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If the current leadership (front office and manager) remains the same, I would expect much the same as the last two years. A thorough shakeup is needed.
I disagree. Realmuto has shown himself to be a self-satisfied jerk without consideration for his team or others whom he might infect. On the other hand, the Cardinals do look like they use use a top-flight catcher in the future, which Realmuto undoubtedly is, and they probably won’t have to play in Toronto for a while. However, it is completely absurd to even suggest that the Phillies might trade him for a pitcher with an uncertain future who might not even be able to pitch at all this season. The writer has apparently allowed his unwarranted hatred for Flaherty to distort his reason.
I understand completely, Brian. I guess I’m just spoiled enough to miss the usual schedule. While I’m on the subject, I think your chief evaluator ought to somewhere provide the scale on which he is basing his judgments. If, for example, a player has a present hit tool of 30 with a possible future upgrade to 50, are these grades based on the usual perfect grade of 80 or upon something lower? This ought to be made clear. If the 80 scale is being used, it seems that most of these prospects are falling well short. One can’t expect 80s, but there are woefully few 70s or even 60s. I hope the grades are higher as we reach the very best projects.
It may be easier to change the front office, but ownership continues to overrate Mozeliak and the rest of his regime, so no change is likely to take place. I would be content if Mozeliak retained his role as Team President (in which all reports indicate he has been creative and constructive), and yielded his power over
transactions to a younger general manager (not the current one) with a fresh approach from outside the system.Whatever the nature of the problem, it continued again tonight: 4 games, 4 one-sided losses, each marked by horrendous pitching. Have the teams ever had more wins than losses for even one day this season? I think not.
In his very timely analysis of the poor play of the entire Cardinal minor-league system, Brian seems to overlook one possible factor: The Cardinal farmhands until recently had played no competitive games other than intersquad action for more than a year until the belated beginning of the league seasons earlier this month because of the distance of their training camp from the others. Of course, the longer the poor play continues, the less plausible is that excuse, and the more likely it becomes that most of us have seriously overrated the overall quality of the system.
One correction to Brian’s excellent piece: Bobby DelGreco was an outfielder, not an infielder, and defensively he was excellent, but he was a terrible hitter, especially against righthanders. He came to the Cardinals in one of Frank Lane’s worst trades as Cardinal general manager. Lane loved to make trades, and my recollection is that he saw DelGreco have a rare good day against the Cardinal excellent lefthander Harvey Haddix and impulsively traded Haddix for DelGreco. DelGreco’s .215 average in his partial year with the Cardinals indicates how well that trade worked out, but I believe it was made worse by the fact he could no longer face Cardinal pitching, for which he had a rare affinity. When DelGreco some years later returned to the National League with the Phillies, he resumed his torrid hitting against the Cardinals but, as usual, against no one else!
