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Bob Reed is gonna lose it when he hears this! JK Bob. As a fellow member of the Urias fan club, I am sad to see he may not make it to the major leagues.
Now we have 3rd-year Bader (26), 2nd-year O’Neill (25), and Fowler, with 1st-year Thomas (25), 2nd-year Edman (25), and 1st-year Carlson (21) as the backups. Fowler being the Milt Thompson of this year’s outfield.
bccran
Never seen such a “green” OF with the Cards. Anyone remember one just as green? Big risk.
1991 would be the closest imo.
We basically had rookies Ray Lankford (24), and Bernard Gilkey (24) out there with 2nd-year Felix Jose (26). Then they had Milt Thompson as Gilkey’s platoon buddy and Hudler as the 5th outfielder.
stlcard25
#Cubs have offered Jason Heyward, Kyle Schwarber, and David Bote to the #Rockies for Nolan Arenado, per source.
— John McGrath (@JohnMcGrathMLB) January 13, 2020
That’s a laughable offer. If you take Heyward out, it becomes even.
It’s probably best to throw out Dean’s minor league stats prior to 2018.
In 2018, Dean hit .345/.410/.511/.922 for a 217 wRC+ in AA, and a 132 wRC+ in AAA. He had a .367/.408/.606/1.014 line against LH pitchers.
In 2019, Dean hit .337/.400/.635/1.035 for a 146 wRC+ in AAA. He had a .303/.407/.636/1.044 line against LH pitchers.
thejager
-1yr suspensions to GM and manager? so what? it’s not like they won;t have influence on everything from -their homes
It’s been reported that Luhnow is to have ZERO contact with anyone, and if caught, will be banned for life from baseball. He’s not going to risk it imo.
Brian Walton
KeymasterPaid – Annual
Pads wrote:I don’t think they will get a valuable pick at this point any way.
Let’s get specific. The Ozuna comp pick will be just before round 3. We don’t know the exact number yet, but last year, it was pick no. 78 overall, carrying about $800,000 of additional cap room.
Taken by the Cardinals after no. 78 in their drafts in the last five years alone (so others may still be in the pipeline):
Zac Gallen (traded)
Tommy Edman
Andrew Knizner
Harrison Bader
Jordan Hicks
Paul DeJong
Ryan HelsleyOf course, there were misses, too…
I’d say that’s probably the best batch of draftees from that point in the draft on of ANY other team in baseball over that time frame. My post wasn’t very clear, but it’s not like we are getting a 1st rounder anymore like when Heyward or Lackey left.
For whatever reason, I thought Miller just looked a lot better than his stats showed. He was a little more wild than I thought, but he probably had the hardest workload of any of our relief pitchers given when he’d come into the games.
Brian Walton
Just yesterday, Craig Edwards at Fangraphs showed that the cost of a win in free agency this winter is up to somewhere between $8.0 and $9.1 MM/WAR, depending on the calculation method.
So, how could the Cards can land Arenado without overpaying – at that incremental cost of $16-18 MM or less? Like I said, I don’t see how the math works realistically – forgetting about the players they will have to give up in the trade, too.
Like I said, there is an exponential component to WAR increases. We can’t just sign a 3-WAR player ~ like Ozuna ~ and plug him in our lineup and receive 3 extra wins because our replacement players or baseline players are already very capable of producing some combination of 2.0 WAR or so.
So you can spend $18M AAV on a free agent and get slightly better or you can spend $35M on a Cole or Rendon and get the equal benefit of trading for Arenado. In this case, we could lock up cost-certainty in a 5.0-6.0 WAR player for at least 3-5 years, assuming he doesn’t take the opt-out, at a similar price the first two years as a $16-18M AAV free agent, while getting the Cole/Rendon/Harper price later on in the contract.
My package has Carpenter going to Colorado.
GameCard
Edman is not a sub that is just wrong.
Edman doesn’t have a position as of now. He can still get 600 PAs as a super sub.
We gave Munoz, O’Neill, and Martinez 705 PAs last year for instance.
Edman should have a good year as a super sub. I’m projecting around a .786 OPS. My point is that either Carpenter is good and Edman doesn’t play 3B much or Carpenter is bad/injured and Edman does play, which makes us worse at the positions that Edman would otherwise back up for. In an case, I don’t see 3B giving us anywhere near what Arenado provides.
Also, I think WAR should be looked at more along an exponential curve than a linear curve. There are only 8 playing spots for us to get above-average production from. CA is tied up. 1B is tied up. 2B is tied up. SS is tied up. Etc.
The Cardinals got about 23 WAR from the positional side this past year, meaning the starters need to average over 2.0 WAR each to have a successful season, assuming the backups can give about 0.5-1.0 WAR. The projections have us around 18-20 WAR total with DeJong and Goldschmidt at about 3.5 each.
So a 2.0 WAR difference would be a large benefit to a team like the Cards that is in a win-now mode.
I don’t think they will get a valuable pick at this point any way. Doesn’t he have to sign a deal for over $50M for the Cardinals to get a pick?
CariocaCardinal
I dont think you can include Gorman as long as Arenado has his player option after 2021
Gorman wasn’t even in the organization two years ago. Plenty of time to figure it out and you’d have Edman, DeJong, Montero, etc. to plug in. I wouldn’t be worried about that. If Arenado is good enough to turn down a 5yr/$164M deal for his age 31-35 years, then we got our money’s worth.
Another simpler verification is that in 2019, Carpenter+Edman delivered 4.4 fWAR. Arenado was at 5.9.
So what would be the cost of those incremental 1.5 wins?
The Cards give up multiple players plus take on $35 million per year in salary. Even if they dump Carpenter, they still would have to eat some of his pay.
Bottom line, I do not see a way the equation for the Cardinals would close. Sorry.
You aren’t factoring in that Edman would play regardless. He played just 57% of his innings at 3B, mostly with Carpenter out. If Carpenter is providing great 3B production, then Edman is playing elsewhere. If Arenado is playing 3B, Edman is playing elsewhere. Be it 2B, SS, or in the OF, Edman gives us above-average backup play.
Beyond that, Edman had a career year ~ 3.2 fWAR and, without a doubt, can’t be expected to produce a similar OPS as he did in his half-year in 2019. I’d personally remove him from the equation altogether.
Meanwhile, Carpenter has some real issues of consistency, age, and eroding defense that gives me great pause on using WAR figures from 3-5 years ago. I definitely wouldn’t expect him to maintain his 3.0+ WAR over the next two years, or expect Edman to pick up the slack. Then you are looking at a 5.9 to 1.2 WAR gap based on last year. The projections have Arenado at 5.0 and Carpenter at 2.0 ~ a 3.0 WAR gap, which could escalate if Carpenter’s erratic play takes a turn for the worse.
BlackHillsCard
How about Fowler, O’Neill, Knizer, Montero, and Reyes?
Fowler isn’t waving his NTC and it’ll cost more than that for Arrenado. You would most definitely have to include Gorman in any trade package for him with Gorman being the centerpiece prospect.
Fowler wouldn’t be include also since he left Colorado on bad terms with the mgmt and fans.
Gorman and Carpenter seem like the obvious choices to go to Colorado. I mean, where would Carpenter even play if we had Arenado?
Now, Arenado is very nearly being paid market-value playing for the Rockies. There isn’t a lot of value there in a way.
I think a possible trade would be Arenado and McGee for some combo of Gorman, Carpenter, Bader, and Knizner. That’s a massive overpay for the Cardinals to be able to buy out Colorado for being the only ‘supplier’ of all-star 3Bmen on the market.
By including McGee, Colorado saves about $26M in 2020. Then they save $16M in 2021 and then 5 yrs of $35M-ish. for a total of of over $200M.
I don’t think it’s fair to use OPS when discussing the Cardinals offense. The Cards had a wRC+ of 95 last year, good for 7th in the NL, league average was 94.
Meanwhile, by OPS, they were 11th in the NL with .737, with league-average being .754.
They were also 4th-BEST in the NL in both 2017 and 2018 by wRC+.
bccran
Glad Mo finds guys like Oh, Mikolas and Kim. Paying big, long term dollars for a free agent who either gets injured or has a serious production decline
How would one know which free agents to go after? We all know at this point that Mozeliak is bad at it, but who do you sign? I thought Peralta was a great get and Lohse and Holliday worked out in the past. He certainly needs a more recent win on the big FA contracts. I’d much prefer he only looks at this niche market (Japan) or the older guys on 1-2 year deals like Berkman, Beltran, Miller, Neshek, and Norris. Holland may be the only one that really backfired.
With regards to Molina, he gave the Cardinals $163.1M of surplus value on his first $22M deal. Then he gave $74.4M of surplus value on his second deal of $75M. He’s at -$10.8M on his current deal.
If there’s one player that’s earned a goodwill contract, it was Molina. HOWEVER, that shouldn’t entitle him to a second goodwill contract.
Brian Walton
It could have been disastrous, especially given the talent the Cards gave up to get him, to let Goldschmidt reach free agency before trying to sign him. That would have been a terrible path to take. One should not hint that every early extension is bad. That is not the case, though we agree for Molina now.
One thing I will note. The extensions they give to the young players buying out arbitration and the first couple years of free agency almost always work out. It’s the second one that kills us. Wainwright and Molina both made the Cardinals a fortune relative to production on their first contracts, just like Carpenter’s $52M deal. Wong’s $25M deal, DeJong’s $26M deal, Martinez’s $51M, and Garcia’s $27M deal were all bonanza’s from the team’s perspective. They got burned before doing this with Chris Carpenter’s 2nd deal, then again with Wainwright’s second deal (the $97M one), and now with Carpenter, Wainwright, Mikolas, and Goldschmidt, although the latter two are different imo.
The only mistake contracts on young players they made were Piscotty and Allen, but both of those worked out in the end.
Minuteman3
Ever the maverick around here, I am hoping Ozuna resigns with the Cardinals. The Red would be pretty much out of it with the foreigner they just signed but I am not sure of the Rangers spending ability. I doubt the Cards would go more than 3/40 for him so, despite my wishes, he may not return. If he is bullheaded about the 5/100 I heard mentioned, he will be waiting past the draft and the pick is dropped but he will never get $100 mil from anybody.
The Reds signed Akiyama for CF most likely. That would allow them to put Senzel in the super-sub role, ala Edman.
If they pursued Ozuna, it would likely be for LF exclusively, pushing Winker, Sensel, and Ervin out from that position. They are at $122M payroll so far and are said to be able to go to $140M.
No Edman.
It should go
Wong
Edman
Goldschmidt
Carpenter
DeJong
Fowler
Molina
BaderFor the season, it should be the first three every game, then whoever is hottest, assuming Edman is playing.
BTW, Lane Thomas was a below-average hitter at AAA this past year. He should be behind Arozarena and O’Neill in terms of outfield options.
That’s a really good move for them. They were going to be counting on a lot from some younger players and he can play CF. Big addition.
Brian Walton
Pads, that is not what is being communicated out of Chicago. The beat writers are saying the Cubs are trying to get below the $208 MM target. The Bryant trade speculation is a direct result.
What have you read specifically that leads you to believe otherwise?
The tax rate increases in subsequent years. The Cubs paid $7.6 MM in 2019, a 20% tax on the overage. If they miss again for 2020, they pay a 30% tax and it goes to 50% in year three. Depending on how much a team is over, there could be a draft pick penalty, too.
I just don’t believe it. Nothing substantial really, but I don’t see them trading major leaguers like Bryant, so they would already be over the luxury tax level for 2020. So what’s the point of staying “just over”? Right now, they have an estimated luxury tax payroll of $214,342,333. I bet they will go up to the $228M level at a minimum.
Also, I believe the increased tax effect is only on the increased payroll. As in, they will be taxed 20% on the $20M between a payroll of $208M and $228M and then 30% on the $20M payroll between $228M and $248M.
First tier: 20% of $20 million = $4 million
Second tier: 32% of $20 million = $6.4 million
This was the article that got me thinking about it last year. Perhaps, that is a separate rule of the luxury taxes though. Are you saying the initial 20% jumps to 30% in 2020?
Onyxgem
what he is saying is 100% correct though, if you lose your best or one of your best hitters and do nothing the offense is not going to get better it is going to get worse…
Ozuna posted a 107 wRC+ and a 110 wRC+ in his two years as a Cardinal. The Cards have Arozarena, O’Neill, Carlson, Thomas, and even Edman to play that position. I don’t think it’s far-fetched to believe that one of them could exceed such a low bar of offensive output.
858booyah
I could see Puig but I see them just rolling out with the kids and being dead last in runs scored.
It’ll be fun watching this team middle to win 83 games.The Cardinal way!
League-average (NL-specific) wRC+ was 94 last year (.754 OPS) The Cardinals posted a 95 wRC+ (.737 OPS)
That’s good for 7th out of 15 in the National League by wRC+. By OPS, though, they were 11th.
Generally, American League teams are always going to have better offenses than those in the National League, and teams from hitters’ parks (Rockies) are going to post higher OPS numbers (.782) than their true offensive output (86 wRC+). Meanwhile, the Reds were lower by both OPS (.736) and wRC+ (87) than the Cardinals in 2019.
