The 2017 Cardinals are America

lots of juicy wong drama here:

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/cardinal-beat/wong-would-rather-be-traded-than-platoon-at-second-base/article_9d03dd0f-b604-5be7-8a44-0287814094da.html

as i mentioned above, i think they should trade him, but it's nagl for wong to be complaining about playing time when he's not clearly better than gyorko/garcia.

god, i'm watching the espn feed of the mets/cardinal and there was some really sad commentary on the matt adams in LF experiment. paraphrasing: "the first ball hit to matt adams in LF will be the first ball he ever catches in LF during a game. i asked adams how he was feeling about this game and he said 'eduardo...i'm nervous.'"

we are all nervous. goddammit matheny, every year i think i have prepared myself but you keep innovating

they sent pham down to the minors and go with the hot hand in the immortal jose martinez. granted, pham was having a crappy spring training, but he's a reliable backup in the field and his bat is usually decent. instead we get jose martinez. it's not hard to imagine a scenario where one of the three starting OFs goes down with an injury, martinez sucks ass for 3 weeks, and then magically you have matt adams as your temporary LF for a while. or they send wong out again to give it a shot. there's going to be a lot of adversity this year.

much of Matheny's roster dicking last year was all a cascade effect of when Moss went into a horrible slump but Matheny kept playing him at 1st and would look everywhere else for offense.

I'm pretty sure the recent Wong drama coincided with a 1-0 spring training loss.

His mental process is so obvious and he's usually reacting to his own bad decisions. Like "I should play Wong in LF b/c he needs to get at-bats to get out of his slump!"

brisbee predicts 4th place (although he admits that he's trolling and actually thinks it's 3rd place).

It’s been a bad idea to underestimate the Cardinals for, oh, about 20 years or so. But here’s a partial list of what I’m not buying:

Kolten Wong’s bat
The team finding about 75 homers on the bench again
Mike Leake’s viability in a homer-happy era
Adam Wainwright’s ability to bounce back at 35
Aledmys Diaz being the great hitter he was in the first half, instead of the solid hitter he was when he came back from injury
Lance Lynn returning like nothing happened
Michael Wacha putting his miserable 2016 season entirely behind him
Dexter Fowler repeating his career year

Add it up, and what do you get? I'm predicting a fourth-place finish, but what we'll actually get are 93 wins and Rookie of the Year votes for Harrison Bader. I’m no dummy. I know exactly how this is going to look stupid by August. But when you spend 7,000 words writing predictions, sometimes you just want to watch the world burn. Of all the would-be contenders, though, the Cardinals have the most obvious worst-case scenario, and it doesn’t take a lot of suspension of disbelief to get there.

http://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/st-louis-cardinals

Yadi, 55 millions for 3 year per mlb dot com.

rosenthal says 55-65 million, and that molina will be the highest paid catcher in the game (per bengie and yadi's wishes, it seems), at least per AAV

in cold baseball terms it's probably an overpay, but the cardinals ownership has had a surplus that they keep threatening to spend the last few years, so if this is how they do it, so be it. it would be great to see him close out his career as a cardinal, and hopefully get a chance at one more championship before replacing matheny as manager.

commenter on mlbtraderumors that wrote that lucroy just popped a bottle of champagne otm

twitter is brutal
http://i.imgur.com/7M0ZOhN.jpg

in cold baseball terms i'd say it's a ridiculous overpay, but i think it's cool that they did it

It could have been worse, they could still owe Pujols 150 million.

lol, yeah.

i don't know, i think $55 million for 3 years isn't too bad. $8-9/WAR is the going rate for free agents these days, and three years from now that's likely to be around $11 to 12. So assuming a middle ground of $10 million per WAR, they're asking yadi to generate 5.5 WAR over 3 years. i think he'll do that, or at least come close. the effect on fans and attendance is more limited because most games come close to selling out anyway. people will turn out to see yadi's final days but they were probably going to the game anyway.

America's opening day starting lineup:

CF: Dexter Fowler
SS: Aledmys Diaz
1B: Matt Carpenter
3B: Jhonny Peralta
C: Yadier Molina
RF: Stephen Piscotty
2B: Jedd Gyorko
LF: Randal Grichuk
SP: Carlos Martinez

Wong is probably having feelings right now

Peralta batting cleanup was a possible worst-case scenario for this season, but i didn't think it would happen on opening day. hopefully the guy bounces back this year but...probably not.

plus WAR undervalues catchers, especially their defensive effect of the game.

xpost

yep - i think BP's WARP incorporates some additional defensive catcher value that fangraphs and baseball reference don't use, and it boosts yadi's value quite a bit

Cards fans cheering on Fowler like they just signed Mike Trout.

He seems like a good guy

He's immediately pretty much the most interesting person on the team, apart from Martinez. Nearly everyone else is very, very boring

writing this as oh is coming in

mike matheny. you are dumb. bad process. you are dumb. i hate you.

i don't care if oh gets the double plays and the save next inning, mike matheny is the woist

schwarber and rizzo, both lefties, coming up, so he brings in the right-haned Oh to get a 5-out save. and never even had a second guy WARMING UP! nope, why would you warm up a lefty and a righty at the same time? no reason to do that. especially on opening day, when no one is tired...at all.

the rain begins

Matheny's thinking process vindicated, back to America.

And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free

GET SOMEONE WARMING UP

Too late.

Oh just threw his 31st pitch.
Matheny just NOW had Brett Cecil get loose

fuck

fire matheny.

you know the stupid asshole in the stands who yell "BALK!" whenever they see the weird fake pickoff move to 1B before throwing to 3B, and then loudly explain to everyone what a balk is, even though it wasn't a balk?

i would take that stupid asshole over matheny any day of the week

mike matheny is america

what a fucking dumbass

xpost lol

he already got bailed out by getting out of the 8th inning + a 2-run Grichuk HR in the rain, and then he somehow finds a way to make the worst possible decision anyway

made this a couple years ago, should have made it the thread header:

http://i.imgur.com/PnPNAU6.gif

to be fair, things are most probably fine if Carpenter doesn't pull that bonehead flip/indecision error.

first auto-intentional walk in MLB?

matheny owes grichuk at least $20

carlos martinez is so good

yep, the confidence drop off after him that any of our other starters can get through the cubbies lineup 3 times without getting destroyed... is not so good.

piscotty apparently signed an extension this morning

That's strange timing.

@keithlaw
Yadier Molina has had a great career so far. He has not had a Hall of Fame career so far.

he got some replies

https://twitter.com/keithlaw/status/848709486365855749

i would not consider him a HOFer either

i almost revived the hof thread to bring this up earlier. he may be a borderline case if he can keep it up for another few years and some sort of cacher defensive retroanalysis emerges that bumps his value up. but...probably not.

but i've heard numerous announcers recently referring to him as a "future hall of famer", some with a bit of consideration, others just stating it as a fact. one of the espn people said it last night, and i heard it a few times during the WBC too. he's certainly a legend in st. louis. it's totally cheesy and cliche but "his legend is growing" for real. everybody loves yadi.

- signed #1 yadi fan, america

career wRC+ = 100

he also trails rough contemporary russell martin in WAR

yes but his intangibles have been 140+ for almost a decade now

carlos martinez is so good

― na (NA), Monday, April 3, 2017 2:11 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the hype was intense but so is easy 100mph gas.. jfc.

can we do a POO: Russell Martin, Yadier Molina, Buster Posey thread lol. it'll be interesting when they're all retired to see how they stack up.

Jesus. Piscotty got hit three times on his trip around the basepaths: HPB from arrieta, hit by catreras taking second on a pitch in the dirt, then hit it the head from a throw by rizzo as he scored. That last one was brutal to watch. Hope he's ok.

Also, in the second game of the season - Matt Adams in LF

RIP 2017 cardinals, and america

that final play was a perfectly agonizing, fitting end to the season

will they be *spoilers*, like America?

i think they'll be half spoilers. wild (card) prediction: i think they'll take 1 of 3 from the brewers, and the rockies will manage to pick up at least one from the dodgers. even if matheny plays his B squad all weekend, that's still a pretty decent team, capable of winning at least one from the brewers.

"high floor, low ceiling" will be the epitaph of the 2016-17 cardinals

RIP 2017 cardinals, and america

that final play was a perfectly agonizing, fitting end to the season

― Karl Malone, Friday, September 29, 2017 4:15 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's always next year! as a Cubs fan, watching Matheny and the Cards dugout was "good times", i'm sorry to admit...

https://media.giphy.com/media/8TNHNwBEhhc4g/giphy.gif

ICYMI

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2017/9/29/16388812/busch-stadium-cardinals-protest-stockley-verdict

fuck yeah, they're bringing oquendo back to 3rd base coach and giving willie mcgee some sort of job

happy willie mcgee's birthday

https://i.imgur.com/jEG0gNL.jpg

cardinals figurative boner is getting impossibly hard this offseason

Cardinals "Bitter" After Being Turned Down by Giancarlo Stanton

wow guess he wasn't ready for the cardinal way(TM)

https://i.imgur.com/oDYy5Hy.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/H2uBVJo.jpg

luke gregerson, 2 years/$11 million

i think i like this deal? all of his troubles last year seem to come from a huge spike in FB% + HR/FB, plus a jump in BABIP. the rest of his peripherals seem to be in line with the rest of his career, so he seems like a good bounceback guy

I'd think the only thing would be a second year on a reliever at age 33. He was always good with the Padres.

also he can tell the cardinals all of jeff luhnow's secrets

yeah, ideally all relievers could all be signed for a single year given how volatile they are, but that's the risk you run i guess...

encouraging to see that 3 of his HRs last year were of the minute maid bullshit variety (http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2017_6059&type=pitcher) and a 4th wouldn't have been a HR in almost half of MLB stadiums.

cardinals/astros and yankees/marlins should hold a secret-sharing slumber party