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force Game 6 Friday night
Another CFFF this year would be welcome, even though for me it would be frozen air fryer nuggets from the grocery store. I live in an impoverished fiddler desert. I dream of a UNICEF chopper flying down the street with a guy kicking cases of fiddlers out the back.
That’s 7 guys for 5 slots.
On today’s podcast Brian and Kyle discussed the evolving usage of pitchers and nature of pitching staffs. The concept of 5 slots is increasingly blurry. On a pitching staff set up like the forward thinking Brewers are trying to do, with a staff full of good multi-inning guys, 7 guys who could be considered starters is not a problem. I don’t claim to have my head around the concept yet, but I can see things going that way, and I assume the Cardinals development staff does too.
My thinking about Clarke is, best case, he has to stay on the mound all 2027 working up through AA and AAA, just to position himself to take a run at MLB sometime in 2028. That is way more staying healthy than what Roby has to do to get to the promised land. I have previously mentioned that there is no structure in a pitching arm that sheds loose bodies when healthy and undamaged, which is concerning, but in Clake’s case, it seems intuitive that maybe it is debris from a previous procedure, and maybe that is less concerning. We don’t know, of course.
I have Bob’s teen heartthrobs coming up after Kuhns, Roby and Molina. That puts them in my top 20 which seems fair. Almost all teen shortstops don’t stay shortstops the whole way up. They slide somewhere else more crowded with bats while also facing better and better pitching and defense as the pyramid narrows. About a half season into AA you see who survived the gauntlet.
13 Kuhns
14 RobyI decided to go crazy and bump Roby up displacing Molina in my list. Not because I think Roby will magically become resilient and have a substantial MLB career, but because he might have a healthy and substantial 2027 in MLB.
I have already talked about Kuhns, but in addition, I think he will be a fast mover. A reason I think so is he has such good control. Hardly walks anyone. One scouting report says he is over the plate too much.
I was interested in Kyle’s view that the game is headed toward pitching staffs of 3 inning guys. At the least the familiar roles of starters and relievers are evolving. I guess if you have a guy who goes 4 and another guy who goes 3 it doesn’t really matter which goes first and is the official starter. Until contract time at least. It seems like the pay spread between starters and relievers would narrow, as would IP in a season. I guess you would still want a cheap mop up guy though.
As you spent a deal of time on Peete, I was hoping for some info on his health layoff this year. It is said there was something in addition to the concussion layoff. Unknowns make it hard to assess health risk.
When i saw Frias ranked the 5th best prospect in the Cardinals system on the cardinals.mlb site I decided to discount what pundits thought about it. To me his results don’t jump off the page. Teens can have some amazing metrics and i don’t doubt he is right there, but the stuff that doesn’t support the narrative gets swept under the rug sometimes. For example, they point to his high exit velo but don’t factor in it comes with a high ground ball rate which results from his negative average launch angle. ‘But he can fix that!’ Yes, but a lot of guys would be good if they fix something. Easier said than done. Thats just my take, of course. If he sports a better batting line next year i will like him better. So i have him in my 20-25 group which consider very fair.
Nigel, back then the test of whether a guy was a starter was going through the lineup 3 times. They sorted them early I guess and arm trouble showed up sooner rather than later. Now days the development strategy is all about carefully curating the workload. Some say it has to be that way now because the damage is done before they even get to pro ball.
Peete has the first round pedigree and put up a good batting line in limited play time, but I am unsure about him. He switched from infield to outfield to start the 2025 season and hit for low average with a lot of strike outs over a full season. Then missed a lot of time in 2026. I know he sat out due to concussion protocol but am unsure if there are other health concerns. Can anyone shed light on that?
I assume they think its fine for a .500 team going through rebuild. At some level of competttiveness, 4+ inning guys won’t get them there.
One item relevant to a starter is IP per start. Doyle was 4.47 and Franklin 4.2.
Not saying anything wrong with that for first pro season as a starter, but going deep into games is an impotant box which both have yet to check.
Man, everyone mentioned is right there. I am OK with any of them in these slots. Another top 20 guy IMO is Mason Molina, largely due to proximity and durability. He did OK in his AAA stint, and a guy who can stay on the mound and not get his head knocked off has a chance to learn the art.
I was hesitant on Condon. A lot of good stuff can be said about him, but none of it changes the fact he is an undersize outfielder with no power. Still, I give the draft pedigree its due picking Condon and Kuhns here.
The system seems to have a lot of talent coming along all up and down. We shouldn’t assume that the middle infield in place now is going to be better than alternatives a couple years from now.
Spending the money on wonks, scouts, coaches and the tech stuff they use only provides an advantage to the teams that are first off the line with it. Once everyone has it then they are all spending the money on it just to tread water. Eventually, teams will figure out how to make it less labor intensive and head counts will move the other direction. Then the teams with ‘bloated’ staffs will be old fashioned.
One of the reader comments with that article spelled out the other side of the meddlesome owner issue.
“The last GM with any level of autonomy humiliated the owner with a string of scandals resulting in record fines and losses of draft picks. Then sued him. Guessing Crane might still be a little gun shy about giving free reign”.
I agree Cjintje is top 10 worthy and voted him, but the issue is the same most of them seem to have now days which is going deep into games. As of now it looks like 90 pitches is his cap and he hopes for 5 IP out of that. Last year between both stops he went 133 IP in 28 starts for an avg of 4.75. His pitch count stayed the same all year. Scrolling the game log he maybe got rather more efficient as the year went along. More 5 and a few 6 IPs late than early. He averaged 5+ his last college year, so it kind of looks like that’s what we’ve got. He’s going to be trying for 5 each time and if everything goes great he could go 6 now and then, but if not then he won’t reach 5. Sounds familiar right? Maybe just the new reality.
