Join columnist Jeff Gordon for his live St. Louis sports chat at 1 p.m. Friday
Bring your Cards, Blues, Mizzou, SLU and MLS questions and comments, and talk to columnist Jeff Gordon in his weekly live chat.
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Thanks for the chat, Gordo, and happy Friday!
You say Naughton lacks "swing-and-miss stuff for high-leverage work," but with all due respect, isn't it just as important to not walk people in high leverage situations? And also to not periodically leave pitches over the middle of the plate to get clobbered? It just feels to me as a 50-year observer of the sport, that for pitchers ERA is all that matters. Not K's, not spin rates, not velocity, not barrel percentages, or any other overthinker esoterica. I don't mean to be stubborn or simplistic, but it just seems self-evident to me that the thing that CAN'T be measured -- throwing the ball in the zone, but not in the middle -- is the most important quality of all. (Check Woodford's pitcher heat maps for 2021 and 2022, and you'll see a guy who improved profoundly at pitching on the edges of the strikezone, for instance.)
Thanks for letting an old fan rant, and enjoy your weekend, good scribe! -
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The trouble with guys like Naughton is inherited runners. Relievers can throw strikes and induce soft contact and still allow inherited runners to score. A bullpen needs guys who at least have a chance to strand guys with strikeouts. So Naughton is more of a middle reliever and spot lefty specialist. -
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The Pirates can ASK for a Juan Soto package, just like Oakland asked for Nootbaar and Donovan. Nobody is giving the Pirates anything remotely like that. I can ASK Salma Hayek on Twitter for a New Year's Eve date. But the smart money is not on my side. Sigh.
Thanks for the chat, Jeff. Do you think the Cards are semi-actively shopping Ryan Helsley, trying to get max value for him coming off his likely career year? His Baseball Trade Values evaluation places him at the same neighborhood as Hence/Graceffo, and if I could get a very, very good starting pitcher prospect like one of those two, I think I'd make that deal. Unless Liberatore or Connor Thomas becomes a mid-rotation stalwart real fast, the Cards badly need *starting* pitchers. Relievers you can just sorta find. Not starters. -
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What does it say about the FO’s talent evaluation, foresight, strategy etc when they make such a drastic change from a pitch to contact model to a swing and miss model in a single year? Are they desperate and unsure of their own thoughts and ideas? A follower instead of a trend setter? What should the fan base be appeases with any explanations that are put forth?
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Baseball changed. Thanks to pitching labs and advanced training techniques, more pitchers are adding more velocity and greater spin rates. On the player development side, this has created even greater interest in high school pitchers with projectable frames, like Jordan Hicks. There is greater potential to build guys up. While the Cardinals continue to target college pitchers who can rise fast into at least depth roles in the big leagues, on Randy Flores' watch the Cardinals are looking for higher ceilings too -- as they have with hitters.College pitchers are often abused by their schools, so they often need rebuilding after turning pro. But the Cardinals have had some success adding velocity to guys like Zack Thompson and Gordon Graceffo after they get into the system.Also, let's look at where hitting is going. More guys have more power because there are one dimensional and focused on doing damage. A guy like Nolan Gorman doesn't have to hit a ball just right to get it over the fence. Pitchers can make good pitches and watch them leave the park, especially when the ball is livelier at the time. Hence the value of the swing and miss in this Three True Outcomes era.
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My son and I went to a MIZZOU football game earlier this year. During a break, the jumbotron showed a groundhog doing the Freddie Mercury "Aye-Oh" bit with the audience. The student section was all over it! Any chance the Blues adopt this to replace the horrid John Denver routine?
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For whatever reason game presentation folks across the NHL love the John Denver singalong. How did this happen? How many hockey fans drive country roads? This isn't bass fishing!Still, I was holding up OK until the Blues brought a John Denver impersonator to perform on the concourse and on the big screen before the game. My breaking point was reached.
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Hiya, Bobo!
There's something I don't get. The Cardinals have won the Team Gold Glove for the past two years (I think it's a Fielding Bible thing), and yet instead of playing to that particular team strength, they apparently are going to bend over backwards to try and acquire *strikeout* guys instead of contact guys -- which would be no big deal, except I feel certain that strikeout guys will cost more because (1)they're rarer, and (2)other teams NEED them much more than the Cards. And also, if you fetishize strikeouts and ignore control pitchers, you wind up with highly effective guys being given little or no opportunity/responsibility (cough, Woodford, cough), and guys with velocity/movement being given too much opportunity despite their poor control/command.
Strikeouts are intrinsically good. But not as good as low ERA's. And frequently the pitch movement that generates strikeouts is the selfsame movement that makes it hard for the pitcher to locate consistently. So along with the K's, you also see more walks, and more pitches left over the middle. See Hicks, Jordan. Anyway, have a good weekend, Gordo. -
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Re free agency mega-deals, I say that if the "price of poker" goes up to an unreasonable extent, then you do not play. Simple as that. Do. Not. Play. Just like with college tuition costs. If schools want you to pay 40, 50, 60 grand per year, then forget it. There is always a threshold you simply do not cross. There's junior college and community college and night school and trade school and all brands of continuing education opportunities. Don't radically overpay for X, when you can pay 10 cents on the dollar for a Y that's nearly the same quality. If you're a middle class family, or a middle class ballclub, you be smart. Smart is best.
Question, Gordo. If Ivan Herrera really clobbers Triple-A this year (he posted a 110 OPS+ in Triple-A last year) do you think the Cards use him in, say, a 60/40 or 65/35 tandem with Contreras going forward, or is Ivan strictly trade bait in this scenario? -
I believe Ivan has a chance to earn his place, since Contreras has enough power to take at bats at DH and first base. That would create the need for a catcher who can hit -- and it would also lessen opportunities for all of these young DH types who can hit for power.
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I want to trade Gorman, not Carlson. Gorman is 90% redundant due to the breakthrough by Brendan Donovan in 2022, and the numerous other DH types on the big league team. Or you trade Donovan and keep Gorman. Doesn't matter which. Just like it doesn't matter whether you trade Yepez or Burleson, but you gotta trade one because you can't play them both, and the team has needs -- chiefly pitching, of course. No one is "giving up" on Gorman, but there isn't playing time for all these guys. Not even close. And player development received wisdom says their skills/trade value will gradually atrophy if they're playing 3 or 4 days a week instead of 6 or 7.
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Sure. Rick Majerus had them up to a very good level. Travis has been close with these 23-victory teams, but he hasn't gotten over that hump. I believed this was the team to change that. They looked like it, too, until they let the Auburn game get away. They haven't been great since then.
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Not ringing a bell. I remember the strobe light slip-and-slides down the hall (ouch), "pennying" victims in their dorm and suffocating them with rubbing alcohol fumes (never did that myself), the Saturday night danger of having the room next to the communal bathroom (not me) when guys lose control of bodily functions . . . good times.
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Gentleman's wager, Gordo: I say Masataka Yoshida makes at least three All-Star games during his five years in Boston, and over that half decade is one of the 20 best hitters in baseball, with an OPS+ of 130 or better. I think the Cards and others really missed the boat on the little guy. When you're one of the two or three best power hitters in your league, while also being the very toughest to strike out, you are a truly gifted batsman. Nobody in MLB has ever done that. Not even the amazing 1938-41 version of DiMaggio. (He fanned just 3.5% of the time, but that wasn't among the lowest 10 K rates in MLB, believe it or not.)
I wish the Cards had used the "Contreras money" for Yoshida or Kodai Senga, and just gone with Herrera/Knizner at backstop. If it didn't work, then you make a trade in-season for a starting catcher (probably from Toronto). Milwaukee showed with the Adames deal a couple years ago, that you don't have to wait until late July to make trades. -
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Hey, Bobo!
I loved, loved, loved what Quintana did for the Cards in 2022. But as you implied, he was coming off a string of poor seasons. If the Redbirds could've retained him for, say, 6-8 million per year, that would've been a fine deal. Anything over 10M per year is dangerous, and he of course well exceeded that.
My question, Jeff, is about Juan Yepez. Per all publicly available information, he is among the worst defensive players of the past...well a long time. Really, really awful. So what's stopping Marmol from simply sticking him at DH for 130-140 games and leaving him alone? He has no platoon issues and can't play the field. This is a born DH. This is the definition of a DH. And he could be a really, really good one. -
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