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Agreed re this sort of analysis helping to explain the Cards moves.
Thanks for flagging Komar. He’s done better his last four starts, but I notice his low K totals. Can you give a sense of what you see.
I’d surely like to protect Pages. That said, my inclination is to protect pitchers over position players at this point given the particular struggles of the pitching staff. And the Cards have other catching prospects. Hopefully they keep Pages, but Bedell before Pages.
jnevel-
Thanks for doing this. I have been wondering about this very issue. (In part because I wouldn’t be surprised to see them bring up a centerfielder. I just checked and saw that Antico won’t need to be added to the 40-man, so have ruled out his promotion. But I wonder if we’ll see Pinder called up.)
There’s no way I call up Graceffo, McGreevey, or Scott.
I am inclined to call up Winn, which gets us to 43 on your list. As you note Leahy could be a drop, so 42. I’d get to 40 by (a) dropping Palacios, who seems to me a marginal prospect–I’m willing to let him go to play Winn; (b) Sending a player away in a trade for one of those pitchers. I know we can’t forecast trades, but it seems unlikely to me that we can bring in 3 starters and a reliever without a trade.
I agree with you about Bedell and Pages. Darn. Back up to 42. I’d think that trades would get us there. If not, I would take that chance exposing Gomez and Pages to the Rule 5. But your exexercise does give me pause. Winn will likely be next year’s main SS. It would be good to be start to break him in now in case the callup reveals a reason to be sure to keep Edman for next year in case he needs to be SS instead.
I saw some speculation (can’t recall source) that they will try to pull a 2 or 3 for 1 trade before setting 40-man rosters in part to protect an additional player.
Mo did get good value. Clearly they weren’t going to get an established starter for a rental, though I’d hoped they would get one for a rental plus. But we didn’t trade anyone whose contract wasn’t up (save DeJong, if we had wanted to take the option). Seems like both Hudson and Liberatore will be starters the rest of the way, perhaps in the hope that one can be fifth starter next year. If that works, then they need two more starters, and I’d assume at least one would come by trade. We’ll see in the offseason if Mo can pull it off. I’d think the presence of four other starters would make it easier to land whatever free agent we pursue since it would assure a bit more that we are pushing to contend next year.
Mo is playing poker. Last year he got Montgomery by waiting. We’ll see if he gets a similar outcome in the next…47 minutes. My bet is that Flaherty is traded.
Between the two trades, looks to me we got good value, but not value for opening day 2014. We’ll see how they fill the Monty/Waino/flaherty spots for April 2024. Bigger chance of at least one veteran down to a single year on his contract?
He played the whole game last night, and what I read was that this was the pla no today, too. His full game last night was different from standard practice, and i understood today would be too.
Brian-
Not sure I agree re your judgment about Tuesday. If they trade Flaherty and Monty, my guess is that they get two rotation arms to replace them so no net change. And I’d be fine with that, TBH. Then the question is if Waino is better than Hudson and Liberatore, who seem next in line. If it’s the Waino of his last outing, and if Bob Reed’s diagnosis of Liberatore’s MPH decline are on target, I think I would go with Waino. Probably with Hudson piggybacking for the last four innings of Waino starts.
Gibson started 14 games his last year, with another 8 outings from the pen, 109 innings total. Waino has only 12 appearances, all starts, and 56.2 innings, so he’s not kept at it as long as Gibby did, at least in terms of how much they’ve pitched. We’ll see where Waino is after another couple.
I think his best stretch of about that long this year was April 25-May 7. 20 of 51, 7 doubles, 5 HR, albeit three in the last game. That’s a pretty good run. But overall, his OPS is down to .839. Very good, but not the .879 to .981 of the previous three years. He’ll be 36 in September and it wouldn’t be surprising if he were beginning to show the signs of aging.
Agreed here with ZTR. Waino getting to, or past, 200 is maybe the one thing other than trying to figure out what next year will be like that will keep me watching down the stretch. And on top of that, I’m not at all sure that the Cards have five better starters just now, and that’s before the likely trades of Monty and Flaherty.
This reminds me a bit of Gibby’s last year. 3-10 and a 5.04 ERA, up from 2.77 two seasons before. The end came of the career came fast.
I’d forgotten the end of Forsch’s career. 3.73 ERA at age 38 with the Cards, then traded to Houston with his ERA at 6.51 the rest of that year, 5.32 the next.
Odds of getting ROY are not high, for sure. Walker was a favorite this year and won’t get it. But I’m not sure of the cost of having Winn spend another 3-4 weeks in AAA before coming up, too.
My money is also on O’Neill sticking around. At least till the offseason when, hopefully, he’s had enough playing time to be more attractive if they want to trade him. Maybe trade him for pitching then, with an OF of Donovan, Nootbaar, Walker, with Edman as 4th OF/late defensive sub/backup SS and 2B.
I’d love to see Monty re-signed. But my money is that he will want to see what he can get on the market at year’s end.
Hi 27-
Players lose rookie status at 130 AB or 45 days on the active roster. Call him up Sept. 1 when rosters expand?
Picking up on the need for “win now” pitching…I keep trying to grapple with what that is. My sense is that part of it is having upside pitchers, but part is depth. Part of the problem this year is that the 4th and 5th spots in the rotation have been particularly problematic, adding strain everywhere else. I think of these as spots where the pitcher needs to consistently keep the team in the game through the end of five. They don’t need to be folks who largely win the game on their own. I’m optimistic that Matz has turned a corner here and will be a solid 4th or 5th starter next year. Landing the other, say next year’s 5th starter, before the trade deadline seems to me doable. Perhaps this is a couple solid AAA pitchers a bit closer than Graceffo is, someone who can let Graceffo get the AAA time he needs.
Mikolas has been inconsistent this year, but part of that is the danged WBC, I suspect. I am fine with him being one of the top three pitchers in the rotation. But they need to get two more. Last year they got Montgomery at the deadline. I’d like to see them do that magic again. Then a top end free agent could look at us and see “hey, I’m joining a team with Mikolas, [trade deadline three], Matz, and AAA guy who will be fifth. This is a rotation that has a good shot at the postseason” and we become a more attractive option.
So I don’t see us getting this all done at the deadline. But we can make a downpayment. Montgomery cost us Bader. Bader seems closer to Carlson or DeJong to me than he does to Donovan or Noot. Bader was at 1.2 WAR for the season when he was traded last year. DeJong is at 0.9, Carlson 0.7. [Noot is at 2.6, Donovan 1.9]. Add in Montgomery to this year’s trade, and the fact that we got Montgomery last year makes me think we have some chance of pulling off a deal for someone who could be a number 3 starter next year without trading, say, Donovan or Noot.
Bob-
Thanks for the ROY reminder. I’d be very tempted to wait till late enough in the year to bring up Winn that he would still be a contender next year. I agree with those saying that it would be good for Winn to see time in MLB this year to begin to get acclimated. I’d raised the concern over the marginal prospect who would be left unprotected to the Rule 5 if Winn is on the 40-man. I’m skeptical that I would worry that much about that player. But I’d rather make the decision knowing who it would be!
It would be interesting if Chicago holds on to win tonight and as a result decides to buy rather than sell, then comes up short this season, missing the opportunity to build, and leaving the Cards with one less team competing with them in selling. OK. I’m stretching in looking for a way to feel better about that debacle in inning one.
Suarez enters the game, so both long men used tonight.
I did a bit of searching, and it seems that a pitcher can be tossed without warning if it’s determined the HBP was intentional. The umps could have let that one go. And should have to my mind. But I think they did have the option of doing what they did.
Mikolas won’t go tomorrow, but if they deal Flaherty, they might just move Mikolas up a day to take the Monday start.
Liberatore is rested. I’d put a lot of money that he gets called up for tomorrow as the innings eater from the pen. Naile pitched yesterday so is out.
I don’t think I remember seeing a pitcher tossed without there being a warning. Hudson hasn’t pitched in five days, so should be able to eat some innings. If he can find the plate.
Watching the Cubs laughing at the Cards, I am wondering if there will be some benches emptying at some point this weekend.
Lawrence’s MLB time is…not inspiring. But he had a sub-3 ERA in AAA in 2022. And the Cards might be on the verge of needing a lot of major league pitching. I can understand the desire to bring Lawrence in for a game or two to see if he’s a possibility, if there’s a need.
I want to bump this. Hjerpe showed some interesting signs just before going on the IL. If his health is nothing to worry about, I could see his moving fast.
