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I think Gil is a ‘one to watch’.
Trejyn Fletcher dropped like a rock. Otherwise the ranking would have been nearly the same as the July ranking. He’s only 18 years old.
Malcolm Nunez hasn’t made it out of Low A yet. We’ll see how far is DSL stats from 2018 will carry him.
In today’s posting of TCN Top 50 for August, Carlson is still ranked number 1, ahead of Gorman. It will be interesting to see if Gorman reclaims the top spot before Carlson makes it to the Majors. I don’t know how other organizations handle their prospects, but with the Cardinals organization, I would say that every player listed in the top 10 of this ranking will get a call up to the major league team. At this moment in time, they all look like regulars. But time will tell who will get traction at the MLB level, and who won’t. (I’m off the subject of Carlson. But I want to mention that I think it’s a bit of a stretch to rank any player in the top 10 of any ranking who has not even made it out of Johnson City.)
Carpenter was 0 for 4. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for the guy, or hate him. The only one that can save him is himself, and he’s failing at it. I can’t see any reason to continue to start him.
Baseball America once said that Forrest Whitley was the best pitching prospect in all of baseball. Then, Whitley got busted for steroids. He hasn’t pitched well since. In fact, he’s pitched so poorly that you can hardly call him a prospect based on his current stats. Yet, BA ranks him 8th in their Top 100. I think sports media, written and spoken, are basically contributing to the problem by effectively ignoring it, particularly at the major league level.
MLB is always trying to do something to make the game more attractive to fans. I think the answer is right out in front, staring MLB right in the face. It’s steroids at the MLB level. Get rid of steroids. Even if it continues to be, for the most part unspoken, people still sense that something is wrong and it turns them off. Competition is supposed to be about bringing out the best in an athlete, or anyone else for that matter. It’s not supposed to be about dominating the other team and its players, although admittedly, it sure is fun being in First Place with room to spare.
Freese, Holliday, Berkman, Beltran, and Lohse (thanks to Papa Dunc), as SoonerinNC stated above, were all good free agent signings. None of them happened recently. (I don’t count Peralta because he crapped out on his contract after a couple of years.) Looking at free agent signings, there were six good ones listed by Soonerin NC and six bad ones. I guess you could say that Mo is overdue for a good free agent signing.
No Berkman signing, no World Series in 2011.
I’d rather wait and see what happens for the rest of the season before passing judgement. We know that Albert is new school, and we know that Budaska is old school. It’s easy to see where that could have caused friction. They brought Albert in for a reason. If Budaska was getting in Albert’s way all the time, then one of them had to go. No doubt that this has been simmering for some time.
They could ask Carpenter, Goldschmidt, and Molina to take less money next year with the promise that they will get all of their money, with interest, in the following years. What this boils down to is MO asking the players to loan him the money to sign Ozuna. It has happened before, I think with Holliday. Also, Molina’s $20M should be off the books after 2020, and Cecil’s $7M will be gone. Also, they supposedly have all that extra TV revenue. The point is that there is probably a way to sign Ozuna if they really want to.
Because of the state of our farm system lately, I have a tendency to blame Flores for whatever mistakes happen that are related to scouting.
I get what you are saying about Goldschmidt. It depends on what you are comparing him to, I guess. If you’re comparing his contract to Heyward’s contract, then his contract makes sense (if there’s anything that makes sense about paying a ballplayer millions upon millions of dollars). But the fact is that Goldschmidt is not living up to expectations. He is not producing like he is getting paid to produce.
I hope they let go of whoever the scout (Flores?) was that is responsible for the Cecil debacle.
MO got lucky in 2011 when he signed Berkman coming off of an injury. I think he was trying to hit on the same kind of luck with Greggerson.
The Carpenter extension was a case where Carpenter played on MO’s emotions and fooled him into thinking he was doing the right thing.
Goldschmidt is not a bust. But, so far his contract doesn’t match up with his production on the field. I don’t think anyone ever gave a single thought to the idea that his production in St. Louis would not be comparable to his production in Phoenix. MO might have gotten tricked here, also. We’ll see.
It just seems that Fowler was hurt by having to leave the comaraderie with his friends in Chicago. It’s taken him this long to get over it. Matheny was of no use in getting Fowler through it.
I think MO could have gotten Mikolas to sign for less money if he had waited. But maybe not. There will be teams desperate to find a decent starting pitcher this offseason. Mikolas is decent.
If Carpenter and Goldschmidt were hitting as anticipated, this team would be near the top of the NL in offensive production, IMO.
Just wanted to pass along my thoughts.
And Andy Young has an OPS of .940 (albeit at Reno in the PCL).
At the time of this trade we thought we were getting a future HOF player in Goldschmidt, and the fans in the Lou were euphoric about it, mudville included.
In a completely unrelated matter, the real problem with the game is not our front office. It’s the MLB front office. They could have done what it takes to remove steroids entirely from the game. Instead, they chose to leave open a means and method for steroids to still be used by players who want nothing more than to get a megacontract.
I love that optimism, Ny. Lets hold onto it.
Mercado looks pretty good, although the jury is still out on him, also.
I like MO and I hate to say it, but he is just not good at assessing people. He screwed up by giving us 4 years of Matheny….. and Carpenter has made him look like a fool.
I agree. Incremental changes were not going to make the difference for this team. So why waste top prospects for a rental or a marginal upgrade? The problem is offense. If Carpenter were real like he led many to believe he was, especially MO, things would be a lot different. We would be 3, 5, or maybe even 10 games better. The Cubs have won four in a row now. But their pitching is still suspect. The Division winner for the NL Central is still up for grabs.
And that one good month, plus a visit to MO to tell him how he yearned to finish his career as a Cardinal, got him an extra $39M.
Carpenter’s leadoff hit yesterday was a seeing-eye single right into the shift. Nineteen out of twenty times that ball is an out.
I think they’ll make a realistic offer for Will Smith. But if it gets to be a bidding war, they will quiet down.
What’s going to happen if Carpenter still can’t hit?
Junior Fernandez is only 22 years old. Lately he’s been walking almost 5 batters per 9 innings pitched. I’m not saying they won’t bring him up. But it sure doesn’t look like he’s quite ready yet.
Just an opinion, but Bumgarner has not been great lately. I don’t think he would help our pitching much more than Wainwright has this year. I think they’ll make some kind of an offer for Bumgarner, but they won’t overpay for him. What our pitching needs, IMO, is maturity more than anything else.
I don’t like Reyes as a reliever. He has too many fits of losing control of his pitches. I’m okay with bringing him up in September and using him for mop up once in awhile.
After watching Mayers last night, this is exactly what I thought should happen. After all, how many chances is a player supposed to get to prove himself?! He threw two unhittalbe curveballs for strikes in the eighth. (I guess pitches like that are why they put up with him for so long.) But then he threw seven balls in a row for two BB’s. He might show up in Memphis. But IMO, they should just let him go to another organization, and hopefully, that other organization can bring him to his full potential. Enough is enough for the Cardinals, though.
The article also says:
‘Every player in the system has an equal chance, with only their performance during the month used to differentiate the best of the best.’
I doubt if there’s a whole lot of difference between the Appalachian league and the DSL. Although, I admit that I feel more comfortable seeing YaSenka get the award than I would if Gustavo Rodriguez got it.
As with assessing anything or anyone, you just can’t do it on numbers alone. There is always subjective aspect to it, also. You have to have to listen to your gut, as well as everybody else around you.
Gyorko was going to be DFA’d or released purely because the Cardinals like their young prospects and want to keep them busy. Plus Carpenter will be back eventually. I would imagine that any player who gets DFA’d or released hates it. Even for a veteran it must be somewhat traumatic. I think the FO should be commended for finding another team for Gyorko. I thought Gyorko looked bored, or sleepy, on the field lately. I bet this trade wakes him up and he starts hitting like he did when he first came to St. Louis.
Gustavo J. Rodriguez’ numbers were better than YaSenka’s numbers all across the board. Clearly, Gus Rodriguez was penalized for being in the DSL instead of somewhere stateside, like the Appalachian League…???
