ghostrunner wrote:Nobody thought to draft Pujols until the 13th round.
This is false actually. Tampa Bay's story is the most notorious -- they had a scout quit in part because they wouldn't draft Pujols -- but the Red Sox passed on Pujols earlier in the draft because he wouldn't agree to their bonus demands. More to the meat of your point, it says something to me that nobody threw a 13th round or 62nd round pick at Freese. Not at HS, not when he was a JuCo, not after his fourth year. That's an untold story I find hard to ignore.
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.
Adding an empty name to a list isn't progress. As Leroy implied, you're not improving the Cardinals by trading Pujols for a AA guy. We can try to draw a line between where a transaction helps or hurts your talent overall, and at the very least I don't see how this trade is much above that line. Decent prospects have a high enough failure rate as it is. I can't see how somebody out on the fringe like this helps. It's pretty pointless talent-wise, but money-wise is another matter. I agree that they're following the farm philosophy, which unfortunately means they're not spending extra money for pitching this year. History suggests their philosophy excludes spending extra money on above-slot draft picks too.
Mozeliak has described himself as a finance guy, and this looks like a financial transaction to me, and, man, that sucks.
