You're right about the Cardinals being boring as church.
I'm still waiting for Mo to surprise me. Middle of the pack offensively the past three years. Mookie was available. Yelich. Good players up and down have come onto the market at young ages. Team gets frugal or blows money on relievers like Cecil and Gregerson and Miller. Andrew Miller has a negative WAR since being a Cardinal. Pathetic.
I like Goldy, but can we get a young thumper? What happened to having offenses with Pujols and Holliday? Edmonds and Rolen? We used to carry 2-3 league-respected mashers in our lineups. Not asking for much here I feel. Especially with the payroll parameters (fake anyways).
Not asking for much. Just one of the best hitters in the history of baseball, one soon to be hall of famer, and 2 guys who are borderline hall of famers.
You're being intentionally disingenuous again. I never said they had to match those guys in career arcs. The comparison wasn't in the exact skill, it was that this franchise used to pay for multiple players with generational talent. League-respected mashers.
Yelich, Betts, Harper, Machado, Arenado, Realmuto, Donaldson, even Rendon and LaMahieu....all easily available to Mozeliak. Unless you think we couldn't have possibly matched the same package Brewers gave for Yelich. A Betts package around Gorman was definitely doable. And if the complaint is that those guys wanted contracts that were absurd for their age (not that true with some of them), then why is he handing out big ones to Goldschmidt, Carpenter, and Molina? I'm not saying to sign Zach Cozart. But Donaldson was...right there for the taking. Then throw in subtracting Ozuna and Pham for just no reason at all. Awful roster management.
Too much for me to comment on in a single post. Gonna move on.
I don't think it's fair to evaluate Randy Arozarena as the prospect we had in our system, because he actually gained 15 pounds of muscle over the last few months. Nobody could've predicted a year ago this would happen, and he'd have the time off to train and change his body dramatically. He's basically an entirely different person physically.
“ "I will own that. That's on me. You need to know your own players. We will revisit how we rank our own players and make sure that we don't have something like this happen again." -- Mozeliak pre-emptively answering the Arozarena questions. #stlcards #cardinals #MLB“ from D Goold
The quickest way to ensure you don't have something like this happen again is to have consequences for the guy who continues to fail in all sorts of ways. The guy even had corporate espionage occur under his watch, by the guy he hired.
Mozeliak continues to have zero consequences for the myriad of mistakes he makes.
It's not viewed as a failure because Mo's goal is not to win games. His goal is to maximize profits. You probably can't maximize profits with a last place team, sure. So he can't ignore wins entirely. The algorithm says the sweet spot is like 88 wins, so that's what he aims for.
I don't think it's fair to evaluate Randy Arozarena as the prospect we had in our system, because he actually gained 15 pounds of muscle over the last few months. Nobody could've predicted a year ago this would happen, and he'd have the time off to train and change his body dramatically. He's basically an entirely different person physically.
Plate discipline is plate discipline. Tyler O'Neill is strong and physically gifted and athletic too.
I'd still think Randy will be an above average LFer. wRC+ around 110-120 with solid defense and 20ish HRs. That's not bad. I think O'Neill ends up about the same, with more HRs and better defense.
I also think Liberatore will end up as a #3 or better starter, so I'm still fine with the trade. The Rays are too, surely. They got the pennant and the cheap OFer for the next several years til they trade him away in July 2024 to avoid paying his $3.5M arb salary.