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Notice, according to DRS, the Red Sox, who are leading the World Series, are one of the worst defensive teams out there. They had -31 DRS but only gave up 39 unearned runs. That’s quite a ratio. Does anybody believe the Red Sox are worse than the Cardinals defensively?
Just to further the point – the Red Sox have 5 gold glove finalists, including their entire outfield!!! bwahahahahaha
Red Sox with 5 Gold Glove FinalistsWell, right now, I think it’s the only way to dump Fowler’s contract and get anything in return.
Though I’d be perfectly fine if the Cardinals just released Fowler.
The question is, do they have the courage to make the team better by walking away from their bad contract?
And to do a little comparison of the value of the contracts:
Greinke’s bWAR during the life of the contract: 2.3, 6.1, 4.2
Fowler’s bWAR: 1.6, -1.4So far, Greinke’s been the better investment.
You know what, I thought about it this morning, and I said, “Let’s accept DRS as a valid measure, the way we accept errors as a valid measure.” Let’s say the subjectivity of deciding an error is equal and opposite to the subjectivity of deciding a DRS. Let’s simply net out the Defensive Runs Saved versus the number of unearned runs allowed by a team and see what that gives us.
Using this compound metric, the Cardinals ranked 16th! About where they were in terms of season rankings. But continue reading down below!
So, here it goes:
Team DRS Unearned Runs Difference
Diamondbacks 157 39 118
Brewers 112 53 59
Braves 59 50 9
A’s 61 53 8
Rays 52 44 8
Cubs 42 47 -5
Astros 26 31 -5
Padres 48 54 -6
Marlins 39 47 -8
Dodgers 46 56 -10
Indians 27 37 -10
Angels 49 60 -11
Royals 24 47 -23
Giants 33 58 -25
Cardinals 40 69 -29
Yankees 26 58 -32
Twins 20 54 -34
Tigers 24 70 -46
Rockies -1 46 -47
Rangers 7 65 -58
Reds 8 78 -70
Mariners -23 47 -70
Red Sox -31 39 -70
Nationals -55 33 -88
Pirates -37 56 -93
Mets -76 46 -122
White Sox -56 76 -132
Blue Jays -99 60 -159
Orioles -94 72 -166
Phillies -146 63 -209Now, about DRS – you will notice that there are five teams who have given up more runs by DRS than unearned runs. What does that tell you? It tells me the metric is fatally flawed, but oh well.
Notice, according to DRS, the Red Sox, who are leading the World Series, are one of the worst defensive teams out there. They had -31 DRS but only gave up 39 unearned runs. That’s quite a ratio. Does anybody believe the Red Sox are worse than the Cardinals defensively?
Finally, Jose Martinez is the absolute worst defensive baseball player I have seen in my life time. He accumulated 590 Plate Appearances for the Cardinals. He represents 1/9th of our defense. I will leave it at that.
I just don’t see Arizona taking two negative assets (Fowler & Cecil) to save $8 million per year, and lose a contributing asset in Greinke.
$8 million won’t allow them to resign Pollock this year or Goldschmidt next year.
We all know Jose Martinez is just godawful at defense. He accumulated 590 plate appearances, which means he was in the field an awful lot.
We can observe Dexter Fowler and his putrid defense in RF. He’s a man that takes 4.4 seconds to run 18 yards and drops the ball. He accumulated 334 plate appearances while missing two months due to injury. We all know the Cardinals would’ve kept running him out there had he not been injured.
We all saw Marcell Ozuna flailing around on fly balls and misjudging them by 10 feet.
We know Yairo Munoz struggled defensively. We know Gyorko had is worst year in St. Louis defensively. Pham did not have a great year.
So, when four of your starters have a bad season defensively, and your primary bench option does as well, I’d say the scouts were right.
There are a lot of things wrong with defensive metrics – especially for outfielders. They rely on where the ball lands and the probability of being a hit rather than hang time and how far the fielder has to run, there is multicolinearity in the models – is it attributable to pitching, park conditions, speed of runner, teammates, etc? When they start publishing the statistical models, the levels of significance of the variables and the size of the error of the regression models, maybe I’ll put more faith in them. But right now, what we know is the error of the regression models is so big, they won’t dare publish their models for they would lose all credibility.
The Cardinals allowed 69 unearned runs on 133 errors, meaning each error was worth half a run. Houston Astros were the game’s best, and they gave up 31 unearned runs on 63 errors. We can calculate with repeatability how much an error costs a team.
Now, you remember Kolten Wong’s play on Justin Turner, correct? The one where he ranged to the SS side of second and threw Turner out off-balance? Well, Justin Turner is something like the 370th fastest person to first base in the major leagues. If somebody faster is running, Wong does not get the out. How many runs did Wong save on that play? Well, how many outs were there? Two?
To roughly equal one error in terms of runs, there would have to be a guy on first and third with two outs for that play to have saved the equivalent number of runs that score on one error.
Now, how did DRS score that play? We don’t know.
So, let’s stick to the eye test – if four of your starting position players are awful at defense, how good is your defense? If you play people out of position to accommodate those players that are terrible at defense, how good is your defense?
The Cardinals were dead last out of 30 teams in errors. Do we really think that even with all the great plays by Wong & Bader, we were the 5th best team defensively? My eyes must be deceiving me.
The thing is, Arizona is coming off a record setting payroll. They need to dump part of Greinke’s contract to resign Pollock.
If you are familiar with the concepts of marginal revenue and marginal cost, you will see that the cost of acquiring Greinke is an incremental $15.5 million.
For that, we unload Fowler, who is a negative asset on the field and in the locker room, and who really seems not to want to be in St. Louis.
So, you are trading a liability to your team for an asset, and the marginal cost is $15 million.
Fowler could compete for their RF job with Steven Souza, Jr, otherwise he’d be their 4th outfielder. If the latter, they don’t have to resign John Jay, saving another $3 million.
Fowler might sign off on it because he’d be around his buddies from the Cubs in spring training, Arizona is closer to his home in Las Vegas, and Arizona has no state income tax.
And I think if the Cardinals want to salvage any value for Fowler, they trade Fowler, John Gant and (choice of Connor Greene or Adolis Garcia) to the Diamondbacks for Grienke.
Diamondbacks save $15 million per year which they can deploy to resign Pollock or Goldschmidt.
Cardinals upgrade the rotation, thin out the roster and get rid of Fowler.
94 Gyrko
Jedd Gyorko: 1.4 fWAR; 2.0 bWAR
Patrick Wisdom: 0.4 fWAR; 0.6 bWAR (58 PA); 153 wRC+ against RHP & 120 against LHP(remaining) Free Agent 3B WAR:
Mike Moustakas: 2.4 fWAR; 2.5 bWAR (Moustakas had 200 more PA’s than Gyorko); NOTE: Moustakas and Milwaukee have a mutual $15 million option for 2019, thus he is not a free agent at this time
Josh Donaldson: 1.3 fWAR; 1.2 bWAR
Adrian Beltre: 1.2 fWAR; 2.2 bWAR
Pablo Sandoval: 0.1 fWAR; 0.1 bWAR
Chase Headley: -0.4 fWAR; -0.4 bWAR
Danny Valencia: -0.4 fWAR; -0.1 bWAR
Jose Reyes: -0.9 fWAR; -0.8 bWAR
Louis Valbuena: -0.9 fWAR; -0.9 bWARSo, you have three possible choices that can possibly outperform Gyorko (excluding Machado who is out of the Cardinals price range): Wisdom, Moustakas and Donaldson.
Two out of the last three years, Donaldson has outperformed Gyorko (well, WAR is a counting statistic, based on playing time we can say Donaldson outperformed Gyorko all 3 years). Two out of the last three years, Gyorko has outperformed Moustakas. Wisdom is a career minor leaguer in an extremely small sample size.
How would you proceed in upgrading 3B, and would that be the target of your focus or would you focus on upgrading your two worst players last year (Fowler, Cecil)?
Gyorko is set to make $13 million next year. Not sure how much of that is still paid by the Padres, if any. But yeah, I don’t see Gyorko having much trade value at all.
And yes, the Cardinals could also sign Moustakas and trade Gyorko is they really wanted a left-handed bat at 3B
I don’t believe you get a LH bat just for the sake of getting a left-handed bat. If you can have a 5 WAR RH batter and a 3 WAR LH batter, you shouldn’t prioritize a LH batter. I realize the differences between the players you are advocating for aren’t that great, but you get the point.
Given the Cardinals likely won’t be serious players for Machado or Harper, their biggest improvements will come by dumping their worst players – Fowler & Cecil. Some believe the FO should/will keep them due to the size of their contracts, but again, the FO knew they were overpaying when they handed out those contracts. That’s the price they pay for not going after the Harper’s and Machado’s of the world.
According to the P-D, the cardinals are zeroed in on a LH batter and a LH relief pitcher (putting the blinders on once again, which is what caused the Fowler & Cecil contracts in the first place).
The only real upgrade at 3B on the market is probably Josh Donaldson, if you believe he can get through the year unscathed, but he is right-handed. If he can’t steer clear of injuries, he likely won’t be better than Gyorko. If the Cardinals do sign Donaldson, I would see them trading Gyorko, probably for LH relievers.
The Cardinals could also probably trade for Brian Anderson of Miami, but that’s going to require a lot in terms of prospects. He is also right handed. So, probably won’t find a left-handed upgrade at 3B.
The rotation lacks LHP’s – and both Patrick Corbin and Dallas Keuchel would be better than Wainwright, but the Cardinals already resigned Wainwright, so little opportunity there.
If I were guessing on a left-handed corner outfielder not named Harper, I would have to go Michael Brantley, for free agent choices. The Cardinals can probably trade for David Peralta, but they’d have to give up a ton of prospects, including O’Neill. Corey Dickerson of the Pirates would be another choice. He is more expensive and only has one year before free agency, so his acquisition cost would be less than Peralta.
Left-handed relievers – You are looking at Oliver Perez, Zach Duke, Jake Diekmann, Justin Wilson in free agency (I doubt the Cardinals would go after Britton or Andrew Miller). They can also trade for LH relievers.
Just maybe the Cards have to aim higher – both in the standings and their 90-win target.
LOL – The Japanese didn’t start building superior cars by designing them to be a little better than American Cars. They aimed for them to never fail.
The Cardinals front office aims to get into a one game playoff.
Yeah, I saw an article saying the Yankees could trade for Goldshmidt and Greinke…
And another one saying they were likely to sign Corbin…
And, of course the Manny Machado rumors…
Once again, Mozeliak refuses to acknowledge where the Cardinals are:
– They’ve missed the playoffs three years in a row
– During those three years, Wainwright has not had below a 4.40 ERA or 1.40 WHIPRather than upgrade a position, Mozeliak maintains the steady-as-you-go, we-are-resistant-to-change attitude.
And everyone loves him for it.
If this move is indicative of the offseason, 2019 will be another year without playoffs.
The Cardinals signed 40 international players during last year’s July 2nd period. How many did San Diego sign? Were they not trying as hard last year?
Looks like San Diego signed 34 last year…which is probably under-reported, because according to your numbers, they way under-reported the Cardinals
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2017-team-by-team-international-signing-tracker/
It does not change the fact the team is still on hook to pay those players their FULL remaining salary. The money is the rub, not the roster spot (at least for Fowler and Cecil).
If the team decides to get rid of one or all of them, my preferred approach would be the same as they took with Leake.
1. The Cardinals knew they were overpaying for Fowler when they signed him. That’s their fault.
2. Who would take Fowler at this point? Much less trade for him. Release him and hope somebody pays him the minimum and you can save the equivalent of his rookie-level replacement’s salary.Not at all, but unless you truly think he’s a negative value going forward (and I still don’t), or you can trade him for significant salary relief (at least half of it), then a DFA makes very little sense.
1. He has been in the bottom five of defensive outfielders the past two years. He made himself a respectable outfielder when he was seeking a contract. His dropoff in performance seems to be his will to play.
2. He was also brought in for leadership, yet he was last-in, first-out two years ago, and evidently is criticizing the team for only giving in 334 plate appearances even though he was injured the last two monthsOPM = other peoples’ money, a.k.a. the kind that is really easy to spend.
Big boy clubs like the Dodgers and Red Sox pay for bad players to go away. If the Cardinals want to make the playoffs, as is their stated intention, it’s time to put on their big boy pants and it’s time for Cardinal fans to stop giving them a pass. They are a big market team in terms of revenues, a middle market team in terms of spending. Mozeliak has adopted a “make do” attitude instead of a “make the team better” attitude. Winning is top down.
The problem will be whether he can get enough playing time to actually be better. It would seem that 2019 is the perfect time to put O’Neill in on a regular basis, as you need to see if he can be a solid middle-order bat before making a decision on Ozuna next year.
1. He got 334 plate appearances in 4 months last year. How many games should he cost the team before enough is enough?
2. How many 4.4 second 18 yard “sprints” to drop the ball?Your worry seems to be that if they remain on the team, the manager will be forced to use them and they will deliver poor results.
Yes, that is the worry, because that is what they did last year.
Fowler has established that he will not behave professionally if demoted to a bench role. Just in the last two weeks he has publicly griped about Matheny not giving him enough chances to get out of his “slump.”
Wow – maybe he saw that that was the ticket out of town, and is trying to force the Cardinals hand as if his not playing defense, showing up on game day and being LIFO, and, if you believe bccran, openly defying Matheny last year wasn’t enough.
Bob, it is a case of math. With over $5 million to spend and a cap of $300,000 per player, the Cardinals could sign as many as 16 international free agents at the $300K maximum and still have money left over.
Which is exactly what the Padres did.
But since WAR is a thing, if you are trying to improve the Cardinals:
1. Fowler has been among the worst defensive outfielders in the game both years in St. Louis. He was worth -1.2 fWAR in 334 plate appearances this year. The only thing that saved the Cardinals season was him getting injured. Tyler O’Neill was worth 1.3 WAR in 142 plate appearances, despite a 40% K rate. So, over a full season, Fowler would have cost the team -2 WAR while O’Neill would have contributed nearly 4 WAR if you extrapolate out (assuming 500 plate appearances).
2. Brett Cecil was worth -0.7 fWAR this yearGet rid of the two overpaid free agents from 2016, and you dramatically improve the team.
Finally, Gyorko had a bad year. He managed only 1.4 fWAR in 402 plate appearances. Wisdom attained 0.4 in 58 plate appearances, which extrapolates to a little under 2.8 WAR in 400 plate appearances (small sample caveats)…
Take JMart out of the field and only let him pinch hit, and you have a team in the playoffs. But it’s obvious the Cardinals managers can’t resist the temptation, so you have to trade him away to a team that needs a DH.
I’m too lazy to do an actual extrapolation, so I just ball-parked them. It’s about as accurate as WAR is anyway.
However, over that same period, Harper is 11.3 at FG, but just 7.5 at B-R. That difference is quite substantial. Hard to get fully behind a stat that is all over the place.
That is because WAR is a linear regression model. I read a study on it once. In the study, the grad student trying to replicate WAR (because the services that publish WAR don’t publish their models) came up with an adjusted R-squared of about 0.71. Keep in mind, WAR is essentially regressed upon itself, because you put all these variables together, cobble them into one metric, count it up over time, and then regress it against the team’s wins to make it of any value whatsoever.
I did a regression model of sales for the auto industry and had an adjusted R-squared of 0.83, and every single one of my variables was statistically significant.
In WAR, none of the variables are statistically significant until you make them a counting metric.
And any regression with 30 or more variables is inherently flawed.
And their adjustment factors are junk science. I mean, Wrigley field is 8% smaller than Busch, but there is a 1% difference in ballpark factor. And in statistics, you don’t make adjustments to data after you’ve run your model, you do the adjustments to the data before you run your model.
Finally, when you say Harrison Bader was 3.5 WAR +/- 1 fWAR, and Kolten Wong was 2.8 fWAR +/-1 WAR, can you really say Bader was better than Wong? No, you can’t because their confidence intervals overlap. And the size of the error term in calculating WAR is between 1-2 WAR, which makes the metric essentially useless, unless you are comparing Bader to Fowler, and everybody can see the difference with their own eyes.
I am reminded of the poster who had tried to convince us that Gyorko is a better second baseman than Wong…
I’ll be your Huckleberry, Brian.
2013: Wong had an 18.2 UZR/150 in 111.0 innings; Gyorko had -0.7 (roughly average) in 1008 innings
2014: Wong had a 3.2 UZR/150 in 887 innings; Gyorko had -5.0 in 951.1 innings
2015: Wong had a 2.0 UZR/150 in 1278.2 innings; Gyorko had -1.4 in 713.2 innings
2016: Gyorko had a 10.9 UZR/150 in 337.2 innings; Wong had 8.8 in 635.1 innings
2017: Gyorko had a 21.5 UZR/150 in 42.1 innings (admittedly small sample); Wong had a -1.1 UZR/150 in 888 inningsNow, I’m going to ask you Brian, is it easier to play multiple positions well (Gyorko comes into Spring training practicing 3-4 positions) or one (Wong)?
If you are looking at the trends from 2014 to 2017, what do you see for each of those two players?
Feels like narratives get spun sometimes when there is an agenda.
It certainly does, Brian. It certainly does.
No one was clairvoyant to know that Wong, for example, would take off, and Fowler did not.
But you are saying you could see past the defensive metrics from 2014 to 2017 and knew Wong was going to have a breakout year defensively in 2018?
It is easy for tough-talking internet GMs to tell DeWitt to swallow over $50 million of his dollars.
You know, when I fist came on this board in 2016, I often thought you were a keyboard warrior hiding in your parents basement, because you were often the leader of the lynch mob against anyone who said anything critical of the front office. After the Cardinals missed the playoffs two years in a row, you mellowed a lot, but still have a ways to go.
While that is realistic, Brian, the club has to make a choice. Do they prefer to get into the playoffs and get the increased revenues that go along with it, or do they prefer to keep giving Fowler chances to prove himself?
The message they tell everyone is they want to compete for championships. The message they send by trotting Fowler out there night after night is that the size of the contract determines playing time, even if it’s not in the best interest of the team.
Fowler is a sunk cost. It’s the nature of guaranteed contracts. Business owners make decisions to end ill-fated investments all the time. Typically not to the tune of $82.5 million, but the Cardinals chose to make a $50 million overpayment to secure Fowler’s services from the beginning. They knew the last few years of his contract would be bad, it now appears his entire contract will be.
At least by making the playoffs, they can recoup some of those sunk costs. Each home playoff game brings at least $600,000 in gate revenue alone (assuming 40,000 attendance at $15 per ticket, which should be conservative). Plus TV revenues, merchandise sales, concession sales, etc. And then there is the branding, goodwill and increased merchandise sales associated with having a winning product on the field, that accrues after the season has ended.
I thought this system prevented duplicate posts!
It happened to me once. Others, I have seen it happen more frequently.
In any case, my number one reason (but certainly not the only or even manority reason) would be the addition of Hudson to the pen.
I think it’s a combination of getting rid of bad apples in the club house, dramatically improving the bullpen, and finally going with the youth movement who were being blocked by people underperforming.
The absence of Fowler from the lineup isn’t the cause of the surge, but it is a factor.
So is having relievers capable of going multiple innings in the bullpen.
And not playing people out of position.
If I were to assign the biggest factor, I would say it is a lifting of the mood in the clubhouse with Matheny gone and a few of the players who were contributing to the bad atmosphere (possibly) gone. We still don’t know who they were, but there seem to be indications Fowler was one of them, and it is easy to see how Pham might grate on his teammates.
When you consistently run a player out there who was performing as badly as Fowler was performing, you send the WRONG message to a team that is supposed to be trying to win.
