***Official 2021 STL Cardinals Thread***

[BigRedChief]

2021 Opening Day Lineup

Spoiler!

1. Tommy Edman (S) - 2B
2. Paul Goldschmidt (R) - 1B
3. Nolan Arenado (R) - 3B
4. Paul DeJong (R) - SS
5. Tyler O'Neill (R) - LF
6. Yadier Molina (R) - C
7. Dylan Carlson (S) - CF
8. Justin Williams (L) - RF
9. Pitcher

For the new Cardinal fans that joined the Planet since last year.....

2020 Thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=329273
2019 Thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=320239
2018 Thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=312812
2012 Thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=254619
etc.
All the way back to 2006 WS
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=312812

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

He had a bullpen full of starters he could have pulled from.

Reyes has been dog shit terrible since the all star break. Period. His last 2 leverage situation he gave up game losing HR before the playoffs.

Schildt batted Carpenter in the middle of the lineup countless times this season hitting under .200.

I don't want to hear it, he was terrible at managing. He may be a decent coach but that's not his job.

He didn’t really, though. Flaherty and Hudson just got back after not pitching for months and would have been used in a high leverage situation that they’re not normally used for. It’d be us asinine as Matheny using Wacha in 2014 at SF.

Regarding Reyes, if he was so bad, then why didn’t Mozeliak do something about it and shun him to the IL with a bullshit injury or, hear me out, prepare him as a starter going into the season(like he’s pretty much been prepared to do his entire career) instead of forcing him on Shildt in a role that he’s not designed for?

Re: Carpenter- sure, he deserves criticism for batting him in the middle of the order. However, that liability is still on Mozeliak for not cutting ties with him and forcing Shildt to use him.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Rams Fan

He didn’t really, though. Flaherty and Hudson just got back after not pitching for months and would have been used in a high leverage situation that they’re not normally used for. It’d be us asinine as Matheny using Wacha in 2014 at SF.

Regarding Reyes, if he was so bad, then why didn’t Mozeliak do something about it and shun him to the IL with a bullshit injury or, hear me out, prepare him as a starter going into the season(like he’s pretty much been prepared to do his entire career) instead of forcing him on Shildt in a role that he’s not designed for?

Re: Carpenter- sure, he deserves criticism for batting him in the middle of the order. However, that liability is still on Mozeliak for not cutting ties with him and forcing Shildt to use him.

The unbelievably sad truth is that for most of the season, until Nootbaar came up, Carpenter was probably our best option off the bench against RHP. Yeah - the bench was THAT bad.

And the bullpen was populated by cast-offs and kids that can't throw strikes. The starting staff was a 40 yr old and a bunch of guys who might give you 3 innings before they get chased until it was just populated by four 40 yr olds, only one of whom could hit 91 on his best days. And a wide variety of slop-tossing lefties at that...

And Shild took that team to 90+ wins. And he's 'terrible' because he picked Reyes over Whitley in a game we lost because we went 0-11 w/ RISP despite getting at least a dozen balls to drive in those situations.

Shildt is nothing resembling a problem.

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Mikolas first contract had excellent value that he immediately torched with an extension a year too early.

And I'll say the same thing about the Goldschmidt deal I said then - it WASN'T below market. It WAS the market. If anyone was offering more, Arizona takes it. And it wasn't until the last 4 months of this season that Goldschmidt played to his salary, let alone the prospect capital we traded to get him.

And the funny thing about the Arenado deal - when the rumors first started I crunched the numbers and here's what I said at the time (this was before it picked up steam, mind you - just seemed like more Mozeliak bloviating):

Spoiler!

Regarding his value...hmm....

Let's say he hit his peak season last year and try to scrub a bit for the shoulder injury. He's been such a steady player that a healthy Arenado is unlikely to be much different than the guy he was for the 5 years prior. So set his baseline at 6 wins to be fair and assuming his shoulder comes back.

Good rule of thumb is -.5 per year at 30 and beyond. I think you want to add another 1/2 win lost at 34 and 36 as those are typically pretty big dropoff seasons for most. WAR should also adjust for Coors factors fairly well because it is supposed to be ballpark adjusted.

So starting at 5.5 wins in 2021 and moving forward 6 years, that gives you 24.5 wins over the full deal by bWAR. But here's the problem - Arenado get a lot of WAR value from his defense and I've never thought bWAR does a very good job of weighing a defensive win share - it inflates them, IMO. I think fangraphs does a better job there. By fWAR his baseline for 2021 is really a 5 win player rather than 5.5. So that nets you an fWAR of 21.5 over the 6 years when re-scaled.

So assuming a return to health, no inordinately large 'non-coors' adjustment and a basic aging curve, you're looking at a 21-25 win player over the next 6 years. Placing him as being 'worth' $170-200 million if you accept $8 million/win. Bear in mind that I hate this figure, I think it's incredibly easy to dissect and if you're building a team around $8 million win shares, your team will suck.

A $6 million/win return is actually getting you on a path towards building a winning ballclub. That say's he'd be worth $125-150 million over those 6 years. He's due to make $199 million.

So here's the thing. The only way I can get to a point where Arenado is 'worth' what he'll be paid is to A) Accept full health in his injured shoulder B)Give roughly equal weight to a defensive win share as an offensive one and C) accept $8 million/WAR as a 'winning' move, which is to say that last year's Harrison Bader is actually a $24 million/season player if he plays at that level going forward.

Um....yeah....he ain't.

I'd go the low side of every single one of those choices and say that he's worth roughly $125 million over the rest of the deal which means the Rockies are upside down by $75 million.

They'd have to take Carpenter, Fowler AND Mikolas off our hands to start earning any prospect capital in return. They won't. So we should probably pivot.

My takeaway in there was that the Rockies would need to absorb almost $50 million to get to break even on a salary dump (I suggested they take on that much in bad contracts) and they would never do that so it wouldn't get done. Low and behold that's EXACTLY what they absorbed. They didn't take on bad contracts, they just paid cash. But I pegged the market for the guy. When everyone else was sucking off Mozeliak, it was because too many of these old talking heads still have no concept of surplus value.

The Cardinals didn't get Arenado for below market value either.

And in the end they didn't get Ozuna for below market value because evidently the rest of baseball knew what we, the fans, didn't know at the time - his shoulder was wrecked. Oh by the way, Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen, the guys we moved in that deal, might just have as much trade value as Jack Flaherty has right now. Alcantara almost certainly does at least (Gallen probably did but that elbow issue will scare teams off).

Man, if you're reaching for Neshek, you're really scraping bottom. Name a team that doesn't stumble-ass backwards into a reliever every year or two. That's the nature of reliever volatility and exactly why you shouldn't do dumb shit like pay retail at $36 million for Andrew Miller or give Brett Cecil 4 guaranteed years.

Hasn’t Goldschmidt historically performed better as the season’s progressed?

You’re probably right that he gave up market value for Goldschmidt. Losing Kelly is going to stink.

Arenado-I don’t know man. They basically gave up nothing of significant value to take on Arenado’s contract. I think he’ll be fine long term.

Alcantara will be something nice, but I value a starting outfielder more than I do a pitcher.

Mozeliak’s best moves since 2008 have been the following:
Holliday trade/signing
Not signing Pujols
Signing Berkman
Trading Craig for Lackey
Signing Neshek
Signing Mikolas(first contract)
Signing Beltran
Trading for Arenado
Trading for Goldschmidt
Rasmus trade

Mozeliak isn’t a great executive, but he’s not terrible. He’s above average and is towing the company line. I don’t think he should be leading the Cardinals given his propensity to spend money poorly recently along with being the person behind the rotation and bullpen being a cluster ****.

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

The unbelievably sad truth is that for most of the season, until Nootbaar came up, Carpenter was probably our best option off the bench against RHP. Yeah - the bench was THAT bad.

And the bullpen was populated by cast-offs and kids that can't throw strikes. The starting staff was a 40 yr old and a bunch of guys who might give you 3 innings before they get chased until it was just populated by four 40 yr olds, only one of whom could hit 91 on his best days. And a wide variety of slop-tossing lefties at that...

And Shild took that team to 90+ wins. And he's 'terrible' because he picked Reyes over Whitley in a game we lost because we went 0-11 w/ RISP despite getting at least a dozen balls to drive in those situations.

Shildt is nothing resembling a problem.

Exactly.

Shildt was given a shitty ass selection of starters and relievers to deal with and somehow won 90 games with that.

Starting lineup didn’t click until late in the season.

Mozeliak deserves credit for assembling the good parts of the roster as well as the bad. He deserves all the blame for putting Shildt in a shit situation to begin with.

[Prison Bitch]

So the Arenado deal looks like it is 7/164 for The Loo, after the Rockies’ deduction. ZIPS projected him at 4.0 fWAR this year which he hit on the nose. So after Year 1 he returned 32 of the 164 owed.

Can they get the 132 remaining back from him? First, that’s the wrong question to ask since *every* FA deal (which this essentially is) won’t return full value. And you’re paying more upfront for less on the backend. Since Arenado agreed to defer some of his deal (how much and how it’s structured are unknown), that mitigates some of it from a TMV perspective.

Let’s therefore say we need to really just get to 115. Is that do-able? ZiPS preseason had him at 2022-25 as 4.3, 3.6, 2.9, 2.1. I assume the final two years he’s 1.5 and 1.0. That’s total war of 15.4. At 8.5M per War that’s a value of 130.


However ZiPS downgraded his next two seasons. 2022 dropped from 4.3 to 2.8....2023 from 3.6 to 2.3. If that’s how his base case, he’ll prob return about 80M of that 115


TLDR: next year will determine what kind of future value he has.

[DJ's left nut]

My point being they shouldn't have HAD to give up anything of value to take on his contract. Arenado with his contract in tow had a negative asset value. As I laid out - aggressively the Rockies were $75 million underwater and conservatively about $25 million. The fact that the Rockies landed right in the middle in what they sent over tells me I was balls on right in how I reviewed that.

Why should the Cardinals have had to give up significant prospect capital to take on an upside down asset? They shouldn't and they didn't. Oh, and Arenado had a full no-trade clause so he tied Colorado's hands as it was.

The Holliday move was damn was in 2009, man. No, he didn't sign Pujols, but not for lack of trying. Same thing with Heyward - he TRIED to screw both of those up but someone was willing to be dumber.

Berkman was a good signing. Beltran was a GREAT signing. Craig for Lackey was nice but it also cost us Joe Kelly who's been an excellent reliever. Rasmus was a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE trade and nothing more than a salary dump. Edwin Jackson was traded that morning to the first team willing to take on Mark Teahen's deal, then flipped to us in the afternoon. So we traded Rasmus for a guy in Dotel that could've been had for a spring training invite a few months earlier and a lefthanded reliever. No, you don't have to give up a 23 yr old CFer who the season prior had a 3.5 win season and 2 seasons later had a 5 win season for that. You give up AA organizational filler for trades like that, not a former top 5 prospect in all of MLB who had played extremely well at a young age at the big league level.

But for the Furcal deal saving everyone involved in that things ass, the Rasmus trade is a complete debacle. Oh, and the Furcal deal was made necessary by dumping Brendan Ryan (4 win season that year) and signing that piece of shit Ryan Theriot to play SS in his place.

He has 3 moves on that list that he deserves absolutely unqualified praise for. Holliday, Berkman and Beltran. Neshek is just a nothing signing. Everyone has those if you throw enough shit at the wall and everything throws shit at the wall when they're building a bullpen. That doesn't move the needle.

[Prison Bitch]

You’re prob right. Didn’t know they gave up anyone. Whoever Gonber is he was worth 1.3 this year (10.5m). His zips is about 1 win each of next 3, so that’s 40M the Cards shouldn’t have given up.

I’d have to know who replaced him in The Loo pen. I assume he wasn’t going to ever start for you. If the guy who took his spot offsets that.....

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Prison Bitch

You’re prob right. Didn’t know they gave up anyone. Whoever Gonber is he was worth 1.3 this year (10.5m). His zips is about 1 win each of next 3, so that’s 40M the Cards shouldn’t have given up.

I’d have to know who replaced him in The Loo pen. I assume he wasn’t going to ever start for you. If the guy who took his spot offsets that.....

Oh he'd have started this year, for sure.

His replacement was some combination of Wade LeBlanc, Johan Oviedo and Jake Woodford.

It was....not great.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

My point being they shouldn't have HAD to give up anything of value to take on his contract. Arenado with his contract in tow had a negative asset value. As I laid out - aggressively the Rockies were $75 million underwater and conservatively about $25 million. The fact that the Rockies landed right in the middle in what they sent over tells me I was balls on right in how I reviewed that.

Why should the Cardinals have had to give up significant prospect capital to take on an upside down asset? They shouldn't and they didn't. Oh, and Arenado had a full no-trade clause so he tied Colorado's hands as it was.

The Holliday move was damn was in 2009, man. No, he didn't sign Pujols, but not for lack of trying. Same thing with Heyward - he TRIED to screw both of those up but someone was willing to be dumber.

Berkman was a good signing. Beltran was a GREAT signing. Craig for Lackey was nice but it also cost us Joe Kelly who's been an excellent reliever. Rasmus was a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE trade and nothing more than a salary dump. Edwin Jackson was traded that morning to the first team willing to take on Mark Teahen's deal, then flipped to us in the afternoon. So we traded Rasmus for a guy in Dotel that could've been had for a spring training invite a few months earlier and a lefthanded reliever. No, you don't have to give up a 23 yr old CFer who the season prior had a 3.5 win season and 2 seasons later had a 5 win season for that. You give up AA organizational filler for trades like that, not a former top 5 prospect in all of MLB who had played extremely well at a young age at the big league level.

But for the Furcal deal saving everyone involved in that things ass, the Rasmus trade is a complete debacle. Oh, and the Furcal deal was made necessary by dumping Brendan Ryan (4 win season that year) and signing that piece of shit Ryan Theriot to play SS in his place.

He has 3 moves on that list that he deserves absolutely unqualified praise for. Holliday, Berkman and Beltran. Neshek is just a nothing signing. Everyone has those if you throw enough shit at the wall and everything throws shit at the wall when they're building a bullpen. That doesn't move the needle.

the Rasmus deal was great because we don’t win the WS without that trade. I’d make that deal every time. Same with the Frank Clark deal. Last two years have sucked really bad but we don’t win the SB without Clark.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

the Rasmus deal was great because we don’t win the WS without that trade. I’d make that deal every time. Same with the Frank Clark deal. Last two years have sucked really bad but we don’t win the SB without Clark.

So the Mulder trade was a good one as well?

Jesus I hate this line of reasoning. It’s just lazy.

[KChiefs1]

I’m wondering where Shildt will end up. Was he a Matheny guy? Were they close? Is Shildt a very religious guy? I’m just wondering if Shildt ends up in KC.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ThyKingdomCome15]

Not happy about this even a little. Mo has a lot to explain.

[comochiefsfan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

My point being they shouldn't have HAD to give up anything of value to take on his contract. Arenado with his contract in tow had a negative asset value. As I laid out - aggressively the Rockies were $75 million underwater and conservatively about $25 million. The fact that the Rockies landed right in the middle in what they sent over tells me I was balls on right in how I reviewed that.

Why should the Cardinals have had to give up significant prospect capital to take on an upside down asset? They shouldn't and they didn't. Oh, and Arenado had a full no-trade clause so he tied Colorado's hands as it was.

The Holliday move was damn was in 2009, man. No, he didn't sign Pujols, but not for lack of trying. Same thing with Heyward - he TRIED to screw both of those up but someone was willing to be dumber.

Berkman was a good signing. Beltran was a GREAT signing. Craig for Lackey was nice but it also cost us Joe Kelly who's been an excellent reliever. Rasmus was a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE trade and nothing more than a salary dump. Edwin Jackson was traded that morning to the first team willing to take on Mark Teahen's deal, then flipped to us in the afternoon. So we traded Rasmus for a guy in Dotel that could've been had for a spring training invite a few months earlier and a lefthanded reliever. No, you don't have to give up a 23 yr old CFer who the season prior had a 3.5 win season and 2 seasons later had a 5 win season for that. You give up AA organizational filler for trades like that, not a former top 5 prospect in all of MLB who had played extremely well at a young age at the big league level.

But for the Furcal deal saving everyone involved in that things ass, the Rasmus trade is a complete debacle. Oh, and the Furcal deal was made necessary by dumping Brendan Ryan (4 win season that year) and signing that piece of shit Ryan Theriot to play SS in his place.

He has 3 moves on that list that he deserves absolutely unqualified praise for. Holliday, Berkman and Beltran. Neshek is just a nothing signing. Everyone has those if you throw enough shit at the wall and everything throws shit at the wall when they're building a bullpen. That doesn't move the needle.

You talk about Mozeliak like he's Brett Veach.

I don't think he's that great either but he isn't a complete idiot.

[Jewish Rabbi]

Shildt will end up taking the Padres to the World Series.

[Chief Roundup]

Well, this is surprising and shocking.
You guys can debate who was worse between Mo and Schildt. The bottom line is that Mo is still here and Schildt is not.
The real question now becomes whom do we sign as the next Manager of the Stl. Cardinals? So who does everyone want/think we can or will end up with?