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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.
Condon is a long ways off. Ragsdale is a CFer in the same way Josh Baez is a CFer – in Minor League action only.
Bling, he’s Rule 5 eligible at the end of this season, but if he isn’t taken, he still has a few years of team control left.
He and Peete are the 2 guys competing with Scott/Church for the CF job of the future. I would love for Davis to win that competition because he has the most upside, but odds-wise, I might rate his chances right now as lowest of the four to win the job.
Thanks for kicking this off “25”!
Let’s go a couple weeks after the season. I will have my eye on the AFL and that should play out by the time we get to where those guys will be on the list.
Without one of their best hitters in Deniel Ortiz (IL), the Springfield Cardinals still are sending out a lineup tonight with only 1 guy whose season stats are below a .800 OPS – their number 9 hitter and catcher Ryan Campos at .778. Hitting is inflated in the Texas League, but still this is pretty incredible.
I do wonder if they might stay 100% internal other than maybe 1 bullpen guy signing. Even if a salary floor gets adopted, it may not take effect immediately. And, if it does, they could get there with extensions. By the look of things now, if all the prospects keep developing at the same pace as they have been, they should be major league average or better at every position by 2028 so I could understand the logic in not investing in a single free agent who blocks advancement.
I think CF carries the greatest internal risk of not getting someone by 2028 so if they did sign a free agent to more than a one year deal, I’d expect it to be there. Unlikely, but to me the most likely of all the unlikelies.
For the starting rotation though, I don’t think they need to sign anyone. If they could find a Dustin May, then sure. But those deals often don’t pan out so it would be hard to replicate that success. They have 5-7 guys now who can start in 2027, plus they should have an incredible 5-6 starters at Memphis who all just need between 2 months and 6 months before they should be good to go.
I like that the roster is now what it very well could be come Spring Training (whenever that occurs). There are no more obvious free agents or roster cuts. 38 players plus Rajcic on the 60 day IL.
Even so,there are still some potential cuts/trades:
Bruihl
Stanek
Prieto
Pereira
Fernandez
Gorman
Fermin
One of the catchers not named BernalHowever, all of them could be back. We will see.
I like this move. It allows more at bats for Fermin and Saggese by letting Urias go. And, no reason to let Strzlecki pitch over our rookies at this point with nothing else to play for this season.
There’s a shutdown period between the end of the college season and the draft. It’s a bit risky to ramp all those arms back up after sitting cold following a long season. In general, the team is trying to protect its prized assets. The assets they draft in the later rounds are less protected and probably get the option to start throwing again if they want and if they prove they can do so effectively, they get an opportunity to play.
I think that last piece you said is what drove my comment, Brian. There almost certainly is a higher risk. And ramp up or not, going out and throwing 102 in your first outing after coming back pushes that risk higher. We don’t have the calculus of how much higher. But a reasonable person would assume it’s higher. And my assumption, supported by some loose evidence, is that he threw that hard without coaching support to make a statement and get noticed.and he did get noticed – a lot. Then the coaches weighed in and he has now backed off that velocity some. Pure speculation, but reasonable speculation based on outcomes. And now I worry that sending him to the AFL puts a spotlight back on him without our coaching staff hovering over him. I reserve the right to say I told you so when he gets hurt after an AFL stint.
Go figure. I got a mere 1 correct with Dohm. I did mention Roby (or at least I thought strongly about him) and Hernandez as possibilities. I didn’t even realize Elissalt was back healthy enough to pitch. Pretty much the same with Roby as he didn’t appear in a single contest this season.
The one that truly surprises me here is Watson. He’s had a pretty terrible year. Maybe he’s working on something new and just needs some time with it?
I like the McGee and Peete picks. Peete has had a great year on offense, but he’s also missed lots of little slivers of time. McGee is a guy who has had a ho-hum season up until he recently got promoted to AA and then he has taken off.
I worry about Clarke. He came back from 27 injuries (maybe exaggerating a bit) and started immediately throwing 100+. That was a way of saying “look at me and what I can do”. And now we plan to send him to the AFL where all minor league eyes will be on him. What will he do for an encore and how much is that going to cost us?
He really had a great year with the bat. It’s also helped him having so many other guys getting on base in front of him. That certainly contributes to the RBI total.
Between both Baez’s, Raniel Rodriguez, Jack Gurevitch, Tai Peete, and for the most part Deniel Ortiz and Leo Bernal, we have had some outstanding offensive performances this season. In addition, we acquired two guys from the Brewers who were also having outstanding years in Frias and Ragsdale. That’s almost a whole team of exceptional offensive prospects right there. There were also quite a few “very good” offensive seasons from many others out there (Colton Ledbetter, Sammy Hernandez, Yordalin Peña, and Ryan Campos – just to name the ones who first come to mind).
Joe was Phil Niekro’s brother.
Yeah, I doubt any other brothers have done it. Maybe cousins?
GPT says only Ken and Bob.
Some other notable families: Dizzy & Paul Dean, Ramon & Pedro Martinez, Mel Sr, Todd, and Mel Jr Stottlemeyer, and the 4 Leiters (Al, Mark, Jack, & Mark Jr).
Probably not. Certainly not for Joshua and probably not for Jesus. I’m not sure he’s going to be ok at 3B either. He still needs to get better all around at defense.
You have to play lots of close games that you happen to be winning late to accumulate saves. Those other guys are probably better than O’Brien but they just get fewer qualifying save opportunities.
It essentially says if Graceffo was pitching in front of an average defense with an average batting average on balls put in play against him going to that defense in an average park size, he would be expected to have an ERA of 4.90 or something like that. It’s generally a better predictive stat to guess at future production than using ERA and certainly more predictive than using wins and losses for relievers . . . but it’s far from perfect. I think it also uses strikeout and walk rates in the formula. I don’t either like it or hate it. It does seem to work better for certain kinds of pitchers than others.
But Graceffo is still likely to be pitching half his games in Busch stadium next season and he is likely to mostly have Winn and Wetherholt behind him again. So that part of the formula is already messed up.
