Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“2023 rotation rankings…the Cards are 19th…
… and those numbers collectively have the team finishing 81-81… That seems a lowball projection.”Yeah, that’s obviously far too pessimistic on the overall team record. They’ve won 90+ games in each of the past three full seasons, and return the vast majority of last year’s talent. (Departure of Pujols+ Molina is balanced by the arrival of Contreras, of course.) Moreover, they’ve finished at least 10 games over .500 in 13 of Mozeliak’s 14 seasons as GM, or whatever they’re calling his job now. Poobah, I think? So they ain’t going 81-81. Or at least, as Damon Runyon would say, that’s the way to bet.
As for the rotation specifically, the ZiPS forecasting model is decidedly less scary for Cardinal fans than whatever prediction system or expert panel ESPN is using. But first, a bit of background is in order.
According to ZiPS, in terms of total talent — position players plus pitchers — there are 8 MLB teams distinctly stronger than the rest right now. Those 8 teams are the Cards, Braves, Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Astros, Blue Jays, and Padres. (The Phillies and Brewers are 3 and 4 games behind the aforementioned octet, respectively.) If replacement level is 48 wins, the Braves are projected at 103 victories, the Dodgers, Cards, and Yankees at 97, the Mets and Stros at 96, the Friars 95, and Toronto at 94.
Among the Great Eight, the 7 non-Redbird starting rotations are projected to average 14.9 WAR per the ZiPS model. The Redbird rotation is projected at 13.8, so not quite even with their peers but quite close.
“The MLB Network had Arenado as their 5th best 3rdbaseman heading into 2023. Machado was ranked #1. Not sure that makes a lot of sense to me.
Thoughts posters?”
It’s moronic, of course. Almost as bad as 12 months ago when they ranked Arenado 8th among third basemen. Yes, 8th.
But there’s nobody to point a finger at, no human being, as their ranking is always based on something called “the shredder” and of course they do not reveal much if anything about “the shredder” methodology. But given the ongoing dismissiveness toward Arenado — even coming off of his best year with the bat — it’s more or less axiomatic that “the shredder” massively over-regresses defensive performances, and over-adjusts for the ageing curve, much like some mainstream projection models have done forever. (Though to be fair, the ZiPS model has improved lately.)
I’d prefer to see Arenado get the recognition he quite clearly deserves, but Nolan will likely retire universally acknowledged as the best all-around third-sacker of his generation, and a first-ballot HOFer. That’ll do.
I agree with Willie and Andujar. This change will chiefly add games I don’t care to see in the first place.
As for difficulty of schedule, thanks for the article link, Brian. As said article concluded, it won’t make a huge difference for any team. Less than a single win for anyone, one way or t’other, according to the very recent analysis of the esteemed Clay Davenport. In his words:
5. New schedules
“The first set of numbers I put out still had the 2022 schedule built into it. Most years that is no big deal, but this year they are changing to a more balanced schedule, with less concentration on your own division. That was good for teams in the strong Eastern divisions (the Nationals gained 0.77 wins when I changed the schedules, most of any team; the Marlins, Red Sox, and Orioles all gained over 0.5 wins). And it was bad for the AL Central (the Guardians and White Sox were the two biggest losers, dropping by 0.85 and 0.69 wins). Those changes in team totals will be accompanied by changes in individual numbers, but it isn’t large enough to be a real issue.”
Among Marlins the play is Jesus Luzardo, for me. He has four years of team control remaining, as opposed to just two for Lopez. And Luzardo was distinctly more effective in 2022 — albeit in a smaller sample of innings.
Luzardo, 18 starts & 100 IP, 3.32 ERA overall, and 2.64 in 10 road starts. Sub-1.000 WHIP in Aug./Sept.
Lopez, 32 starts & 180 innings, 3.75 ERA and 3.00 in 16 road outings. Awful 2nd half, with a 4.97 ERA.Luzardo allowed a paltry OPS of .601 last year. Lopez nearly 100 points higher, at precisely .700. I admit, track record matters for sure, and Lopez was certainly the better pitcher pre-2022. But there is no doubt that Luzardo (still just 25 years old) was the better one last year. And vastly superior down the stretch.
Moreover, Luzardo might be gettable without a lot of pain, as the Baseball Trade Values website puts his market value at a relatively modest 28 million — due primarily to durability concerns, no doubt. The Cards have Nolan Gorman (26 million) presumably available, and could toss in a pretty persuader like Burleson, Baez, Yepez, or McGreevey for instance. Depends what the Marlins like.
My one big misgiving about all this, is the Marlins know pitchers. They have for a long time. Nobody else could have developed Sandy Alcantara as well as they did. Nobody else would have promoted the late Jose Fernandez as aggressively as they did (I thought they were nuts, but it worked out spectacularly well). So I’d be pretty leery in general about acquiring any Miami arm….
But if they’re taking the plunge, I’d say take it with Jesus.
“Why would anyone assume this has anything to do with Marmol?”
Probably because until the hiring of Ollie Marmol it was exceedingly rare for Cardinal coaches to leave the organization of their own volition, unless of course it was for a promotion. Or retirement.
We’ve now had three in a few months. Maybe as many as in the previous 30-40 years? I have no idea how much if anything Marmol had to do with any of the three departures, but there’s nothing illogical or conspiratorial about suggesting it. If he had nothing to do with any of them, then it’s a rather enormous coincidence. (And there are big and small coincidences.)
None of us enjoy the fact that the vast majority of things happen for multiple reasons. It makes the world too messy, but that’s how it is. And because I don’t believe in big coincidences very much, I’m pretty sure that the manager had something to do with at least one of the trio of departures — not that any of the three will necessarily hurt the team, mind you.
“My biggest regret is that we didn’t sign Scherzer when he signed with Washington. In hindsight that 7-year deal looks fabulous now.”
And Washington also signed pitchers Strasburg and Corbin to similarly massive long-term contracts, and those contracts have backfired so horribly that the team has finished last three years in a row with no end to the misery in sight. That’s the downside to such contracts.
“Yes, the money is there and plenty of it, Junior just values his cash more than the WS.”
To be fair, I think I’d also rather have fifty million bucks than watch the Cards win the World Series. 😉
Anyway, the answer to the original question is, their scouting and analytical departments have let them down on numerous occasions. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.
Take Mike Leake. He came to St. Louis as a so-so pitcher who everyone expected might improve under the guidance of Yadier Molina. Then it turned out Mike Leake was the one pitcher in baseball who persistently thought he knew better than Yadi, and shook him off time after time after time. There’s a word for that.
“Well yeah, that’s reasonable, BW. However, a legitimate question would be that if he was “never right” why did the Redbird manager continue to hand him the baseball up until mid-season?”
Boy, is that ever a good question. Well asked, Andujar.
And for anyone interested, here’s the link to that highly enthusiastic VerHagen article from Spring Training — the one I said I was linking to and then neglected to do so. Sorry ’bout that, 27.
If you love Hogan’s Heroes, Rat, you should check out the movie Stalag 17. Same general set-up, but a blend of the comical and serious.
Okay, Cranny. Thanks.
The thing is, you go to five websites and you’ll get five different sets of numbers. I was just curious which website you were referencing, so I could check into their methodology — however much of that is publicly available.Thanks again for responding in any case, and have a good New Year.
“Thanks, Bob, for the stats on Mikolas and Verhagen; I just don’t understand the VerHagen signing. Being mediocre overseas shouldn’t be a reason for the Cards to sign VerHagen.”
You’re welcome, 27. And you’re absolutely right that VerHagen’s two-seasons of mediocrity across the pond should’ve precluded the Birds signing him at all — much less to a multi-year deal.
Here’s a Post-Dispatch article from March that’s all about VerHagen. If you can get past the nauseating gushing of Derrick Goold, you’ll probably glean some idea of what the Cards mistagenly saw in him.
I’m somewhat surprised, Cranny. It’s become almost received wisdom at this point that the Cards are roughly 10th in revenue. Been that way for, I dunno, 15, 20 years or longer.
Could it be that Ballpark Village wasn’t included in the estimate you cite? (And could you cite the site that you cited? Thanks!)
“Change “VerHagen” to “Mikolas” and you could have said the same thing about the latter before he went overseas and became a better pitcher. Mikolas’ ERA as a starter with Texas had been 6.44.”
A pox upon the typewriter of anyone who mentions Mikolas and VerHagen in the same sentence!
Mikolas didn’t merely become a better pitcher overseas, he dominated, roaring through like an Orient Express. Miles was there for three seasons and posted a tremendous overall ERA of 2.18 across 425 innings. For comparison, Shohei Ohtani in his three full Japanese seasons was effectively identical, totaling 458 IP and a 2.24 ERA. Records of 31-13 for M.M. and 36-13 for S.O.. Rumors are that Ohtani hit a little better than Lizard King.
VerHagen on the other hand had a so-so 3.51 ERA in Japan, in 208 IP. That resulted in a record of 13-14. And VerHagen was worse than that just before the Cards signed him — he had a deeply unimpressive 3.80 ERA in 2021. (Mikolas had a sparkling 2.25 ERA the year before signing with the Birds.) VerHagen was awful in the majors for years, then mediocre in Japan, then awful again in Spring Training last year, then awful yet again in the regular season. Injuries or no, it would’ve been completely reasonable to release him back in June or July. I know, I’m heartless.
“I just happened to be over at Fangraphs and checked out their 2023 projections for:
Woodford 4.42 ERA, 4.54 FIP
VerHagen 4.16 ERA, 4.30 FIPThompson 3.97 ERA, 4.21 FIP
Cabrera 4.08 ERA, 4.35 ERAPretty much the same… They are obviously doing more than citing last year’s stats and assuming they continue…”
——————————————–
Oh, I’m sure Woodford and Thompson won’t duplicate their spectacular low-2 ERAs in 2023. (Just like Helsley won’t repeat his incredible ERA either.) But I very much doubt that Jake & Zack will see their ERAs double. They could, of course. But I’ll bet even money on the under.
Anywho, Brian, I went out of my way to check Baseball-Reference for their projections, since the above looked highly questionable to me. And indeed, B-Ref sees things much differently.
Woodford 3.54 ERA in 61 IP
VerHagen 4.50 ERA in 36 IPG. Cabrera, 4.00 over 54 innings.
Z. Thompson, 3.27 across 44 innings.The sad fact is that except for 26 innings that he twirled 8 years ago for Detroit, VerHagen has pretty much only been terrible in the majors. And Cabrera? If we very modestly set the “good season” bar for an MLB reliever as a sub-3.50 ERA over at least 30 innings, we see that Genesis Cabrera — and Jordan Hicks, by the way — has never met even that meager standard.
I think it’s pretty clear that [velocity + movement] is a good basis for drafting pitchers, but it is not nearly enough justification to deploy a mediocre pitcher at the MLB level. You simply gotta get people out, no matter how you do it. I’m starting to think that the Cardinal brass has forgotten that. And that Marmol never knew it in the first place.
——————————————–
“Thanks Bob, I feel better now. It would also be helpful if Pallante could be used exclusively out of the pen. He did exceptionally well for a Double-A pitcher beamed up to MLB.”
Happy to help, if I have. And I agree, Bling, about Pallante. In relief he had an ERA about a run and a half lower than in the rotation. If the club wants him to break camp with the team, then he’s gotta be a bullpenner.
But if they believe he could be a mid-rotation starter long term (surprisingly, his FIP and WHIP were equally mediocre whether starting or relieving), then they have to send him to AAA. Can’t give him the Hicks/Oviedo treatment. Give him the Lance Lynn/Wainwright treatment, i.e., let him develop his craft over dozens of Triple-A starts, and you’ll never regret it.
Andre should probably get extensive Triple-A time regardless of his projected MLB role, but I’m not going to ask for a miracle.
“That list up above fills me with dread.”
Me too, Bling.
But replace VerHagen with Woodford, Cabrera with Thompson, and move Hudson to the Triple-A rotation until he’s needed in the majors — and add Pacheco or Packy in his place — and you’ve potentially got something really good.Reminders from 2022:
VerHagen 6.65 ERA and 6.53 FIP. Woodford 2.23 and 3.13.
Cabrera 4.63 and 5.62. Thompson (relief only) 0.91 and 3.18.But all of this would obviously require a commonsense, merit-based usage of pitchers, rather than spin rates or salaries or swinging strike data. A man can dream, can’t he?
First JJ asked, “Name your price, GameCard. What should Edman’s contract extension look like?
Yrs / $”GameCard enthused, “Incorrect on Eddie IMO. Sign him long-term NOW.”
And finally, 25 went into some useful details: “I would not sign Edman long term unless very favorable terms (something like Whit Merrifield’s deal with a low base and club options). Merrifield is an excellent comp for Edman and he’s basically replacement level by now. Little guys whose game is predicated on speed and defense tend to decline early, and Edman fits that bill to a T. We want him here til about 30ish, and then move on.”
I agree with 25 that Merrifield is an excellent comp, as a player. (Merrifield, it should be noted, was worth a little over 3 WAR per 150 games during his age 31 & 32 seasons, by the way. Not peak Merrifield, but solidly productive.) I haven’t looked at the Merrifield contract, but I did glance at Cot’s Contracts, where Tommy Edman is projected to get just over $4MM in his first arbitration year this season. Which means that if, going forward, Tommy stays exactly as healthy and productive as he has in the past, he’ll likely make around $7MM in 2024 and $10MM in 2025. For a total of $21MM prior to free agency, which he would reach at age 30.
Therefore, I’d offer Tommy a contract that gives him more than that over the next three years, but with relatively cheap years beyond that, including a club option/buyout. Let’s say 6-8-10-12-12 for the next five years, with an option at 12 (and a 2 buyout). All told it’s a 5/50 or 6/60 contract.
And this way, Tommy is inked through age 32, with the option for an additional season. A deal like this feels mutually beneficial. Tommy is “set for life” even if he gets hurt or suffers a Mysterious DeJong DeCline. And the Cards get a bargain if Tommy ages as gracefully as Merrifield has. (Or Mark Ellis, if you want an even more optimistic comp for Tommy. With his value largely driven by defense and baserunning, second baseman Ellis was a 3+ WAR player right up until he arrived in St. Louis at age 37. After which he stunk, of course, as I’m sure you all recall.)
“They didn’t keep Wong, they won’t keep Edman.”
Well, with all due respect to Kolten Wong, Tommy Edman is a little bit better in every way. (Like how Paul Goldschmidt is a bit better than Freddie Freeman in every way, despite what the clowns at MLB Network asserted with vehement unanimity 12 months ago. But I digress.) Wong, career OPS+ of 99 — and it was just 95 as a Redbird. Edman, 103. Baserunning? Kolten is excellent, worth 4 runs above average per 150 games in his career per Fangraphs. Tommy however is historic, at 7 runs per 150 games. (Vince Coleman and the Two Billy Hamiltons might be the only guys to average 8 runs or better per 150, over a meaningful career.) And Edman is just a bit better in the field than Wong, as evidenced by Tommy’s ability to play shortstop if necessary.
And finally, Tommy is more durable than Kolten as well. So we add it all up, and the club should feel more motivated to retain Tommy than they did with Kolten — solid though Wong certainly was.
———————————————————
I just looked it up and Marcel’s projections is supposed to be short for “The Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System.”…Haha! However, here’s the proverbial kicker…According to the MLB website, “Marcel has frustrated many a predicter because, despite the simplicity of its methods, it typically performs on par with other more complex systems.” Where do they get these guys?
I think I can give you the straight dope on this, Andujar. Marcel is just a silly name given to the projection system in honor of a TV monkey of the same name. There was a pet monkey named Marcel on a sitcom a didn’t watch.
The forecasting model was designed years ago by the highly respected baseball analyst Tom Tango — which I believe is his real name — and he named it after a monkey because of its simplicity. When projecting future performance, I’m 99% sure that Tango discards a player’s history from anything more than three years ago. Then he weights the past seasons as 3X the most recent season, 2X the year before, and 1x the year before that.
And that’s the whole thing in a nutshell, I believe. At least that’s what I recall reading several years ago. Maybe Tango has modified it, but I doubt it. Because part of the point of it, is that ballplayers are so tricky to predict, that even a very, very, very basic projection model can perform as well as the most sophisticated algorithms.
Below are the career and numerous situational statistics, i.e., “clutch splits,” for Bruce Sutter and Giovanny Gallegos. These numbers are not intended to persuade anyone of anything, but rather to merely inform and if possible very mildly entertain.
Overall Career OPS Allowed: Sutter .628, Gallegos .582
September Only: Sutter .701, Gallegos .637
Two Outs: Sutter .579, Gallegos .607
Men On Base: Sutter .631, Gallegos .660
R.I.S.P.: Sutter .661, Gallegos .702
2 Outs, R.I.S.P.: Sutter .605, Gallegos .623
Late & Close: Sutter .630, Gallegos .595
Tied Score: Sutter .647, Gallegos .508
High Leverage: Sutter .659, Gallegos .647
Medium Leverage: Sutter .571, Gallegos .499
Low Leverage: Sutter .610, Gallegos .582
9th Inning: Sutter .634, Gallegos .607
Extras: Sutter .695, Gallegos .968 (20 at-bats)“Isn’t it time for somebody to take a long drink from the reality jug and do what needs to be done with De Jong?”
I hear you. It’s been very frustrating the past few years. But 12 months ago we all though Matt Carpenter was completely washed up — and back then he was eight years older than Paul DeJong is right now. Maybe we can get the Yankees or Rangers to fix DeJong for us. Hardy, har, har.
The frustration might be large, but the risk with DeJong is small. I’m 90-99% sure that the club (both front office and manager) currently considers Tommy Edman to be the starting St. Louis shortstop, not anyone else. But if, just for the sake of discussion, Brendan Donovan has a horrible sophomore slump, and Nolan Gorman does NOT look like he can play the keystone, then the possibility arises of Edman returning to 2nd base and DeJong to short. I don’t see it happening, but then I’ve been wrong before once or twice.
DeJong is 28 years old, and still has the talent inside of him to be a league-average batter, in my opinion. The question is, do the Cardinals have the individual(s) to get him back to that point?
“I find it interesting that Gomez appears to be the best power-hitting prospect in baseball, and we all just lump him in the Adolis Garcia category of players whose wart (singular) is too profound to allow him to flourish.”
Back in 2021, the man had a slugging percentage of .309 in Double-A.
Then it was .705 in 2022. An increase in slugging % of nearly 400 points is the greatest year-over-year jump that I ever heard of. To be blunt, if any hitter in any other organization saw an increase like that, I would simply assume the new power was achieved chemically, not naturally. Call me a world-weary cynic, but in my mind that’s by far the most logical explanation. Unholy power from a guy listed at 5’11”, and who was probably on the verge of disappearing from professional baseball, and had never hit like that before? The simplest answer is usually the correct one.I could be mistaken about Moises Gomez, but I just think 2022 was a complete and utter fluke, if it was even achieved legitimately. And I suspect the Redbird front office, and other organizations, sees things the same way, or at least mostly so.
“We have rp’s with the following MLB results in 2022:
Drew Verhagen: 21.2 IP; 6.65 ERA; 1.89 WHIP; 18 K; 14 BB; $3 million salary for 2023
Chris Stratton: 63.1 IP; 4.26 ERA; 1.53 WHIP; 60 K; 25 BB; $2.8 million salary for 2023”To be fair, though, Stratton was much more effective than that once he joined the Redbirds. Era of 2.78 and FIP the same (2.80). Cubs did get a good deal with Box, however. I’ll definitely give you that. He’s been very good for three years running.
It might be irrational exuberance, but I do like the Cardinal bullpen right now — assuming relievers remain relievers, and aren’t pressed into starting. (I’m thinking of Pallante, Naughton, Thompson in particular. If Ollie wants to start Woodford, he’s more than welcome. ;))
Dodgers will probably pick him up, put him on the Malibu Wheatgrass And Beetle Diet, and get a 4-WAR season out of the fatso.
Good for the Reds, though. If you don’t think the player can help you win, just get rid of him. The money, as the cool kids say, is a sunk cost. Don’t compound your mistake by making the club worse.
The Mets will probably have a great regular season, because that’s what Buck Showalter does when he’s got the talent. But the man has made the playoffs six times and never had a winning record in October. He’s the anti-Torre, the anti-Bochy, the anti-Ned Yost.
When it comes to “top lineups,” there’s the Magnificent Seven, and then there’s everybody else. The Cards, Dodgers, Yanks, Mets, Braves, Stros, and Jays are quite evenly-matched. Any of them could be #1, any could be #7. It’s that close in my opinion. On the other hand, the author of the article has San Diego ranked second, which I would disagree with vehemently, since the Friars rated 12th last year in wRC+ and right now we have no idea what Fernando PED Tatis’ real legit level of baseball ability is — plus he’ll be missing for the first third of the season, even if he remains a superstar.
————————————————————
On a related note, since I prefer to include fielding and baserunning in any evaluation of position players, here’s last year’s WAR totals for position players. I’ve taken the average of Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference. (I didn’t use Baseball-Prospectus because they have a truly goofy way of measuring hitters now that is basically all-theory, zero reality.)
2022 position player WAR, by team:
1) Yankees 35.9 WAR
2) Dodgers 35.8
3) Redbirds 35.1
4) Blue Jays 31.4
5) Astros 29.4
6) Metropolitans 29.1
7) Braves 28.4Among the above seven, the Cards might be tougher to rank than anyone this year because they have so many guys who should regress negatively or positively. Plus, the great Albert Pujols is gone (because let’s face it, he was great again, at least with the lumber in his mitts), which subtracts a chunk of offense. But Yadi is replaced by Contreras, which upgrades the backstop offense astronomically.
The thing about the Cards is, the Everyday Eight will be darn good. But I’m afraid the boring truth is the Birds still do not have championship-level pitching, though, and for the third straight year they’ll have to adjust on the fly in July. (Yeah, I know. I’m the 917th observer to mention this.)
They’re gonna have to win a lot of 6-5 games this year.
“Woody’s incredible HR/FB luck during his “good” stretch of starts in 2021 (he gave up 0 HR despite allowing plenty of hard contact and fly balls) and pretty much all of 2022 (1/43 HR/FB ratio when the average pitcher would have given up 6 HR) make him look like a better pitcher than he was.”
I didn’t look into 2021, but in 2022 Woodford gave up just the one home run, which indeed almost certainly involved a chunk of luck. By taking all batted ball locations against Woodford, we can see that with average good fortune he should have given up a little less than 2 homers. Here’s the math:
In 14 parks he would’ve given up just the one homer.
In 9 MLB parks it would’ve been 2 homers.
In 5 parks, 3 homers.
And in 2 parks, he would’ve coughed up 4 homers.So (1×14) plus (2×9) plus (3×5) plus (4×2) equals 55 homers across all 30 MLB parks. Divide the 55 homers by those 30 total ballparks, and you get 1.83 homers. So based on how well/poorly the batters hit the ball against him, JW “should’ve” allowed 1.83 homers in 2022. Lucky, yes. But not a lot of lucky. He pitched to the edges of the zone, and got a lot of mediocre contact.
Woodford will never post another 2.23 ERA again, just like Goldy will never have another 190 OPS+. But both deserve credit for their 2022 achievements even if they are not going to be repeated. (Not that their achievements are remotely comparable in their profundity, of course.)
The way the free agent market violently over-reacts to One Big Season (see Swanson, Dansby) it makes sense from Flaherty’s point of view to hope for a highly successful 2023 and the subsequent massive payday. With Jack’s injury history, I’d frankly be reluctant to even offer a 2/30 contract at this time.
Let’s just hope he has a very good year, then make the qualifying offer, as GScott said.
The guy to get a contract extension will almost certainly be Miles Mikolas. He’s very good, but not great, he likes it in St. Louis, and he won’t cost top dollar — say 18-20MM per year for three years plus a club option, something in that neighborhood. Maybe Hudson as well, if he shows a bit more control & velocity in April/May. Dakota might take half the money that Mikolas requires, and if he returns to pre-2022 form, that’ll be a bargain.
