Join baseball writer Derrick Goold for his live Cardinals chat at 11 a.m. Monday
Bring your Cards questions and comments to Monday’s 11 a.m. live chat.
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Adding a bat like Contreras' (or Murphy's or Kirk's) to the lineup would raise the floor of the team's offensive production. Lengthen the lineup and improve upon the black hole of the last couple years. Adding another high level, non-catcher bat raises the lineup's ceiling. Doing either (or both!) definitely sounds good to me. -
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Hi Derrick, how do the retired numbers within the Cardinals organization work? If Rolen is elected to the HOF, will his #27 automatically be retired? Does it matter what hat they wear on their plaque? Pujols may go in with blank cap, but his #5 will be retired some day. Thanks for your hard work.
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Some quick answers:-- It is not automatically retired. The Cardinals do consider Hall of Famers, as in National Baseball Hall of Famers, for retirement, but it is not a guarantee. Lee Smith and others did not have their numbers retired with induction.-- It does not matter what hat they wear. Tony La Russa has a blank hat in Cooperstown and a number on the wall in St. Louis.-- No. 5 will be retired at some point, based on the team's current plan.-- No. 4, 5, and 50 are likely being warn/were warn for the last time by a Cardinal.
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I know the Cardinals don't do "windows" in the sense of phasing in and out of competitiveness. That being said, Paul Goldschmidt has 2 more years on his contract - I'd love to see the Cardinals explore how much AAV they'd have to pay DeGrom on a 2-3 year deal. They need that kind of upside in their rotation in the postseason.
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Would be a fascinating conversation for sure. And if there was ever a time -- DeGrom seems primed for a high AAV deal with shorter years. Maybe some team combines both and best big on his future health and performance, but the ingredients are there for a crazy high single season salary. That's a lot to hitch onto one player without depth of spending or depth of talent to cover if the high-dollar player/pitcher falters or misses time with injury. Still, I like the creativity of your suggestion. Doesn't mean it's likely.One note: Goldschmidt sure seems like he'll stick around more than two years.
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Since, at least for now, it doesn't appear the Cardinals are in on any of the top free agent shortstops then I think DeJong will get an opportunity this spring to see if he can rebound. He's untradable right now, unless you want to eat at least half or more of his salary, and I don't see Mo eating that kind of money. I wish the Cards would move on from Contraras and look at acquiring Moreno from the Blue Jays. They should resign Quintana too.
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Blue Jays are not motivated to trade Moreno. They're fielding conversations on the other two catchers, though I'm not real sure how motivated they are to trade Kirk either, really. He has a bat that teams usually keep at that age, at that level of control, let alone that position.DeJong has $12 million remaining on his contract. His salary for 2023 will be $9 million and then he has buyouts for two option years.
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DG, Toronto does need a SS too that can field. There are a couple SS on the market that could fill that for them. Their own home town reporters have mentioned that they are not eager to increase payroll.
The Cards have said that the payroll was going up. Is their a possible win win there? -
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Will players participating in the World Baseball Classic also participate in Spring Training with their MLB teams? If so, any idea which dates? Want to finally check Spring Training off the bucket list, but not if stars like Arenado and Goldy will not be there at Roger Dean!
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Yes. Those players will start spring training with their teams -- for the most part -- and then return to the teams to finish spring training. Exhibition games for the WBC teams are March 8-9, and camp will open shortly before that. The championship game for the WBC is March 21. So anywhere in that stretch, say 2 1/2 weeks, maybe three, the players will not be with their teams.
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I think Beltran is a sure HOFer. I think Beltran was better than Jimmy ballgame, but, if Edmonds can't even get 5% of the vote to stay on the ballot -- a travesty, IMHO -- does Beltran get 10%? Which way are you leaning on him? With the ballot losing names this year, I'm hopeful voters won't have to leave people off that they'd prefer to vote for as they've had to in previous years -- and that could have been part of Edmonds issue too.
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I voted for Jim Edmonds. I've also voted for Andruw Jones. I am leaning toward voting for Carlos Beltran, though I reserve the right to do more research and reporting before coming to a final conclusion, and I have not even started doing that for the current ballot. I will, per usual, share my ballot so you can see where I ultimately ended.Edmonds' had bad timing. He went up against Griffey on the same ballot. Jones never had to do that. That's the issue with being the second best on the ballot at the same position.
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2 trade proposals- Tyler O’Neill and Dakota Hudson for Sean Murphy and AJ Puk? What that get it done? To much? Second would be of epic trade proportions in the comic industry. DC sends the under utilized team of Legion of Super Hero’s to Marvel for the under utilized ( at least in the Marvel movie world) Fantastic Four, throw in Silver Surfer and Ghost Rider. That’s a six for well a Legion trade? Think of all the future ( 31st century) draft picks Marvel would get?
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1) A team like Oakland would be moving Murphy to reduce the cost with a player like him entering arbitration and due a raise. They would not take in a deal two players already in arbitration and due raises. They would be spending more in the deal you suggest and also losing on the years of control side, too. This is not the deal they're looking for.Let's look at years of control to see how it ends up in the deal: Murphy (3) + Puk (4) in return for O'Neill (2) + Hudson (3). That's not much balance for the A's who want to reduce cost and increase control. This does the opposite. Unless they think they can flip O'Neill like they did Holliday for a greater package at the trade deadline.2) Fantastic Four is about to become the franchise team for the MCU. It's coming. Fantastic Four is going to be the engine movie that drives the whole franchise toward the next Avengers doubleheader. Marvel isn't trading their prize from the Fox deal. We'll see if it works out. We've seen Fantastic Four flame out before as the face of a franchise.
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DG I think we may have a rare case of someone being irreplaceable? It seems to me that one intangible thing the roster will need is that veteran mentor that Albert provided to players like Yepez and Donovan to name just two. Holiday will help, but he will be a coach, same with Willie. Not quite the same. So to replace Albert you would get ___________ ?
Is there anybody walking the earth that can do that? Bonds maybe, but he's left-handed. Big Mac? Maybe but both of those guys are retired coaches now. There is nobody playing who is even close.
Have we found somebody irreplaceable? -
I understand where you're coming from. The players you mention would not hit in the lineup in addition to bringing that presence. Neither will Matt Holliday, but do not dismiss so casually the fondness that clubhouse has for Holliday. As close as they can get, they got in their bench coach.He just won't hit 20+ homers in the lineup.Someone else will have to do that.
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Interesting question. Let's try to do this bullet-point, too, if that's OK?-- The awards are announced after the season, but let's not call them postseason awards because the voting is done before the first pitch of the postseason. That's right. We all get an email telling us our ballots are due and they must be in before the first pitch of the postseason, period.-- There are 30 ballots for each award. They are allocated two to a city. So, St. Louis gets two NL MVP, two NL Cy Young, two Manager, and two Jackie Robinson ballots. KC gets two of each AL award ballots.-- In many ways, we're tradition bound with these ballots, and it would be an interesting question whether we look at another alternative. A MAJOR REASON for the above setup is to assure that there is geographic balance for the voting and that New York, with more media outlets and more BBWAA members, does not get an imbalance of the ballots. The current setup, for example, assures that there are 10 voters from the AL West who got a long look at Ohtani and 10 voters from the AL East who saw the most of Judge, and not 10 voters from the AL West and 74 from the AL East.(Aside: The St. Louis chapter of the BBWAA is one of the largest because of The Sporting News and how long it was here, and all employees at TSN were grandfathered into the BBWAA because of when it was founded more than 100 years ago. So, it's entirely likely that if you opened up the MVP voting to more members like the Hall vote, STL would have the largest voting body in the time zone.)The chairperson of each chapter determines who votes for each award. In St. Louis, the tradition has been to give ballots to the writers who see the most games total in person. The MVP has also gone to the writers who have been on the beat the longest. Through the past 18-19 years I've had the chance to vote on all four of the ballots.In the end, reporting and research are the rules with the ballot, so there's definitely a conversation that could be hand on if the current model is the best.I'm always up to hear suggestions.