Comments on: 2010 Signing Deadline Thread

By: JC

JC — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:49:17 +0000

OK…thats your opinion…I think Wright is quite a bit better overall than Zimmerman. And your definition of elite jizes with BC and I don’t agree which is fine. We all have opinions.

By: Felonius_Monk

Felonius_Monk — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:22:33 +0000

Zimmermann is better than Wright IMO, and he’s at least as good.

If Cox is a slightly above-average regular at 3B or 2B, then that’s a great result for a #25 pick. Wilson would’ve been a real shot in the dark and, with Holliday and Pujols (and Rasmus) the main meat in the Cardinals’ sandwich going forward, they really need to surround them with lots of inexpensive, average or slightly better players. That fills our needs more than a lottery ticket who may be an all-star or a bust.

As bc says, a .300, 20+HR guy at 3B or 2B is pretty much elite by definition unless their defence is absolutely appalling. There’s only 2 or 3 guys in the league at either position with those sort of numbers.

By: JC

JC — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:31:36 +0000

I consider someone elite if they consistently are among the best at their position both offensively and defensively. At 3B the 2 guys that I consider elite are Wright and Longoria. Zimmerman is in that next tier with a declining ARod…Young is probably in that category as well. But I don’t throw around terms like “elite” or “ace” lightly. If someone is a #1 starter they aren’t necessarily an ace. There might be 6-8 legit “aces” in the bigs IMO. But apparently its just a difference of opinion. You use the word elite for the top XX number of players at a position regardless if they have shown the consistency on both sides of the ball for a number of years.

Now back to Cox. His D will not win gold gloves so you hope for an avg defender that can hit around .300 and hopefully give you around 20HR’s…until I see him with a wood bat consistently against decent competition I am not about to say he is going to be a solid regular or an all-star…but if I had to guess right now he will be a solid regular…probably above avg solid regular.

By: bc

bc — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:02:21 +0000

Apparently not. All of those guys listed made the all-star team or were up for the last spot but not voted in (Zimmerman, Young). There aren’t any better major league 3Bmen than the guys I just listed. Solid regulars to me are guys like Mark Reynolds, Casey McGehee and Ian Stewart. I guess you conside elite to be HOF caliber and I consider elite to be the current crop of all-stars at 3b. That’s fine. If Cox ends up being an all-star at 3b, I’ll be very happy.

By: pitch and hit

pitch and hit — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:13:00 +0000

Maybe you are right, plus when they knew Wilson wasn’t coming they had more to spend, the ML contract allows them to spread it out, until 2013 I read?

But is he Alevarez talent and able to contribute as soon as Alverez did, in the cardinals organization?

By: themop10

themop10 — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:50:01 +0000

Maybe the Cards threw a number at Wilson and they said it doesn’t really matter what you offer. When they said they never exchanged numbers maybe the FO meant they did not sit down with his agent and negotiate terms back and forth. We have no idea what actually went on.

By: JC

JC — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:34:42 +0000

I just don’t get this argument. We signed Cox to overslot deal and a MLB deal. We signed Jenkins to over twice the slot. Swagerty got 30% overslot. Reggie Williams Jr got 3+ times overslot and I heard Dodd and Bryant were a decent amount overslot as well. That is a decent amount of overslot deals. And the hold up on Wilson was not money driven…so if he would have said I want to sign but I need $2+M or whatever it was the Cards were prepared to make that happen. I seriously doubt anyone would be questioning this topic if Wilson signed. You will see that they were in the upper 1/3 of spending for this draft when its all said and done.

By: Gruntosaurus

Gruntosaurus — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:20:46 +0000

It’s interesting to go back and look at some of the mock drafts, and see what they thought about these guys. “Consensus,” such as it was, seemed to have Blair as a low-first or high-supplemental round pick. Taking him where the Cardinals got him hardly strikes me as going cheap.

Allie is an interesting question. The mock drafts had him all over the place, with signability concerns abounding (and at least one draft had the Cardinals taking him in the FIRST round). If they’d played it safe with their top choice and picked someone they were sure they could sign — and a lesser talent than most (not all) writers perceived Cox to be — then yeah, I’d have been disappointed if they hadn’t then rolled the dice on Allie. But you can hardly criticize them for going for a different guy who’d dropped to their slot and didn’t seem to have those concerns. Blair wasn’t a “cheap” choice for the slot, just a comparatively risk-averse one, and I have no problem with that. After all, we’d be calling for somebody’s scalp if they’d taken Cox and Allie and been unable to sign either of them, wouldn’t we?…

By: JC

JC — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:13:27 +0000

We don’t see eye to eye on what elite means apparently. So you consider elite what I consider solid regular.

By: bc

bc — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:50:29 +0000

The list of 3B who are hitting .300 with 20+ home run power is Beltre and Zimmerman. That’s it. If we expand that to .285 with +20 home run power, we get Rolen, Wright, M. Young, and Longoria. That’s elite company and I’ll be thrilled if that’s Cox.

As a sophomore, Cox had a 1.116 OPS in the SEC. That’s better power numbers than Zimmerman had at UVA. I’m prepaed to reserve judgment on his ceiling. Just because he’s so advanced now (having hit well at the highest level of college competition) doesn’t mean he doesn’t have upside. He’s 21, not 25.