Word is there is some shake-ups coming in the player development wing of the Cardinals organization. I’m sure there will be more on that in the coming days as the dust settles.
I’d argue that either a) the player development is absolutely lousy or b) the roster creation/management area of the organization is dreadful. If the best solutions the Cardinals can come up with include Aaron Miles, Jeff Suppan, Pedro Feliz and Jake Westbrook (in that order) while trading away talent because the manager can’t play nice with others, then either the minor league system is filled with players who aren’t better than REALLY below average MLB players (except you Jake) or someone is holding the roster management hostage.
They say in the NBA that it isn’t a ‘series’ until the home team loses. The good news for Memphis is that if they don’t lose a game at home the rest of this series, they win the Championship. The bad news? They lose any games the rest of this series and they win nothing.
- The Redbirds gave up 4 in the 1st, 3 in the 2nd and never were able to overcome it.
- Allen Craig went 2-for-4 with 2 2Bs.
- Mark Hamilton hit a 2-R HR in the 3rd inning.
- Amaury Cazana and Reuben Gotay both went 2-for-4 with 2 R.
- Tony Cruz went 1-for-3 with a 2B and 2 RBI.
- Brandon Dickson‘s defense let him down for 4 UER (9 R total) but he also yielded 10 H and 4 HRs in the game, only last 3.1 IP. He struck out 2 and BB 1.
- Oneli Perez gave up the other 2 runs in 1.2 IP with 1 K and 2 H.
- Tyler Norrick got 1 out on a K, had a BB and 2 H.
- Francisco Samuel recorded 2 Ks.
- Adam Reifer gave up a H and a K in 1 IP.
- Eduardo Sanchez had a BB and a K in his IP.
Entries (RSS)
I think successive mediocre drafting in 2006 and 2007, along with a major league manager that has never seen a player under the age of 25 that he didn’t think had an “attitude” problem are the two reasons the Cardinals are in the lousy shape they are right now.
And I really don’t think things will be much better for 2011.
I could agree with you UNLESS the Cardinals find a way to force feed Tony some players. Anderson needs to be the back-up, sorry but droppin’ a couple million on an unnecessary player is not in our budget nowadays, Craig Greene and (unfortunately until we find a better replacement) Stavinhoa need to be on the bench if we plan on paying Albert what he’s worth. We need two reliable bench player free agents to come to our team and another SP to make up ground for the awful 06′ 07′ vacant spots and pray for some farm system magic next year. In 2012, we’ll have more self-sustaining players, hopefully, in the upper minors, but you’re right, 2011 will be a struggle that hinges on the development of Greene, Craig, Stav…., and MY BOY Matt Carpenter in the majors.
I still see lots of good things rumbling in our minor league system though. Don’t lose faith men.
How is Stav a better option than Mather or Cazana? He has zero upside…IMO these two are already superior players to Nick, and have some upside (I realize Cazana is old, but I’m not sure he’s not still learning/developing). I completely agree on Craig, Greene and Anderson. FWIW, I’d like to see KMac given another shot at the rotation next spring, or at least stretched out as a starter so he could be ready should an injury arise (again)…I hope the team kicks the tires on resigning Westbrook (maybe 2 year deal) and Penny (1 yr…make good deal)…in that order.
2006 wasn’t a bad draft at all. three of the draftees are already pretty well established in the big leagues (chris perez, luke gregerson, jon jay), a few others are on the cusp (allen craig, adam ottavino, pj walters), and there’s still a viable prospect at double A (pham). and that’s to say nothing of Cazana the Magnificent.
the 2007 class was a very thin class, but 2006 shouldn’t be lumped in w/ it. there’s no star potential in it a la colby rasmus, but there’s a worthwhile amount of useful big-league production.
Why is Steven Hill not playing? I would rather have him up with the big league club and left Pagnozzi in Memphis
I think it is shortsighted to overlook this season’s production of the system with a rookie pitcher of the year candidate (Garcia), a very helpful 3b until injury (Freese), and Jay and Salas as productive spare parts with good futures. It is unfortunate that Walters has not yet cut it (I am willing to give him another try after he is a year away from his personal tragedy). It is very unfortunate that Ottavino got hurt. I think that Greene should have been given a bigger opportunity and hope that he will. I think Craig and Anderson can be helpful players going forward as role players.
Next year, I think that Lynn (hopefully Walters and Ottavino) can be 4th/5th starters and guys like Sanchez and Samuel (and Salas) can add depth as right handed relievers allowing for McClellan to either start or be a closer candidate going forward. Descalso can be a candidate either at 2b or utility IF. It would be nice if Hamilton can play RF. He should have some trade value based on his hitting.
You can make fun of guys like Miles, Suppan and Feliz, but Cincy has brought in guys like Edmonds, Bloomquist, Springer and Izzy who are equally washed up. All teams do that to try to fill in spots.
This season would have been much different if Penny, Lohse and Freese had not been injured. I realize that they have other problems also, but I don’t think the player development system is at fault.
Edmonds was having a solid season in Milwaukee before he went to Cincy, which makes the move defensible, and he also has a ton of talent, or at least did. So taking a flyer on him seems reasonable. How is that comparable to Miles? We know he was never very good to start with, and hasn’t played well at all while here this season either. Yet he still plays. At least with someone like Gotay there is a chance he shows that he can be a decent ballplayer. And if he doesn’t do this, you could have then went on to the veteran market. It’s not like other teams were threatening to sign Miles first.
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And what is with Tony saying things like playing Greene now “wouldn’t be fair to Tyler?” That is damn stupid, and is only an excuse to not play him, which doesn’t make sense. At all.
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And the Feliz trade has turned out about as bad as we thought it would. He hasn’t hit a lick, and his defense, though better than Miles (shocker!), isn’t really that good anymore.
The Suppan signing I was actually okay with, and still am. We tried Walters, who once again hasn’t been able to show an ability to get out major league hitters (and I don’t think he will, but I hope I’m wrong), and Ottavino got hurt. None of our other pitching prospects were ready, so the choice was between MacLane and Suppan, which is pretty much a wash really. The difference here is cheap minor league options were tried before the over-the-hill vet was brought in. I don’t think anyone would really argue with that logic.
all options exercised were at mlb minimum salaries
tg and miles cost the same
saying you have ‘dry powder” and then showing up with a cap gun has
got to be a downer for the players
Great way to put it. As for the Miles, Winn, Feliz, Westbrook trades, these are trades that real contenders tend to avoid to be honest. You give players like mentioned above a place to wane their careers with less productivity over time, while letting younger, potentially better players stall out in the minors. Part of the log jam issues the Cardinals are currently facing seem to stem from the refusal to permanently promote players. Granted, there are exceptions to everything, but some players deserved more regular at bats over Miles, Winn, etc. that simply did not get them this year. That should be a red flag.
You cant win off cast-offs. You barely survive off them.
Westbrook is a move a contender would make to sure up the backend of their rotation. The problem is, contenders don’t dump a potential cleanup hitter or at worst, your best bat off the bench just to afford the Westbrook trade.
Jay’s had a great run this season, don’t get me wrong, but the Cardinals moved Ludwick for money and because he didn’t agree with LaRussa about his playing time. With Rasmus taking an injury right after the trade, Ludwick would have gotten the playing time he deserved.
We had 4 Major League competent OF’ers on the roster this season and LaRussa got into verbal (private and public) tiffs with 50% of them. Couple that with a verbal tiff with the super-sub on the team, the perpetual doghouse our starting SS is in and of the 8 guys getting regular playing time to start the season, LaRussa had feuds with at least 4 of them that we know of.
Either 4 players are wrong or 1 guy is wrong.
The Cardinals, Mo and TLR, have made mistakes this year, but let’s look at facts.
1. In 239 AB’s Edmonds has 9 HR, 21RBIs and is hitting .272
2. In 118 AB’s Miles has 0 HR, 8 RBI’s and is hitting .297. If you double Miles’ AB’s he has 16 RBIs. Not much difference. They are both washed up. The Cards took a flier on Miles and Cincy/Milw took fliers on Edmonds.
3. Player A 132 AB’s, 3 HR 16 RBIs and 273 BA
Player B 149 AB’s, 4 HR 18 RBIs and 228 BA
Player A is Randy Winn with the Cards and Player B is Ludwick with the Padres.
4. The Cards thought they could get by with Jay in RF after trading Ludwick. Days later Rasmus is injured.
5. The Cards at the trading deadline thought they were getting Freese back, only for him to reinjure himself for the season in the few days after the deadline, leaving them to scuffle to get Feliz, who I agree is terrible, but there were hardly any options at that late date.
6. I agree that it would have been nice to give Gotay a chance. However the Cards and the teams that previously have had Gotay all must see something lacking because everyone seems unwilling to give him a full chance.
My points were only that the farm system has produced one excellent (Garcia), one very good (Freese, until he was injured), one good to better than good (Jay) and one helpful (Salas) player this year. The fact that the system could not also cover the injuries to Freese, Penny and Lohse is a shame, but, if it did, I would say the system didn’t just have a “good” year, but would have been said to have an “excellent” year. I think with the players lineup at AAA and AA next year could be excellent for the Future Redbirds. Beyond next year I am even more optimistic for what the farm system will produce.
Jim Edmonds .271/.336/.479, .356 wOBA, 124 wRC+
Aaron Miles .297/.325/.331, .286 wOBA, 79 wRC+
Edmonds is waaaaay better than Miles, period. Even with the BABIP-driven high AVG, Miles doesn’t have the ability to draw walks or drive the ball at all, thus ends up as a below replacement level hitter. This guy simply doesn’t deserve a major league roster spot.
RBI is not a great source to compare players; it depends a lot on quality of his team mates and his spot on the lineup.
I agree with you that there were little other options over there when Freese injured himself again and done for the season. However, they could try Greene or Gotay at 3B instead of importing useless players like Feliz. According to Fangraphs WAR, Feliz was THE worst player in MLB with a negative 1.5 WAR. He has hit .202/.227/.255(32 wRC+) and added a negative 0.5 WAR as a Cardinal; his seasonal WAR now sits at -2.0. This is a historically bad record. The move was downright horrible and indefensible.
Again my point was NOT that Miles is better than Edmonds. My point is that they are BOTH, at this stage washed up veterans that contending teams desperately pick up over the course of the season when they don’t have a true prospect that they feel is either ready or that they want to waste away getting very few opportunities over the remainder of the season versus full opportunities by staying in the minors. I would guess that neither Miles nor Edmonds are on a major league roster after this season.
Again we agree that Gotay should have been given a shot. Feliz is terrible, but has had previously an excellent defensive reputation which I would guess is why they went in that direction.
You are simply wrong here…Edmonds is still a solid to above average defender, and an above average hitter. Miles is (and always has been) a poor defender and hitter. He has ran into some (BABIP) luck in his time with STL that bloats his empty batting average. Contending teams add guys like Edmonds as a 4th OFer capable of filling in at any OF spot…MLB teams generally do not waste time with players like Miles.
Of course, Edmonds always WAS waaay better than Miles. Miles isn’t so much a has-been as a never-was. His decline phase hasn’t really been particularly precipitous.
I agree that it’s misleading to lump Westbrook in with these other moves. Getting him was a soundly conceived, if desperate and (maybe) overly expensive, attempt to salvage a post season after two key ingredients (Lohse and Penny) got broken. Any team on the playoff bubble with the same needs would have tried to do something similar.
As for the third-base mess, it is instructive to look not at the way the (ahem) candidates were hitting this year, but the way they were expected to hit. When Freese went down, he and the others who’ve been named here (and elsewhere) had predicted “total averages,” the Baseball Prospectus one-liner for predicting offensive player worth, of:
Allen Craig: .263
Pedro Feliz: .246
David Freese: .239
Ruben Gotay: .256 — incidentally, he was mediocre in the minors this year, other than an inexplicable tendency to draw walks
Tyler Greene: .232
Felipe Lopez: .264
Joe Mather: .239
Aaron Miles: .232
Let’s face it: none of these guys were expected to reach even adequacy at the plate, and several (Craig, Mather, Lopez, Miles) were reasonably expected to be liabilities with the glove as well. That one of them did step forward and far outperform expectations until he got hurt was almost a miracle.
At the same time, however, one of the operating principles that a stars-and-scrubs team simply MUST follow (and the Cardinals are fated to be such a team as long as they have AP, MH and CC, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing) is that if you throw enough cr*p against a wall, some of it will stick. Jon Jay (predicted TAv=.252) stuck. None of the cr*p thrown at third base did. That’s the nature of the beast.
so, why did they sign gotay?
I agree with almost all of that. The players we’ve graduated to the big team have tended to perform better than the prospect gurus, or we for that matter, would have predicted, and we may, indeed, have competed without the three big injuries. The success of the farm teams may indicate that we have more players on the way who can fill roles like jay and Garcia have. The problem, as always, is that we don’t have anyone in the high minors who could be projected to impove this anemic offense in the next couple of years. Because of this we will not, again, be rated as having a top system and this can be attributed to the player development folks. We spent too many draft picks on college players based on performance statistics and not enough on high ceiling atheletes. It does appear, from the last two drafts, that we’ve learned that lesson and have drafted a better mixture of high ceiling prospects.
You bring up an interesting point about prospect gurus tending to underrate our players. I think the biggest reason is the distortion caused by park effects for our full-season teams.
For hitters, the park in QC is neutral, more or less, but the weather early in the season can make for tough playing conditions. The FSL crushes hitters, who magically become prospects when they get to Springfield and the TL. Then they inevitably disappoint prospect watchers (including those of us who should know better) when they play in Memphis.
When you see hitters who tear up the FSL, like Craig in 2007, you can probably guess that they’re legit. When pitchers post low ERAs in the TL, like Garcia, Lynn, and now Broderick, chances are we’re underrating their potential, since the only way to post a low ERA in a park like Springfield’s is to induce a lot of ground balls or weak pop-ups. And a guy who can hit well in Memphis can probably hit in St. Louis, assuming he can keep the strikeouts under control. (Craig’s K rate jumped from 17-18% in Memphis to 25% in St. Louis. That doesn’t bode well for Hamilton, whose K rate is already in the mid-20s in AAA. The opposite example is Tyler Greene, who cut his K rate in MLB this year.)
I don’t agree, on two counts. First, while the prospect gurus consider the system weak, at least some of them (notably John Sickels) remark on the large number of grade-C prospects in it who have a good chance of reaching the majors but will never be stars. And that’s exactly what has happened, this year and several others recently for the team: lots of guys get their first (Anderson, Hill, Salas, Ottavino, MacLane, Craig, to some extent Jay) or first extended (Freese) look at the Show, and fill a role without having any prospects of being stars. Problem is, a dozen of those guys don’t help a team nearly as much as one Heyward or Posey does.
Second, I don’t think most of the emerging players in the system WERE underrated. Garcia surely was, but not by everybody, and you really can’t blame the pundits for being reserved in their praise for a guy coming off TJ surgery. Jay was probably underestimated, but it’s too early to be sure by how much, and the same may also be true of pre-injury Freese, although predictions were all over the map for him. Pretty well all of the others have performed just about as expected, or in some cases (I’m NOT going to use that Daryl guy’s last name…), worse.
That all has produced a “successful” year for the farm team, both in the way the teams have done and in graduating Garcia, Freese and Jay to the Show. It does not suggest to me that the system was badly underrated, because the other “graduates” were much more of a ho-hum nature that every team gets, if not necessarily in the abundance that we do (although I heard the Cubs had 19 rookies this year…). Incidentally, the better prospect mavens (Sickels, Goldstein, etc.) get park effects in the minors, and adjust their forecasts accordingly.
question for me is, is memphis doing well last couple of years because it is full of AAAA players?
you will never know unless they get a real chance in stl. every player has to up his game when he moves up. you’ll never know who is capable of that last adjustment unless you let them try.
I agree with the above, my opinion is that players are left too long at AAA, but as stated there seems to be a reluctance of the organization to bring them up because they are not wanted (by the manager). Then as Alex says you get the log jam. Then they can tend to burn out playing the waiting game. I saw so many young players on other teams brought up this year and doing well, they were taken up when they were doing well, not waiting to see how they would finish. Don’t you do this when your guys are hot and breeze through the system? I saw this with contenders as well as non contenders, who now have become contenders. That youth can help spark a team, let them get some time on the big stage then you can bring them back down, and if they continue, call them back up in september. Why not take a player like Dickson for example, in my opinion he should have been brought up, see how he did, instead now after a few bad outings you wonder what’s going on.
The way I hear it was that players like Miles was preferred because he had “playoff” experience, well there isn’t going to be playoffs for those “experienced” players right?
Luhnow is no longer going to be playing a dual role, John Vuch will be the farm director, working under Luhnow who will concentrate solely as scouting director. Perhaps this has been a problem, there needed to be two people to fill two definite different jobs. I read Vuch will spend more time visiting the milb per level at a time, where Luhnow really didn’t have the time to visit as frequently as he should.
true too
last night tlr removes jay for winn and greene for feliz, miles at second, pags rather than anderson
why?
way ahead is perfect time to get a better look at younger players
and he chose to slip his “regulars” in
perplexing to say the least
So what you’re saying is…we had three players get their first significant shot at MLB this year, who were all underrated going into this year, but you don’t agree that our farm system is wholly underrated…? Also, I think it’s unfair to say that Garcia does not have star potential. That’s overlooking the makeup of our bullpen that has been developed over the last 2+ years. None of KMac, Boggs and Motte were projected to make much of an impact (let’s not forget Salas). With these guys and the old man our RH relief is among the best in baseball.
This team already has its “star” players…Carp, WW, AP, Holliday and Rasmus. If Garcia can maintain his 2010 success he will certainly be added to that list. We need to put average major leaguers around these star players.
Remember that the very poor rating for the farm system pertains to THIS YEAR’s farm. K-mac, Sauce, etc., are irrelevant to the current rankings.
I did some poking around with Baseball Prospectus’ statistics (maybe not the best out there any more, but what I had handy) and learned some interesting things about farm systems and rookies. Using their VORP metric, the Cardinals’ 2010 rookie class has been the sixth most productive in baseball, behind (in ascending order) the Mets (barely), Marlins, Giants, Reds (a TREMENDOUS rookie class there), and — way ahead of everyone else — Atlanta, and it’s not just because of Heyward. They have had terrific production from a whole avalanche of rookies. By comparison, over 100% of the Cardinals’ production (note that this is possible because there are numerous negative “contributors” like Ottavino) came from the obvious three guys — two of whom pretty well everyone expected to be in the majors, not minors, and therefore weren’t included in everybody’s analyses, although they were in some.
Another thing: there is very little statistical correlation between how this year’s rookies fared and the order in which BP ranked the systems for 2010. It is there, and it’s in the direction expected (higher-ranked systems have more productive rookies, our own notwithstanding), but it’s quite weak, and may or may not be statistically significant (correlation coefficient around -0.24, for those who follow such things). This is not a complete surprise, because most of the guys in any team’s farm system who are “prospects” will not reach the majors in the year in which they contribute to the evaluation of the farm system. However, what *is* surprising is that the correlation between 2010 rookie production and *2009* farm-system rankings is even weaker.
I’m still studying these data, but one thing that’s emerging clearly is that the most “productive” farm systems are not the ones that produce lots of major-league-marginally-useful guys, but the ones that produce one, two or three (or, if you’re Atlanta or Cincinnati, even more) players who are REALLY, REALLY GOOD. The paucity of such guys in our system, until Miller and maybe some of the 2010 class arrive, to me justifies concern about the system. It looked much better in 2009, and lo and behold, one “really, really good” rookie arrived this year, as did two others who have been major positive contributors too. If you can convince yourself that Lance Lynn, Adam Ottavino, etc. — let alone Ruben Gotay — have the promise of contributing on that level, I’d like to have some of what you’re smoking.
I’m not a stat geek or numbers guy but didn’t everyone of our minor league teams finish above .500 for the first time in years (ever)?
I think it’s time Tony goes. Not that he’s a bad manager, that’d be a hard case to make. It’s more that he doesn’t fit what the Cards are going to have to become. They will have to take advantage of youth. They aren’t going to have five 25 HR guys, so they are going to have to use what some of the youth brings which is speed. RF next year should be an open competition between Jay, Craig, Mather, and as crazy as it may seem I’d give Hamilton a look. I’d sacrifice defense for offense. Greene would be my Lopez. Wiggington insurance at 3rd and Marcus Thames as a cheap vet for the bench.
Our system in a nutshell goes like this:
1) We have the depth at many positions of guys that MIGHT make it to the bigs and some that could be solid regulars.
2) We lack star power and have for some time now. Even if the trades for Holliday and DeRosa weren’t made the only potential solid player in that group was Wallace (not a star to be IMO). You could argue Perez as well since he MIGHT end of being a very valuable back of the bully guy and maybe a closer. But that was our position of strength in our system.
3) We lack premium position players – We don’t have many exciting CF, SS or 2B in the system. We have plenty of hitters that can’t play anything besides 1B or a sloppy LF/3B. We have some athletes that can play CF but most are very raw.
4) We only have 1 pitcher that projects to potentially be a #1 SP. We have another couple guys that MIGHT have a ceiling as a #2 SP. Then we have plenty of fringe #5 SP/Middle Relievers
The key points are we now have some solid depth in our system but you need a good mix of depth and high ceiling potential. I like what we did to some degree with our 2009 Draft and I think we did a very good job with our 2010 Draft. We have been more aggressive in the IFA market which is also a good sign. We still have another couple years of going after high upside players in the Draft and IFAs to have an exciting overall system. Then you have to keep it up by mixing high floor talent with high ceiling talent year after year. I hope we stay down this road so 1 or 2 trades won’t absolutely kill our farm.
I remember Whitey Herzog saying that when he went to KC, he watched the practices and realized that Frank White could outplay Cookie Rojas and Amos Otis coudl outplay Vada Pinson. So he switched them and KC went on a roll. Whitey described it as a trade to get two starters without giving up anyone. When does that happen in St Louis. What do you think would have happened to Pinson and Rojas, who obviously “knew how to play the game”, had a history, and “four years ago were allstars”.
Everybody has to wait for an injury to get in the lineup, including Ludwick, Molina, Polanco and even Pujols. Is there any evidence taht La Russa has the ability to recognize young talent.
When i ask Strauss why they don’t try Gotay, i get “well, there is some concern that his arm is not strong enough.” Well, he is playing third at Memphis. And, most importantly, we’re not looking for a perenniel allstar, we’re looking to replace Felipe Lopez at third.
You get the same answer with everyone else you suggest. Coudl Cazana hit .230 and play RF in the outfield instead of the warning track? Then he could replace Winn. How could anyone believe Aaron Miles is superior to Tyler Greene, or Mike MacDougal is superior to Salas, or Kinney. Will we ever see Joe Mather again.
Maybe none of these guys can play, but maybe they can. Since you already know the old guys can’t, why not take a look? Further, could Clayton Mortenson or Chris Perez have helped fill those huge holes this year?
They are way to eager to throw away non-gold star prospects and to rely on proven overthe hill mediocrities.
I just can’t see how this organization can go forward with a manager who rejects every prospect out of hand, or as you have pointed out attacks all of them who are not his BFFs.
that is so, and unless jmo takes those type guys off the roster, we will repeat this year with little hope of getting better.
if you give tlr those guys, they will play
i’m not a no-winn guy, but we would know a lot more about our situation if tg had been up instead of miles, etc. right now, the tg experiment has yet to happen. and the craig experiment, and the next mather experiment, etc.
I am fearful about the near term future of the Cardinals. Most of the key players are approaching the
downside of their careers. Both Carpenter and Wainwright are unlikely to be as effective in the future
as they have been the last several years. Molina has been overused for a catcher The two young players with the most upside–Rasmus and Ryan–are among the Cardinals most likely to be traded or discarded. The manager is very
resistant to nurturing young players. The Cardinals have traded prospects with the most promise (Perez,
Gregorson) for third rate veterans after inadequate research on possible problems.
Ryan, among the guys with “most upside”? In what universe, please?
Why should we criticize the pundits for underating our players when our own team does the same?
I saw where Strauss said that no one in our “major league clubhouse” thought we had any significant position prospects who could make an impact in the next 2 years. If true, that seems likee a stupid comment on mnay levels. Do you think Larussa or mcGwire have even ever seen Carpenter hit? or Chambers? If so, it was probably in Spring training and logic would say they may have improved since then (that´s why they´re in the minors isn´t it – to improve? Someone tell me if I ´m off base but it would seems stupid of those in the major league clubhouse to say and stupid to report.
Cariocacardinal:
I concur. I have thought that since Jockety was fired that Strauss has been a buttkiss for that regime and the remnants thereof, namely LaRussa, and has taken every opportunity to take swipes at Luhnow and the people he brought into the organization.
Without getting into a diatribe about all the stuff that Strauss puts out at the behest of LaRussa and to support Jockety and backstab Luhnow, the portion of the Strauss article that bothered me the most, was “Mozeliak conceded Thursday that this season has found the minor-league support lacking with the exception of John Jay. After several years of largely ignoring the minor league free agent market, Mozeliak said the club is likely to retool in that arena this offseason. It’s going to be different, yes, Mozeliak said. Look at the last few years. We have not been very aggressive.”
The Cards did sign Gotay, Maclane, Oneli Perez and Houston Summers, all of whom were minor league 6 year free agents in the past offseason. MLB publishs a list of such players each season at about this time. There are virtually no players on last years list who contributed this year at the major league level. Signing players off that list is a crap shoot and, if Mozoliak thinks that will make a difference going forward, he needs to get his resume ready. The Cards already have a logjam of 4A type players which is what the 6 year minor league free agents are, with few exceptions. It was just a lame excuse by Mozoliak for poor roster management this season, which Strauss readily reported because it implied a swipe at Luhnow.
Last point. To say that Jay was the only exception to support from the minor leagues. What about Garcia? Going into the season Garcia was not expected to make the team since he was recovering from TJ surgery. He was outstanding in spring training, but so was McClellan. Both of them should have started. Instead because Mozeliak wildly overspent on Lohse ($41 million) he felt compelled to downgrade McClellan’s arm strength to a set up spot. I know hind sight is 20/20 but I would have liked to see McClellan AND Garcia have started the season in the rotation. For the last few years one of the strengths of the system has been middle/setup right handed relievers. I think Salas, Sanchez, Kinney could have filled for McClellan in the bullpen.
Again Mozeliak is making excuses for HIS bad season, and his inability to stand up to LaRussa, who is resistent to playing young players unless he has not alternatives, and Strauss is ALWAYS willing to report that kind of stuff if it sucks up to Jockety/LaRussa at the expense of Luhnow.
Sorry for the rant. It has been bothering me for the last few seasons. Yes, maybe Luhnow had too much on his plate having both jobs, but he is not the reason for the failure of this season to this point. The farm system is considerably better than when Manno was overlooked and Jockety was asked to leave because he was in a snit over Luhnow being asked to take the farm system in a different direction.
there is absolutely no reason not to push kmac into the rotation. we draft relief pitchers like they could turn lead into gold, and we take a starting pitcher, convert him to relief, and then when he gets his feet on the ground, we keep in relief because the manger is such a tinkerer in the late innings he “needs” 13 pitchers. absurd. starting pitchers are so much more valuable than relief pitchers, it is crazy not to try kmac in that role.