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Yes Brian, that trade was unquestionably a win for the Cardinals. The Cardinals were able to harness Soriano’s changeup into an effective weapon to turn him from a pretty bad reliever last season to an average reliever this season and the Nationals seem to have not done anything right with Granillo as he flamed out in a big way.
I have been right a lot of times on prospects. Granillo is probably the most wrong I’ve ever been (maybe Carlson, but there were a lot of weird external factors and mismanagement with him). I thought Granillo would be our future closer. I was almost certain he’d at least be a back of the bullpen guy.
It’s hard to tally these as if it were regular predictions. Some of the posters posted regular predictions, while others tried Bold Predictions as the thread indicated. When someone picks what seems reasonably likely or has a decent chance as any of happening, that isn’t “Bold”. Maybe we need 2 threads next year.
Anyway, here are mine:
1. Jordan Walker is a top 3 finisher for the Gold Glove.
It’s possible this happens. He was solid out there this season (and much improved) and there aren’t a lot of good right fielders.
JJ Weatherholt leads the team in hits, RBIs, runs, and sadly, errors.
He was good, but not quite that good. Plus, he missed some time due to injury. Fourth in hits, fifth in RBIs, and tied for third in runs. I’m glad he didn’t lead in errors. Not even close on that one. Just 2 of them all season.
Matthew Liberatore finishes in the top 10 for Cy Young.
LOL. Way too bold on this one.
Our best reliever by FWAR for the season isn’t even on the opening day roster.
I actually got this one right. Graceffo was the FWAR leader and he didn’t make the opening day roster.
No position player with over 250 at bats has a batting average above .250.
We only had 2 (Burleson & Walker), but that was 2 too many for my prediction. Fairly close though. Here’s a good example of what I was saying up top. I might have predicted 2 or 3 if I was predicting. But because this is “bold predictions”, I went with zero.
Andre Granillo becomes the Nats best reliever and I get to say I told you so.
Boy oh boy was this one so much not the case. Andre was terrible for the Nats. Not sure what happened to him as I didn’t watch him hardly at all given the different affiliation.
From a 40-man roster standpoint, the changes from where we were a week before Spring Training ended to now are:
Subtractions – Dustin May, Matt Pushard, JoJo Romero, Ramon Urias, Yohel Pozo, Lars Nootbaar, Nick Raquet, Chris Roycroft, Tink Hence
Additions – JJ Wetherholt, Quinn Mathews, Max Rajcic, Cade Winquest, Hancel Rincon, Blaze Jordan, Luis Gastelum, Everson Peirera
I’m not sure what to think of all that. I love the first 2 names on the addition list. Nootbaar and May though are big losses. However, the guys we got for them, we will have to wait on. I think in a vacuum, this view looks like marginal progress. It may not count as progress at all if you decide to only look at the changes from opening day and ignore the Wetherholt addition.
“64” – Good callout. I missed him.
Right now, for this season, Church would have qualified in the solid role player category. I do think he has potential to get to average, but probably never above that.
I should have also listed Hjerpe in The Who knows? category even if I think he’ll end up being a really good one.
3B is the clear problem area that could easily be upgraded through a trade or FA. Baez is not ready yet and may never get there, but there is a decent chance he could make it there. If the team doesn’t go to the outside, then I’d just put Blaze Jordan there and hope he can find his plus bat again. Saggese can play there some too.
CF is also a problem area. I’m not ready to give up on Church because he’s shown such a great ability to grow and adapt, but right now he’s a below average player.
Josh Baez should get a chance to perform in LF for the whole season. He could be bad. He could be a superstar. It’s so hard to guess with him given all the different ranges of his successes and failures throughout the Minors.
I don’t know what to do with Walker. He has the same problem he’s always had. He does not seem to have any kind of pitch recognition. He swings hard with quick hands. If he guesses right, he can do lots of damage. If he guesses wrong, he looks silly. The latter tends to happen more often than the former.
I think the other positions are set including Bernal at catcher. Speaking of catcher, I’d prefer Herrera not do it anymore. I’m fine with Crooks or even Pages as the number 2. Bernal should get 65% of starts plus a few starts at 1B or DH.
I’m not sure where to put this, but I’m going to put it here. I’m going to dump most of our players into categories based on their performance this year (offense & defense combined or pitching).
One of the best in the league at his position: Wetherholt
Could have been a good player on a good team this season: Burleson, Walker, Pallante (these last two are a bit on the bottom edge of this category, but probably qualify)
Around an MLB Average Player: Leahy, McGreevey, Winn, Herrera, Graceffo, O’Brien, Bruihl, Dobbins, Gastellum
Had limited playing time but showed they might get to category 1 or 2 with more: Mathews, Bernal
Solid role player. Fine for a bench player or low leverage BP guy on an average team, but probably doesn’t belong on a good one: Pages, Saggese, Pereira, Fermin, Jordan, Torres, Soriano, Stanek, Fernandez
Poor season all around – not MLB-worthy: Svanson, Scott, Prieto, Gorman, (plus several that were released)
Who knows what we have yet?: Baez, Crooks
Ideally, to be highly competitive again, we need a LOT more players in category 1 & 2 than what we have today. Maybe 5-7 more of them. That’s why 2027 doesn’t exactly look like a winner either – even with Mathews & Bernal and even if Winn or Herrera hits better again. They would either need some dramatic improvements in their current roster or to go out and sign (or trade for) 1-3 excellent free agents.
I’m truly sorry for your loss Albert. Likewise, my father grew up in Wisconsin as a Brewers fan so I can relate.
CC – Add Quinn Mathews to your list as well.
I think Franklin should probably be moved to your maybe list. He has a long time before he’s rule 5 eligible so there’s little reason to rush him. I agree on everyone else.
I decided to see where our starting pitchers fell by # this season. To make it a perfect 1-5, I had to find the right number of innings to get as close to 150 qualifying pitchers as possible. 90 innings as a threshold gets us close enough as 152 pitchers crossed that threshold this season (with 4 games remaining as of this post). We will just ignore Mikolas and Zack Littell who brought up the rear and call them an each a #6 starter. How did we do? Any top 30 guys who were #1’s by definition? No, but we did better than you might expect.
Buoyed some by pitching roughly half their games at Busch Stadium, the Cardinals essentially had 3 #2 starters, 1 #3 starter, and 1 #4 starter. Here’s where they placed by FWAR on a list of 152 starters:
May – #36
Pallante – #38
Leahy – #53
McGreevey – #77
Liberatore – #108I’m not sure Liberatore’s start last night is counted in there yet. The others should all get one more shot to improve or fall back.
Springfield had a messy game on defense and did a lot of striking out in key situations. Won bin Cho was a consistent negative contributor on both sides of the ball.
Good callout Albert! I should have prefaced what I meant better.
There are some great games mixed in there pulling numbers up. I say less effective in the sense that he is actually having no hit nights with some k’s. For quite some time, he was getting hits in every game. So it’s by Raniel’s standards, not by any normal human being that he’s been a bit less effective than he had been. And yes, he hasn’t hit well in the tiniest of sample sizes for the 3 games of playoff baseball.
I like Top 60 although that voting does get a bit all over the place at that point. Maybe bunch the last 2 votes in groups of 5.
October 5 sounds good. I’d volunteer for weekends but my October is a mess so it would be difficult to commit for sure.
Raniel has been less effective for the last 3-4 weeks. May be just a mini slump. He’s had a few great games mixed in there but overall he’s been worse than he was before that time. He may just be getting wore down a bit. Catching is hard and this is the longest season he’s had.
I’m a big fan of Franklin. I had him ahead of Doyle on our list I published around 4-6 weeks ago on this site. Doyle might have better stuff, but he isn’t as effective at using it due to command and location. Franklin is good at everything he does. I don’t think there’s any way we could have expected him to do this well this year, but he has. I don’t see how he’s not in every top 100 list.
And yes, outstanding game for Tai Peete!
Leo Bernal with a huge home run in the bottom 8th of likely our last home inning at bat for the season. Gives the team a 2-run cushion after Herrera muscled up on one to tie it earlier in the inning.
Catcher is beginning to look mighty settled for the future.
He’s a smart Manager that fits today’s style and now has good experience under his belt, so emphatically yes. He would find another opportunity.
In my opinion, he’s the best Manager at managing a bullpen I’ve seen. My tenure starts with Whitey. The players seem to like him and other coaches seem to like him. Umpires don’t seem to like him – at least the bad ones. I disagree on occasion with a move he makes. Sometimes I’m right. Sometimes I’m wrong. That’s to be expected. He is young and the team has been stuck in neutral since he took over. I assume those are the 2 reasons some people don’t like him. He can’t do anything about the former. I’m not sure he can do much about the latter given the talent he’s inherited.
Walker started on fire and trailed off a bit. Pretty much the same with Weatherholt. Herrera never rekindled what he had last season. Victor Scott and Nolan Gorman were terrible. Mostly positive for the others, especially the starters. Also, some of the new guys that came after over half the season was finished look like they could make a positive impact next season. Specifically, those are Gastellum, Mathews, Hjerpe, Josh Baez, and Bernal. Also, Blaze Jordan only got in about half a season and has promise. Saggese looks interesting again as well.
All of that is enough to make me think that they could do almost nothing and run back out there the team that is around right now minus Gorman and be ok. At least ok until reinforcements are ready. They aren’t good enough yet to push in all their chips, but they could make a trade or two from depth or sign a couple solid free agents and at least enter playoff contention.
I would suspect that they don’t pick up Stanek’s option, allow Gorman to walk, and sign a decent reliever plus maybe trade a catcher.
Brian, he had 1 rehab outing at the FCL where he got 5 outs in July before throwing 103 at single A and averaging over 101 about a week later. This is the one I was referring to. Then, I don’t believe he’s thrown 103 since. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he does it in the AFL.
Agree Bling. I think we would love to produce everything on our own, but that’s probably an impossible ask. We have depth though at C and to some degree at middle infield and corner outfield that we could spare.
CF is not an immediate glaring hole. We have Church and Scott and neither is an embarrassment. Church has also hit a little better lately. We could just stick with what we have. We would likely stay below average, but we might get close to average if everything breaks right for Church.
