***Official 2024 STL Cardinals Thread ***

[BigRedChief]

I'll update the rosters and opening day lineup when its officially released.

2024 Opening Day roster.

Spoiler!

Our 2024 Opening Day roster is set!#ForTheLou pic.twitter.com/YdcaRqRVtz

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) March 27, 2024

For the new Cardinal fans that joined the Planet since last year, here are some of the historical threads going back to 2006.

Spoiler!

2023 thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=348136
2022 thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/show...8#post16877588
2021 Thread
https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=337124
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
\

[raybec 4]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

TON couldn't stay healthy for more than 80 games a season, that one ain't on the Cards and we will see how it plays out.

Hicks tearing it up as a starter is a whole different story.

A portion of the TON thing is absolutely on the Cards. Olli destroyed any chance of repairing that relationship with his bullshit.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by raybec 4

Man DJ, I know you want them to win but your standards are ridiculous. If hitting .073 with a .270 OPS isn't good enough for you then you will never be happy.

I audibly laughed when I saw his box pop up and the .270 OPS.

I mean that's a god-awful OBP. It's a solid BA if you're a guy who plays GG defense (and to Scott's credit, he's close in that regard).

But a .270 OPS is just staggeringly awful. And I'm not seeing anything to suggest it's bad luck. Even that RBI he had yesterday was a ball he mis-hit. Thompson's sitting there saying "Hey he let the ball get deep in the zone and took it the other way..." like hell he did. He just swung under the ball and it flared out. That was no sort of opposite field swing. His front shoulder flew open, his head came off the ball. It was bad swing and he got lucky.

Meanwhile Adolis Garcia, Randy Arozarena, Tyler O'Neill and even Lane Thomas could all be in the All Star Mix.

Anyone know if Jordan Walker's hit a ball in the air yet this season? Still can't believe they sent the guy to AAA to work on his swing, he openly defies them ("I'm going to keep doing what got me here") and then they brought him back to STL anyway because of fan unrest. Wonder of wonders, he's still hitting the ball straight into the goddamn ground.

This organization just doesn't know what the **** it's doing at any level.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

They were bragging about the crowd on the broadcast lulz and panned to the only full area. What a pathetic organization. Lying sacks of shit.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

TON couldn't stay healthy for more than 80 games a season, that one ain't on the Cards and we will see how it plays out.

Hicks tearing it up as a starter is a whole different story.

Yes it is.

Because it's EVERYONE. If it were just O'Neill I'd listen. It's every single guy that leaves this organization. O'Neill, Randy, Garcia, Thomas, Hicks, Gallen, Alcantara.

You could build the fundamentals of a WS roster with nothing but our cast-offs. When the Rays acquire a player, he's on my fantasy baseball radar immediately. I know they're going to get good production out of the guy. When we TRADE a guy, I do the same thing. Because this organization for the last 10 years or so had reduced the productivity of every single player on its roster by about 20%.

If Dylan Carlson gets traded, RUN to pick him up off waivers. Liberatore? Grab him.

Because there's not a single person this franchise won't **** up. They broke Nolan Arenado, FFS.

It's a rotten organization and O'Neill is just part of the same trend they've shown across the board. They're unwilling to work with players to maximize what they are and instead hammer them for what they aren't.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Worst outfield in baseball....not a damn one worth a shit....then you look at the guys they let go and it would be a damn fine group

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by raybec 4

A portion of the TON thing is absolutely on the Cards. Olli destroyed any chance of repairing that relationship with his bullshit.

Weird how his health suddenly declined and got real mysterious shortly after the manager shit on him for no reason and then the organization threw him under the bus to protect their sock-puppet manager.

Can't imagine why.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Pasta Little Brioni

Worst outfield in baseball....not a damn one worth a shit....then you look at the guys they let go and it would be a damn fine group

Impossible.

There's a logjam. I know because Ricky Horton keeps saying so.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Impossible.

There's a logjam. I know because Ricky Horton keeps saying so.

Speaking of embarrassing that a major league team has as an announcer. It's unbelievable how low this organization is on EVERY damn level

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by Pasta Little Brioni

Worst outfield in baseball....not a damn one worth a shit....then you look at the guys they let go and it would be a damn fine group

Your hate for Nootbar is so ****ing insane at this point.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Originally Posted by Rams Fan

Your hate for Nootbar is so ****ing insane at this point.

Not really. Brandon Marsh is what you think Noot is (and Marsh is a much better hiiter) and he hits ****ing 8th

Again as AN END OF THE ORDER/MAJORITY PLATOON GUY he is FINE. What about this don't you understand??? It's the playing in a prime lineup spot that's the problem

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Weird how his health suddenly declined and got real mysterious shortly after the manager shit on him for no reason and then the organization threw him under the bus to protect their sock-puppet manager.

Can't imagine why.

Come on man, lets not get too revisionist history here. His health didn't suddenly decline he had 1 outlier year he played in 141 games.

The Marmol incident was last year correct?

TON games played in STL he averaged 81 games a year with Shildt as his manager. He averaged 80 games a season his entire 5 year stint in STL.

2018 - 61 - Matheny fired Schildt interim
2019- 60 Shildt manger
2020- 51 - Shildt Manager
2021-141 ( amazing) Shildt manager
2022 - 90 Marmol
2023- 71 Marmol

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Come on man, lets not get too revisionist history here. His health didn't suddenly decline he had 1 outlier year he played in 141 games.

The Marmol incident was last year correct?

TON games played in STL he averaged 81 games a year with Shildt as his manager. He averaged 80 games a season his entire 5 year stint in STL.

2018 - 61 - Matheny fired Schildt interim
2019- 60 Shildt manger
2020- 51 - Shildt Manager
2021-141 ( amazing) Shildt manager
2022 - 90 Marmol
2023- 71 Marmol

Nobody's saying he's Lou Gehrig but you're also not being entirely fair here.

2018 was a partial season - he wasn't hurt, he started the season in the minors and earned his call-up. I think maybe he had a little injury in there that cost him a couple weeks but I honestly don't care about those that much. He was mostly healthy that year.

2020 was the COVID year - they played 58 games.

2019 was a little of A and a little of B. He was bad, got demoted, got himself back to the bigs, started for a bit, got hurt and missed most of August before he came back in a bench role.

22 was undeniably a cluster**** of injuries which led to changes in his training regimen. He even talked about how he was changing the way he ran the bases to avoid those sort of soft tissue injuries. Then on a play where he did precisely what he said he'd do (throttle down and tighten his turn) and in the process actually ran a BETTER 2nd to home time than his average, he got bawled out by his manager and screwed by his GM.

And he quit on the team.

O'Neill will probably get hurt again this season. It's what he do. But I think a motivated O'Neill gives you All-Star caliber production when he's on the field and can probably give you 120-130 games.

And we traded him for nothing. Now he's killing it. And if he does repeat his 2019 season it will be the same excuse making from folks that it was for every other guy Mozeliak traded away for nothing to see excel elsewhere.

Because there's ALWAYS an excuse. After the first half dozen examples, maybe stop making them.

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Because there's ALWAYS an excuse. After the first half dozen examples, maybe stop making them.

There's a lot to criticize Mozeliak for, and deservedly so, but there's also a bunch of shit that I don't know how you can entirely blame on him.

-Taveras dying
-Piscotty's mom getting ALS
-Adolis Garcia becoming an All Star out of nowhere at age 28 after being DFA'd and passed over by every team when being DFA'd by Texas
-Craig suffering a career altering foot injury
-Alcantara becoming a CYA winner after having a profile that projected better as a reliever in Memphis given his control and Ozuna not working out

That doesn't excuse everything else like:
-Leake
-Cecil
-Panic signing Holland at the worst possible time instead of earlier in the off-season
-Throwing Contrera under the bus when he was doing exactly what he's done his entire career
-Saying the rotation in 2023 was going to be fine
-Running Carpenter and PDJ onto the field every day when they shouldn't have been playing everyday
-****ing over Wong
-Matheny
-Having a horrendous rotation and bullpen in 2021 that he had to frankentein for innings
-Ruining Carlson's confidence

[DJ's left nut]

Alcantara is the sort of thing that a team SHOULDN'T miss on. They should've been able to identify that sort of thing better than we could. And it wasn't as though it took 5 years in the minors for Alcantara to hit. He raced through our system and we gave up on him far too early. He was immediately in the bigs in Miami and showing signs of breaking out even as a rookie. In that rookie season you could tell that if you could just harness his command a bit and find more snap on a breaker to miss bats, he was going to be an awfully good pitcher. Those are guys a good organization who has brought him along just cannot miss.

And honestly, given our track record over the last 10 years, do you really have any confidence at all that he'd have amounted to anything here? Gallen probably would've - we like that sort of profile. Alcantara would've been lost in relief just like Hicks and Rosenthal before him.

Taveras wasn't going to be very good anyway, IMO. Swing was too long. He was never as advertised. He was going to be another in the long line of Cardinal player development failures. Him dying gave Mozeliak an out that he wouldn't have had.

As for Piscotty - do you recall what put Piscotty on the prospect map to begin with? It wasn't the Cardinals - kid went to Driveline and rebuilt his swing after 2 years of circling the drain in the minors. That we got any sort of prospect value from him at all wasn't even a result of the Cardinal player development system. But/for his own initiative, he'd have never been in the big leagues anyway.

And Allen Craig was a late arriving rookie who got hurt at 29 years old. He wasn't ever going to have some long and productive career. He wasn't an 'old man skill' player - he was a poor mans Arenado. See ball, hit ball. The injury was a brick wall that brought him to a screeching halt, but he was going to start downhill soon anyway. That's just the aging curve for players like him.

These issues that people use to justify a decade of Cardinal malaise just don't check out for me. Garcia's the only one that really qualifies as bad luck but again - with a broad track record of ALWAYS moving on from the wrong guy, are we really all that confident that it wasn't the Cardinals that were the reason he was stalled out in the first place? Certainly seems to be the case.

[Rams Fan]

I don't think Alcantara would've amounted to much if he had stayed given the track record of pitching development, but I think it is more justifiable to have traded him (young pitchers with control issues who can throw fast flame out all the time) for Ozuna than giving up on Gallen.

Not sure we can really say one way or another on Taveras given the sample size, but given his status and hype, I don't think we would've known for another year or 2.

From what I remember with Piscotty was that he was an above average hitter that got on base in the minors but had no position.

Craig probably would've had 2-3 years left of being above average hitter and then would have been average for a bit. The decline wouldn't have been as stark.

And with Garcia, I think that's the most defensible one for luck. Again, teams had 2 opportunities to get him for free and they didn't. It's not exactly like the Rangers thought he'd be great either.

The pitching development and decision making deserves to be criticized much more than the position players. Tommy Edman had a 6 WAR season and 2 other seasons above 3 WAR. That's insane.

I think Mo should be gone.