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Another way of looking at this should we rebuild question is would you prefer to do a rebuild by choice or enter into one by force because you spent years over leveraging your assets to try and remain competitive?
The reason we suck now is primarily because we have traded away valuable prospects to get Ozuna, Goldschmidt, and now Arenado to try and fix our offense and get back to the playoffs after missing three years in a row. We are paying the price for pillaging our prospects through those trades when we could have tried to fix our offense through free agency without giving up prospects. But Dewitt and Mo don’t want to spend what it takes to sign elite free agents, so they instead trade for guys. Now we don’t have enough good young players in the upper minors or on the big league club and the big veteran bats we traded for are either gone or are underperforming and getting older while making massive salaries. We will likely be disappointing the next couple years unless Dewitt spends wisely to give us much needed depth to replace what we’ve traded away. As it is, the next few years we will only be a few injuries away from the type of team we see now.
Blingboy, Gorman has actually done much better this season at using all fields, though he doesn’t have as much power hitting it to left. That said, as he adjusted more to double a pitching he became able to pull pitches he previously couldn’t, causing his power numbers to return to previous levels. But he definitely isn’t as pull happy as he used to be
A lot of our hitting prospects have looked good this year. It’s the mirror image of the pitching prospects, although a few of them have been starting to turn the corner perhaps of late.
I agree, we are starting to build up our system again, though we have a long way to go I think. We seem to have done really well in our last couple of drafts. Hopefully we can do as well this draft as we did last draft and also really restock the org with some pitchers. I think part of the issue with our pitching depth in the system is that I read we are really young at most levels so our pitchers have a lot less experience than the guys they are competing against, which has led to mostly bad results but could pay off in a few years once they are a little older.
Gscottar, I think those would definitely be good organizations to poach from, particularly the Rays. I heard on a baseball podcast that the Rays owner considers investing in a large front office to be a major competitive advantage that allows them to cheap out on payroll for players because they work the margins so well. Nobody has better scouting of other organizations talent than the Rays. Because they are so forward thinking they are also way better at player development. Also, they tend to move on from players before they decline which keeps them from giving out bad contracts and let’s them replenish their system. Lot we could learn from.
LACardfan, interestingly enough there is a chance we might be in position to draft both those guys if fangraphs rankings are anything to go by. We have pick 18 and pick 70, and at fangraphs Painter is 21 overall and Stovall is around 60.
I’m not someone who would be opposed to a full rebuild where we are really bad for a few years. That said, tanking doesn’t work as well with more teams doing it every year and Dewitt would never allow it anyway. The reason I’d be for it though is that it would play into our organizational strengths of drafting and scouting, and would give us access to acquire better young talent than we are normally able to acquire. It would also give us time to reset the roster and get younger and more talented. But it’s a pipe dream with Dewitt and our current tv deal, we rely too much on attendance for revenue.
dac… I’ve mentioned that ’17 draft for years now. That may be a reason we’re in trouble. I don’t think the situation can be fixed in two years. By then Gorman and Liberatore should be in STL. There are some good prospects at the low minors but they probably won’t be ready for 3 or four years. We have some older players at Palm Beach whose ceilings aren’t very high at this point.
A great majority of the pitchers system-wide have been up and down and mostly inconsistent. Ralston, Prater and Paniagua are the best so far but they are still a few years away.
I truly don’t want to sound pessimistic…. I just want to keep it real.
I hear you. Part of the projection of us doing much better in a couple years is definitely me taking a leap of faith. I think we have a lot of promising players in the lower minors who are 3-4 years away. That being said, in the near term we can count on guys like Gorman, maybe Burleson, Nootbar (at least as a potentially useful bench piece), and Liberatore in the rotation. Gorman and Liberatore could be impactful on a similar level to Carlson, and Burleson and Nootbar could be useful depth, which is something we desperately need as our bench players outside of Sosa have been a disaster.
The real key to us improving is spending going back to normal levels (not a guarantee) and some bad contracts coming off the books in Carpenter, Fowler, Martinez and Miller. If we can make some savvy pitching signings, that could really fix a lot of our woes. I think pitching depth is going to be an issue for the next few years though. I think we could really improve if we do those things correctly, but our recent track record in free agency isn’t inspiring. I think our scouting is really good, but some of the early extensions have been truly bad mistakes. That’s why I would like them to add to our front office by poaching people from the Rays for example to help shore up our front offices weak spots.
Mo has shown in the past that with the right people advising him, he can make really good decisions. Unfortunately there has been a real talent drain from the years where we were cutting edge that has not been sufficiently replaced.
Some guys that look intriguing based on either system needs or Randy Flores’ history that I’m hoping the Cardinals can grab with their first round pick are:
Pitchers
Hoglund – he fits the mold of a guy who might fall into our laps who if healthy wouldn’t be there. Excellent stuff and I read a report saying he has elite command. There is some percentage chance he stuff may deteriorate due to getting tommy John, so that is a risk to be sure.Bachman – elite sinker and slider, inconsistent change up. Command really improved this year which vaulted him up draft boards.
Wicks – lefty with the best change up in the draft and a good fastball. Can hit 97, so considerably more velocity than Marco Gonzalez had to work with.
McGreevy – mid 90s fastball, throws four pitches and has good command. Was a late bloomer as a prospect so there could be a lot of untapped potential as he was a converted middle infielder.
Hitters
Zavala – fits the combo of good hit tool, power, and advanced plate discipline that Flores seems to fall in love with. If we took him at 18, might be able to sign him under slot like we did with Walker last year.Ford – fits the hit tool plus power mold, is a great athlete, currently a catcher but could play elsewhere. Is a high schooler but Flores isn’t afraid of that.
Chandler – technically a two way player, have seen him mocked in our range. He is a two sport athlete with a football scholarship to Clemson, but he could really take off if he starts focusing on one sport.
I don’t remember a time when there were this many really promising hitters in the Cardinals’ minors
I agree, especially in the low minors. Last years draft appears to have been a major success in particular. Walker is already a fringe top 100 prospect on fangraphs due to his impressive numbers, advanced plate discipline, and eye popping stat cast exit velocities. Mason Winn has taken the torch from Gorman for hottest hitter in the system and appears to be what we hoped Delvin Perez would be when he was drafted. Alec Burleson has cooled off a little but is still a well above average hitter at double a his first year in the minors.
The pitchers from that draft I’m still high on as well. Tink Hence is still to make his debut but is really intriguing. Ian Bedell had to get tommy John but is promising. Levi Prater is striking out the world and if he can get his walks under control will really shoot up our prospects ranking.
That draft was rated highly at the time and the early results are really exciting.
Maybe Randy Flores and Gary LaRocque should be on the hot seat.
This is just nuts. Flores has done about as well as you could hope given the Cards typical draft position and it would be knee jerk lunacy to dismiss him. I don’t know enough about Larocques role other than he is highly valued and would likely be missed.
Frankly this whole thread is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. We are having a bad year due to being riddled with key injuries but were in first place in our division when healthy. The issue is we don’t have the depth at Memphis we’ve had in years past to supplement the big league club and are suffering as a result. But this was always going to happen at some point after two decades of contention as a playoff caliber team every year that won two World Series and went to four. Eventually you spend so many years trying to contend now while also trying to prepare for the future, you over leverage yourself and make a run of regrettable decisions, and you end up with a disappointing year.
That’s fine, it’s okay to have one disappointing year due to injuries and not enough depth. That’s not a reason to dismiss the entire front office because having a year like this one was inevitable. Now, does that mean I think this front office couldn’t use some new blood? Of course not, I really wish we would poach guys from the Rays or dodgers as I think we could stand to improve. Super teams are the type of teams that win it all now, 2006 and 2011 types of seasons don’t really happen like they used to. And super teams that have star talent and ridiculous depth take time to build. We’re likely at least a few years away assuming we do everything right from the draft, to international free agency, to acquiring talent through trades and mlb free agency. The fact that Dewitt would never tank makes that task even harder and I’m skeptical our current front office can do it based on the last five years of decision making. That being said, I’m not really upset about this year.
Ztr, we have Gorman and Burleson at double a doing well, Nootbar at Memphis might be ready to be a useful bench piece.
That being said, part of the reason it seems like we have no prospects at Memphis ready to fill needs on the big league team is probably due to the draft penalty in 2017 really hurting us, the fact that under Flores we have spent more high picks on high schoolers who take longer to develop, and also the fact that there was no minor league season last year which seems to have really hurt a lot of guys, particularly pitchers.
That said, our last few drafts seem to have some real hits but the highest level they’ve reached is Gorman and Burleson in double a, most of them are in the low minors. I suspect in a year or two we will have a highly ranked system, probably top ten.
Thanks so much for the update, Brian! I had been wondering about this for awhile. I think it was Goold who I remember reporting about the lease situation with the Marlins being the reason they hadn’t installed the equipment yet, but this was admittedly a few years ago so I could be misremembering. It could have just been a financial situation and the team gave a made up reason when they were being asked why the equipment wasn’t in use yet? Or goold was speculating rather than reporting actual info? Anyway, glad to hear it sounds like the equipment is actually in use!
I know historically we have done well with first early round college pitchers, but has that remained true under Randy Flores? Dakota Hudson worked out, but Zach Thompson and Griffin Roberts are not looking too hot. I remember Flores saying he has more say in the early round picks before turning it over to the scouts. One hit and two question marks isn’t that much to go on for assessing Flores’ ability to scout pitchers. He has done really well with early round position players though.
But if we are just looking at needs of the system, pitching should be the priority. That said, there is the argument of going bpa rather than drafting for need in the early rounds.
It’s funny you mention get a new owner bccran, because I think a lot of what people are frustrated with Mozeliak about (risk averse strategy, not doing enough to be a World Series contender) are probably criticisms that should be directed at Dewitt. Dewitt sets the organization’s strategy and financial constraints and Mo executes that vision. I think you could easily argue Mo has done a bad job of that the last half decade. Outside of the Arenado deal, it appears basically every major trade Mo has made we would have been better off doing nothing and keeping the prospects. The Ozuna deal lost us Galen and Alcantra, the Goldy deal lost us Kelly who would be our best hitter right now, the Arozarena trade looks terrible in hindsight, etc. But I think a lot of those moves were driven by Dewitt likely being eager to get back to the playoffs and being worried about the Cubs. If Dewitt had told Mo to be patient, then we are much better today.
LACardfan, pitchers aren’t always going to have their best stuff and they need to learn how to pitch through that. That pitchability is why guys like Wainwright are still in the league and why other guys flame out or never make it. The minors is the perfect time to work through some adversity at the expense of your stats. If he is able to figure it out, it would be a valuable lesson should he make the big leagues.
In Palm Beach, they let Edwin Nunes allow four runs AND load the bases before taking him out of the game. The only out he recorded was the last player he faced.
A large part of the problem with our minor league affiliates is their managers do not have their heads in the game at all.
Is the minor leagues not for development, particularly low-A ball? I think they should give guys plenty of opportunities to work through outings where they don’t have their best stuff or control, even if they end up with terrible stat lines as a result. They need to learn to work through that stuff at some point, it’s not like whether we win or lose a game at a ball is more important than Nunez learning to pitch when he doesn’t have his best stuff.
Teams with front offices like the
cardinals don’t get what they want they get what they deserve. This group for 7 years now has underperformed and put a team on the field that is an also ran.I know people get frustrated with Mo because he is seemingly risk averse in his strategy to pretty much everything (from not signing the Harper and Machado types to how we have historically approached the draft and international free agency, we tend to take smaller risks rather than big swings). That said, I think that is probably more driven by Dewitt than Mo. Frankly, the easiest way to acquire star talent is to tank for several years, but this fan base would never tolerate that level of losing as evidenced by this thread of people ready to give up their fandom in a year we’ve had bad luck with injuries but we’re competitive when healthy.
It’s true that front offices have gotten smarter and we have not been at the forefront of forward thinking front offices in years most likely. I’ve wanted a front office shakeup for a couple years now. But that wouldn’t change who our owner is, so it’s likely the risk averse strategy would stay the same even with a new president and Gm.
Assuming a DH is in play next year, Gorman and/or Burleson could be part of that equation in 2022.
An exciting tidbit is that they are both lefties at the plate which we sorely need. I also am excited that both Gorman and Burleson seem to be well balanced hitters that can hit for power and get on base without striking out a ton. What Gorman is going at Springfield is eerily reminiscent of Carlsons breakout year there, and Gorman is basically the same age as Carlson was when he lit Springfield up.
Hopefully both finish this year with time at Memphis and may be well positioned with a good spring training next year to make the big league club by mid season. This is assuming there is no strike of course.
It’s an important year for the Cards draft. The system is in the worse shape I can remember in the last 20 years.
Eh, I would disagree with that sentiment slightly. The teams are bad because the depth is not good, particularly the pitching. But the actual prospects among our minor leaguers are performing really well it seems. Ultimately it’s how your prospects are doing that matters. Maybe you could make an argument that prospects playing on losing teams is in some way bad for their development but I don’t think that has been demonstrated.
Interestingly, I read an article (I think it was on the athletic, might have been Keith Law) that made the point that this years draft could be unique in that the high school players will have been evaluated more by scouts than a lot of the college players due to COVID wiping out a lot of the showcases/seasons for college guys whereas a lot of the high school ones still happened. As a result, the scouts may be more confident in their evaluations of high school players for this particular draft, whereas historically they tend to be more confident about college players. The article wondered if this would lead to more high school players getting drafted in the early rounds compared to most years.
I know this probably gets asked every year in a draft thread, but what is people’s opinions on drafting for need versus drafting best player available? It seems like pitching is now a real need in the system due to Flores picking high upside bats in the first few rounds over his tenure (even Correa did this his year as well). Now starting pitching seems like a real need in the system.
Yet, at the same time, Flores seems to have done really well with his picks on high upside bats. Gorman looks really promising, and I know it’s early for Walker but he’s definitely exciting and should appear on some top 100 lists next preseason. Winn is intriguing as well. If Flores is particularly talented at drafting hitters, maybe go with that strength in the early rounds?
Maybe go with boa and hope someone falls like you did with Gorman (and less successfully with Perez and Plummer).
What is everyone thinking our strategy should be in the early rounds?
Forsch, normally I would agree with trying to maintain a balanced perspective on things. However, I see their struggles offensively this year as a continuation of the offensive struggles last year. In looking at it that way, I would argue we’re not dealing with a small sample size anymore but instead think we have a lot of hitters who are flawed in a similar way (inability to hit breaking balls and off speed pitches). If it were just one or two batters, it wouldn’t be a problem. But it seems to be most of the lineup that struggles with this. I was hoping Jeff Albert would be able to help with this but it seems like he largely hasn’t been able to. That is cause for concern as our front office has limited flexibility to address this issue this offseason or next due to bad contracts on the books and a lack of elite prospects to replace the flawed hitters in the near term. I’m optimistic about Carlson and have been impressed with him so far but he by himself will not solve the problems with our offense. I suspect we will just have to wait for the bad contracts to come off the books for an infusion of talent to help our offense.
This seems like a good pick that both fills an organizational need while still going bpa as mlb.com had him rated 14th overall.
I’ve been following the box scores of Nunez ever since I watched his first game in Peoria. It was evident in his debut that, while he clearly looked overmatched against breaking balls, he was making substantial progress as the game went on and looked noticeably better in his last at bat compared to his first one. As I’ve been monitoring his box scores, I’ve noticed two interesting trends. The first trend is that he has really cut down on his strikeouts after his first few games, which is really promising (though it’d be nice if he also drew more walks). The other trend I noticed is that he is hitting for almost no power, as he currently has only one extra base hit. Obviously, this is the best pitching he’s ever faced and the power will likely return with more time at the level. What I can’t tell from just reading box scores is how often he hits the ball hard and how he is adjusting to breaking stuff. I know he is striking out much less, so it’s clear he’s made some adjustments to secondary pitches. But I cannot tell if he is having any luck hitting them without watching the game or reading the report of someone who has. Has anyone here watched Nunez recently and could give me the answer?
To anyone who was able to watch Peoria, did Nunez get any hits off of breaking balls? I noticed in the game I watched Monday that he seemed to be adjusting to the breaking balls as the game went on and even fouled some off. To give you an idea of how quickly he is adjusting, in his first at bat Monday he came completely out of his stance trying to hit a curveball and struck out. But as the game went on, he was much better at staying in his stance and even managed to make contact a few times, instead of missing badly. He seems to be really quick with making adjustments after each at bat, showing good intelligence.
