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“Please show me where we ‘Got it done’ for a very long stretch. We have one month that we had a playoff caliber record.”
I think the poster was likely referring to the two-month stretch of May 12 to July 8, during which the Birds were an outstanding 33-18. (Of course, prior to that they were one of the worst teams in MLB at 15-24, and unfortunately all games count equally.)
I want to single out Marmol for praise, as he used Liberatore correctly for one of the few times in the past two seasons. Matt was throwing well, Ollie left him in. (Sometimes managing is simple, ain’t it?) Certainly could’ve left him in for the 8th inning, but with 3 full innings at least he was deployed in something approximating an old-fashioned long man role — which is what you have to do if you’re going to regularly pull starters at 85-90 pitches, and not overtax the one-inning relievers….
“I guess they should just say they are excluding all rookie players from consideration since that is what they do in practice.”
Couldn’t have said it better.
Rainiel Rodriguez had one of the most extraordinary months in memory (.404/.492/.962) and despite getting 30% fewer trips to the plate than Saggese, the 17-year-old backstop actually accrued more total bases in July. His slashline dwarfs Saggese’s in every category.And then to top it off, there’s the massive plate discipline gap in Rainiel’s favor. Saggese, 7 walks and 22 whiffs. Rodriguez, 11 walks and 5 strikeouts. (And 8 home runs.)
It’s not just July, either. Since mid-June, Rainiel Rodriguez has been mashing like a right-handed Ted Williams, at .363/.461/.813 with 19 walks, 10 strikeouts, and 10 taters across 115 plate appearances.
On Tuesday he struck out. This is noteworthy, since he hadn’t fanned in roughly three weeks. All in all, Rodriguez has struck out just twice in his last 60 trips to the dish, against 14 walks, 7 homers, 5 doubles, and a triple. The Cardinal brass should be throwing the young man a parade, rather than ignoring this amazing stretch of hitting.
“All we know is that he hadn’t run yet. We don’t know if he had a green light. We don’t know if he needed a green light or if he was cleared to run at will.”
But that’s not really all we know, is it? About Ollie Marmol’s views on base stealing, I mean.
We also know that the Cards are near the bottom of the majors in stolen base attempts, despite being successful well over 75% of the time.
And we know that Masyn Winn stole 92 bases in 104 tries over 322 minor league games — and has attempted just 17 steals in 142 MLB contests. (Hey, Ollie, how is Winn ever going to be a really good MLB base thief if he isn’t permitted to learn his craft via trial & error?)
Marmol sometimes sends his runners aggressively, even employing double-steals. BUT that’s only when there’s little or no positive effect on the outcome; like when the Birds are leading by 3 or 4 runs in the 7th or 8th innings. Marmol 99% of the time eschews both steals and hit ‘n runs because there’s risk involved. He timidly fixates on risk while ignoring the potential rewards.
“I long ago arrived at a point in time when I learned to never be surprised at anything the Cardinal manager does or doesn’t do.”
Seconded.
But I have to say, when Victor Scott was on first base with Sean Manaea on the mound (base stealers are 15-for-16 versus Manaea this year) I really, really honestly thought Marmol would give Victor the green light, turn the fast guy loose to do the one thing he’s great at. But Ollie didn’t. And then Pham singled. Which got Scott to second base only. Where he was of course then stranded.
Marmol is terrible in so many ways, I’ve simply lost count. The one thing he does well is deflect blame.
“Fedde has been good. But if he pushes Pallante out, then it might not be as big of a gain as we’d like.”
Exactly. Who does Fedde dislodge from the rotation? Pallante has been solid this year, with a sub-4 ERA. And he’s been very good of late, averaging 6 innings per start over his last 5 games, with a tidy 3.30 ERA.
The club’s worst starter has been Mikolas (4.99 ERA) and there’s no way he’ll be removed as long as he’s healthy and making 20 million bucks.
So how does Fedde help much? I’d say he doesn’t — unless the team goes with a strict 6-man rotation. Which might be precisely the objective.
Cardinal starters on normal rest this year: .799 OPS allowed
Redbird rotation with 5 days rest this year: .710 allowed“The problem wasn’t Ollie. It was Gibson not going 6, Roycroft not throwing strikes when he needed to, and the offense not making enough good contact. In this case, Ollie actually is the only good thing….”
Thanks for the response, Jnevel. So it would appear that you are arguing that Marmol simply had no real choice in the matter, given circumstances. That Liberatore HAD TO be used yesterday — again, despite throwing 69 pitches just three days earlier.
So my concrete question to you would then be: would you still endorse Marmol’s use of Liberatore yesterday if Matt had thrown 75-80 pitches on Wednesday? How about 85? Or 90? It seems to me that by your logic, what you said and what you did not say, Wednesday’s pitch count is entirely irrelevant. Is that correct? If not, then what is your number?
There have to be limits in these matters. Personally, my limit would be in the 45-50 pitch range, since 42 was Matt’s previous career high in that 2-days-rest circumstance. Anything more than 50 was dangerously dumb, in my opinion. And very likely to fail in the short term, and risk Liberatore’s health in the long term.
Liberatore in my opinion should have been on the “do not use” list yesterday. Plain and simple. This is done with relievers all the time.
The bigger question is, how did the manager permit this ridiculous emergency situation to arise at all? The starter went 5 innings yesterday, not 2 or 3. And yet, just one week removed from the full reset of the All-Star break, and just two days after an off day, the manager still felt he had to use Liberatore inappropriately and a position player for 2 innings!
So again I ask: if in your mind 69 pitches on Wednesday did not preclude using Liberatore on Saturday, then what is your personal limit? Thanks.
“Meanwhile, Liberatore continues to be a young Steven Matz. He can’t get anyone out.”
Yup. It seems like pitching Liberatore on just 2 days rest after a tough 69-pitch effort on Wednesday was a really, really bad idea.
For context, the most arduous outing he’d ever had before in his MLB career which was immediately followed by an appearance on only 2 days rest, was 42 pitches. (Not to mention, the 69-pitch game was quite high-stress for Matt, as he got clobbered for 5 runs in 3 innings.)
Competent managers don’t do things like this.
“I’ve read the SEC being compared to AA by some as far as the competition.”
This SEC mythmaking deserves de-bunking, I think.
Keith Law, who’s been analyzing/ranking minor leaguers at national platforms (ESPN, The Athletic) for roughly 20 years now, gets asked about this very subject two or three times a year in his chats. The answer never changes: short-season ball is equivalent to Division 1 college baseball — yes, even the very best college conferences. Same answer when Longenhagen at Fangraphs is asked, I’m pretty sure.
I was surprised the first time I saw that response, many moons ago — because some college superstars enjoy immediate dominance in the minors at the A-Ball level. But as time has passed and I’ve tracked LARGE sample sizes of collegiate stars, I’ve noticed how many struggle at even the Low-A level when first exposed to that type of competition.
Some conferences are considerably tougher than others, of course. And within the SEC, for instance, if you took the conference All-Star team in recent years, that might be a limited group who are at the Low A-Ball level talent-wise. But the thing of it is, even in the very best NCAA conferences, once you get to the 3rd and 4th starting pitchers — or even the Saturday starter for most teams — the depth just isn’t there. Not like in the pros. So the college stars can pad their batting numbers pretty easily.
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Take JJ Bleday for some recent supporting evidence. Huuuge college superstar, home run king at a glamourpuss SEC school, drafted #4 overall in 2019 and immediately a consensus top 30-40 overall prospect in all the minors before he’d ever played a professional ballgame.
His slashline for his final college season? .347/.465/.701
His slashline in High-A right after college? .257/.311/.379Now, to be fair that was in the Florida State League. But still a difference of nearly 500 OPS points sums things up rather neatly. And furthermore, two years after that he still couldn’t manage a .700 OPS in Double-A. (Now, finally, at age 26, he’s having some MLB success at the plate.)
Again, it’s the lack of quality depth that drags down the overall talent level in college ball. Think of it like the Negro Leagues, in a way. The best Negro Leaguers were every bit as great as the best Blanco Leaguers…but the Negro Leagues on the whole weren’t as strong as their honky peers because of the profound difference in depth. (White leagues were drawing from ten times the population base as the Negro Leagues, to field just twice as many pro teams.)
Similarly, pro baseball draws from all of the best available scholastic & collegiate talent. So of course there is no way possible that the SEC has ever been at any point equivalent to a professional Double-A league, nor anything close to it.
Simply put, if the SEC = AA, that would mean that the SEC annually features dozens of 19- and 20-year-olds playing well at the Double-A level. And that’s complete nonsense.
“Carlson is in his fifth MLB season and has over 1,600 career plate appearances. It is time to stop using the word “potential” with him. He needs a fresh start elsewhere.”
As you say, Brian, Carlson has a substantial MLB track record — as a league-average bat, not a poor one. The current OPS+ of 53 is very, very, very likely to be a fluke, is my point of view. A fluke driven by highly sporadic playing time, severely limited by at-bats going to Siani and Carp. Carlson is 25 years old, so I’m assuming he’s not a player in decline.
But I do agree 100% that Dylan needs a fresh start someplace else, IF he can’t get 5-6 starts per week under the Arch.
This is probably an unnecessary reminder, but Tommy Edman was drafted 196th overall, Brendan Donovan 213th, and Lars Nootbaar 243rd. So I’m not ready to throw cold water on the entire non-Wetherholt portion of the draft just yet.
I know that exit velocities and spin rates and such are being evaluated in ways they couldn’t be just a handful of years ago, but I stubbornly still think that the draft is more art than science. And I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised if the Cards get a great reliever and/or #3/4 starter and/or 2-3 WAR position player from rounds 3-20.
Should the Birds have scouted other conferences besides the Big 12? Sure. But maybe they did a very good job of scouting the only conference they DID scout. 😉
“Re: roster redundancies
Too many DH types. If Goldy doesn’t return, who do you like at 1B? In-house or acquire through trade?”For me, either Burly or Gorman at first base, with the other at DH full time (more or less). And return Tommy Edman to his Gold Glove defensive spot at least until Wetherholt is ready. I wouldn’t completely rule out a trade for, say, Yandy Diaz for 1st or DH if he could be had at a reasonable cost. But I’d rather save all trade ammo for much younger players than Yandy.
“…Siani can’t be the starter.”
Agreed. The Redbird manager persists with weird, almost fetishistic attachments to certain marginal players (last year Motter, this year Siani & Pages, and Carp to a lesser degree) who simply are not good enough overall as baseball players to justify the role assigned to them. Not when they undermine consistent playing time for guys with vastly more talent/potential like Gorman, Carlson, and Herrera.
So, next-to-last in centerfield? Sounds like a real good reason to trade for Luis Robert….
I’d say the W-L record so far is a bit better than I expected — but the run differential is surprisingly terrible; in the Senior Circuit only Miami and Colorado are worse, of course. The run-scoring stinks. Bad lineup construction + timid baserunning will do that.
But yes, the Cards oughtta be buyers I think. Because they have roster redundancies to address, and trading some guys away right now makes more sense than waiting and waiting and then getting nothing or next to nothing in return, a la Tyler O’Neill.
“But if they lean toward defense from the position, there will be a trade market for Herrera just as he is. I highly doubt Pages would draw much trade interest, however. That tells me a lot.”<
Well said. Just because the StL manager values Pages highly, that doesn’t mean he’s remotely as rare/valuable as Ivan Herrera, AKA Willson Contreras Lite. In terms of a trade, how about Herrera + Gorman + Jordan Walker for Luis Robert? Cards could sweeten it further with, say, Dylan Carlson and/or a mid-level pitching prospect. I think that’s a strong blend of present/future MLB talent; hard for the White Sox to pass on it, I’m guessing. And Robert is worth it.
Per Baseball-Reference, Luis Robert has been worth 5.1 WAR per 150 games over his career. For context, future HOFers Arenado and Goldschmidt have been worth 5.1 and 5.0, respectively.
So the Birds would be getting a Hall Of Fame level centerfielder — when healthy — who’s just 26 years old and due to earn less than $5MM over the rest of this season, then merely $18MM per year for the next three campaigns.
Edman returns to his Gold Glove position, and Donovan, Robert, and Noot occupy the outfield. Burley is DH until next year, when he takes over at first base.
Marmol did a nice job with the bullpen today, other than warming up Romero in the 9th inning with a 5-run lead and nobody on. (Isn’t Romero one of the “overworked relievers”?) Well, can’t have everything.
Gorman appears to be trying for base hits instead of homers over the past few days — and that’s great. I don’t want to see an Arenado-esque power outage from Nolan #2, but a batting average of at least .240 would be wonderful at this point even if it means fewer taters.
Cards have still scored fewer runs than the cubs and allowed more. A win is a win is a win, but I guess I’m a snob ’cause I won’t be enthused until the Birds have scored as many runs as they’ve permitted.
Thanks for the responses, guys. I appreciate the research involved. The specific numbers you provided allows us to compare your examples with this year’s deployment of Liberatore — using means and standard deviations to concretely measure consistency (or lack thereof).
“Brad Thompson immediately came to my mind ~ from 2007-2009. Here is a stretch of his pitch counts: 87 31 78 31 16 80 88 45 – Many similar stretches throughout the 3 years.”
That’s a mean of 57 pitches, and an SD of 29 for Thompson.
“It is not all that unusual. Just last year, here are Woodford’s counts when he returned as a reliever in 2H. 59-21-16-28-50-49-78-50”
In this instance, Jake Woodford has a mean of 44 and an SD of 21. So in each case the standard deviation is almost exactly half of the mean.
Now Liberatore. Mean of 27, standard deviation of 24. So the SD is therefore roughly 90% of the mean, which is a far cry from 50%. Thus, not remotely similar to the Woodford/Thompson examples.
I’ll offer this challenge to any industrious soul reading this. Find any pitcher, any team, over the past 40 years who was used in a manner truly similar to Libby (min. 10 appearances in a stretch), and I’ll gladly send 100 bucks to the charity of your choice. Okay, not gladly. But I’ll do it. I’m defining “truly similar” as the standard deviation being at least 80% of the mean. Good luck.
Know what’s funny (and very sad)? Redbird fans are so benumbed to Marmol’s incompetence that they sometimes don’t even see the simplest, most glaring managerial gaffes.
I’m not talking about Helsley; that was a gray area decision. I’m talking about Liberatore. The guy hadn’t pitched for a full week, and he’s conditioned to throw 70, 80 pitches if necessary — and yet Boy Genius pulls him after just 20 pitches. Why? So he can insert the overworked duo of Kittredge & Romero. (Entering play today, those two and Helsley each had 39 appearances, tied for 14th in MLB.)
Anyway, in my 50+ years of Cardinal fandom I cannot recall anything like the past two months of Liberatore’s usage. Here’s all of Matt’s pitch counts, in chronological order, since April 28th: 38, 12, 8, 50, 13, 60, 70, 13, 17, 12, 6, 23, 10, 11, 7, 12, 48, 85, and tonight 20.
I doubt if any MLB manager has used any pitcher in such a radically inconsistent manner over the past 30 or 40 years. Instead of regularly leveraging Liberatore’s durability in order to take the innings burden off the best parts of the bullpen, Ollie works him with all the consideration afforded a rented mule — a mule who has zero idea what his role is within the pitching staff.
Any bullpen examples of overwork are entirely the manager’s doing, nobody else’s. Not infrequently Marmol removes starting pitchers 15, 20, even 30 pitches earlier than contemporary convention, regardless of how well they’re throwing…and then he also refuses to employ anything like a longman/swingman, which of course is Liberatore’s natural calling if he isn’t a starter.
But perhaps I should give Marmol the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, since he never played or managed above A-Ball, he simply doesn’t know the MLB rules. Maybe he thinks it’s not legal to leave a reliever in for 3 or 4 or more innings….
“This time JoJo failed, so those that are laying in the weeds ready to pile on Oli when a reliever fails, they need to show up every time a reliever succeeds. Of course it’s hindsight. Show up in a game thread and call it live.”
Speaking just for myself, JJ, I could come to these game threads pretty much every single day and enumerate the parade of idiocy that is the Ollie Marmol Administration. The starting lineups, batting orders, basepath timidity, pitching changes: nearly every game Marmol makes another choice that reduces the team’s chance for victory that day, or meaningfully undermines player development, or both. But I am fond of the posters here, even those with whom I disagree vehemently re Boy Genius, and want to spare them my self-indulgent, repetitive critiques.
But last night was an exceptional display of managerial stupidity. I had to either punch the television or publicly vent. My sanity gain is your loss.
I used to rail against LaRussa for leaving his starters in beyond the 115, 120 pitch mark on a fairly regular basis. Well, Marmol proves that the pendulum can indeed swing too far in the other direction. When Cardinal A-ball kids are consistently throwing 90-95 pitches, but veteran major leaguers in their 30’s are limited to 80-85 offerings, there’s a serious disconnect within the organization. Or inside Marmol’s tiny brain, at least.
“That lousy move was on the Redbird manager for going out and getting Gray at 84 pitches and still protecting a 4-1 lead.”
Yeah, that was inexcusable by Boy Genius — unless Gray himself asked out of the game, which I very much doubt.
The quick hook was rationalized by someone here, saying that Jazz Chisolm was due up. Well, it was a man on first and two outs in a three-run game. Removing Gray because Chisolm could potentially pull his team within a run with a homer…well, that’s micro-managing from fear, if not outright panic. Really bad decision-making.
Instead of the Redbird relief corps throwing 4 1/3 innings tonight, Gray could and should have gone the whole way and given the pen a night off. He had no trouble throwing 100+ pitches last year, with zero ill effects in his follow-up starts.
Specifically: 2023 Sonny Gray, 5 starts between 101 and 107 pitches, next 5 starts 28 IP and 7 ER, for a 2.25 ERA in the follow-up games.
Even if only on general principle, it’s a very good idea to stretch your starters out every once in a while, so they don’t completely lose the ability to comfortably throw 100, 105 pitches when needed.
Marmol is terrible, and Winn + Carlson bailed him out tonight. But even in victory, the bullpen threw 4+ unnecessary innings thanks entirely to managerial incompetence. And that may influence tomorrow’s game, or the day after. That’s what bad managers do. Their poor decisions leave ripple effects for days or weeks or sometimes much longer.
“Ottavino still pitching. He was another guy that I think we simply let go, and it was puzzling at the time.”
You’re right, BikeMike, they just released him more or less.
Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken but I think the way things unfolded, the Cards tried to convince Adam O. to switch from starting to relieving, following his extremely disappointing AAA season in 2011 (ERA around 5.00). The way I remember it is that Adam basically refused to listen, so the Bird braintrust got rid of him.Of course, Colorado scooped him up, told him he was in fact now a relief pitcher, and to his and Colorado’s credit he’s flourished in that role for more than a decade. (A sparkling 3.24 ERA while logging the third-most innings of any reliever from 2012-present, behind only Kenley Jansen and Bryan Shaw.)
Maybe Ottavino was intransigent — even insubordinate — but it still feels a bit like just one more example of front office mis-management over the past dozen years or so. It ain’t easy sometimes, but getting the most from your players frequently means convincing them to accept and eventually excel within a different role than they’d prefer. The Cards failed at that.
Anyway that’s how I remember it, Mike.
“Poor Jack F. Four teams in two years and sitting at 4.91 ERA, his lowest ERA so far of any non-Cardinals teams. While I don’t wish ill of him, I do hope we help raise his ERA above 5.00 today.”
I hope we clobber him; that ERA looks pretty shaky.
But to be fair, Jack has fanned 36 men while walking just 4 so far. So that mediocre ERA could be seriously misleading.Um, didn’t Drew bring us Adam Wainwright?
Didn’t the Rasmus trade go a looong way toward winning the 2011 World Series?I recall being ambivalent about the JD swap and against the Rasmus trade at the time — and I couldn’t agree more that Don Tony was himself something of a head case when it came to some of his players/pitchers.
But. It’s pretty hard to argue against the Drew and Rasmus trades, given the eventual outcomes.
I misspoke, sorry.
Last year Fermin hit .227 in AAA in 66 at-bats.
The 400+ plate appearances in AAA that I cited above combined his 2022 and 2023 AAA seasons.The point remains the same, obviously. He’s never hit anything like this in AAA before.
“Sure, new guy, but isn’t that a pretty small sample size?
Yes, but he did pretty much the same thing last year in AAA.
It’s repeatable.”Not accurate. Last year in AAA, at age 24, across 400+ trips to the plate, Fermin hit .220 with a .700 OPS. Nothing remotely like the domination he’s shown this season. (But I would agree that he’s a distinctly better hitter than he was a couple years back. He murdered winterball and then hit very well in Spring Training, albeit against weaker pitchers.)
But the math is bad. If the Cards didn’t already have a logjam of position players, maybe Fermin could get a couple weeks of regular playing time in the majors. But I can’t see the fit, even with Edman and Carlson and Carp on the shelf.
Even if Jordan Walker is sent down, and the outfield is Donovan-Noot-Burleson — which by the way might be the worst defensive flycatching group in MLB — Nolan Gorman still has to play pretty much every day. And you can’t put Gorman or Fermin at DH, because then Ivan Herrera isn’t playing. There’s no room at the inn. Or infield.
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Of course, if Jose keeps clobbering the ball for the next 10-12 games, you really owe it to him to give an MLB tryout if at all practicable.
