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One risk in keeping Lynn and then not signing him is that he signs with the Cubs, replacing Lackey. He’ll be haunting us for another 3 years or so.
If we keep him, I prefer management to be thinking of working a deal moreso than taking a flier on a draft choice. A solid major league starter is worth far more than a post-second round pick. Sure we have some nice prospects, but pitching has a way of thinning out fairly quick. Just like this year with Reyes going down and now Wainwright going on the DL. Weaver is still an unknown, Leake is inconsistent, and even Martinez struggles more than you want for an ace.
Ironically our fifth starter, Wacha, and Lynn are pitching better than anyone the last month or so. Lynn has been pretty consistent all year, and is a horse. He has a lot of value so we either need to keep him and commit to signing him, or get at least a top-100 prospect and other lower risk potential in return.
When Rosey is good, he’s very good. Like any pitcher, it is all about commamd. If he’s right, he dominates.
Maybe a “bridge” type signing would be a better way to phrase it. I think the club knew the last couple of years of the deal could be over-payments, but wanted to have greater insurance on the next 2-3 years.
Good comments mudville. And you never know how things will work out. I was riding the bike this morning and thinking about what I said on the Fowler and Piscotty deals, and then thought that who knows, maybe a year or two from now those deals will look good.
Nice to win the kind of game we usually lose. I would be okay if we decide to move on from some of the core of this club and move toward the future. If we could get some good controllable talent for Carpenter, Lynn and Oh, not to mention Grichuk, Siegrist, Bowman, and possibly Martinez, I say go for it.
Lynn would be tough to lose this year, as he is pitching well and is a workhorse. I’d love to work a deal for him and jettison Leake and Fowler, but we would have to absorb a lot of financial commitment. And we need to see what we can get from Dexter, along with Piscotty. Both have been a bit sabotaged by injury this year, but maybe down the stretch or next year they’ll bring some good value. Piscotty should, although given hindsight the club undoubtedly wishes they had not done either deal.
DeJong looks like the real deal to me, but we will see how he progresses. He needs to learn better plate discipline, but that is not unusual for a guy just starting out.
On Diaz, after I commented about how bad he was playing, the reponses were that he was just fine and was our everyday shortstop. But man, you could just see that something was wrong with him – I wonder of it has something more to do than just baseball.
Pham is more in the category of players we want to acquire, not trade. I would be real surprised if he is dealt unless premium prospect(s) coming back are part of the deal. If that is the case, most likely other players will be involved as well and we would be signaling to the fans the old “wait ’til next year” slogan.
Trade Pham? No way, unless we are in full “sell” mode. Grichuk maybe, but if they trade Pham, they may as well start unloading guys like Lynn, Oh, maybe Carpenter as well and stock up for the future.
Dexter was sort of a stop-gap, insurance type signing after we let Holliday walk, that has turned out worse than expected in the short run due to him being a little banged up this year, and then Matheny doing his usual lineup messing up routine. Since then, the signing is looking worse as Pham is healthy and gotten to play and show his value, Bader is doing well, and we just traded for a hot-shot AAA outfielder. Not too mention the extension to Piscotty, and the ever-present Grichuk who hits homers at a reasonably good pace, enough to keep us all thinking maybe he could be as good as Pham. Then there is Martinez who is similar to Grichuk – can look real good at times, good enough to make you think that if he plays regularly he could put up some numbers.
Great comments and illustration on WAR. Those guys that put up 7+ WAR are incredibly valuable. We had that in Pujols for years. We got much more value from him than we spent. Which brings up another point – history has shown that often a high WAR guy like Albert gets compensated more by a team he leaves, than the team he was when at his best. In other words, Albert is not unusual in that the team that got a bargain for him does not over-compensate him during his declining years. Often another team “pays” for the value that went to his prior team. Right now, we are paying Dexter’s 2016 value, that went to the Cubs. But then the Cubs are paying Jason Heyward’s 2015 value, that went to us.
It’s good to see that everyone is now on board with Diaz as a disappointment. I commented how bad he looked about a week before he was sent out, and there were quite a few responses saying basically that I did not know what I was talking about. But watching him, it was obvious he was lost – he would weakly flail at pitches well out of the zone, and was trying to pull them at that. Now it looks like DeJong is the man at short. DeJong and Wong kind of has a ring to it – they look like a good, young DP combo for the next few years.
Exactly – that’s how I would have done it. I also do not like Molina in the 5 spot. I would have gone:
Fowler
Wong
Pham
Gyorko
DeJong
Voit
Molina
GrichukThe unknown is: Has Carpenter improved due to moving to leadoff, or is it more a normal progression towards his career average? Maybe some of both? Maybe had he stayed at 3 he would have done even better? We’ll never know of course.
Quite a few disappointments this year. Diaz of course is a huge drop, but then his loss has been mitigated somewhat by the play of DeJong.
The bullpen is probably the biggest disappointment I see. We have lost far too many games that were close late. This Cub series was a classic sample of our season – we outscore them by 4 runs in the series, but lose two of three, both losses being in late-close games.
Another point that has not been brought up that I think has hurt our club is not sticking with Carpenter in the three spot, and giving in to the whole “he can only hit lead-off” mantra. One of the big reasons Fowler was thought to be worth the deal we gave him was to settle our lineup, bring in a true leadoff man, and hit Carpenter in more of a run-production spot. To abandon that some 40 games into a five-year deal is extremely short-sighted. I don’t have a break down, but Carpenter is probably not hitting much different at lead off than he did at #3, and most likely would have about the same numbers today had we stuck with him at 3.
Now we have Dexter Fowler at 3, which makes our 3 and 5 hitters, including Molina at 5, as probably near the weakest twosome in the league.
Then after that, Piscotty has been a major disappointment. You have Grichuk, Piscotty, Molina and Diaz (when he was with the big club) all around .700 OPS. That is tough to overcome, and then with a shaky bullpen it’s a wonder we are not further below .500.
But then the reason we are where we are is that Pham and DeJong have picked up much of the offensive slack, and the starters have been mostly good.
Wow, Siegrist looked great! Here is a situation where I would bring him back for the ninth. No way Mike will do that of course, and there is something to be said for it as you love to have him build his confidence on that outing. Bringing him back might not go so good in the ninth.
Promising appearance though.
Sheesh, good offense and bad defense in this one. At least the offense has hit the “On The Run” bonus. This should be the batting order for the next few games:
Sierra
Carpenter
Pham
Gyorko
DeJong
Molina
Wong
FowlerMike likely won’t do that, so at least he should flip Sierra and Fowler and go that way with the rest of the order.
If the team was doing well, there would likely be more talk about DeJong. But since the team is poor (to date anyway), people tend to focus on the reasons for failure.
Tough loss yesterday. Not enough runs for the number of hits, and once again we cannot close it. I thought Matheny might stick with Rosenthal to start the ninth against Cervelli, then bring in Cecil against the left-handers. I think Mike needs to get out of the mind set that bullpen pitchers can only pitch one inning, as right now our ‘pen is so bad that if a guy is looking good you need to stay with him. The auto-pilot managing does not work.
It looks dim for the Cardinals to not be in a sell mode in the next week or so. We really need to win 2 of the 3 “non-deGrom” starts, as most likely that game will go in the Mets win column. And even doing that, we only get a series split and basically tread water.
A woeful situation right now. When Dexter Fowler is your number 3 hitter, that is an indication of where your offense lies. Look at the top teams #3 hitter, and there is a huge gap between the Bryce Harper types and Dexter. What has killed us offensively has primarily been Matt Carpenter’s inability to step-up and be a solid #3 production hitter, and Steven Piscotty’s lost year. Aledmys Diaz’ flop is right behind.
Same here. Whenever an article is accompanied with a video, I never watch the video. I just want to read about the topic. With a video, I find my mind drifting and do not get the same information as I do from reading.
But I think this is a reflection of a changing world. The younger people prefer video. Whenever my wife’s sons come over to our house, especially if there are a bunch of people around, they spend a lot of time showing everyone these funny videos they find. They pretty much do everything by video.
The Cardinals are in a bit of a bind for the time being, as two of the guys they would consider sending to Miami as part of a deal for Stanton are on the DL (Grichuk and Piscotty).
Most anyone would love to add Stanton to their lineup, although he has struggled some this year. But he’s a legitimate power hitter, one who will no doubt have a career year in the next few years. The question of course is how much do you carve out of your farm system, and how much stress do you add to the salary budget to make it happen?
Management will need to assess the risk and potential rewards, and decide if they can be a player in a deal like this.
Wishing Colby all the best. He always seemed to have off-the-field issues; I felt it was a lack of maturity, but perhaps something else was going on.
Not sure his dad was always a positive influence. It seemed like his dad tended to blame others for Colby’s misgivings. I do not know this for sure of course, but I sensed that when an authority figure chastised Colby, his dad would get on the authority figure and say “what are you doing to my son”.
When I was a young guy and an authority figure chastised me, my dad would ask me “what kind of screwing around are you doing to get the coach (or teacher or another adult) upset like that”. 🙂