So, what changes do we need to make for next year?

[Hungary Jack]

Hungary, would you agree that Garcia is an infinitely better option than Boggs? Boggs can be the middle relief guy for me, but he's had two years to show what he has as a starter, and it just isn't happening.

Yes, and I completely spaced on Garcia. But I wonder how judicious it would be to start him given his paucity of innings in 2009. Ideally you give him a year in the pen, but the Cards may really need him to start.

I actually like the notion of Boggs in the pen. He does have a power arm that our organization generally lacks. We have seen him be quite effective for 2-3 innings at a time, but the lack of a deep repertoire eventually bites him in the arse as a starter.

My point about the pen, which JL, Haltz and others have argued here before, is to stock the pen with cheap, cost-controlled arms or vets on one-year deals for <$2M. I think Moz almost certainly will go this route in 2010 while adding Smoltz as insurance.

[Hungary Jack]

From another thread, I'm gonna run with this:

We gave 1525 PA to Ankiel, Thurston, Duncan, Greene, Greene, Barden and Stavinoha. That's 25% of our PA to guys with OPS+ from 62 to 83 and the majority in the lower end of that range.

Richie's got a great point. Oh, I don't begrudge them for giving a lot of those at-bats to those guys this season for various reasons. But it amounts to 2 to 2 1/2 full seasons- 1/4 of your everyday lineup- OPS+ing in the 70's. A quarter of your lineup was Aaron Miles' career line.

What I'm driving at is that it's not going to be hard to upgrade over all that. Freese over Thurston alone should be worth 1/2 a win, maybe more. If Holliday is back for a full season (gutless choker accusations aside), it'd be a huge upgrade over the 65% Dunkiel, 35% Holliday season they had in 2009. Getting improved bench play, and not having a ton of AB's going to Duncan and Ankiel and Thurston and K. Greene as regulars for 2 months of the season, can and will go a long way.

You beat me to it. I was going to latch onto that little tidbit as well. Finding a way to not have to get that many at bats to players who OPS in the 70's will be helpful. An uptick in the production of DeRo would help as well. I wonder if they really do plan to give Freese a shot at starting, but even if he is a guy who fills in, he makes the bench stronger, and reduces the at bats for the "70's crew" that much more.

Completely agree. I think these figures attest to how bad our bench was in 2009, and how it was exposed in the series with the Dodgers. The bench looked fairly strong into 2009, but turned into a disaster when Greene tanked, Glaus never recovered, Ankiel stunk, etc. I really hope we improve our depth in 2010.

[Cheddar Tom]

if you read the VEBers, the Cardinals need to make wholesale changes and just blow the team up. this is just about the simplest offseason the cardinals have had in awhile and people keep throwing out crazy ideas about letting everybody walk and take draft picks. just put holliday and derosa or freese into the lineup, buy low on pitching and you win 88 games.

the bullpen shouldn't be a mystery at all...pete parise, fernando salas and matt scherer should all get opportunities and i think at least 2 of them could be good.

[JL21]

VORP is out of favor and there are better stats and blah blah blah... but it's also quick, dirty, and easy.

Here's what departs from the St. Louis Cardinals offense v.2009:

K. Greene: -4.4
Duncan: -2.6
Ankiel: -4.1
Glaus: -2.4
DeRosa: 0.8
Holliday: 35.0

You've also got Stavinoha (-2.8), Joe Thurston (-3.8), Tyler Greene (-2.3), Shane Robinson (-1.6), and Brian Barden (-0.9) that are all possible places to improve pretty easily.

The first four above alone made them a win and a half worse than Joe AAAschmuck would've made them. I'm leery of saying anything about the last five that are places to improve because it seems like every team has a group of players like that and it's not like there are players on the farm that are obvious upgrade over any of them. Craig, Mather, and/or Freese (to a lesser degree) all potentially could, but certainly aren't any kind of guarantee. Either way, it wouldn't hurt to give them a shot at the jobs.

And then the pitchers:

Pineiro: 35.4
Smoltz: 4.7
Chris Perez: 2.2
Todd Wellemeyer: -14.7 (ouch)

There's also Boyer (-0.4), Todd (-1.1), Mortensen (-4.4), Kinney (-5.9), and Walters (-9.3). Again, I'm leery of saying that they can improve there because every team has a flock of guys like that pressed into 50 innings of duty or whatever.

There's a whole lot of addition by subtraction that's going to go on here. Can they get two starters to rack up 360 IP (Wellemeyer + Pineiro) and combine for 20 runs above replacement level? Easily. Can you get two OFers who can combine for 700 PA's at replacement level? That's a win better than Dunkiel did. Yeesh, you can't swing a dead cat in a AAA clubhouse without hitting two OFers who can do better than Dunkiel did this season.

[tscards]

If Welley never pitches for the Redbirds again, I can't help thinking we're a better team overall.

[Hungary Jack]

I see your point JL about the craptastic production we got from the fringe areas of our roster (once Glaus and KG were obviously out of the picture), but I am not sure how much marginal upgrades in these areas will enable us to compete with the likes of the Dodgers, Rockies, and Phillies, whose lineups are considerably deeper and benches are stronger.

My argument carries the assumption that we can make the playoffs in 2010 without significant changes from the roster that finished the 2009 season. This assumes resigning/extending IBM and probably DeRosa while finding a replacement for Pinata. I think all of these are very possible, but I am not sure it goes far enough.

I'll also assume that we are committed to Schumacher/Lugo, Ryan and Molina at their respective positions, which means .700-.750 OPS from 3 lineup slots. Thus what else can be done to improve our lineup depth?

Letting Ludwick walk and signing Abreu and adding Coco Crisp to spell Rasmus against lefties are two moves I think the org should consider. Maybe adding a bat like Melvin Mora, who also hits lefties well, makes sense provided he's willing to be more of a platoon player. This would allow the club to take full advantage of DeRosa's ability to play 2B and LF.

I doubt Pinata ever repeats his 2009 performance, but he was pretty durable. I think Lohse can rebound from his injury and be pretty effective again. Maybe a guy like Doug Davis or Padilla could be had on a one-year deal for the 4th slot.

[haltz]

I agree with pornstache21, but I also find myself saying something like this every offseason and wonder what the ~1,000 worst ABs look like for any given club, and if we aren't just as likely to lose something positive as something negative.

[Fan_In_NY]

VORP is out of favor and there are better stats and blah blah blah... but it's also quick, dirty, and easy.

Here's what departs from the St. Louis Cardinals offense v.2009:

K. Greene: -4.4
Duncan: -2.6
Ankiel: -4.1
Glaus: -2.4
DeRosa: 0.8
Holliday: 35.0

You've also got Stavinoha (-2.8), Joe Thurston (-3.8), Tyler Greene (-2.3), Shane Robinson (-1.6), and Brian Barden (-0.9) that are all possible places to improve pretty easily.

The first four above alone made them a win and a half worse than Joe AAAschmuck would've made them. I'm leery of saying anything about the last five that are places to improve because it seems like every team has a group of players like that and it's not like there are players on the farm that are obvious upgrade over any of them. Craig, Mather, and/or Freese (to a lesser degree) all potentially could, but certainly aren't any kind of guarantee. Either way, it wouldn't hurt to give them a shot at the jobs.

And then the pitchers:

Pineiro: 35.4
Smoltz: 4.7
Chris Perez: 2.2
Todd Wellemeyer: -14.7 (ouch)

There's also Boyer (-0.4), Todd (-1.1), Mortensen (-4.4), Kinney (-5.9), and Walters (-9.3). Again, I'm leery of saying that they can improve there because every team has a flock of guys like that pressed into 50 innings of duty or whatever.

There's a whole lot of addition by subtraction that's going to go on here. Can they get two starters to rack up 360 IP (Wellemeyer + Pineiro) and combine for 20 runs above replacement level? Easily. Can you get two OFers who can combine for 700 PA's at replacement level? That's a win better than Dunkiel did. Yeesh, you can't swing a dead cat in a AAA clubhouse without hitting two OFers who can do better than Dunkiel did this season.

This is completely why I think the Cards will be fine with a healthy Carpenter, and a resigned Holliday. However, as we just saw this past year just getting replacement level out of replacements isn't easy. I mean after all, shouldnt replacement level be what is attained from your AAAA guys? Because Barden, Robinson, Greene, Stavi is exactly that...AAAA players that should be replacement level. Also people look at the fact that the Cards had a ton of at bats given to players with craptastic production, but I think that happens to every team at the beginning of the year. Players who do will play themselves into the at bats in July, August, Septmember, and the terrible production guys dissappear into the deep corners of the bench or to AAA.

[JL21]

I agree with both of you guys (haltz and Fan) re: replacement level and it happening every year. That's kind of why I don't want to discount Stavinoha, Robinson, Barden, T. Greene, Todd, Mortensen, Kinney, Walters, etc... As much as I'd hope for an upgrade there, I'm not sure how much you can bank on that.

On the other hand, it's the other, much bigger pieces- K. Greene, Dunkiel, Wellemeyer- that were even less productive than the quad-A chaff. Sure, every team has a handful of players every year that plays themselves out of playing time later in the year. But it's not usually players that have that much expected from them (Dunkiel and K. Greene made up 3/8 of the expected everyday lineup, or at least 2 1/2 out of 8), get that many chances to play themselves out of the lineup, or play that poorly before playing themselves out of the lineup. Those guys were awful. For instance, Ray Lankford was the '04 opening day LFer. He eventually fell out of favor/played himself out, but en route to that he racked up a .774 OPS. In '06, it was Luna, who went .772 along the way. Also that year, you had Johnny Rod and the Gooch combining for a mid-.700's OF platoon before Duncan took their slot.

[JL21]

Regarding other teams (similar payrolls) and their bottom-feeder 1,000 AB's, a few examples that would be akin to Duncan, Ankiel, and K. Greene:

-Atlanta: Kelly Johnson (1.0), Jeff Francoeur (-8.1), Jordan Shafer (-5.3)

-Cubs: Mike Fontenot (-2.0), Aaron Miles (-13.5), Micah Hoffpauir (-0.2)

-Detroit: Adam Everett (-6.9), Gerald Laird (-6.2), Clete Thomas (-0.5)

-Toronto: Millar (-6.1), Rod Barajas (-3.2), John McDonald (-2.1)

haltz, maybe you're on to something.