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“The DSL and FCL seasons are mercifully over. Good lord, that was dreadful.”
Too true, Bling. Not a single position player on either team can be projected as an MLB starter at this point. Mejia was a disaster, and Samil De La Rosa actually regressed at the same level, which is incredibly rare at his age. And terrible, of course.
Stiveen Rojas pitched well for a 16-year-old in the DSL, and Leonel Sequera (17 in the FCL) only walked one man across 17 innings, but pitchers are so volatile under the best of circumstances that it’s impossible to be very enthused by these micro samples at the lowest professional levels.
“Peoria’s Crooks II, after his slow start that lasted the first two months of the season, has turned it around this month. The ’22 fourth round switch hitter has put up some very good numbers in August…. .371BA .997 OPS…. to raise his seasonal stats. The 22 y.o. catching prospect could and should get a push up to AA before this year ends. We could have something here.”
Yeah, I would also like to see Crooks challenged with a Double-A promotion, Ny. (Selective sample alert!) Since June 8 he’s hitting .326 in 218 ABs, and better still he’s slugging .560 during the same span. The lefty swinger (Leo Bernal is the switch-hitting backstop in A-ball) is likely a platoon guy long term, but catchers don’t start 140 games these days anyway, so I don’t ding Jimmy Dale much for that. Pair Crooks with a lefty-killing catcher and you’re set. I mean, in twenty years when the Contreras contract expires.
No, it’s still certainly a top 10 system, roughly in the 7-9 range by my estimation. Recall that before the season a poll of MLB executives placed the Cards firmly inside the top 5. Link: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-front-office-selections-best-farm-systems?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage
Winn has confirmed himself as a top 10 overall prospect — remove the first few weeks of the season and the 21-year-old belongs in the top 3 overall — and there are 4 or 5 other top 100 types in Hence, Saggese, Herrera, Bernal, and probably Graceffo. Top 150 would include Max Rajcic and Jimmy Dale Crooks III, and a top 200 has McGreevy and perhaps Bedell and Victor Scott II. Maybe Tekoah Roby, I guess.
That’s between 9 and 12 top-200 types. That’s distinctly above average depth, anchored by an uber-elite talent in Mr. Winn. And if you think Winn belongs where the national voices have ranked him (top 30-50 range), just take ten minutes and compare him head-to-head with the other elite minor league shortstops. Among Mason’s shortstop peers, only Matt Holliday’s son profiles better, and Jordan Lawlar is his only equal.
Some of the shortstops rated above Winn are in fact worse at hitting, worse at fielding, and worse at baserunning. But they’re ranked higher because they are either more physically imposing or were drafted higher. That’s all. And it’s nonsense, of course.
So #22 is not remotely correct, I’m happy to report. The national guys are wrong about the Redbird system. As usual.
I’d leave Rom the heck alone while he seems to be having a meaningful breakthrough in Triple-A, but that’s just me I guess.
At any rate, to put Drew Rom into some sort of objective statistical context, these are the Davenport Peak projections for the better Redbird pitching prospects. The numbers below represent the halfway point between their projected ERAs and FIPs during the best stretch of their MLB careers.
Rajcic 3.40
Graceffo 3.49
Tink 3.68
McG 3.99
Bedell 3.99
Hansen 4.09
Mautz 4.12
Rom 4.23
Paniagua 4.37
Robberse 4.39
Roby 4.43That’s 11 under 4.50. For a bit of further context, the cubs have eight such pitching prospects in their system. Under 4.25, Cards eight and cubs six. Under 4.00, cubs have three to our five. And finally, Chicago has none under 3.75, despite allegedly having two of the top dozen pitching prospects in all of baseball according to the
expertsincompetents at Fangraphs.“Bob – Excellent post, except I don’t think you want to trade Gorman.”
I’d prefer to keep Nolan, cranny, but I don’t think there’s a way to get Dylan Cease without trading him — unless the Cards would part with either Nootbaar, Walker, or multiple elite pitching prospects. The latter is a fairly ridiculous notion of course, given the club’s recent history of pitching mediocrity, and the enormous embarrassment of the Alcantara/Gallen trade debacle.
Here are some player valuations at the Baseball Trade Values website:
Noot tops the Cards at 69 million, then Walker 61 and Gorman 40. Moving down the list and looking only at the more tradeable names, there’s Donovan 16, Edman and Carlson 15, Burleson 13, Graceffo & Roby 10, O’Neill & Pallante 8, and Willson Contreras minus 26 million.
Cease is valued at 46 million, while Freeland’s contract is surprisingly considered underwater at minus 19 million. Therefore Gorman + Carlson or Burleson + Graceffo or Roby + Bernal or Crooks (both around 3 mil value) would be roughly 65-70 million at BTV (about 50% above Cease’s value) and most importantly it would very likely be the strongest offer the Sox would get for two cheap seasons of Cease.
And then Carlson or Burleson, plus Contreras, Victor Scott 2, and a sweetener like Pallante, would be value-neutral, which would theoretically be enough for Freeland and then some. But in this case, I’m pretty sure Freeland’s real world value is NOT underwater as the BTV site claims.
“Really like Freeland. When healthy he is a solid mid-rotation starter. Gorman would be a great Coors Field player, but I hate to deal him, and would not for Freeland straight up.”
Yeah, I feel the same, Mike; and Gorman shouldn’t be remotely necessary for Freeland. Kyle’s contract is fair but not exactly cheap at $64MM for the next four years. It’s a real commitment that many teams would not want to make.
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The thing about Gorman is, the club has few truly high-end trade chips. Anyone who wants to hold on to Gorman must decide to either trade Nootbaar or Walker. Or to put it another way, two months ago Donovan and Gorman were valued almost identically at the BTV website, between 36 and 37 million apiece. Now Brendan is less than half of that.
Thus, trading Gorman right now makes perfect sense to me. Because his value is high but unlikely to go much higher. He whiffs so much that his batting average could collapse at any time, and there’s always the injury bug — especially for a guy who seems to have semi-chronic back troubles.
The Birds have Winn, Edman, and Donovan for the middle infield, and Tom “Cycle” Saggese certainly looks like a future 3-4 WAR player. But as we all know, they need pitching badly. So a swap makes sense.
Gorman will never hit .280 or win a Gold Glove or steal 25 bases. His power is intoxicating but it creates a bit of an illusion in my opinion, makes him appear more valuable than he truly is or ever will be. (And if he does have a bad back to even the slightest degree, his defense/baserunning will get worse before they get better.)
Trade for Dylan Cease and Kyle Freeland. Sign free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Roster clutter will be cleared (maybe they can even dump Contreras along the way) and payroll doesn’t necessarily need to increase much.
Cease
Mikolas
Yamamoto
Freeland
Matz, Hudson, Liberatore, et. al.And they would all be under team control through 2025 as well, meaning none of the current AA and AAA arms would need to be rushed. But obviously none of this matters unless and until Ollie Marmol and Dusty Blake are replaced by experienced grownup MLB thinkers.
Guys traded away would be Gorman, Carlson, Willson, Burleson, Knizner, Victor Scott II, either Bernal or Crooks, and one or two from among the AA/AAA starting pitchers. That’s more than enough trade ammo to get Cease + Freeland. (Of course, over the winter the Cards also had more than enough trade ammo for Sean Murphy but the A’s were idiots and opted for a largely useless ballplayer named Esteury Ruiz as the centerpiece of the deal.)
That still leaves this Opening Day batting order:
Nootbaar CF
Donovan DH
Goldy 1B
Arenado 3B
O’Neill LF
Walker RF
Herrera C
Edman 2B
Winn SSOutfield defense is blah but the infield glovework should be the envy of MLB. Overall, assuming a decent bench & bullpen, I think the team would be average-or-better at all four aspects: hitting, pitching, defense, and baserunning.
Thanks, Rat. I’m with Whitey.
Also, one more thing I neglected to mention. Among the 1,106 qualified minor league batters this year, Masyn ranks 543rd in on-base percentage with a respectable-but-mundane .357. And he ranks 192nd in stolen bases with 16.But despite all that, he ranks first in runs scored. By a large margin.
Winn has 91 tallies in 98 games.
No one else has scored 80.Among Masyn Winn’s many virtues, he has been extremely durable as a pro ballplayer.
Here’s how durable. Since the start of 2022, Winn leads all minor leaguers with 1,018 plate appearances.
He’s also 2nd in hits with 253 and 18th in extra base hits, with 94. (Nearly 700 batters have 600+ plate appearances since the start of last year. Winn is in the top 10 in triples and top 35 in doubles. And now he’s hitting homers like nobody’s business.)And yet, yes, I want him to remain in AAA for now. For three reasons. One, because this protracted stretch of incredible hitting performance is still brief enough to be mostly a hot streak rather than a true talent transformation. Another 70 or 80 PAs and I’ll be truly convinced. Two, I admit to being seduced by the siren song of a possible extra first round draft pick (and the massive draft budget increase that goes with it) if Masyn Winns the 2024 ROY for the National League.
And three, I don’t want Marmol getting his hands on Winn until it’s absolutely unavoidable. I’m afraid he’ll try and make Masyn a second baseman, or utilityman, or outfielder. Or he’ll constantly move him all over the field defensively, and up-and-down in the batting order, and make it impossible for Winn to get acclimated, comfortable, and confident at the MLB level. Have I mentioned lately that Ollie Marmol is incompetent?
And speaking of the outfield, I confess that last year I was speculating myself about a possible Masyn Winn move to the vast green baize. But that was before two things happened: he brought his error totals at shortstop way, way down. (His fielding percentage in AA was .983 and in AAA it’s .981. Those are fantastic numbers, to go with his good range & extraordinary arm.) And showed he could play shortstop without breaking at all physically. Now I don’t believe he should ever play anywhere else. Much like how Tommy Edman should never play anywhere but second base — never, ever, ever in the outfield.
With his 4-hit night, Masyn Winn warrants an update.
Since June 14th (173 trips to the plate) the slick-fielding 21-year-old shortstop is batting .338 and slugging .663, for a Ruthian isolated slugging of .325. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Babe Ruth’s all-time record isolated slugging was .348. (Josh Gibson’s was .346 though of course that wasn’t against MLB competition.) So Masyn probably isn’t as good a hitter as Babe Ruth yet. But he is showing very nice power. Very, very nice.
And better by far, Winn has been crushing the ball for the past seven weeks without sacrificing contact. In fact, he has decreased his strikeouts substantially while increasing his power immensely.
Specifically, from Opening Day through June 14 the 21-year-old fanned 54 times in 295 PA’s for a strikeout rate of just over 18% — which isn’t bad at all these days, but it was attached to a meager isolated slugging of .106. I personally slid him out of my top 10 overall prospects and into the 15-20 range.
But since then he’s whiffed just 23 times in the aforementioned 173 plate appearances for a superb 13.3% failure rate. Again, accompanied by an astronomical .325 isolated power tally. Nobody reading this needs to be told that an extreme power/contact profile is the best of all possible exactas for a hitting prospect.
There is now a non-trivial chance that by his mid-20’s Winn will be the best-hitting and best-fielding and best-baserunning shortstop in the Senior Circuit. I can’t rate him the equal of Jacksons Holliday and Chourio as a prospect, but he’s a clear #3 overall for me with Jordan Lawlar not far behind.
“They’ll probably add a starter via trade and one via free agency. They also are probably going to watch how effective Hudson and Libby are for the remainder of the season.”
Whatever Dakota & Matt do over the next 8 weeks, there’s no way either of them can reasonably be penciled in for the Opening Day 2024 rotation, and Mo realizes that I believe. (Liberatore isn’t going to do anything worthwhile if he’s damaged goods, as he certainly appears to be based a 4 MPH drop in the fastball since May.)
In fact, the matter was clarified two days ago on the air. Tuesday night during the game, Jim Hayes quoted Mozeliak as saying quite clearly that the club would add THREE starting pitchers over the winter. Moreover, very specifically Mo said that the recent trade acquisitions are NOT even being considered as possible rotation candidates for Opening Day, 2024.
My personal hope would be for two trades to clear some redundant clutter (5 starting OFers + 4 middle infielders + 3 catchers does not work) and one free agent signing. But I expect it’ll be one trade and two FAs. And then we’ll have the same exact problem next year with a confused third-rate manager distributing playing time haphazardly and pretty much getting the least out of everyone, especially in the field.
It’s a darn shame that extremely high draft picks in baseball don’t have remotely as much value as in football or basketball. (Well, maybe not such a shame from our point of view, since the Cards very rarely own such a pick.)
Anyway, here’s what I mean. Using the WAR totals available at Baseball-Reference, over the nearly 60 years since Rick Monday was the first player ever taken in the amateur draft, the average outcome for a #1 overall pick is a 20 WAR career. Same for the #2 overall pick, then there’s a meaningful dropoff.
So the average outcome for the very top pick is substantially short of stardom. A little deflating for those expecting some watershed moment in Cardinal history next draft. In fact, the position of the pick itself (likely #5 or #6) has less value in my opinion than the big boost in draft budget — let’s hope the Bird front office uses it creatively to land a very good player at that high slot, but with mucho dough left over to sign a high school star away from his college commitment with a much later pick.
“As far as Arenado is concerned, a writer at cbs sports says his substantial drop in defensive skill is just a precursor to a broader decline. Look at another great Cardinal 3rd stacker, Ken Boyer.”
It wouldn’t be unusual for a 3rd-sacker to decline precipitously in his early-to-mid-30’s, but I think what’s happening with Arenado is he’s been playing through some minor but meaningful physical limitation — pretty much all season. He’s half-jogged to first base on many GIDP balls this year, plus it’s looked to me like he isn’t getting the same bend, the same flexibility on defense. Maybe back, maybe hammy, I don’t know. (More likely the latter, as a strained back would inhibit his batting more than is evident.)
I could be unreasonably optimistic, but I expect a bounceback from Arenado in the field next year. He’s an extremely dedicated athlete. And to answer the question, this year is the first year Goldy & Arenado’s talent has gone to waste. On a good team — regardless of playoff results — nothing is “wasted.” And the Birds have always been good or better up until now. Thanks for nuthin’, Ollie!
“Mo had a good day.”
Not today, he didn’t. Pretty bad day today. The other day, with the return for Monty, Stratton, and Hicks, THAT was a good day. But he got very little for Flaherty/DeJong, with the primary piece being yet another middle infielder, the single thing the Cards need less than anything else.
To be a successful trade deadline, to me they had to clear some of the clutter in the outfield and middle infield, while acquiring somebody with at least a 50/50 chance to be at least a #3 starter in 2024. (Dylan Cease & Grayson Rodriguez were top of my personal wish list. But then, I didn’t know Civale was available from the Tribe.) They got nothing like that. I mean, nothing remotely like that.
The five trades that Mo made are exactly what you would want IF next season were going to be a “tanking” season, and 2025 the next season for truly trying to win 90+ games. And as far as I know, that’s not the actual front office plan. But that’s the effect.
Mo will now either retain the entire unwieldy roster clutter — huge mistake — or be forced to trade over the winter, when nearly every team believes they have at least a puncher’s chance at the Wildcard. So who’s gonna trade you a good starting pitcher under those conditions? I suspect the answer is nobody, but I guess we’ll see.
“Get over it! Contreras is our catcher and you will see he will be just fine.”
Recall that Contreras was so bad behind the plate that Wainwright and Flaherty went to Marmol and the front office in May and said Willson could not continue to catch unless he profoundly changed something about how he was operating behind the dish.
Whether he was tipping pitches, calling bad sequences, of just being horribly predictable, he was doing something very, very wrong. Because I’ve followed this sport for half a century and have NEVER heard of a veteran catcher being removed at the request of his pitching staff. Then more recently Mikolas was using the pitch-com doohickey to call his own pitches because he didn’t trust Contreras to do so. This is obviously extremely unusual as well.
The team’s ERA with Contreras behind the plate is nearly 5.00, which is of course terrible.
The team’s record when he starts at catcher is 33-49. With Knizner or Herrera it’s 14-11.If you’d like me to “get over it” you’ll need to provide at least one piece of evidence in favor of Contreras’ performance behind the plate this season — beside his throwing arm. Not his hitting. Not his record in Chicago. Just some tiny scrap of anecdotal or statistical evidence is all I ask.
I say he’s terrible and must go, if there’s any way possible. Same with Marmol, and same with Blake. And same with Mo, if he doesn’t trade from the ridiculous middle infield surplus this winter to fix the awful pitching.
“I hope Povich is included at least.”
I’ll take Shirley but not Maury.
“Mikolas
Matz
Liberatore
Pallante
Woodford
McGreevy
Thompson
Graceffo”That’s a nightmare scenario for Opening Day, 2024. Never happen. With Liberatore physically compromised (his fastball is down by 3-4 MPH from just three months ago), there isn’t anyone on that list besides Mikolas who I’d bet even money could throw 150 major league innings next year with a sub-4.00 ERA.
“That would be a head scratcher if we don’t trade Flaherty. Surely the return would be better than the extra draft pick.”
No draft pick at all as compensation unless a free agent signs for at least 55 million bucks. And nobody is giving that kind of dough to Jack. So moot point on that score.
“Doesn’t matter who our pitchers will be until we get a pitching coach who has experience as a pitching coach!”
You got that right. And a new manager and starting backstop as well.
“Definitely sign a top free-agent pitcher in the off-season…no doubt about it.”
Only if he comes with a money back guarantee. How much are DeGrom, Scherzer, Verlander, and Rodon being paid this year? Roughly $150,000,000 and for what? I invite anyone advocating a “top free agent pitcher” signing to tally their contributions this season. It ain’t pretty.
No. The thing to do is make multiple trades, and one Mikolas-type signing if there’s anyone like that available. The Cards are like an NFL team with four good running backs and a crap defensive line. You find a way to trade from your rather absurd surplus to acquire an essential need.
How about this:
Carlson to Yankees, Nolan Gorman (or Brendan Donovan) to the White Sox, Yankees also give something to the White Sox, and Sox send Dylan Cease to the Cards. Cards could also give Sox some high profile but non-elite prospect like Baez or Hjerpe. Depending who the Yankees add to the mix, this could be the strongest offer the White Sox receive.
Dylan Cease should be the target even if the Birds must overpay from their numerous redundancies. Maybe the Pale Hose would like Ollie Marmol as a throw-in….
I hate the idea of a major free agent signing. With a white-hot passion.
The Cardinals over the past seven or eight years have almost certainly been the very worst team in the sport at evaluating free agents. Would anyone here dispute that point?
I guess a painful, morbid recap is necessary for those with an irrational need to watch the Redbird front office make the same mistake over and over and over and over again. I am sorry, but you are forcing me to do this. Forgive me.
M. Leake
D. Fowler
B. Cecil
G. Holland
A. Miller
L. Gregerson
S. Matz
W. ContrerasThat’s well north of $250 million, plus a pair of first round draft picks mind you, for what, a grand total of maybe six or seven WAR so far? (I lack the intestinal fortitude to do the math.) And we should throw Marcell Ozuna in there for good measure, because his disastrous acquisition obviously reflects the same exact problem, which is an utter inability to determine what major leaguers to add to the team. (It took no brains to “evaluate” Arenado and Goldschmidt.)
And one next-to-last thing. Those myriad pitching failures? They came when the team had a much better manager and much better pitching coach.
If the club is forced to get a free agent, make it someone from overseas like Mikolas or Final Boss, both of whom provided excellent value, particularly in their maiden season under the Arch. But here’s the thing: only get a guy if he’s had *real* success overseas.
Not someone who has a high spin rate or large fastball or unusual horizontal movement. Nonononono. I mean someone who has a low ERA. Because that actually wins baseball games.
Saggese has been very productive at the plate every year.
At 19 in Low-A he had a 127 OPS+.
In High-A at age 20 it was again 127.
And this year in AA at 21 it was 133. (He won’t be 22 until next April, by the way.)
Young for every level. Highly successful at every level.Mozeliak compared him to Brendan Donovan which is partly true, partly not. They do appear to be extremely similar in terms of defensive versatility and baserunning. But Donovan has vastly superior plate discipline markers, and Saggese more pop but also more swing ‘n miss. So it’s more like a hybrid of Donovan & Gorman as a profile. Obviously that’s a very strong prospect.
The only reason Saggese isn’t a consensus top 100 guy is that he was drafted in the 5th round rather than 1st. Problem is, people are frequently narrow-minded dolts and thus they have an exceptionally difficult time evaluating someone who outperforms his draft position so profoundly. It makes their heads hurt so they pretend the performance isn’t real.
Righty starter Tekoah Roby was ranked #11 in the Texas farm system by MLB Pipeline.
But he was ranked much, much, much higher at Fangraphs — the #64 prospect in all the minors. The #14 pitching prospect in all of baseball. So there’s obviously a pretty (bleeping) wide range of opinions about the guy. Of course, Fangraphs will have to figure out a way to radically devalue him now that he’s in the StL system. I’m sure that by winter they’ll have dropped him out of their top 100.
Saggese strikes out quite a bit but keeps a high average anyway. Some guys can do it, some can’t. At any rate, I’d estimate his 75th percentile outcome would be a cross between Brendan Donovan and Nolan Gorman, i.e., a solidly above average starter at either the hot corner or keystone.
These guys are both 21 in Double-A this year (Roby has been out for two months with an injury, unfortunately) so their upside has likely been underestimated by the scouting community in general. Because that’s how these things tend to work. Scouts of course know the ages of prospects; they just don’t give it enough weight.
Real good haul for two months of Monty, better than we had a right to expect. And the return for Hicks ain’t half bad either. But as others have quite rightly noted, the Birds need a LOT of pitching for 2024 and they got none today from either trade. Well maybe a reliever but who cares. They need starting pitching and bunches of it. Especially if Marmol has ruined Liberatore, as I strongly suspect he has.
I absolutely concur that (among other things) Mo should’ve put the “Contreras money” toward Kodai Senga instead, as that would’ve addressed a more pressing need that couldn’t possibly be fixed internally. BUT.
But whatever Mo did or didn’t do over the winter, it’s a fact that 80-90% of objective outsiders (incl. Vegas, of course) picked the Cardinals to win the division this year. Maybe higher than 90%. They picked the Cards coming into Spring Training and they picked ’em coming out of Spring Training. They all saw the talent or lack thereof in the rotation and bullpen, and they still picked our Redbirds.
So the talent is here. Was and is. But there’s no talent in the dugout.
Marmol is average at handling a rotation, terrible with the bullpen, awful at figuring who should play where on the field, and the worst manager I’ve ever seen at filling out a batting order.Recall the outfield nonsense, especially the centerfield saga over the past 12 months.
Bader traded, so Marmol picks Dylan Carlson as the best defensive CF.
Then in Spring Training this year, he decides Tyler O’Neill is his best CF.Then later on with O’Neill out, he decides neither Carlson nor Nootbaar will do, so his Gold Glove middle infielder Tommy Edman becomes his CFer of choice. Then O’Neill comes back, so a week and a half ago Marmol tells Carlson he’s out of the starting lineup and should brace for a trade, and that Nootbaar will be playing CF. Except that what’s actually happened is that now Carlson starts in CF as often as Nootbaar. There’s no logic or at the very least consistency to any of Marmol’s decision-making.
He has no idea who his CF should be. Or who should hit leadoff. Or bat third. About all he knows is that he wants Paul Goldschmidt hitting second. He really, really wants that, because that shows everyone how darn smart Marmol is — because some algorithm somewhere declared at some point that a team’s “best hitter” should bat second.
Here’s a pro tip, Ollie: If your best hitter is named Carew, go ahead and hit him second. If it’s Killebrew, don’t be an idiot. Hit him cleanup. Because you see, there’s no such thing as an absolute rule when it comes to batting orders. Oh, except this one. Don’t put one of your worst hitters in the middle of the order month after month, even if he is a highly paid free agent acquisition. Oh, and this other one. Leave hitters in batting order slots where they’ve already enjoyed conspicuous MLB success, and remove hitters from slots where they have not. You’re welcome, Boy Genius.
“It’s the most pathetic assembly of ‘arms’ I can ever recall for the Cardinals.
I keep going back to: There’s no way to fix this in one year – there’s just not.”I don’t see it that way. A competent new manager, new pitching coach, and new catcher, and I believe it could be instantly fixed. But without all three of those changes, I agree with you completely and would go even further. If they keep Marmol, Blake, and Contreras, this team will challenge for the worst record in the National League next year. Maybe the entire majors.
With Contreras starting at backstop this season, the Cards are 33-49. That converts to 65-97.
With Knizner or Herrera starting at catcher, our Redbirds are 13-11. That converts to 88-74.
Just a little food for thought.“He’s a top notch CF defender – similar to Bader.”
“Not much power, but excellent defense.”I really hope you guys are right. But I haven’t seen any numbers anywhere or read any scouting reports to indicate that Victor’s defense is in any way elite. Baseball Prospectus says he’s mediocre in CF, while Clay Davenport’s numbers are good but far from great. (For context, both websites ranked Harry Bader’s glovework as tremendous in the minors.) I don’t want to pick a fight but can you cite any scouts or other industry sources? Thanks!
“While Scott does possess a little more pop than Hamilton, Scott is very aggressive at the plate, doesn’t work counts or take walks.”
That’s one of the fascinating things about VS2. In Low-A he walked a fairly thrilling 17% of the time! In High-A, it declined to a so-so 9%. Now in Double-A, it’s a completely unacceptable 4%. Which is a big reason why he shouldn’t be rushed to the next level any time soon. His AA batting average is great — but it’s utterly empty, a textbook example of unsustainable (and also likely overrated) hitting performance.
The good news is, the patience he showed in Low-A is inside of him. He doesn’t have an innate aversion to the base on balls. So maybe just maybe if he’s permitted plenty of time at both Springfield and Memphis, he can get that walk rate back to double digits. Then you’ve got a plausible 3-3.5 WAR centerfielder. But for right now, he looks like a 4th OF to me. A very good one, granted. But still a 4th.
Thanks for all of the responses, guys!
One thing I didn’t bring up before with Winn, is the Rookie Of The Year possibility for next season. If he comes up in the next few weeks, that chance is lost when his rookie eligibility evaporates. And the potential R.O.Y. bonus of an extra first round draft pick evaporates with it. That has to factor in. For me, anyway.I think Masyn could handle the promotion right now, but it’s a gray area decision on whether to call him up — and this is assuming DeJong is traded and shortstop is open. I’m sure I would feel very different if the Cards were a couple of games from the Wildcard, a la the cubs. But Marmol’s mismanagement has made the playoffs a near impossibility. (And yes, Mozeliak gets a chunk of blame, too. But the obvious difference is, Mo has a long track record of good-to-very-good results. Marmol does not.)
With another big game last night (single, triple, tater), Masyn Winn now has the following line for the past two months:
.335/.395/.572
That’s across 215 plate appearances and includes just 28 strikeouts. (A modest 13% K ratio.) Or we could go all the way back to April 26 instead of May 26 (331 PAs), and the slash line becomes just slightly less impressive at .313/.387/.517.
Any way you cut it, he’s hitting the crap out of the ball. And if the big club were just merely muddling through at .500 or so, I’d strongly advocate a promotion for Masyn. (Motter and Fermin make me sad.) But Marmol has led this team to such depths, such viscous irrelevance, nothing matters now except 2024 and beyond. So we may as well keep Winn in AAA and save the option year.
“Thanks, Bob! I’d managed to forget that relief appearance and had not seen the co-incident velocity problem. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that any physical problem is of the sort that an offseason will help.”
You’re welcome, Gags. I’m trying to stay optimistic, but down in AAA Liberatore’s velocity just keeps deteriorating. Last two starts for Memphis the 4-seamer has averaged 91.5 and 92.2 MPH, compared to an average 4-seam fastball of 94.75 during his excellent 8 early starts, and 95+ in his first MLB start.
Link to Brooks Baseball:
https://www.brooksbaseball.net/velo.php?player=669461&b_hand=-1&gFilt=&pFilt=FA|SI|FC|CU|SL|CS|KN|CH|FS|SB&time=game&minmax=ci&var=mph&s_type=2&startDate=03/30/2007&endDate=07/26/2023I suspect it’ll be the operating table this winter for Matt. I’m just praying it’s an elbow, not shoulder.
And speaking of Liberatore, somebody mentioned that he hadn’t been “dominant” since A-Ball. I’m not so sure about that. Over those first 8 starts this year in AAA he posted an ERA just above 3.00 in a league where the overall ERA is a morbidly obese 5.24. To me, when you’re beating your league ERA by more than 2 full runs, that easily qualifies as dominant — modest sample size and all.
At any rate, whatever the cause(s) of Liberatore’s massive decline in velocity/effectiveness, we clearly can’t pencil him in for the 2024 Redbird rotation. Or any point beyond that, either.
Fire Marmol. Please.
