No, it definitely wasn't talent evaluation. If you believe Goold -- and, imo, he has been the most consistently right of the Cards reporters -- Yelich was their target beyond Stanton for a year or more before they settled on Ozuna.Popeye_Card wrote:Let's pump the brakes a little bit on Yelich being a power bat going forward though. The first 3 months of the season were pretty much in line with his career. Then he had a huge second half. Ozuna had a huge power surge in his age 26 season too, then fell back this year.
Don't get me wrong, I still like Yelich better. And I think the Cardinals did too but the asking price was different. In hindsight--yeah, we made the wrong choice. But I don't think that has anything to do with talent evaluation.
In some ways, though, that's the problem with the Yelich situation. They evaluated correctly. They positioned themselves to make the moves they wanted -- Stanton and then Yelich. They did everything right, except that when an easier route presented itself, they took it. We paid less to get a player we knew was lesser and we got lesser production for a shorter period of time and a much lower cost. Sure, I think they hoped that Ozuna could repeat his 2017, but statistically and analytically, they knew that wasn't likely to happen. And in taking the easy road with Ozuna, we left the player we liked more out there to get snatched up by a rival. A rival who looks to me like it has a real advantage over us for the next few years. It would have been risky to either wait the Marlins out on Yelich or pay up to get him immediately after Stanton was dealt. They, as usual, took the easy, efficient, and safe route.
We win the efficiency battle almost every year. Mo's office would be filled with those plaques if such an award exists. If we want to win, we can't do that. We either need to tank so it's easier to get the higher draft picks, or we need to take risks on impact players while giving up prospects we really like.
As good as Flaherty looks, I would take Yelich over him right now and into the future. That's what it would have cost us. That was inconceivable to the Cards... which is why they are stuck where they are.
Edit: To apply this logic to Machado and make it thread-relavant, all Machado costs us is money. No players. Not even a draft pick (I think). This is the kind of risk we should take. We have the positional need. The player is available. The longterm budget situation is right. We should do what we can to make it work. It still probably won't work, but we really need to try.