Join Cardinals beat writer Derrick Goold for his live chat at noon Monday
Bring your Cards questions and comments to Monday’s noon live chat.
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Greetings from Roger Dean Stadium. Miles Mikolas is warming up in the bullpen with all of the pitching staff watching. The Cardinals have their opening day roster set. They are giving you a preview today of the opening day lineup vs. Pirates. Albert Pujols will be at DH. Adam Wainwright will be on the mound. Andre Pallante will be in the bullpen. And the Post-Dispatch is about to launch expanded coverage and new ways to access that coverage.You've got questions. I'll do my best to come up with answers here. We'll follow along with the game, too.Away we go. -
The Padres just picked up Manaea for what appears to be a pittance. It was an offer the A’s chose out of several evidently. Did the Cardinals make an offer? Even for a rental it doesn’t seem to make sense how he went so cheap. The Twins desperately need another starter to go with their offense in the weak AL Central. Any idea why he didn’t bring back a bigger return? -
The A's got two top 20 prospects from the Padres' organization, including a top 10 prospect, and one that several other rankings are high on. I'm not so sure that's "pittance." Manaea has one more year of control. He's a free agent at season's end. And in exchange for him and another player, the A's got 12 years of control, including eight total at a reduced salary, even with the new CBA. If they expect both of those prospects to get to the majors and contribute that's a solid trade even if neither of them is a standout. For the A's that control is maximizing dollars, and that's clearly what they're trying to do. I don't think he went for "cheap."There is no indication the Cardinals made "an offer." They have been unwilling to part with the prospects who get asked about most -- Walker, Gorman, Liberatore, and they don't want to part with that kind of control for one year of a starter. That's just not been their MO.I also want to caution that the A's may believe that the two top 20 prospects from the Padres' system is the equivalent of two top 10 from Cardinals organization and other teams don't have comparable players at all. That's also in play here.
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DG...yay, baseball starts Thursday. Sweet!
On March 27th, Cards lost to the Mets 7-2, I believe. Something I do not ever recall seeing happened. de Grom started and pitched three innings. Not unusual. Then Scherzer pitched the last six innings. Now, de Grom is out with some apparent pitching malady. He is half of the non-thrifty Mets two-ace $70M/year super duo.
If Scherzer had gone down after pitching six, there would be barbarians at the gate looking to pitch Buck in the East River. But de Grom did get injured. The whole concept of two A-list starters pitching the entirety of a ST game is baffling. What am I missing here?
Like the Birds, the Mets must have had at least 20 arms in camp to choose from for a couple of those innings. You think Scherzer wanted to go six? Even if he did, should he have been allowed to? Again, tell me what I am missing here? Never seen that before. Thanks. -
They just scheduled the two of them on the same day based on how they entered camp and how ready they were to handle that amount of innings. Scherzer was ahead of deGrom in terms of pitch count, and deGrom wanted to have the routine of the starter. This is what happens when ... and this is key ...There are fives teams playing each other in a small geographic bubble.... That assures that once every five days, a team is off, completely, and that can lead to overlapping pitchers or a lot of back field assignments. The Cardinals had back fields going to get the innings for their starters. The Mets opted to put two on the same day and see what happens. Yes, it was a little theater. Yes, it was a lot of the schedule. Yes, it was a lot of where the pitchers were at that point in time. Scherzer wanted to go six, yes. That was his schedule.deGrom has a stress reaction in his right shoulder. That is the same injury that Michael Wacha had to overcome and did so by changing his routine, taking control of his offseason rehab and his program, and then reclaiming a spot in the majors. He's with Boston now.
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Simple answer: They never are. That's not their business model. I've heard both the president of the team and president of baseball operations describe it the same way. They don't want to go "all in" on a season at the risk of having a downturn a few years later. They would rather sustain what they have, continue to contend, then to have the wild spikes of all-in, rebuild, all-in, rebuild. They don't want that as the business model, so they think in three- and five-year plans.
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I realize that fans don't count for anything and that it doesn't matter what I think, but......I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT!!!!! Starting a runner at second base who did nothing to deserve to get there. Did I mention that I HATE IT!!! Also, I see that Trevor Rosenthal is available. Could he be on the Cardinal radar?
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Service time. Salaries. They will have a 28-man roster for the first month of the season, but it shrinks to 26, the usual number, on May 1. Any roster spot is a chance for a player to gain service time, to increase his salary, and that's something teams monitor, as you know.
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Oliver Marmol told me yesterday that he's not concerned, not at all. There have been positive indicators from Edman on the back fields, where he's done so much work this spring. That said, the Cardinals do see some situations where Edmundo Sosa could get starts at second base, and they acknowledge that Brendan Donovan is a phone call away ....
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Sandy Koufax was quoted as saying that once he began pitching to contact he became a much better pitcher. Or words to that effect.
This seems to be the Cardinals approach this year as they attempt to build on the strength of their defense by utilizing pitchers that induce higher percentage of ground balls.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
Your thoughts please.
Thanks for the chat -
That is exactly the case. And it has a daily-double benefit, too. The Cardinals will take advantage of their standout strength -- defense -- by pitching to contact, and they will be more efficient, which should help the starters cover the innings and bring stability to the bullpen use in a way other teams won't be able to. A bullpen, even bloated with arms to start, can only cover so many four-inning starts in a week. A team that gets 80 pitches and four innings from a starter is going to test its bullpen more than a Cardinals team that might get six innings from 80 pitches because of the approach and efficiency. That's what they're banking on.
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I was listening to your podcast from shortly after the lockout began and you were talking about the goals of the players in the negotiations. One goal was to increase the pay of young players in order to incentivize teams to look at lower tier free agent veterans instead of paying the minimum salary for a rookie. Do you think that the Cardinals signing Dickerson and Verhagen is an example of this? Gorman and Liberatore would have been cheaper and may even have been a better alternative.
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I understand your question, but not quite. VerHagen agreed to terms before the lockout, and his signing was an example of the Cardinals wanting to build up some depth with swingman and potential starters. They also like the idea of identifying his stuff and seeing if they could utilize it differently to greater success. Dickerson is the closer example, but not because of Gorman. Like Liberatore, Gorman is not on the roster, and the Cardinals don't want to put them on the 40-man roster until they are going to play/pitch in the majors. There's no need to a) start their options or b) start their service time or c) halt their development for a part-time role. Pujols ahead of Yepez or say Baker is the better example of this, though the tinge of nostalgia is what's driving that choice, too. I think the best example of the rising cost of young players making middle-tier players more appealing will be seen elsewhere, or in the coming offseason.
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I don't know if they've showed him that specific hitter or those specific numbers. However, they have talked to him about the benefit of not switch-hitting or doing so differently based on the type of pitcher. He's done that a few times on the back fields this year, where he'll hit right-handed against a right-handed pitcher. He did that against Mikolas, for example.
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That a player drafted in the 13th round would become the greatest righthanded hitter of his generation and lead the league in home runs, average, and RBIs for an entire decade while spotting every other hitter in the league a year before he debuted. He set records for the start to his career -- so how could we see that coming.Maybe Musial did. He did show up opening day 2001 at Coors Field and surprise everyone.
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No. It sometimes happens during spring. The other assignments have to take priority and the BPIB happens when there's time to record and produce one. Alas, there hasn't been. There's been a lot of content generated from spring training from chats to videos, and then article after article after article after news. Just when there's time to record a podcast, the Cardinals go and sign Pujols.The schedule shifts a bit with the start of the regular season and BPIB will be back. That's the hope. That's the goal. That's part of the launch of new coverage this week.
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There isn't one. And I know that's not what you want to hear, but that's what is fair and accurate when it comes to injuries. Players respond differently to rehab and work, and it's better in these early weeks of the throwing program to see how his arm responds to work, not to some schedule. He's started the opening days of a throwing program. As he advances through that, keep in mind he'll have to go through a spring training-like schedule. So, he's like a pitcher in early January at this point. They hope he'll be able to move from this point to throws, to mound in the next couple of weeks and then that brings a month of building arm strength and rehab assignment that will mirror a spring schedule. But all of that will be sketched out only after these initial days.He's got the bursitis addressed. Now he begins to build arm strength and correct the mechanical issue he thinks may have contributed to the shoulder discomfort.The lack of a hard and fast timetable is true for injuries, and more and more teams are recognizing the benefit of being more honest with fans and media rather than conjuring a timetable early in a diagnosis that ultimately is just a guess anyway.
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In order:Adam WainwrightMiles MikolasSteven MatzDakota HudsonAnd ... TBDThe Cardinals are going to start the season without naming a fifth starter. Ben Frederickson had the exclusive news this morning that they are leaning toward Jordan Hicks as the starter for the fifth game of the season. That is against Kansas City.
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