Cardinals Have Work To Do

Tejada? Wouldn't Tejada just add to the whole older-breaking-down-creaky-not-so-good-anymore thing the Cardinals seem to have going on?

If it were me, I'd get Renteria over Tejada any day.

Has anybody considered that Edmonds may not come back? Or is that even a possibility?

I'd like to see what Duncan could do with Silva.

I'm not sure that I'd rather have Renteria over Tejeda, because Edgar isn't too far from the breaking down stage himself. Tejeda hasn't been to the NL, so maybe he it would spark his career?

Tejada and Cash for Ryan, Duncan, and Reyes. Is that lopsided? Maybe 4 million to the Cards?

No way they'd have to give up rasmus. I'd say reyes and a duncan should be enough. However, I don't think the cards will trade duncan so just something along those lines.

I don't get why everyone says the Cards will go get a power hitter...

AP - 35+
Ankiel 25+
Duncan 25+
Rolen 20+
Edmonds 15+
Ryan 10+

What they actually need is a leadoff type 2b or ss.

They probably should just keep Eck

Ryan had 4 HRs in 190 ABs. So Give him an average of 500 ABs it projects out to 10

I'm not so sure that Ankiel can be penciled in for 25 home runs in 2008. Sure, he's a great story, but the minor league numbers aren't great, and the walk rate is a touch scary. I definitely think Tejada is a great buy low candidate, especially with him coming to the NL. Given the O's fetish for mediocre corner types (Gibbons, Millar, Huff, etc.), Duncan could certainly anchor a deal. It'll be interesting to see if Jocketty is willing to give a free agent contract this summer (if he's still there). He was very hesitant to pull the trigger on one this year, but there is definitely more of a sense of urgency under the Arch this year.

Really, the cardinals finished with a .405 slg%, good for, get this, 24th in the bigs. Looks like they might need a little help in this department.

Here watch this, Pittsburgh pirates are going to win the division. Really, Duffy can steal 50 bases, Bay can hit 35 HR, so can Laroache, nady's a lock for 20, sanchez, batista, paulino, Wilson all in double digits. Gorzelany, and snell are aces, maholm and duke have underperformed their perifrials, and Capps had a two something ERA and could get more saves given the opportunity.

See my point, Any team can win if they get max performance out of all their players for a year, even pittsburgh, but it so very rarely happens.

You're expecting everyone of the players named to increase their performance next season.A lot of teams would win if 6 of their position players performed at a higher level next year than this.

well when basically every single starter missed time or played through significant injuries, its not that much to expect better performance. do you honestly expect Rolen to only have 8 HRs next season?

youth with experience is the key of the success for dismissing rolen, Eckstein, Edmonds, incarnation (not nor as they signed it) and Reyes (better than softbol played) and to go to equipment like marlins or milwakee or others to bring to players like jj hardy, Braun, goatherd, uggla but in fact not who is the one that is in charge to buy players to being very bad Kennedy please is necessary to be very desperate to let itself rob haci the money the point is that we must give another semblante to the equipment not as they dismissed suppan and to weaver many misfortunes had been saved

because to inhale by matt clement or silva and wolf to even pitcher losing because not to give it everything by they johan Santana and roy halladay also I insist on the young players as a short field or third base or center field

***I see the Cardinals as the new Giants. One inner-circle Hall-of-Famer carries the team while the GM pretends to carry out a plan. Walt Jocketty's put together some good teams in the past, but is there anyone to get excited about, young or old, other than Pujols and Carpenter?***

As far as players to get excited about? Wainwright, Top 10 pitcher in NL this year. Molina, Gold Glove defense figuring out how to hit MLB pitching. And we saw what Scott Rolen can do without the scar tissue bothering him in his shoulder. He went 100 ABs (a month) after getting a cortisone shot to increase the motion in his arm and posted .293/.333/.505/.838 OPS with Gold Glove defense.

Like the team he put together in 2004 and 2005 that won a combined 205 games? Those teams came after a broken down Cardinals team in 2003, that Jocketty retooled by trading for a young starter (Marquis), having a good starter return from extensive surgery (Carpenter) and rebuilding a bullpen that was the demise of the 2003 team.

And let's not fool ourselves, for as inept as the offense has been these last two seasons (2006 and 2007), a healthy Chris Carpenter and Mark Mulder over those two seasons brings the Cardinals division titles in both years.

Should they expect anything out of either of those going forward? No. But coming into the 2006 season, should Jocketty have expected one of his Top 2 pitchers to suffer a massive shoulder injury? In 2007, should he have expected his ace to need TJ surgery?

The Cardinals will increase payroll and make adjustments to hopefully give them 'stability' in the rotation. This was a team that was 9 outs away from being in 1st place in the NL Central with less than a month to go with a 7 man rotation, a 3rd basemen who could barely move one arm, a LF with a sports hernia that kept him from being able to walk most days and a revolving door in the MIF.

They need help in the rotation and offensive production out of a MIF spot, no doubt. But to blast Jocketty as something of a fool doesn't jive.

The Cardinals can also backload contracts for players starting bigger payouts in 2009 as Edmonds, Encarnacion, Looper, Izzy, and Mulder come off the books, Izzy being the only one of the bunch that is remotely worth what he is being paid.

And as morbid as this sounds, they may get relief from Encarnacion for 2008, as he may choose to retire if he does not regain full eyesight in his eye again.

I'm not trying to paint a rosey picture of the 2008 Cardinals. As they stand right now, they are a very flawed team. But stability in the starting rotation and a MIF that could outhit a girls softball team would go a long way to giving the team a shot at another division title.

Wow, that's alot of uninformed statements backed up with some solid generalizations.

Chris Shelton=Rick Ankiel? Chris Shelton came up and outperformed his minor league career, Ankiel carried over what he was able to do over an entire season in AAA and what he's been able to do his entire baseball career.

The part where I said the Cardinals shouldn't expect anything out of Mulder or Carpenter from here going forward was lost on you?

And, just to go back to the 'Chris Carpenter wins the Cardinals the division' in 2007, if Carpenter had put up his worst season as a St. Louis Cardinal for the full 2007 season, he still would have been worth roughly 5 'wins' value wise. For a team that finished 7 games back, 5 wins is big deal.

The Cardinals aren't the only team that has had injuries. Every team has injuries. The Phillies had it worse than the Cardinals did. So did the Dodgers.

The Mulder trade was terrible from 2006 going forward. For 2005, it improved the team's pitching staff. It gave the Cardinals 3 starters in the Top 20 in the NL in Wins and ERA. It also helped the post the best ERA in the NL. The Cardinals were a team on the cusp of winning a World Series that need that final piece to push them over the top. They went out and traded the future to get a veteran pitcher for a 2 year rental. The Rolen injury at the hands of Hee Sop Choi derailed that plan.

I shudder at the logic that says if the Cards stand pat or make minor adjustments the team will be fine. Same thing we heard from the White Sox at the beginning of this year.

That too was a team coming off a WS victory. The next year was a disappointment but instead of making significant changes the Sox just hoped that their players would be healthy and play better. Didn't work out so well for them in this year.

If the Cards try that same strategy we will be looking at a $100m roster that goes 81-81 if they are lucky.

"So you basically have two Duncan's in the corners"

Offensively by the way...he is WORLDS better on defense.

Tim, that guy doesn’t have the numbers right at all…
His problems come in on the Mulder, he adds his performance bonus in prematurely. He also doesn’t factored deferred money; here’s how it really looks:

Pujols 16M (3M deferred)
Rolen 12M
Edmonds 8M
Carp 10.5M (2M deferred)
Encarnacion 6.5M
Mulder 6.5M
Looper 5.5M
Kennedy 3.5M
Spiezio 2.3M
Franklin 2.25M
Flores 1M
~ 74.05M – 5M deferred = $69.05M due to 11 players in 08

Options:
Izzy 8M
Pineiro 4M
Taguchi 1.1M
Bennett 0.9M
~ $14M in options to 4 players

Even if all options are picked up:
$83.05M for 15 Players ~ still less than he quoted for 3 more players

Then you have to figure that a good portion of Carpenter’s, Mulder’s and Encarnacion’s salary will be picked up buy insurance. Say Juan misses the full season and the pitchers both miss 1/2, that’s probably another 10M or so being freed up…

Lastly, the current 07 team salary isn’t 100M ~ its $90.28M…

HL,

Yeah, that guy is kind of a joke if he’s making huge articles based off incorrect or blatantly skewed information. Its kind of like saying “well Adam Dunn will never help anyone with his bat and is a complete waste of space since he only hits about .250” while ignoring the 40+ HR and 100+ RBI he puts up nearly every year…

And you sure Juans contract isn’t insured? I know that sometimes certain body parts cant be if there is a injury history on it (gee thanks Albert Belle and Mike Hamton), but I thought atleast basic insurance is a must on all players ~ and since this was a fluke occurrence it would be covered. I mean even if you cant insure say Mark Priors arm, you would have insurance if he broke a toe running laps in the OF…

No matter though, the only thing thats really important is the fact that the Cards are not in the horrible situation that this guy tries to make it out to be. They will probably be paying about 80M to about 14 players with insurance even possibly knocking that down to as low as 70ish… Add quite a few LgMin possibilities and a tiny bit of Arbitration (which I don’t believe 5M in raises there either, he has Taguchi in there who has an option, Maroth who probably wont be back or will cost less if he is and Ankiel who is happy just to be able to have the shot to play and would probably sign cheap leaving you only Molina, Wellemeyer and Miles who will not be +5M) and youre not in that bad of a position at all…

Since the topic was "money committed", they have not spent nearly as much as that guy claims and the statement is completely correct. Your continued sounding off on how much you think they suck and will never do anything right or whatever doesn’t change that one bit...

Again, I don’t care what you think about them because that’s not what I was talking about. I just said in my last post that I know you think they suck and will never do anything right or whatever, we all understand you feel that way… I didn’t mention talent on the field though, what their needs are or anything to the extent; I was talking about money. So how you can take a statement I make about ‘topic A’ and say its wrong or whatever because you don’t think it equals ‘topic B’ is beyond me… But on the other hand it is you; it’s the same things I’ve experienced in every single conversation with you before and I should just expect it from you I guess…

"If your statement meant ONLY money wise, then yes, you are correct, they probably aren't in that bad of shape"

yes, that is the only thing I was talking about! The entire paragraph (which you apparently ignored) that followed the sentence you copied was about money! The paragraph before the sentence you copied was about money! The one before it? You guessed it… Money! The post before it? Money once more… Yet you copy it and tell me that I was wrong?

I don’t see how you can take a couple posts about money that never talk about anything outside of money, find one sentence right smack dab in the middle of all the money talk and change it to how you feel about the Cardinals… Obviously the only thing you wanted to do was talk bad about the Cards and looked for any sentence to give you that opportunity ~ that shows bias or bitterness or something along those lines in my eyes…