need a better all-around hitter) every year except 2017 – which was a total outlier for Ozuna.
The Cardinals didn’t just buy damaged goods, they bought one outlier season with four seasons of barely above average hitting (about a 102 OPS+ for his four seasons before 2017). They had enough young depth to not have to just jump on the first buy-high deal that came their way. But that is exactly what they did.
I wouldn’t even bring any of this up (it really isn’t a huge deal) if it weren’t for so many people buying the front office’s odd straw man about Yelich.
It may be a misconception that the Cardinals had their choice of either when they traded for Ozuna, but it is not a misconception that they got out-maneuvered by a division rival simply due to impatience.
I entirely agree with the idea that exit velocity is a good indicator. But cherry-picking a tiny sample of exit velo is a red flag.
This team needs Ozuna to be the guy he was in his career year, or something close to it. I’m fine with patience with him. But he needs to really hit well to make up for his defense.
If O’Neill gets healthy and starts hitting, though, he needs to go to RF and put Fowler on the bench (or waiver wire) – not LF. Ozuna’s defense is far less of an impediment when he is competing with Martinez. And I really like what Martinez can do off of the bench.
So which team did a good job signing relievers this past winter?
Teams who didn’t sign any big money relievers. That’s one option I don’t see anyone mentioning, but just stop throwing big money at the bullpen, and, especially, old guys in the bullpen.
We have several guys in Memphis who can easily do better than Miller has. Maybe he will turn it around, but would anyone bet on him being worth his contract? I surely wouldn’t.
Just say no. Maybe Nancy Reagan should be our GM.
it all made sense to me
Even the direct contradiction? I mean, he basically said that Hicks has to go with the pitch that feels right… as long as it is the fastball.
Much like an old Henry Ford quote about his customers being able to have any color car they want, as long as it is black.
The difference is that Henry Ford was joking.
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