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A new season is always fun. Optimism reigns. You never know. We have had teams in the past not forecasted to do much, and they excelled. But we have had teams projected to excel and they floundered.
I was reading an old article maybe six months ago about the 1969 season. It was about this time of year in ’69 and a sportswriter wrote, “..If the Cardinals don’t win the East Division there ought to be an investigation.” We finished I think 13 games out or something like that, in fourth place out of six teams.
Noot is probably the guy that can make the biggest jump in production on our club. Herrera might be another guy like that. I see both of those guys as more likely to be real good in the next couple of years than Gorman or Walker.
But who knows. Walker seems like a guy that will struggle for awhile early on, then start to put it together in the second half. Gorman – I don’t know. He looks to be regressing.
Noot even said, “…something is missing because I am not those players.” Just throwing out what might be missing, in addition to the injuries. Noot can just about match those guys with velocity-off-the-bat, but maybe he does that twice every three games. Ohtani possibly does it twice a game, and maybe Soto 1.5 times per game (or 3 times every 2 games).
Funny. Seems like anymore you can find a hat of every color. I have seen red Yankees hats, and black Cardinal and Dodger hats on occasion. Now green.
Still the worst uni’s I have seen of late are those Red Sox yellow jerseys.
Noot needs to stay healthy and play 145-150 games. If he does he will likely be much better than what we have seen – perhaps a 4 to 5 WAR guy. Or in old school numbers, a .290 hitter with mid 20s ding-dongs and possibly 85-90 RBI, plus good defense in left field. Perhaps kind of a “2021 Ty O’Neill”.
Wow Rats – glad you escaped any further damage.
We had corned beef and cabbage this evening as a pre-St Patty’s dinner.
And speaking of bat speed, I saw this. Maybe Arenado will come up with a big year. On the other hand, Donovan is down a little. And look at former Redbird Tommy Edman.
2025 Spring Training Bat Speed increasers/decreasers (min. +5 swings in 2025, +100 competitive swings in 2024)
— Will Harris (@sandwichpick.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T17:49:30.363Z
Another perspective on pitching injuries, and again from our local SABR group. In January we had a video meeting with Denny McLain. McLain was great – very articulate and still engaging and entertaining. He had some great stories and insight.
He used a rather big leg kick and really put his lower body into pitching. He said that today guys do not use their legs as much in pitching, it is mostly upper body. He feels that is part of the issue with increased injuries, in that guys tend to be all arm and upper body using just a pivot in the rubber and relying on their arms for power.
Now McLain did break down and his career was not all that long. He said starting in 1966 he had shoulder problems, and would get cortisone shots to get through his starts. By 1970 his shoulder was shot and he needed rotator cuff surgery, but he did not do it and retired soon after that.
Anyway, FWIW that was a thought McLain shared.
As for pitchers, Larry Dierker told our local SABR group some 15-20 years ago that the primary culprit increasing injuries is “the gun”. He said pitchers are expected to keep “that gun” at a certain level on every pitch, and are not given leeway to let up a little on some hitters. The pressure to do that stresses the arm and shoulder leading to injuries.
As for players in general, part of it might be perception. More teams than 30-40 years ago, and teams use a lot more players than back in the day. Same with life in general – more people on the planet and thus there is more of everything.
Spring Training is the place to try out things. Management probably wanted to see how Noot looked in center and Victor in a corner, as during the season they may need to play those places in the course of a game.
Whoa, good thing we did not re-up Kitty. Not sure what “debridement” is, but if he will miss multiple months the knee must not be good.
Also saw we lost a former St. Louis Brown and are down to two remaining. Frank Saucier (“so-Shay”) passed away recently. Only had a few ABs, but one in particular was quite historical. He was the guy pinch-hit for by #1/8, Eddie Gaedel.
One thing Gaedel has going for him – he has a career OBP of .1000!
Nice call 14 and JB. And nice going Big Luke, the Blond Bomber. While he likely won’t make anyone forget the original Blond Bomber, Mr. Mantle, maybe he can provide some needed righty pop to our roster.
I have not had ESPN for years so no big deal to me that they won’t have MLB games after this year. I just hope I can still get the free T-Mobile mlb.tv subscription.
And unlike many fans, the occasional AppleTV or Peacock game doe not bother me either. Out of 162 games, missing one here or there and either listening to the KMOX broadcast, or just doing something else is fine.
And the last couple of years it has almost been better not sitting through the games.
Disagree BikeMike. Post season performance means something.
It only means something for that particular series. And when a guy’s career is finished it can be part of his overall value in assessing his career. But it has no meaning at all on possible future outcomes, and it seems you are assuming Arenado would never be good in post season if he gets there in the future.
His thousands of regular season appearances carry much more weight than 35 post season appearances. Making his post season an indicator of the future is like taking one week of games out of an entire career and using that to assess a player’s value.
Had he had say, 200 post season plate appearances his numbers would likely be better. If he had 500, his numbers would probably be about where his average regular season numbers are, possibly a bit lower due to the probability of better average pitching for post season teams.
Nobody looks at post season results when making player personnel decisions, especially a guy with only 35 plate appearances. If that weighs in at all in a decision, then you need to get a new job. Here is one – think anyone would say “no thanks” to this guy because he is not very good in October?
.205/.318/.450 – 86 Ks in 220 ABs (36 BBs)
I think Silent George will get the nod, but I will put in another vote for Silent Steve. A bit ironic that both Carlton and Hendrick did the “no press” thing.
Carlton is easily the best lefthanded pitcher the Cardinals system has ever produced, and has the highest Cardinal WAR (not mention overall WAR) of the four candidates.
However, I won’t be upset no matter who is honored as all four are good Cardinals.
Carlton, Renteria and Silent George back for another round, with newcomer Brian “Double Duty” Jordan added. I love Carlton and hope he makes it, but Jordan is a strong candidate also, as are Hendrick and Renteria.
Jordan came up as a Cardinal and had a 20.0 bWAR for us, just under Carlton’s 20.9. Jordan was a real “toolsy” guy who I thought would end up being an even better player than he was when he started out. Injuries hampered him and out of 7 seasons as a Cardinal he only had three where he played more than 130 games. But in those three years he had WAR’s of 5.2, 5.5 and 7.0. The remainder of his career was similar as he was real good when he could play, but could not stay on the field enough to fully tap in to his ability.
Jordan came up when the club was in some down years of the 1990s. Both Carlton and Hendrick have rings as Cardinals, and Renteria played on that great 2004 team that got steamrolled in the World Series.
Carlton of course is the best of the bunch by a good measure, but Gussie Busch’s unwillingness to bend a little in contact negotiations with “Super Steve” as he came to be called for awhile there, robbed us of his best years and helped elevate the Phillies from years of poor to mediocre teams into a consistent winner for about 10 years starting in the mid-70s.
I think Arenado was probably good with going to Houston, and then about the time the Cardinals had a deal worked out the Astros dealt Tucker and it appeared they were going to pull back some and not go all out for 2025. Nolan was probably like, “Whoa, this might not be so good after all. Better to stay where I have some stability and see if something else can be worked out that will be better.”
Just my speculation.
GameCard and Nigel going with the optimistic stance. Could happen. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Contreras and Arenado post 4 WAR years, and Gorman and Walker, not to mention Herrera, Nootbaar, and Donovan all make good to great strides. Then the pitching has to hold up. Again, could happen.
Well we will see. Whitey’s 1985 team was expected to finish last, and ended up winning over 100 games. It looked like a disaster going in to the season though. They had traded Keith Hernandez a season and a half before and now the division rival Mets had added some talented youngsters to suddenly become good. They traded their only power hitter for a soft tossing lefty who had not done anything noticeable in Boston or Pittsburgh, and acquired Jack Clark to replace him. But they were going to make a first baseman out of Clark as they had no else to play there with Hernandez gone. They lost their HOF caliber closer in free agency, and shortstop Ozzie Smith was in a contract haggle. Things seemed to be in a mess.
Yes, all four should be given some MLB time in 2025. And I would like to see Libby given a regular rotation slot and stick with him. To date the club will start him now and then, and pitch him in relief between starts. They don’t seem to think he can be an everyday starter, but I am not sure he has gotten a long enough stretch of starts to show that. I believe his relief stats are better, but he hasn’t been given a lot of time to get in a starter’s groove. Leave him in the rotation for awhile, like 3 months or more and see what he can do.
Most of the attention and seemingly effort by the Cardinals to deal Arenado has clouded what is probably the more egregious issue in a so-called “reset”, which was to move on from at least one, preferably two of Mikolas, Matz and Fedde. Three guys that are mediocre and clog up the starting rotation when there are numerous young guys that need to be given a shot.
Maybe the club tried and there were no takers, and they will surely be moved around the trade deadline if they are healthy.
I have made quite few trips to St. Louis for games, and never had any issues. The last one was in 2019 and I stayed at a hotel that was so-so – maybe 3 miles or so south from the stadium and that area. It wasn’t too far from Lafayette Square and on a Sunday morning I got out and walked around the square a couple of times. I then drove downtown in the morning and kicked around all day at the arch and other haunts. Took in the Cardinals’ museum.
I wished I had brought my bike as I would have ridden the bike everywhere, and will do that next time.
As I said it has been 2019 since I was there, so pre-pandemic, but I don’t think you will have any issues as far as personal safety.
Oh, on my way out of town I drove up to where the old ballpark, Sportsman’s Park, was located. Looked like a bit of a run down area around there, but still a cool trip down memory lane. I thought they would have a a big memorial and perhaps even a museum up there, but all that I saw that paid tribute to the old stadium was a wall with information. And that was good, with names of many of the greats that had played in that park at one, but otherwise it was just open space.