St Louis Cardinals 2025

Has anybody seen a comment by MO to Katie Woo that there is not room on the major league roster for McGreevey at this time? I am reading that on another site.

the juiceman cometh said:

Ah man, Dylan Carlson. I was off the hype-train early with him, and just remember being bewildered by the local media's touting him as a future All-Star even as he completely floundered. The thing is, it wasn't hard to see that he didn't have it. His fatal flaw was always that he just doesn't hit the ball hard. Even the one good season he had, he did not hit the ball hard. That doesn't typically bode well.

Jordan Walker's problem is different. He has massive power, but he just can't get anywhere near an optimal launch angle. He absolutely smokes balls into the ground where the end result is a groundout or single, when if he could get them in the air you're talking about home runs and doubles. If you search there's a video on MLB's website of the hardest hit ball of Walker's career, and of course it's a single. Add to that the inability to take walks and the strikeout rate that's gone up every year and it's not looking good. It's such a shame given the physical tools. I could be wrong but my impression is the club has devoted a lot of effort into fixing this, and Walker has been stubborn.

And good luck finding a trade partner for Mikolas unless you're willing to eat most of that salary. At which point, it may not be worth it. Gotta have someone to eat innings, especially with a lot of young pitchers on staff. You don't want to harm a young pitcher's career because you need them to eat innings in a season that doesn't matter. Now, if you want to shift Mikolas to the pen and give him spot starts as needed, in a way that allows young pitchers opportunities, I would be all for that.

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AS far as touting Carlson as a future all star, was not most of that coming from sources within the Cardinal organization? At one point people were saying that the triumpherate of Bader, O'Neal, and Carlson were the future all star outfield. And the Cardinals literally moved all their outfield prospects to make way for all three.

Se Il Illini said:

AS far as touting Carlson as a future all star, was not most of that coming from sources within the Cardinal organization? At one point people were saying that the triumpherate of Bader, O'Neal, and Carlson were the future all star outfield. And the Cardinals literally moved all their outfield prospects to make way for all three.

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Just going off my own memory, there were plenty of local media parroting those rosy assessments when the front office was making them (and especially towing the company line when it came to not trying to trade Carlson as part of a package for Soto), and then later there were plenty of people in the local media who were critical of the team for not playing him more once his production fell off a cliff. Of those three, the local media was always the most enamored with Carlson, and it's pretty obvious to me that of those three, Carlson will go down as having the worst career. Bader, who is probably going to have the best career of the lot when it's said and done, has accounted for 1.9 bWAR already this season, which is better than all but Donny on this year's Cardinals roster.

The question of how well the Cardinals have drafted intrigued me, so I've decided to take a look and see. Here's a summary of the total bWAR accumulated by each draft class from 2015 to present, the player who have accumulated 10+ bWAR in each class, and how it compares to a franchise with more recent success, the Atlanta Braves

2015 Cardinals
Total bWAR: 41.3
Top players: Harrison Bader (15.2); Paul DeJong (13.4)

2015 Braves:
Total bWAR: 55.1
Top players: Austin Riley (22.7); Jeremy Pena (17.5)

2016 Cardinals
Total bWAR: 47.6
Top players: Zac Gallen (20.2); Tommy Edman (19.7)

2016 Braves
Total bWAR: 0.2
Top players: Ian Anderson (3.1)

2017 Cardinals
Total bWAR: -0.4
Top players: Kodi Whitley (0.3)

2017 Braves
Total bWAR: 6.8
Top players: Reid Detmers (4.2)

2018 Cardinals
Total bWAR: 23.4
Top players: Brendan Donovan (10.9)

2018 Braves
Total bWAR: 2.8
Top players: Tristen Beck (1.6); Victor Vodnick (1.6)

2019 Cardinals
Total bWAR: 5.8
Top players: Andre Pallante (4.3)

2019 Braves
Total bWAR: 14.6
Top players: Michael Harris II (11.9)

2020 Cardinals
Total bWAR: 5.7
Top players: Masyn Winn (5.9)

2020 Braves:
Total bWAR: 9.6
Top players: Spencer Strider (7.3)

Total Cardinals: 123.4
Total Braves: 89.1

So, one takeaway from this is that it's so hard to consistently draft well, I don't think the draft should be your end-all-be-all on how to build a consistently successful team. Look at 2017. Absolutely awful draft year. We did horribly but we also didn't have 1st or 2nd round draft picks that year. The Braves didn't do much better, even though they had the #5 pick in the draft. (Kyle Wright, who had one really good season but has been a below replacement level player for the other 4 major league seasons he's played). If it weren't for Reid Detmers, taken in the 32nd(!!!) round (and who never pitched a single inning for the Braves), that draft would look even worse. If you pan out to that draft, it was a very weak class. In the first round, the only player to amass 10+ bWAR is Hunter Greene. In contrast there are 9 players who have been worth negative WAR so far, 6 who have yet to make the majors.

Another takeaway seems to be that you just want to take big swings. Most of these guys don't pan out. More of our guys turned into productive MLB players than did the Braves guys. But I you'd rather hit really big on one all-star caliber guy than get the same or better value from 3 or 4 above average big leaguers.

A player I'd love for us to hit on as far as raw top end talent from our recent drafts is Chase Davis. He has tremendous raw power and is pretty athletic. Would be a nice athletic pairing with him and Scott. Glancing at his stats, he strikes out alot. Not uncommon in today's game, but it seems really high for my liking. He is the same age as JW, so if those 2 could get a move on, that'd be great.
Quin Mathew's I think will be up this year. We need some swing and miss guys on the mound. McGreevy and Hjerpe are fine and all at the home stadium for the amount of fly balls that get Busch'd, but we need some swing and miss guys.

Still like to see Matz be traded. I think they could get a good prospect in return.

Just heard JJ Wetherholt was promoted to AAA Memphis today................

Saggese has been really really good at turning the DP at 2nd base tonight.....he really really has......................

THAT'S A WINNER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cardinals wait out a 2 hour + rain delay to beat the Nationals 4-2 and pick up a game on the unlovables tonight...........

Sonny Gray with 5 solid innings of 5 hit 2 ER's and 6 K's for the win.................
Donovan with a tying 2 run smashed tater..............
Nootbaar with a solo shot...................
Burlson with an RBI double.................
Matz , Maton , Romero and Helsley close out the win..................yes , there was the usual drama from Helsley but he got his 18th save tonight

Cardinals now 5.5 GB....

Contreras strikeout in the bottom of the 1st inning was PATHETIC................3 FEET OFF THE PLATE AND ALMOST HIT THE GROUND...........WOW..............

just heard Ivan Herrera will get some outfield duty @ Memphis while on his rehab stint...................interesting as he was not going to get much time at catcher when he rejoins the Cardinals later on..........JMHO...........

Hard to believe we have all these catchers and none of them can catch...

pruman91 said:

just heard Ivan Herrera will get some outfield duty @ Memphis while on his rehab stint...................interesting as he was not going to get much time at catcher when he rejoins the Cardinals later on..........JMHO...........

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Ivan hasn’t been very good defensively.

whatahack said:

Hard to believe we have all these catchers and none of them can catch...

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I like Pages but Molina spoiled us for many years...................

BillyBob1 said:

Ivan hasn’t been very good defensively.

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couldn't throw me out on a stolen base try.....................lol

Arenado web gem...........WOWSA..................

Hampson is a wasted roster spot........took a full count FB right down central...................hope Nootbaar is not hurt but just allowing him him to get off his feet.........

THAT'S A WINNER !!!!!!!!!!!!

Cardinals get another series win with an 8-1 victory over the Nationals taking 2 out of 3 from them......

The story of the game was Miles Mikolas with 5 2/3 innings of 2 hit 0 ER's , 1 W and 6 K's and plenty of running to cover 1st base..
Donovan goes 2-4 with an RBI......
Winn with a 2-4 and an RBI......
Burleson with 2 RBI's.....
Contreras goes 2-4 with a solo smashed tater.........
Arenado with another web gem.....

next up tomorrow is the Atlanta Braves for a 3 game series to close out to the All Star festivities...............

50th victory of the season for the Cardinals..................

LET'S GO CARDINALS !!!!!!!!

If you like hitting then tonight's game is a very entertaining battle........end of 3 innings and it's Braves 6 Cardinals 5........

both starters are laboring under the barrage of hits by both teams....

Sean Murphy , the DH for the Braves has 2 homers with both being the longest homers at Busch Stadium this year @ 440 ft and 437 ft..........

Liberatore out after only 3 innings......

awesome half inning of convo with one of the flyover pilots AND a fantastic comeback by Riley O'BRIEN after the Braves getting runners on 2nd and third with nobody out to stifle the Braves by closing the door with no runs scored...........

pruman91 said:

awesome half inning of convo with one of the flyover pilots AND a fantastic comeback by Riley O'BRIEN after the Braves getting runners on 2nd and third with nobody out to stifle the Braves by closing the door with no runs scored...........

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That convo was very entertaining. I always kind of took those for granted and never really considered the coordination to pull that off on time.

bottom of 7th Cardinals get the first 2 batters on then don't advance them after 3 straight medium range flyouts........bullpen doing it's job so far tonight.......

can't get picked off 1st in the bottom of the 8th......I thought VS II had a bigger than normal lead and he did get nabbed..........

fudge...................lost opportunity to pick up another game on the unlovables.................

too many missed opps with RISP..................

another game , same old Fedde.....................

I doubt he would be wanted by another team based on his performance this year......