GatewayRedbirds.com

Magneto2.0 wrote:

cardsfansince82 wrote:

PaintItRed wrote: At this point freeing up salary to make trades that allow us to take on more salary is pointless. Take the saved money, and go sit in a room with Albert and come out with a deal that runs until 2014 or something.

Several people have suggested this in this thread. Why would Albert sign another extension right now?
1. The team is in disarray at this moment.
2. The future of the club is uncertain/unclear.
3. His favorite manager is gone in two years.
4. Any extension would certainly be for less than his fair market value.

I would think Albert would wait to see what we do next offseason before he makes any decision like that.

1. No it isn't
2. Ahh, again, not it isn't, imo. It's pretty clear to me what the idea/plan is. If you want to be technical, every team's future is "uncertain".
3. True, but if he left, he'd be playing for another manager anyway...so....
4. Only good point.

1. Maybe disarray was the wrong word but do you think we have a competitive ballclub right now?
2. We are going to rely heavily on a lot of young guys going forward. Not all of them are going to pan out and most of them have a ceiling of league average. That's why from Albert's standpoint he would want to wait and see what kind of talent we bring in next year with all that money we are supposedly saving up.
3. This is the least important of the four but is still a factor. Here he would have some input on who the next manager is. As a FA he could pick who he plays for.

haltz wrote:Let him play out his contract and retire a Cardinal. You got back junk in the trade, as was to be expected, ate money, created ill will and made the Dollar Bill DeWitt people right for once. It makes zero sense. Like I said earlier, trade AJ Van Slyke for Dallas McPherson a couple of days ago if you want a cost controlled third baseman with upside. At least he's a legit talent.

And no offense to anyone intended, but if they think this "frees up cash" or allows DeWitt to do anything that wasn't an option before yesterday, I'd say you are fooling yourselves.

You're way over the top here, IMO. Even if he plays out his contract, there's no certainty he would be retiring.

Classifying Freese as junk seems way overboard too. That would seem to contradict everything I've read about him thus far. Nobody's projecting him to be the next Scott Rolen, but he seems to have good potential. I don't know the answer to this, but if Edmonds did retire, what would we get then? Is there any compensation for that? As far as eating money, $2 million is nothing. I'm surprised that's all we had to kick in.

Do you really find it likely that letting go of Edmonds was purely to put money back in the coffers? Supposedly it was DeWitt who wanted to extend Edmonds to begin with. I can't see him freeing that money without good reason. Before this we really didn't have that much money available. Even if they don't use it, the option is there. Even if there's not an impact pitcher available, we may be looking at hiring two league average pitchers, which will be costly just the same. Nobody really knows what the owners consider the ceiling on the budget to be, or if there is a ceiling. DeWitt could obviously spend his whole fortune on the team if he chose, but I'm not bothered if he does in fact have an operating budget in mind.

Classifying Freese as junk seems way overboard too. That would seem to contradict everything I've read about him thus far. Nobody's projecting him to be the next Scott Rolen, but he seems to have good potential.

Optimism is great, and keeping an open mind about all of this is worthwhile. But realism can be useful too, so I'd like someone to find even one or two examples of players over the past 20 years who did not reach AA before their age 25 season (other than due to injuries) and still went on to gather more than a cup of coffee as productive major league players.

skmsw wrote:

Classifying Freese as junk seems way overboard too. That would seem to contradict everything I've read about him thus far. Nobody's projecting him to be the next Scott Rolen, but he seems to have good potential.

Optimism is great, and keeping an open mind about all of this is worthwhile. But realism can be useful too, so I'd like someone to find even one or two examples of players over the past 20 years who did not reach AA before their age 25 season (other than due to injuries) and still went on to gather more than a cup of coffee as productive major league players.

Rick Ankiel, in a way. Granted, that's up in the air still.

Realistically there's a lot of context to this particular player, and that's all been laid out here. He's played all of 200 games in the minors and didn't play his first pro game until he was 23. I don't know why the specific age matters that much.

As far as optimism goes, I don't see any other way to be as a fan. It's all BS. I'm trying to enjoy myself here. Aside from that, the board seems to have it's share of realists and/or pessimists. It's dirty work, but apparently me, Easton and Popeye have to do it.

I think we're going to put some money into a starting pitcher before, or by midway through the season. And I mean some real money. Now, I could be completely wrong, as this is mere speculation. But for me, the best way to justify the Edmonds deal is merely a matter of economics. We have a limited amount of resources and were currently on the hook for $8 mil. for a center fielder whose production and playing time was way down. Yet, you have a number of other options in CF that are already in the organization and cheap. If you can move Edmonds and come pretty close to replacing him this year (as well as possibly give the "future star" some PT, in a season that might be a wash) and ink a "real" starting pitcher (as opposed to the typical Duncan re-tread) things could be looking up in '09 with Carp back and Rasmus ready to go.

I think we'd have a better chance of finding that elusive starter if we begin our search now, continuing through the end of next off season if need be, than keeping Jimmy around this year and limiting ourselves to next off season only to reallocate Jimmy's salary. I'm sure Moz is wanting to do something positive for this organization and, hopefully, freeing up this money will give him some room to work.

ghostrunner wrote:Realistically there's a lot of context to this particular player, and that's all been laid out here. He's played all of 200 games in the minors and didn't play his first pro game until he was 23. I don't know why the specific age matters that much.

Not starting his pro career until age 23 is something of a bad sign though. What jim was getting at was that apparently nobody thought to draft him in HS, or when he was an All-American JuCo or after his fourth college year. There's a story here, and I tried to find it, but I still don't know what it is.

As for optimism, this gets to that awful Miklasz discussion of Garcia. I've learned if you blindly take the "under" with prospects on Internet message boards, you'll probably be on the right side. Not that I'm recommending taking a blind position and recognizing that this can be an annoying side to hear, it's pretty much a fact of life that many fans will overrate prospects, and I have to say that hearing about the greatness of Luna and Evans was pretty darn annoying in its own right.

ghostrunner wrote: Even if they don't use it, the option is there.

The option has been there since the summer of 2005:

Number of big bats/impact pitchers traded for in the past 2.5 seasons: 0
Number of big bats/impact pitchers signed in the past 2 offseasons: 0

Looks to me like it's more of "Option D" behind extending their own players for too much money, signing fringe players and trading for crappy starters-turned-relievers-turned starters.

greenback44 wrote:

ghostrunner wrote:Realistically there's a lot of context to this particular player, and that's all been laid out here. He's played all of 200 games in the minors and didn't play his first pro game until he was 23. I don't know why the specific age matters that much.

Not starting his pro career until age 23 is something of a bad sign though. What jim was getting at was that apparently nobody thought to draft him in HS, or when he was an All-American JuCo or after his fourth college year. There's a story here, and I tried to find it, but I still don't know what it is.

As for optimism, this gets to that awful Miklasz discussion of Garcia. I've learned if you blindly take the "under" with prospects on Internet message boards, you'll probably be on the right side. Not that I'm recommending taking a blind position and recognizing that this can be an annoying side to hear, it's pretty much a fact of life that many fans will overrate prospects, and I have to say that hearing about the greatness of Luna and Evans was pretty darn annoying in its own right.

Nobody thought to draft Pujols until the 13th round. (disclaimer - not comparing him to Pujols) It does seem that he can hit now that he has been drafted.

I take your point about overrating prospects, but the stated goal of the franchise at this point is to improve the farm system and try to build from within. I don't understand the confusion about direction people are expressing. We're not going to draft our way to contention in the next couple of years, so some trades like this would be needed to add heft to the minor leagues.

Also, it seems to me there's an even chance Edmonds either rebounds next year or does worse than last season. Even if he's the same, I don't see it being too hard to replace whatever he did last year. The trade may make the team better by subtraction. Before it was my hope that Edmonds would rebound. Now I hope he's outproduced by his replacements. At least here we get something in return, instead of him just retiring - which he may not even do. Looking at it now, I could go either way, but we now have another decent prospect at a position that will need filling in a year or two.

ghostrunner wrote:I don't understand the confusion about direction people are expressing. We're not going to draft our way to contention in the next couple of years, so some trades like this would be needed to add heft to the minor leagues.

Seems to me that they aren't going to draft their way into contention for a long time. Unless you believe that Pete Kozma is Nomar Garciaparra.

If they are so concerned with getting that viable farm system like they insist, Mr. Eckstein would've been offered arbitration. Enter Rick Porcello and Kyle Russell into the discussion.

GatewaySnayke wrote:

ghostrunner wrote: Even if they don't use it, the option is there.

The option has been there since the summer of 2005:

Number of big bats/impact pitchers traded for in the past 2.5 seasons: 0
Number of big bats/impact pitchers signed in the past 2 offseasons: 0

Looks to me like it's more of "Option D" behind extending their own players for too much money, signing fringe players and trading for crappy starters-turned-relievers-turned starters.

To make impact trades now, you need prospects. Attractive prospects. We didn't have them and still don't, with one exception and he's nearly ready to fill a vacancy.

To sign free agents, the trend is to guarantee a number of years. What was the general sentiment regarding Burnett a few years ago? Too much money, not good enough, wants too many years. Now it looks like a good deal. The sticking point wasn't money though, it was time. We also did open up the wallet, only in bad ways - extending Mulder, Carpenter and Edmonds. We just picked up an $8 million option on Isringhausen. That would be an exciting acquisition for most teams. I don't happen to think it was a good idea, FWIW.