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I could see the Cards getting Harper for $37M per year. And then in two years the Brewers or Cubs sign Trout for $55M a year, which would be a much, much, much, much smarter deal. That’s how things are going.
That’s how the last couple of years have gone.
Cards sign 2-2.5 WAR Fowler for 5 years and $80M.
Brewers sign 4-5 WAR Lorenzo Cain one year later for the exact same contract.
Cards trade for 2-3 WAR Marcel Ozuna.
Brewers get 4-5 WAR Christian Yelich.We should learn from the Brewers. Be opportunistic, not impatient. We do not want Bryce Harper, not for 10+ years, and not for $35-40M a year at any length. He is not that special. He just isn’t.
Per fangraphs Harper has been a 4.5 win player for his career. At B-Ref it’s just 4 WAR per year. He’s not anything like Mookie or Mike. Those are generational talents. This is not a generational talent. He’s injury-prone, inconsistent, and is already declining on defense. Probably be washed up by age 32 or 33.
“I don’t mind missing out on him. His health issues are red flags to me. Would much rather have Goldy.”
But wouldn’t you agree that it depends on what the Cards have to give up in talent for Goldy? And I’m guessing the cost would be (will be) prohibitive. Like, they give up so much that the team is barely even improved in the short run, and is possibly much weakened going forward.
I see it like this: say you get Goldy. That means Carp MUST move to third base. Which makes Gyorko a likely trade chip. (For public relations, the Arizona fans need to see at least one productive MLB player come back to the Diamondbacks in the trade.)
So the Cards deal Gyorko plus someone very very good like Dakota Hudson, plus an underpublicized, high-upside, low-minors sweetener like Leandro Cedeno or Jhon Torres. Maybe even another sweetener, too, like Carlos Soto or Julio Rodriguez. Now, Carpenter at 3rd base is a liability in the field — and an injury risk, I would say.
Anyway the upgrade from Gyorko to Carp in total value is 1 to 1/5 wins. At first base, the upgrade from Carp to Goldy is another win. (Of course, Carp was as good as Goldy in 2018. But from 2013-2018, he’s been worth one win less per season, according to Fangraphs. So one win seems a fair estimate.)
So the total upgrade stands at 2-2.5 wins. That might be worth the trade. But in this scenario you also lose Dakota Hudson. And he stood to be one of your 2 or 3 best relievers. Or maybe even a rotation pitcher. With so few reliable relievers currently on hand, Hudson was worth roughly 1-2 wins to the Cards. So the total upgrade from the trade would be somewhere between zero and 1.5 wins.
And then Goldy is gone after 2019, and you don’t have Dakota Hudson for the next 5 years, or Cedeno/Torres ever. (Yes, I’m just spitballing with these names, but I guarantee this is what the trade is going to look like. Maybe not these specific players. But equivalent talents, certainly.)
Love Goldy, hate the idea of overpaying for one year of him. And hate the idea of giving him a massive contract extension into his mid-late 30’s.
I’m with you, Muddy. I’m very gratified to see the smart, civil responses here. Thanks, everyone. As far as I’m concerned this website is the majors and the P-D and VEB are AAA and AA for fan commentary. Fewer ideologues here, and less free-floating rancor.
However, there’s one thing bugging me. I’d intended to tack on an observation to the end of my initial essay, a postscript of sorts; but as my posts are wont to do, it went on much longer than anticipated. So I chose to wait. Then I forgot about it for several days. Blame it on excessive tryptophan intake. Anyway I remembered just now, so here goes.
Recapping, these are the projected major league OPS performances for current Cardinal minor leaguers. Not their projected career MLB numbers mind you, just the OPS estimate for the very best 3-year stretch, based on the 20-year major league track record of 25 Cardinal prospects. Some of these forecasts are pretty sexy. But even if these gaudy OPS numbers here prove 100% accurate, that does not necessarily imply stardom. (Bear in mind, Ryan Ludwick for example posted an excellent .862 during his 2007-09 years, and he was certainly not a star. Okay, he was. But only for one season.)
Nolan Gorman .931
Elehuris Montero .859
Leandro Cedeno .851
Randy Arozarena .836
Carson Kelly .824
Dylan Carlson .819
Lane Thomas .790
Ramon Urias .785
Andy Young .783
Andrew Knizner .776
Evan Mendoza .776
John Nogowski .751
Tommy Edman .730
Edmundo Sosa .723Those numbers are quite impressive, I’d say. (Apologies to Leandro Cedeno, who was inadvertently omitted from the initial list. How do you forget a guy who hits .336/.419/.592?) The Cards could definitely use a lot more pitching prospects, but they’re pretty rich in hitters.
What I wanted to add earlier, though, was that numerous teenage Redbird prospects not listed above might have every bit as bright a batting future as the ones who are there. I’ll just note the best.
Here are the most dominant 2018 hitting performances of some 17 and 18-year-old Cardinal farmhands, expressed in wRC+. (Sorry, Rat. Had to use wRC+ because (1)there’s no such thing as OPS+ for the minors, (2)raw OPS can mislead because some minor leagues have much more offense than others, and (3)believe me, no one here wants to see anyone’s offense described by wOBA. I don’t. You don’t. Everyone don’t.)
Malcom Nunez 238 wRC+
Joerlin De Los Santos 174
Jhon Torres 163
Ramon Mendoza 162
Ivan Herrera 160
Adanson Cruz 145To be blunt I’m not crazy about Adanson Cruz’s bat, though. Cruz struck out too much for the DSL, and as you can see he wasn’t quite as outstanding in general at the dish — not compared to the others. But I felt compelled to mention that Cruz, per Baseball Prospectus, put up some tremendous defensive numbers in 2018. Micro-sample, yes. Lowest rung of the minors, you bet. But good numbers are always better than bad numbers. And his glovework numbers were (your overwrought superlative here).
“Case in point. No one could convince me the 2018 Cardinals would have won anywhere near 88 games without veteran additions Miles Mikolas and Bud Norris, two guys that before the season none of us expected much of anything from.”
Agreed 100%, Brian, those were excellent signings. But the key is, they did not just “turn out” to be excellent signings. They were excellent signings before the season even began — because the dollars/years were controlled, shrewd, nothing like the Leake/Cecil/Holland/Gregerson signings. There was upside with both Mikolas & Norris, and more importantly virtually zero risk of their blocking better guys, if they failed.
Bad signings involve so much money, and so many years in some cases, that the player is almost guaranteed to keep playing regardless of how terrible he becomes. THAT’S the primary hazard with bigger contracts. It’s not the cost in dollars that kills the team. It’s the excessive emotional commitment, the deranged need to play the awful player/pitcher even when they stink.
This is why Bader was benched for Fowler when Mike Shildt took over. Think about that. The team’s overall best outfielder at the time, benched for maybe the league’s worst player. The front office had to trade Tommy Pham just to get Bader back on the field. (And of course the trouble goes even deeper than that. Right now the Cards would have much more room on their 40-man roster if they just cleared the dreck that they’ve signed in free agency over the past 2 years.)
“O’Neill seems like a far from a sure thing to me and the stakes are too high to miss the playoffs for a fourth year in a row.”
Tyler O’Neill is indeed far from a sure thing. No argument there. But so is almost anyone you could name, including Bryce Harper, who’s had three sub-2 WAR seasons in his last five, per Baseball-Reference. But one is going to cost 500 thousand, and one of them is going to cost 350 million. Embrace the bargains, GScott, because they leave much more dough for other needs.
And maybe even leave enough dough to bid on Mike Trout in a couple of years. If you’re gonna dream, dream big. Trout is exactly twice the player Harper is, and will likely cost only 40-60% more than Harper. Trout could become the highest-paid player in history, and STILL be a great deal for the buyer. That’s how much of a generational talent he is. (By the way, I don’t know why the stakes are any higher this year than other years. The stakes are always high for the Cards. The fans always expect a contender.)
“Dave Duncan is no longer our pitching coach, so we have to start acquiring relievers who can actually pitch.”
Ain’t that the truth. I don’t know exactly why Lilliquist was fired 12 months ago after six years of conspicuous success with both starters and relievers, but Mike Maddux certainly failed with the bullpen, especially Greg Holland, while Lilly turned Holland immediately back into the dominant guy he was with Kansas City. It was maddening to see. Here’s a painful refresher!
Holland with Maddux: 25 innings, 56 baserunners, 28 runs, and a 22/22 strikeout/walk ratio.
Holland with Lilly: 21 innings, 19 baserunners, 2 runs, and a 25/10 strikeout/walk tally.I suspect Holland was tipping in St. Louis. (Just like Luke Weaver.) It certainly wasn’t improved health or velocity in Washington that accounted for Holland’s transformation. Heck, his velocity was slightly higher in St. Louis, for both the slider and fastball. Man I miss Lilliquist.
Finally, I want to say I agree with every word of yours, BW52.
“I don’t think this is the time to roll the dice and see what happens. That is what we have done the last three years and it didn’t work. We need more certainty which means going with proven players.”
I must beg to differ, GScott. I think it’s the other way around. I would argue that the Cardinals have failed over the past few years because they have tried too hard to get certainty, have acquired far too many “proven players” who in fact had little upside, were too long in the tooth, or both — THAT’S what stopped the team in 2018. They failed to make the playoffs because they failed to trust their own players and pitchers, and mistakenly sought certainty from without.
Dexter Fowler. Luke Gregerson. Brett Cecil. Greg Holland. Those four by themselves destroyed the 2018 Cards.
Replace their at-bats and innings with Bader/O’Neill/Hudson/Poncedeleon and the team wins 8-10 more games. So-called veteran certainty is never remotely certain, so I say instead go for the upside. Even if it costs a lot less money, and provides less glamor. Fans want big free agent signings. I get it. But the smartest moves aren’t always headline-grabbers.
I said loud and long two years ago in these very web-pages that Fowler was a HUGE mistake, said it over and over, and I specified that Harrison Bader was going to be every bit as good as Fowler during Fowler’s 5-year contract. But Bader was not a proven major leaguer then. He was just a guy who’d dominated college and A-ball and Double-A. So nobody listened, right here at this website. No one believed in Bader.
Oh, a few other folks weren’t completely in love with the Fowler signing, but nobody believed in Bader. Nope, gotta have that guy with the World Series ring, gotta have that certainty, that proven-ness. You know what’s gallows funny, and terrible, and an indictment of the American public education system? Over at Fangraphs there are still numerous fans rationalizing the idiotic and self-destructive Fowler signing. I kid you not. Let us hope the Cards never ever make a mistake like that again. No more Fowlers, or Tino Martinezes, or Mike Leakes, or Juan Encarnacions. Only pay big bucks for big talent.
I’m imploring you now, my fellow Redbird fan (and you guys too, Mo and Girsch and Shildt if you’re out there), please listen to BikeMike. Tyler O’Neill is a ballplayer who needs to play, every day. He is a talent.
Let’s say you are Mozeliak, and you are told you can spend $35 million per year to improve the team. You are staring at three options:
1. Sign Bryce Harper. Make Dexter Fowler a $16.5 million backup
2. Sign Josh Donaldson for $20 million (3 years/$60 million). Sign Michael Brantley for $15 million (3 years/$45 million). Make Dexter Fowler a backup
3. Trade Dexter Fowler + Dakota Hudson + Austin Gomber + Jose Adolis Garcia to the Diamondbacks for Greinke + Goldschmidt. You will likely slap a QO on Goldschmidt next year and recover a draft pick.
Which option do you choose and why?I really like the $35M premise, but I’m going to cheat and say #4, none of the above. Don’t want Harper for a decade, waaay too much risk. Don’t want Brantley to block Tyler O’Neill, esp. since Brantley is old and breaks too often. Don’t want to trade Dakota Hudson; if he meaningfully improves his command OR learns to use a 4-seamer up in the zone for strikeouts, he’ll be a #2/3 starter. If he does both, he’ll be an ace. Mucho upside with Hudson. Also, don’t want to acquire Grienke with $105M still left on his contract over the next 3 years.
The rotation was 5th in all of MLB for earned run average. The starters ain’t the problem. Relative to his extraordinary salary commitment, Grienke has very little upside. And Fowler should just be released. That’s the Fowler option I choose. You can’t use him as a bench player. That’s absolutely not how he views himself; even with months to reflect on the matter, he still gripes about being benched last year, when he was perhaps the worst player in the National League. Crap player, crap attitude. Addition by subtraction.
I’d get Donaldson for the 3 years/$60M, Yusei Kikuchi for $10-12M per year for anywhere from 3-6 years. Both could be bargains. (No one can realistically say that about the Harper/Machado/Corbin/ type marquee guys.) I have no idea whether Boras/Kikuchi are seeking a big BIG deal, or a more tactical, modest Mikolasesque deal that will allow Kikuchi to prove himself in the majors for a couple of years. If Kikuchi can’t make the Redbird rotation out of Spring Training this year, he slides over into the bullpen for a season. Then in 2020 he replaces Wacha/Mikolas when they depart.
Save the remaining $3-5M for a bullpen upgrade at the trade deadline, or maybe rotation. And then trade Jose Martinez plus either Knizner or Kelly, plus perhaps a sweetener like Gomber or Gant or Adolis Garcia or Ryan Helsley to the DH league for bullpen help in the form of Taylor Rogers or Mychal Givens or Joe Jimenez, or Colome or Diaz from Seattle. If Arizona is the trade partner, get Andrew Chafin or Yoan Lopez. Triage principles demand you prioritize the worst wound first. That’s the bullpen.
Thanks for the additional feedback, Brian and C-27.
“I would hope that he tuned his formulas by comparing them to real results. As several have mentioned, some of these numbers seem overly optimistic. But time will tell.”
Well, Davenport’s been doing it for more than 20 years. And I can report that I’ve found his projections quite useful. I know there was a lot to wade through in my initial lengthy “methodology” post, a thicket of thoughts to whack through. But I think it illustrated the historical accuracy of Davenport’s Peak Projections in general — if we agree that the “Peak” can be defined by a player’s best 3-year OPS stretch in the majors.
Again, quick summary for those who didn’t choose to do battle with my sometimes dense writing. Over the past 20 years or so, of the 25 Cardinal prospects who later had any sort of remotely meaningful MLB career, their composite OPS for their best consecutive 3 seasons almost exactly splits the difference between the Davenport Career Peak and Davenport Best Single Season Peak. That’s 20 years of real results, for 25 Redbird prospects.
“The most extraordinary of exceptions do not make the rule. I very sincerely hope that Kelly earns the right to one day be mentioned in the same sentence with Albert and Yadi. However, I will not be holding my breath, as that is a Hall of Fame tall order.”
I agree, sir. I agree in every respect, with no caveats or conditions. Which is why I did not in any way argue that “the most extraordinary of exceptions make the rule.” At least that wasn’t my intent.
But maybe my meaning wasn’t as clear as it could have been, in the previous post. What I said or meant to say was that both Yadi and Albert had 3-year career MLB peaks that far outdistanced in terms of OPS any given single season they had in the minors. They are two outliers, and their mere existence indirectly implies that anyone who falls far short of them is therefore NOT such an outlier himself.
More specifically, Yadi’s best minor league single season OPS was .759. His MLB 3-year prime was 83 points higher at a collective .842. Big outlier, and that’s not what we’re asking of Carson Kelly. Albert had a .953 OPS in the minors and a best MLB 3-year stretch 129 points higher, at 1.084. Bigger outlier. Those are extremes, of course. But I didn’t say then or now that I expected Carson Kelly to be like them, to be markedly better in the majors than he was during his best minor league season.
Carson Kelly does not even have to exceed his best minor league OPS at all, much less clobber it by 83 or 129 points. As you pointed out, his best minor league OPS was in AAA at age 22, when he posted an .834. His Davenport Midpoint is 10 points below that. No best-case scenario required, not even close.
Now. With all of that said, like yourself I actually feel that Kelly will fall short of that .824 prime. Not by a ton, perhaps 20-25 points of OPS. And I think Knizner will surpass the .776 of his forecast. My gut tells me that Arozarena is too high, Tommy Edman too low, and that Nolan Gorman and Lane Thomas will fall short of their Midpoint by 15 or 20 points. Of course, the effect would be radically different; 20 points of OPS could keep Thomas from being an MLB starter, but it won’t keep Gorman from stardom. (Yes, Gorman committed too many errors in his pro debut, but he also turned double plays at a rate that would make Graig Nettles and the Boyer boys blush.)
Some guys will exceed their Davenport Midpoints, and some will of course fall short. Some by a little, some by a lot, in both directions. But the broader point, the important point to me, is that based on everything we know, everything that has happened over the past two decades, there is no reason to think that the Cardinal prospects like Gorman and Montero, and young MLB players like Bader, DeJong, and O’Neill will collectively over-or-underperform those OPS numbers by any meaningful amount.
Those numbers are the best guess. Carson Kelly’s .824 is his best guess. Because the past is the best predictor of the future.
All of these bapigs and wr+c and udr and opi numbers, etc, etc, just make me shake my head.
I was gonna do bapigs, udr and odi in the next post, but now I just won’t bother. 😉
Don’t fret over strikeouts, Rat. Lou Brock fanned a lot, and so did Reggie Jackson and many, many other Hall Of Famers. In fact, Reggie might roughly be Tyler’s best case scenario. Tiny Reggie, we’ll be calling him in 4 or 5 years. We can even create a candy bar for him. And YOU can name it!
When it comes to hitters, focus on the production, not the other stuff. Or as my mom likes to say, concentrate on the doughnut, not the hole.
A mister Brian Walton remarked:
I have no idea how Davenport’s projections are created, but if he is doing thousands of minor leaguers, it is likely formula-based, rather than scouting-based.
In his entire career to date at any level, Kelly had an OPS higher than the .824 “best three-year projection” shown above just once. At Memphis in 2017, he came in at .834 before backsliding this season. Maybe the formula weighted his 2017 strongest, because prior to that, his best showing was just .740 (at Double-A in 2016).
My question is if a player hasn’t done it for a prolonged period in the minors, why should he be projected to do it in the majors for a sustained period? Maybe if the player was young without a longer time playing and/or was rushed, but Kelly is 24 years old now.
I am 99.9% sure that there are zero scouting reports involved in Davenport’s projections. I think he would say that, as with all projection models for minor or major leaguers, his numbers exist to provide a wholly objective and emotionally indifferent complement to conventional scouting reports.
As for Carson Kelly’s MLB numbers exceeding his minor league ones, I would again cite his extreme youthfulness at many of his minor league stops. (I believe there’s an argument that he was in fact rushed, at least a little, in the lower levels, and that this may have hindered his hitting development.) Also, and I think this might be quite consequential, I would note that Carson was learning the craft of catching for his first few minor league campaigns. He himself has said in interviews that he did not work much on hitting until he reached the AA level, and felt comfortable spending less than 90% of his time on framing/pitch-blocking/game-calling/pitcher whispering.
In any case I can think of a couple other players whose 3-year MLB peaks far outdid their minor league best season. Yadi and Albert each surpassed their best single season minor league OPS by more than 80 points of OPS over their 3-year major league prime. To meet his Davenport Midpoint, Carson Kelly on the other hand merely needs to come close to an OPS he’s already posted in AAA, at age 22. I don’t think that unreasonable — although as with Yadi, it may not happen until his late 20’s.
Lastly, GScott graciously said:
That is a lot of research Bob. Kudos to you for taking the time to do it.
But based on the eye test and some rudimentary stats I am going to remain in the camp that Tyler is Grichuk 2.0 until proven otherwise. I hope your projections are accurate though because if they are then Tyler could be our starting LF in 2020.
If he is Grichuk 2.0 then he will just be a 4th OF.Well first off, why can’t everyone on the internet say such nice things to me, or send money? And second, I am glad you mentioned Grichuk alongside O’Neill, GScott, because I’ve seen that comparison a LOT lately, especially within the e-pages of the Post-Dispatch. So you’ve presented a needed opportunity for a side-by-side. (They were born in late June and mid-August, so the comparisons are even more convenient than they’d otherwise be. It’s a bit harder when guys are born half a year apart, and you’re comparing age-relative-to-league. But no such complication with these two outfielders.)
They each posted pretty gaudy numbers at a young age in the lower minors, but there’s not much reason to get into that, as we have large sample sizes for both in AA/AAA to look at.
Randal played in AA at 21 and was solid, batting .256 with a 116 wRC+ and a 3-1 strikeout/walk ratio.
Tyler toiled in AA at age 20 and was fantastic, at .293 with a 152 wRC+ and a 2.5-1 K/BB ratio.Randal was in Memphis at 22, where he hit .259 and slugged .493, with a nearly 4-1 K/BB tally.
Tyler was also there at 22, but he batted .311 and slugged .693. His K/BB remained roughly 2.5-1.Here’s a pretty cool fact. Grichuk had that 116 wRC+ in AA, and his AAA number was 102. Average those together and what do you get? A wRC+ of 109, which just happens to be exactly what he has posted at the MLB level through his first 4 seasons. I don’t even dare to do the math for O’Neill. It’d give me goosebumps.
It’s worth mentioning that this huge year for Memphis didn’t come out of nowhere. Tyler O’Neill was a consensus top prospect when the Cards traded for him from Seattle in 2017 — #36 at MLB.com, #38 for BA, and #53 at BPro. Then he was better than ever in 2018. But specifically, how great was O’Neill in 2018?
When it comes to Triple-A baseball, the Pacific Coast League has been around since 1946, as has the International League. The now-defunct American Association existed from 1946 to 1997. If you add it all up, well, that’s a lot of AAA seasons. Nearly 200 all told. And in all of those AAA seasons, only two batters age 23 or under have ever posted an isolated slugging of .380 or better.
1959 Willie McCovey .387
2018 Tyler O’Neill .382This doesn’t mean that he will BE the next Willie McCovey. In fact I’m sure he won’t be. But it means without a doubt, without room for reasonable debate, that Tyler O’Neill possesses a very rare gift for regularly hitting baseballs very, very hard. This is not a guy whom you block with Dexter Fowler or Jose Martinez. Far as I’m concerned anyway.
Thanks for all of the comments and questions, gentlemen! It might be a bit tedious but I’d like to address each piece of feedback in turn.
Forschy opined:
“It would be interesting to see the projections of players like Mather, Cox, Jones and Anderson just to see how he rated some of the more highly regarded prospects that didn’t make a difference. That might be even more telling about how to regard his projections.”Not a bad idea. Let’s look at the Davenport Midpoint projections for that prospect quartet.
Zack Cox was projected at a fairly dismal .715 OPS, lower than every current prospect cited above, including shortstops Tommy Edman and Edmundo Sosa. No smart team is going to play a third baseman whose best years are below average at the plate. So no surprise that he never made it.Bryan Anderson was forecast for a .767 Midpoint, or slightly behind where Andrew Knizner is now. But Anderson as a Cardinal minor leaguer was a poor defender with a net of -22 runs defensively per Clay Davenport, and even worse at -31 runs at Baseball Prospectus. So it’s not hard to see why Anderson didn’t get much opportunity in the majors. (Andrew Knizner, oddly, is -11 runs at BPro for his career, but a fine +8 at Clay Davenport’s website. Definitely far ahead of Anderson with the glove…the question is, how much.)
Joe Mather’s was the strongest projection by far, with a Midpoint of .860. His MLB debut was fine, with a .780 OPS at age 25 over a third of a season. But nagging injuries over the next several years generally hit him pretty hard, and I don’t think that being used as relief pitcher in the April, 2010 marathon game versus the Mets helped him either. We know for a fact that it injured Felipe Lopez, the other position player who pitched in that debacle. Thanks, LaRussa! (Tony allowed his relief pitchers to bat for themselves in extra innings with the bases loaded and two outs. Twice. Why didn’t he pinch-hit, with the game on the line? Because he “didn’t want to run out of pitchers.” Of course, by not pinch-hitting, not trying to score and end the game, LaRussa’s idiotic strategy eventually led to the very thing he was trying so much to avoid: position players pitching.)
So I would attribute Joe’s disappointing career to injuries as much as than anything else. I do have a theory that unusually tall batters might lose their swing mechanics or bat speed more easily than other hitters, or at a younger age, but I haven’t researched it systematically at all. Joe was around 6′ 5″ or so I think. Anyway it’s just a theory, based on underperformers like Ben Grieve, Jeremy Hermida, Hee Seop Choi, Jason Heyward, and a few others.
Finally we come to Daryl Jones, whose Davenport Midpoint was a solid-but-unspectacular .780 OPS. I liked Jones a lot back when he put up a great partial AA season. But I should have paid much more attention to his defensive numbers, which were quite poor at Clay Davenport (-19 runs) and an outright disaster per BPro (-41). With glovework like that, mostly in an outfield corner rather than centerfield, it’s hard to envision a lineup spot or bench role. (In my defense, I’m not sure that BPro had minor league defensive values on their website a decade ago. Maybe they did, but I don’t know.)
I would say that IF there is a lesson to be learned, Forschy, it’s to scout the defensive statline as well as the batting numbers. (Don’t listen to Keith Law, kids. Always scout the statline.)
Moving along,
jj-cf-stl stated:
The Carson Kelly / Paul DeJong rankings simply confuse me.
I have Carson as the next Tony Cruz, and evaluations like this make me wonder what glaring, obvious skill set I’m missing.Carson Kelly has been a huge disappointment in his limited MLB stints, no one can deny. But “limited” is the operative term here. Let’s check what he’s done over meaningful sample sizes in the upper minors, compared to Tony Cruz.
Tony Cruz got his first shot at AA at age 22, and batted .220 with a smelly 72 wRC+.
Carson Kelly played at Double-A at age 21, and posted a quite solid wRC+ of 115.Tony Cruz was in Memphis at ages 23 & 24, and managed a combined 73 wRC+.
Carson Kelly played for Memphis at age 22 and posted a wRC+ of 120. Again, I won’t praise in any way Carson’s pitiful MLB performance. But the evidence is strongly in his favor that he won’t turn out like Tony Cruz, if given ample opportunity.As for the straight-up comparison with Paul DeJong, Carson was competing at a younger age at every single level of the minors, much younger in some cases. For instance, Carson was initially at Peoria at age 18, while DeJong debuted there at 21. Overall, Kelly’s previously cited AA and AAA wRC+ numbers were very close to DeJong’s at the same levels, and Carson had the better plate discipline markers, to boot. So I’m not too surprised that he projects as well as DeJong does.
ROB COBB and ROB REED…. I didn’t get a chance to see your #76 – #100 selections. Any chance of a reposting? PADS? These lists are very interesting.
There’s no way I’m typing it all in again, brother Nyquist, if Pads can save me the work. I think he’s got it from when I posted the other day. C’mon Pads, I’m lazy!
And please, Nyq, call me Bob. Pugs prefers Bobby and that’s fine too. Screen name is Robert now only by necessity not choice.
“Just say no to Cano. He has no place to play here.
I feel good about trading with Arizona. It seems like a good fit.”I could not agree more, GScott. No to the aging drug cheat Cano, and trade for the two Arizona relievers, Andrew Chafin from the left side, and Yoan Lopez from the right.
Then trade Jose Martinez and other stuff to Seattle for Colome or preferably Edwin Diaz, sign Donaldson and Kikuchi with most of the “Bryce Harper money,” and you’re set for Spring Training.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Release Fowler & Cecil & Gregerson, too. Their rotting carcasses are clogging the 40-man roster.
So maybe a catcher (Kelly or Knizner) a starting pitcher (Gant or Gomber or other) and a DH to replace Nelson Cruz (Jose Martinez) would get the Cards superreliever Edwin Diaz. Seems like a healthy offer to me.
Thanks for the responses, Guys.
I actually agree with you wholeheartedly that re closers there is a psychological component, gscott. I maybe should have said “closers can be found anywhere, just look at infielders Trevor Rosenthal & Trevor Hoffman or catchers Kenley Jansen and Jason Motte. So no smart team takes a potential #1/2 starting pitcher and moves him to relief pitching without giving him a chance to succeed in a rotation role first.)
Last 7 starts of 2017 for Hicks, at age 20, across Low and High-A:
Posted a 1.21 ERA and sub-2.00 FIP, with a 40/9 K/BB, and better than a 4-1 GO/FO ratio, and zero home runs, and just 12.8 pitches per inning.
For that brief shining period of time, Jordan Hicks and his blistering fastball possessed the Perfect Pitcher Profile™. And you don’t move a perfect pitcher to the bullpen. I cannot imagine a reason why I will ever relent in my belief that he should have stayed a starter until he showed he couldn’t be. Not with those numbers cited above.
See, here’s the thing. Even if the long term organizational expectation was the bullpen, you still owe it to both yourself and the kid to see if he can stick as a starter. Because even a #2/3 starter is more valuable (and likelier to stay healthy & effective over a period of many years) than an ace reliever.
The only way the St. Louis front office looks non-crazy in this matter, is if Hicks becomes as effective and durable as Kimbrel or Kenley. And that’s about a 100-1 shot, because those are 2 of the 4 or 5 best relievers in MLB history. What’s really going to happen, is Hicks will maybe be Trevor Rosenthal II, i.e., a sometimes great reliever who breaks down off and on over the next 3-5 years, because that’s what happens to 95-99% of relievers.
RR,
Thanks for the effort/work it took on your last reply.
I guess the easiest way is to ask who you want from the 2nd half pen, next season.The only guys I want to guarantee a bullpen spot are Hudson because of talent, and Brebbia as a reward for previous services rendered.
After them I’d lean toward Waino for experience/leadership, Gant for his multi-inning flexibility, and maybe Gomber. Not because I’m intent on a bullpen lefty. I am one of those weirdos who couldn’t care less if the Cardinal bullpen never has another southpaw in it for the rest of my life. Guys like Shreve and Sherriff and Webb are far too often given innings that their talent doesn’t truly warrant, and 90% due to handedness, in my opinion. But I suspect Austin actually has another gear he didn’t show out of the pen last year — just needs to acclimate to relief pitching, I think. (But I might be nuts, I dunno.)
Release Cecil and Gregerson due to the distraction factor. Release them yesterday would be good. Let Leone & Weaver & Ponce & Mayers battle for a spot over the final week and a half of Spring Training. My drothers, they’d ALL be battling for spots. Again, except Hudson and Brebbia. Also, institute a $1,000,000 bounty for the member of the Cardinal organization, be it janitorial staffer or V.P., who figures out how Weaver has been tipping his pitches. (Late July – late September 2017, untouchable as anyone in baseball, with a 58-8 strikeout/walk ratio. Since then, same velocity, same movement, crap results. Tipping.)
Hicks goes to AA where he belongs, learning the complex craft of pitching as a starter, with his innings lovingly, precisely, purposefully monitored as they should be. He is a rare athlete whose skills are going almost entirely to waste. Imagine him ready to inherit a rotation slot in 2020, alongside Carlos Martinez, Jack Flaherty, Alex Reyes, and Dakota Hudson. The radar guns would weep.
Any schmuck can close. Converted catchers close, and dominate at it. You don’t take a gifted 21-year-old starting pitcher and relegate him to relief. Not if you know what you’re doing. “He’s our future closer! He throws incredibly hard, and he has a real bulldog mentality!” Yeah, like those are bad things for a starting pitcher. Yeesh.
So that’s the short answer. I assumed you didn’t want the wordy one.
JJ-CF asked:
How about the pen? Before and after the purge. Is it still the biggest weakness by far?First, a belated thanks, for your remarks about my earlier “run-scoring” post. And as for the Redbird bullpen status, let’s look at the 2018 numbers split up by 1st half/2nd half.
First half 4.48 ERA, .740 OPS allowed, 1.40 WHIP
Second half 4.24 ERA, .759 OPS allowed, 1.57 WHIPSo even though Holland was released, and even though Cecil and Gregerson got less work, and even though Hudson and Poncedeleon were (finally) called up as reinforcements, the bullpen STILL pretty much stunk over the season’s second half. The ERA dropped a hair, but that may have been dumb luck, as the OPS was worse and they permitted a lot more baserunners, with 144 walks in just 244 innings. Ack.
And worst of all, September was a tire fire with a 5.09 ERA, .834 OPS, and hateful 1.72 WHIP. That’s what you might expect from one of your lesser relief pitchers over the course of a month. Never from your entire pen.
So I would say this all proves beyond any reasonable doubt your honor that yes, the bullpen is by far absolutely the biggest weakness. Could it be improved, without any outside additions via trade or free agency? Sure! In fact I’d bet on it! But the thing is, “improved” is not nearly enough, because as painful as it is to say, we are starting from a baseline of borderline incompetence. It needs to be massively improved, just to be an average, adequate MLB bullpen.
Then C-2016 remarked:
The Cardinals have done TWO trades of multiple prospects for a starting player during Mozeliak’s eleven year tenure. For Matt Holiday and Marcell Ozuna. They aren’t going to do it for a reliever.And I agree with you, fellow fan. We’ve merely miscommunicated; my earlier point was poorly written, or at least not explicit enough. I’m not necessarily advocating or expecting any specific 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 or 3-for-2 trades for relievers.
Rather, I’m just forwarding the notion that whatever collective Cardinal assets would theoretically be traded away for Paul Goldschmidt — major league or minor league, one guy or two or three or more — those same exact assets should instead be traded in some combination or other for multiple young or youngish, talented cost-controlled relievers from A.L. teams not looking to compete for the playoffs in 2019. Or maybe even for Chafin or Yoan Lopez of the D-backs. Because those two guys look pretty darn good, too.
Poll question: Name the last team that won a World Series without a true “Ace” and true “Middle of the order” bat?
The 2015 Kansas City Royals. Oh, how soon they forget. Best pitchers were journeymen Chris Young and Edison Volquez. No ace or anyone who was ever an ace in his life. Big bat in the middle was either Morales or Moose Tacos with 22 HR’s each, or Hosmer with 18. No classic cleanup type.
There’s more than one way to skin a World Series. Yes they’ve missed the playoffs three years running, but the Cards were real close to excellence in 2018. In fact they were excellent over the second half, playing nearly .600 baseball against a very rough schedule — 50 of 68 games v. winning teams. Just need to upgrade the bullpen (immensely) and maybe take a shot at a medium-cost, high-upside free agent like Kikuchi or Donaldson. Or both.
I can’t believe you didn’t mention Luis Montano or Sander Mora! Clearly you are but a casual follower of the Cardinal farm system, brother grenadier.
Seriously, though, thanks for dropping so many names I never heard of before. I’ll be researching over the remainder of the weekend. And you could not be more right about the GCL and DSL; those rosters are overflowing with intriguing position players. Pitchers, not so sure. And that’s being diplomatic.
Thanks a lot, Pads.
When I tried to enter my rankings, that seemed to be when the whole shebang crashed. Didn’t want to sift through all my grimy Post-it notes again. Whew.The Cards were 4th in the N.L. in runs per game in 2018. Better than the Brewers, and better than the Cubs. Only by a thin margin, but better.
And they were probably even better than that ranking implies. Because they scored just 4.4 runs per game while Mabry was here, and 5.1 runs per game after Mabry/Mueller/Matheny were let go. So really, the offense was very likely the 2nd or 3rd best in the N.L. in 2018.
And they were probably even better than that ranking implies. Because over the second half, while their scoring dramatically improved, they were actually facing tougher pitching than they did during the first half of the season. Post All-star game (the final 68 games) the Birds played just 13 games against N.L teams in the bottom 5 in ERA. But they played 27 games against teams in the top 5. So really, the offense was very likely the 1st or 2nd best in the N.L. in 2018.
And they were probably even better than THAT ranking implies. Because they contested half their games in Busch Stadium III, which played as an extreme pitcher’s park in 2018, suppressing the Redbird offense so much that their road OPS was nearly 70 points higher than their home number, and power was particularly squelched. Yadi Molina and Harrison Bader for example combined to hit 27 of their 32 homers away from Busch. So really, the offense was quite possibly the best in the N.L. in 2018.
So that’s why I don’t want the Cardinals trading for Paul Goldschmidt. Whatever assets they would trade for Goldy, those same assets should go toward fixing the club’s biggest weakness by far, the bullpen, by acquiring Joe Jimenez, Taylor Rogers, Mychal Givens or maybe Paul Fry, or most especially Edwin Diaz.
The mountainous 23-year-old Jimenez held batters to a .421 OPS in September, and his minor league career includes a 1.56 ERA and 241 K’s in just 167 innings with a .171 batting average allowed. He’s huge, healthy, and blossoming into a dominant MLB reliever.
Lefty Rogers posted a 2.63 ERA in 2018, and 0.94 over the second half with a .356 OPS permitted.
Workhorse Givens had a slightly down year overall, but allowed just a .512 OPS in the 2nd half, and in August/September, batters were only 9-for-81.
Diaz should require no intro. Great closer, so we know he can pitch in back-to-backs, and also know he won’t flinch in the 9th inning. Three full years in the big leagues, 191 innings, and his career road ERA is a miniscule 1.73.
If the Cards are determined to add a starter, then I like Kikuchi as a medium risk, high reward type. He makes sense for the budget, both short and long term, and could be a lefty Miles Mikolas, i.e., you pay for good and get great.
Thanks for providing the links, Brian. I should’ve done so myself.
Without getting into the specific grades of any given players, the Cardinal numbers from those two Fangraphs links do not match up with one another. This is because the individual player grades had not been updated until literally the moment the Cardinal list hit the website, while, oddly, the team rankings came out before.In other words, the Cardinal list was updated and published AFTER the alleged #19 ranking came out.
The #19 ranking came out. Then a day or two later the Cardinal prospect list was updated, and their top 40 list was published. I know, this makes zero sense. But that’s how they did it. That #19 ranking reflects not even a snapshot in time. Rather, it reflects upgraded rankings for some players but not for others. It was a real bad idea to release the team values the way they did — they should have waited until after all teams had been updated. Instead they did it before any teams had been fully updated. Go figure.
The Fangraphs St. Louis prospect list includes 37 players rated grade 40 or better.
The site’s supposed #19 ranking includes just 29 players from StL graded 40 or above. So please forget about the so-called #19 ranking.In any case, whether Fangraphs ranks them #9, #19, or #29, the team rankings are obviously only as accurate as the individual rankings. With the advantage of perfect hindsight, last year Fangraphs overrated 3 or 4 Redbird prospects and underrated 20-23 of them. They were objectively terrible, every bit as bad as the notorious Baseball America list from 2010 when the Cards were ranked 29th but had a top 3 system. So this year’s F-G list is going to get some scrutiny. From this corner of the internet anyway. As far as the theme, I don’t have any Cardinal prospects within an overall top 30 list. No grade 60, 65, or 70 players. So I agree 100% that the Cards should not score well at all in the very highest-end talent. Because they have none.
But I think it is quite likely that the massive mistake that Fangraphs and others made one year ago with Harrison Bader is being made again this year with others, specifically others like Hudson, Nunez, Montero, and maybe Urias for starters. But I’ll get into the details in the next post, probably tomorrow.
If you want to see the future, look to the past. Based on his terrific defense & baserunning, and excellent hitting record, Harry Bader should have been a consensus top 50 overall prospect 12 months ago; but instead he didn’t even make anyone’s top 100, except for John Sickels at #92. Fangraphs had Bader well outside their top 141, and specifically concluded that he was “a platoon option in center more than an average regular.”
But Bader was not merely competent defensively, as Fangraphs opined he would be. Instead he was outstanding in the field — exactly as the Baseball Prospectus numbers said he had been throughout the minors, and Clay Davenport’s website also said he had been at every pro stop. Both Davenport and BPro had Bader as a +14 runs CF per 150 games for his professional career, entering 2018. I think Fangraphs should’ve scouted those stat lines.
That’s a coincidence, Brian! When it comes to the Forums outage, you got caught in the middle of a major finger-pointing. While I reacted to the outage with a major middle-finger pointing.
Really, though, we know you were doing everything possible. You have a Musialesque track record here. One golden sombrero won’t damage your rep too badly.
Great to see the return of the internet’s best-informed Redbird forum, Brian. And it’s good to be back.
Speaking just for myself, Wiley, my opinion of Wadye’s potential plummeted this year due in large part to the 35% strikeout rate. It’s just prohibitive for a guy who (1)isn’t even in full season ball yet, (2)isn’t young for his league, and (3)doesn’t hit for much power.
71) Ramon Mendoza
72) Adanson Cruz
73) Bryan Dobzanski
74) Austin Warner
75) Elvin DeJesus
Was just 16 in the DSL and posted the 7th-best wRC+ for his age, at 121. Neither small nor large for a second baseman at 5′ 11″, DeJesus fanned too much but did draw plenty of walks, and also displayed at least a little gap power in his 120 trips to the plate. He’s someone to watch going forward. Or he’s a kid in the Dominican Summer League and nobody should give a darn, and I just like him because his birthday is the anniversary of Lou Brock breaking the stolen base record. And my sister’s birthday. I don’t know.
