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Let’s take a concrete example.
Liam Doyle’s last 10 starts in AA, he allowed 8 earned runs in 50.2 innings. To compute the ERA, take 8, divide the 8 by 50.667 (50 and 2/3 IP), then multiply by 9. That leaves the ERA as 1.42, I trust you’ll find.Liam Doyle at #3 for me also, please.
The pride of Pinkerton Academy High School (Derry, New Hampshire) was ranked the #27 overall prospect by Keith Law of The Athletic back on July 23rd.
We must assume Doyle’s moved up in KLaw’s rankings at least a little since then, because from that point forward (10 starts), Doyle permitted just 25 hits, one longball, and 8 total earned runs across 50.2 innings. Thus his ERA for that lengthy stretch was 1.42 and his FIP roughly 2.20, thanks to a sturdy 66/23 K/BB tally.
Liam Doyle at #2, please.
I was opposed to the drafting of Doyle, due to his erratic mound behavior and checkered success rate in college. But he won me over with his results in Double-A this year.
Texas League ERA 5.05, Liam Doyle 3.76. Okay, that’s solid, but of course the real story is the extraordinary improvement over his 25-start campaign.
First dozen starts, 6.08 ERA and 49 hits across 47.1 innings.
Next 13 outings, 1.68 ERA and just 36 hits in 64.1 frames.Doyle didn’t allow a longball over his final 8 starts, and just 1 in his last 11. He’s pretty much a consensus top 40 prospect — and top 30 with both Keith Law and Fangraphs — and I just can’t put either Quinn or Leonardo above a guy who’s unanimously considered so elite, and who finished his season with a combo of extended dominance and good health.
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Quinn walked 60 guys in 100 Memphis innings, which is kinda scary. And Leo’s OPS+ in the majors was higher than any other level at which he’s played, so I’m afraid the hitter we witnessed under the Arch was at least a bit of a distortion. Don’t get me wrong, I like these guys. Mathews and Bernal are overall top 100 guys for me, but I just can’t put them above Doyle (or a couple of others).
I’ll take Rai-Rod at #1, please.
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“Now for the negatives. First, he may not end up the long term catcher. If he’s a future .900 OPS guy at catcher, that’s an immense value. If he’s doing that at 1B, is that really much better than what we have with Burleson out there now?”
I guess it all depends on your definition of “much better.” Over the past two seasons Burly has hit .284/.343/.466 for an OPS of .809. Very solid numbers — and they’d be even better if his manager limited his exposure to tough southpaws. But anyway, I would personally say yes, .900 is much better than that. Even at first base, .900 is pretty darn great. I mean, Freddie Freeman doesn’t have a lifetime .900 OPS and neither does Paul Goldschmidt, and they’re a pair of future Cooperstown members.
What I expect will happen is that Rainiel will split the backstopping duties with Leo Bernal (each starting somewhere between 60 and 100 games there), and Rai-Rod will play the other games as either first baseman or DH. What I’d much more prefer, is that they try the teenager at 3rd base over the winter, in a low-key setting, just to see if he has any natural aptitude there. Because although I do think Blaze Jordan can be a 2-3 WAR guy at the hot corner for the next several years, Rainiel’s bat gives him a higher potential by a fair margin.
I see Logan Gilbert not as a #1 starter, but more as a Skinny Lance Lynn type — which is quite valuable as well. Gilbert logs lots of innings (4th-most in MLB over the past five seasons) and gives you a better than average ERA year after year. And he’s still in his 20’s.
The trouble is, what would Seattle want in return? They have no use for our backstop surplus, with Raleigh on a massive contract for the next 4 or 5 campaigns. The Mariners always need hitting, but if we trade Herrera or Burly, we may be hurting our team as much as helping. So it would likely come down to trading away top Redbird prospects, or maybe a three-way trade incorporating another franchise that badly needs a catcher like Leo Bernal, whose MLB audition is going great, save for those errors.
Since June 8th Rodriguez is hitting .363/.432/.664 (259 plate appearances).
Even better, in 138 trips to the plate since July 9th he’s batting .407/.449/.780 while striking out just 14 times. This is a 19-year-old who is simply too good for Double-A pitchers. That kind of thing happens a couple times a decade, at most. (Vlad Jr. is the most recent example that springs to mind, and that was nearly 10 years ago.)
I’m all for trying Rai-Rod out at the hot corner over the offseason. While it would be nice to have the best-hitting backstop since Gene Tenace, as all here know, the Birds have a backstop glut in their system. When Sammy Hernandez (1.000 OPS for Peoria) is your 3rd or 4th-best catching prospect, that’s an embarrassment of riches. And as much as I like Blaze Jordan, I don’t think he’s going to be more than a 2-3 WAR type of guy going forward, and Rainiel’s bat gives him a considerably higher upside than that, at any position on the diamond.
“Rainiel and Jesus Baez put on a power show in Springfield. Rainiel has been so such a consistent performer after an initial slow start to AA. I would push him to AAA for a couple of weeks to finish the year.”
Yeah, it does feel like Rai-Rod has nothing at all left to learn in Double-A. Last 60 trips to the plate, he has 9 doubles, 4 homers, and 2 strikeouts. Yup. Two.
Teen phenom Yhoiker Fajardo also promoted to AA and scheduled to start on Wednesday, after a mixed tenure for Peoria. (Mixed, yes, but nevertheless strong enough for Keith Law of The Athletic to rank him baseball’s overall #14 pitching prospect in his recent update.)
His ERA for the Chiefs was very solid, but not great, at 4.01. I know that doesn’t sound so good, but the Midwest League ERA this year is a bloated 5.33 and Fajardo’s teammates are even worse at 5.79. Weirdly, the kid coughed up 11 homers in 76 innings, after permitting just 2 in 123 IP across 2024/25. And moreover, he allowed a fairly amazing .359 BABIP.
So why the promotion, and why the tremendous ranking from Law? Well, there are 519 minor league arms with 60+ innings this year, and Yhoiker ranks 6th in Swinging Strike Percentage at 17.7%. The top three in SwStr%? Superduper arms Seth Hernandez, Kade Anderson, and Anthony Eyanson. And right behind Fajardo at #7? Gage Wood, the 5th-best pitching prospect in all the minors, per Fangraphs.
Not surprisingly, with so much swing n’ miss, Yhoiker has registered a slew of strikeouts. Out of those 519 pitchers, he rates 26th in K/9 at 12.50, and 27th in K% with 32.1%. In other words, 95th percentile in both.
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But it goes deeper than that. Fajardo has also done a good job of limiting free passes. His K-BB% is 12th overall, at just over 24%. So, 98th percentile at the thing that’s most important, except perhaps for ERA.
All of that said, I don’t really see the need to push a 19-year-old pitcher to Double-A, especially when he’s not exactly dominating High-A in the actual prevention of runs. But hey, the Cardinal development people know the young man, and wouldn’t promote him on a whim.
re Sandro Santana, the 21-year-old reliever in the Nootbaar trade. A total of 892 minor league pitchers have thrown 100+ innings since the start of the 2025 season. Among those 892 twirlers, Santana ranks 14th with a 2.47 ERA. (With relievers I like looking at multiple years of data, sample sizes are so modest.)
Over those nearly two full seasons, left-handed batters in particular have struggled versus the undersized southpaw, with just 23 total bases in 128 at-bats. That’s a slugging percentage of .180. Even more impressively, this year, across High-A and Double-A, lefty bats have zero XBH against Sandro.
All in all, Santana is my 2nd-favorite acquisition today, after Frias. I would’ve never said that kind of thing about a relief pitcher 20 years ago, or maybe even 10. But bullpen guys are eating more innings every year, and it’s still trending in that unfortunate direction. I mean, less than a month ago a perfectly healthy Matt Liberatore was pulled after 6 shutout innings and a paltry 71 pitches. I’d wager you could count on one hand the number of times that happened in major league baseball history, prior to this season. And as insane as that was, Ollie Marmol is not that much crazier than the typical MLB manager, when it comes to aggressively pulling his starter.
May/Romero trade, A-
Noot, C+The chief concern with the Brewers trade — as others have noted — is that in general Milwaukee is much, much, much, much, much smarter right now than the Cardinals. In fact, they’ve been the smarter organization for a decade or so, at evaluating both their own talent and that of other organizations. So if the Redbird return on the trade seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
Rainiel Rodriguez update from AA.
Over his first three weeks in Springfield (May 12 to June 2) the 19-year-old struggled badly, going 11-for-61 with a lousy 6/23 BB/K ratio and a meager .514 OPS. Well, things are different now.
Since then he’s accrued 184 plate appearances and is slashing .323/.413/.576 with a solid 21/36 BB/K tally. That is a very long and healthy hot streak; or maybe it’s his entirely sustainable new true level of hitting ability, as a teenager in Double-A, in which case Rai-Rod should be considered a consensus top 5 prospect in all of baseball.
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And speaking of Redbird catching prospects, from May 7 through Friday night’s game, 22-year-old Leonardo Bernal is smashing AAA pitchers to the tune of .302/.376/.561 (234 PA’s). When your 2nd-best backstop prospect looks like a future 3-4 WAR starter, that’s a real good sign. 😉
“Rather move Herrera unless he gives up catching. I know they like the hitting upside but he hasn’t hit much recently and has an injury history.”
Yeah, Ivan hasn’t hit much recently, that’s a fact. After hitting quite well in 2024, even better in 2025, and very well through late June, Herrera stopped hitting. And I think there’s a pretty simple reason for this: Ivan Herrera started the first 101 games in a row this year. Small wonder that he finally wore out in July.
On June 24, his OPS was .824, and his BB/K on the season was an outstanding 48/55. Since then he’s walked just 3 times and fanned 29. That’s a guy who is tired and pressing badly — if not hiding an injury.
And speaking of injury, what kind of player should NOT play every single game, week after week, month after month? I would say it’s a part-time catcher who went on the disabled list multiple times in the previous season with leg injuries.
Look, Marmol deserves a great deal of credit for the McGreevy/Pallante usage of Herrera behind the dish. Ivan never catches two days in a row — which is quite wise — and both twirlers have been terrific with Herrera catching them in 2026.
Pallante with Herrera 3.33 ERA
Pallante with others 7.11 ERAMcGreevy with Herrera 3.12 ERA
McGreevy with others 5.06 ERAWonderful, fantastic, do not change this part! Let Ivan Herrera be the personal backstop for both of those guys. But how about a couple days off each month?
(And DH’ing is NOT a day off. When you DH, you still have to hit a round object moving 95 MPH, which requires the most concentration & coordination of any professional athletic activity known to man. And you still have to run the bases, which takes, well, a bit of effort anyway.)
Just to fully articulate the recent excellence of Quinn Mathews, here are the numbers over his last 9 starts for Memphis:
49.1 IP
22 hits
11 runs, 10 earned
5 homers
57/19 K/BB tally
1.82 ERAI’d bring up Quinn (and Dobbins) for MLB long relief. Long relief only, 3-5 innings, keep them stretched out. No real reason not too, that I can see. Mathews has certainly earned it now, and Dobbins has already performed very well this season in that role — small sample caveats, of course.
Thanks for the acquisitions overview, Jnevel. Pretty bad pitching, yikes.
For whatever it’s worth, Jim Callis from MLB.com rates the StL draft #1.
“1. Cardinals
The Cardinals spent two of their top three selections on a pair of high schoolers: outfielder Trevor Condon (first round), who offered the best combination of hitting ability and speed in the prep class and might be the next Pete Crow-Armstrong; and shortstop Rocco Maniscalco (second), one of the youngest players and best defenders available. Tennessee right-hander Tegan Kuhns’ (supplemental first) stuff and strikes made him one of the best college mound prospects, while West Virginia righty Dawson Montesa (supplemental second) is an interesting upside play and UCLA righty Cal Randall (fifth) is a fast-track reliever with one of the best fastballs in the Draft. Central Florida outfielder Andrew Williamson (supplemental second), Texas Tech outfielder Caden Ferraro (third) and Kansas State shortstop Dee Kennedy (fourth) are all proven college performers.”And that’s the same Jim Callis who has routinely downgraded, dismissed, and disparaged Cardinal farmhands for 20+ years, going back to his days at Baseball America. So if THIS guy adores their draft, that carries a little more weight.
But please, I wish everyone would stop talking about Condon & Crow-Armstrong. Yeesh, I’m just about sick to death of that PCA guy — and moreover, it’s unfair to hang that expectation on anyone, much less an 18-year-old kid.
How about we aim just a little lower? I think the young man’s profile (speed, excellent CF defense, good batting average, and 15 homers a year) is much more like former Redbird Andy Van Slyke. And if Andy Van Slyke is his 80th-90th percentile outcome, that’s damn fine by me.
Won-Bin Killebrew! Hope the young man can at least be an above average batter for the rest of his AA season.
As for Rainiel Rodriguez, he of course initially struggled at Springfield, but he’s really whacking the horsehide now. His first Springfield game was May 12th, and here’s the splits:
May 12 to June 2… .180/.268/.246 with a lousy 6/23 BB/K ratio across 71 plate appearances.
June 3 to present… .342/.451/.592 with an excellent 13/17 BB/K tally in 91 trips to the plate.
His last two homers? Line drives to the opposite field power alley. Things of beauty.
“I officially hate Ryne Stanek. There simply is no reason for him wasting a roster spot when he is freaking terrible.”
There are 3.5 million reasons. Don’t blame Stanek for being incompetent; he’s doing the best he can.
Blame the incompetent GM who signed him to a $3.5MM contract that by default kinda sorta forces the incompetent manager to send him out there again and again. Reminder: Stanek was bad in 2025. Stanek was also bad in 2024. There was no reason to sign him to a guaranteed contract of any size.
The thing about Ollie, is that he continues using Stanek in relatively high leverage situations. There’s ZERO justification for THAT, regardless of the man’s salary. (Last I checked, Stanek had one of the worst 4 or 5 tallies of all MLB relievers, in terms of Win Probability Added. Because Marmol places far, far too much faith in him. After tonight’s debacle, Stanek may very well have the single worst WPA in the majors. And Marmol is his accomplice in that.)
Brief Jack Gurevitch update.
He’s now played 10 pro games NOT at Roger Dean Stadium, and in those 48 plate appearances he’s hitting .400/.500/.750 with 8 walks and 10 strikeouts.“Has anyone watched enough of Memphis to talk about how Blaze Jordan is doing fielding 3B?”
I can’t vouch for his range, Gags, but over his 57 hot corner starts in 2025/26, he’s only committed ONE error. So there’s that.
Braden Davis with 8 K’s and zero walks yesterday. Moreover, 7 of 8 whiffs were swinging.
I feel like Davis may be significantly underrated among Redbird pitching prospects. Last year there were 691 minor league pitchers who threw 70+ innings, and Davis was 99th percentile in swinging strikes %, 99th in percentage of flyballs that were infield popups, 91st percentile in line drive suppression, and 67th percentile in groundball ratio.
Swinging strikes, popups, and groundouts. Nice combo, huh? Probably why Braden only permitted 35 hits in his final 85 innings last year. But also walks, too many of them. So if he can keep the ball just barely inside instead of just barely outside of the zone, he’s a dandy starting prospect. (Per the Gameday graphics, in his first AA start this year he had 11 or 12 edge-of-the-strikezone strikes that were actually called balls by the ump. And before you ask, no balls were called strikes. And no, there’s no ABS reviews in the Texas League.)
So “Philly Nation” is souring on Dave Dombrowski, I guess. Well, that’s understandable; the team is under .500 and it’s nearly the 20th of April!
With apologies for turning the thread away from the paltry Cardinal payroll, let’s look at Dombrowski and Philadelphia a bit. Immediately prior to Dombrowski’s arrival in Philly, the Fightins missed the playoffs for nine consecutive seasons. Didn’t even have a winning record in any of those nine campaigns either.
Since DD arrived in late 2020, they’ve had only winning records, they’ve made the playoffs each of the past four seasons, and they won the N.L. pennant in 2022. (Hard to win Senior Circuit pennants with Dave Roberts’ Dodgers around.)
Going back to his Boston and Detroit tenures, Dombrowski’s clubs have made the playoffs 11 of the past 14 seasons. If you hire Dombrowski, he wins. Payroll goes up, and he wins and he wins. He’s the anti-Chaim.
As for the residents of Philadelphia: the only thing worse than a fool, is a phool.
“Bob, I’m unsure where you are getting your numbers from but they don’t match what ZIPs would do. For McGonigle, the Tigers still got a bargain on him as he was projected for 5 WAR seasons which at 8 years with 2 pre arb and 3 arb ZIPs projected him to be worth $190 mil. Still ahead for $40 million for the Tigers.”
Thanks for the response. Let’s examine these numbers.
I said the Tiger ownership only comes out ahead if McGonigle is a Hall Of Famer.
If McGonigle averages 5 WAR per year for his first 8 years, that’s EXACTLY what a Hall Of Famer looks like. So I don’t see how the ZiPS numbers contradict my opinion re McGonigle.Or put it this way: I would cheerfully give anyone here 3-1 odds on McGonigle putting up 40 WAR over the next 8 years. Because I’d say his chances are between 10 and 15 percent. To tally 40 WAR in his first 8 years, a player must be really great and really healthy, over and over. McGonigle might do it, but it ain’t half likely. (I’d put Griffin’s chances a bit better, maybe 20-22%.)
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“Add in the fan perception, merchandise, media, etc. The Tigers maybe could hold onto McGonigle after he becomes a free agent, but who knows at what price that would be?”
“Now, suppose one or the other wins a division title and makes the playoffs in a year that they otherwise wouldn’t have in those free agent years. How about they win a pennant? A World Series? There are so many factors that could skew things toward the team.”
As for the first part, if McGonigle is good and the team is good for his first six seasons, the fan perception and merchandise will follow. And if McGonigle walks after six years in Detroit, the team will not face substantive backlash from their fans as long as they publicly let it be known that they offered their young star a highly respectable offer — not unlike the Cardinals did with Pujols after the 2011 season.
As for the second part, if the Tigers win something important with McGonigle, after his first six years expired, it will be because of a lot of reasons. Individual players invariably get too much credit & blame in baseball. There’s no QB, no point guard. Compared to an average (i.e., 2 WAR) MLB player, K.M. would shift the win total by just a few more games per year.
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“I think somewhere in the neighborhood of $80MM for 8 years for Wetherholt is the absolute tops the contract should be. It should also give him more in the early years than he would get in the normal, year-to-year contract process. Less in the later years.”
Took the words right outtta my mouth, Forschy. Guaranteed dough of either $40MM for 6 years, $60MM for 7, or $80MM for 8. And then in each case, club option(s) through his 9th or 10th season. Options at somewhere between $25MM and 30MM per annum.
Tink topped out at 91 MPH on his 4-seam fastball. I don’t see any way that could happen unless he’s significantly compromised physically. So sad for the guy.
“It is interesting to me fans here don’t want a player extended…the money amount wouldn’t cripple the team by any means…”
I am violently opposed to a Griffin/McGonigle type of contract being offered to Wetherholt. But that does NOT mean that I’m against JJ receiving a lengthy contract extension, not at all.
As detailed in a previous comment in this thread, if Wetherholt’s first six years are a pristine parade of 4-WAR star-quality seasons and flawless health, he’ll make roughly $55MM in total. So offer him approximately 75% of that right now ($40MM), but with two or three club options at the end. Options at, say 20-22 million bucks apiece.
We all know how badly a Griffin/McGonigle contract *could* backfire. Look at what happened in the first three or four seasons of Dylan Carlson or Nolan Gorman or, yes, Jordan Walker. (I’m extremely curious to see what Jordan Walker gets in arbitration next year, if he hits .280 with 35-40 homers this season. I don’t think it’ll be much, since 2024/25 were so dismal.)
Anyway, the only position player since Pujols who would’ve worked out to the club’s advantage by signing a large early contract, would be Matt Carpenter. That’s it, he’s the only one. Donovan woulda been okay, too, but just okay (depending on the dollars involved, obviously).
Modest, Brewer-style early deals are usually okay, even shrewd. But at $100M+, they’re foolhardy at best. Basically, the only way the Pirates & Tigers come out ahead on the Griffin/McGonigle deals is if those players become Hall Of Famers.
Part of me is glad that talks with Wetherholt haven’t progressed. Actually, all of me is glad.
Most of the lengthy contracts being signed now by inexperienced major leaguers are somewhere between irresponsible and quite destructive. Except for Milwaukee’s deal with Cooper Pratt. Leave it to the Brewer front office to be smarter than everyone else. (The McGonigle deal is moronic; the club is assuming 95-99% of the risk. Only way the team saves money here is if McGonigle becomes a perennial All-Star who plays 155 games a year for the next decade.)
At, say, 50 or 60 million bucks, the Cardinals can afford to get it wrong, kinda. But not at $100MM, $120MM, or more. And that’s likely what Wetherholt’s agent is asking for, given the current panicky climate among some ownership groups.
Thanks, guys, for the responses re Fajardo. Doesn’t explain/justify the modest pitch count, but so early in the season I guess it’s a quibble, not a legit complaint. On the other hand, if it becomes a pattern of usage, then I’ll howl about it. 😉
Worth mentioning probably that Yhoiker Fajardo pitched 3 innings (54 pitches) out of the Peoria bullpen for some reason on Sunday. Too hittable with 6 safeties allowed, but just one earned run and 6 K’s to zero walks.
Don’t know why he didn’t start. Or throw 70+ pitches, as he did in his debut outing 5 days earlier. The latter matter could be a physical thing, but the former is just weird to me.
