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The Cardinals Offense is Inexplicably Bad · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  What's up everybody? I am Charlie Marlow.
• 0:03
  That is once again the great Brendan Schaefer.
• 0:05
  And this is the slightly above average show known as Low
• 0:09
  hanging fruit. And I care about the Cardinals.
• 0:12
  That's why I'm wearing red and Brendan clearly does not.
• 0:16
  Clearly a former TV guy, because you guys would always do that.
• 0:19
  You'd wear red and you'd almost get in trouble from the viewers
• 0:22
  if you didn't. Whereas the sports writers, it's
• 0:24
  the opposite. If you're wearing the the colors
• 0:27
  of the team, you're some big Homer and it's a bad look.
• 0:30
  So I think that's that just explains the world's from which
• 0:33
  we from which we come here. Yes, especially opening day.
• 0:37
  If you did not wear red on opening day, an old lady named
• 0:40
  Gladys or Edna or Gertrude was going to call the TV station and
• 0:46
  complain about all that young whippersnapper Charlie Marlow is
• 0:49
  not wearing red. OK, tell you what you know, no
• 0:53
  more old stories because we have an exciting baseball team to.
• 0:56
  Talk about, I don't know, old stories that might be the only
• 0:59
  thing that can get us through this team is.
• 1:02
  This team is clicking on all cylinders.
• 1:04
  Brendan. Question mark.
• 1:06
  Yeah, baby. What do you think?
• 1:08
  Well, I think they're last in MLB and homers, and it's a
• 1:12
  common thing that fans say, like if you heard this to the last
• 1:15
  couple years, it's like it only seems like the Cardinals can
• 1:18
  score by hitting a home run on occasion.
• 1:20
  Like that's their way to score a run.
• 1:22
  They can't really have those true rallies very often.
• 1:24
  They don't know how to hit with runners in scoring position, all
• 1:27
  those things. And if that's the combination
• 1:30
  that you are, you can only score by hitting the Homer, and you
• 1:32
  are last in baseball in the Homer, probably not doing very
• 1:36
  well offensively. Yeah, that's pretty fair to say.
• 1:39
  OK let's just start there and and we'll we'll work backwards
• 1:43
  and we'll get to the Tiger series and then the Mets series.
• 1:46
  But just big picture, it's hard for me to explain and
• 1:51
  rationalize how the offense is this bad.
• 1:54
  We were talking over the offseason.
• 1:56
  I thought probably close to top ten.
• 1:58
  I think you said top ten maybe pushing top five.
• 2:01
  I think everybody thought with the names on the back of the
• 2:04
  jerseys, even though these these jerseys, apparently nobody likes
• 2:07
  them and you can see people's underwear.
• 2:08
  But still, I mean, how do you explain this offense being this
• 2:14
  horrendous? I I really can't.
• 2:18
  It's collectively just been a disaster.
• 2:21
  Other than Wilson Contreras, who's doing a pretty good job,
• 2:24
  Mason Wayne, I think has been above what we had expected.
• 2:28
  The thought with him was just be kind of league average play,
• 2:31
  good shortstop. Defensively, you'll take that.
• 2:33
  And he's a little above league average, I think defensively
• 2:36
  right now, even after a recent downturn.
• 2:38
  But everybody else, I mean, the leadoff man, Donovan's sub 700
• 2:43
  OPS, Goldie Arenado, Gorman, they're all in the six hundreds.
• 2:47
  Jordan Walker's not even here. Like, it's just been a an epic
• 2:51
  disaster across the board. And the reason I think that the
• 2:56
  Cardinals and Ollie Marm will keep kind of keeping the
• 2:59
  positive beat is because for one, they have to.
• 3:02
  Otherwise, how do you even level with what's going on right now?
• 3:06
  If this is the team you are, it's not going to be a very fun
• 3:08
  summer. But also it's just the notion of
• 3:10
  like the pedigree of these players is known for the most
• 3:13
  part. You know what these guys have
• 3:15
  been historically in their careers.
• 3:17
  Even the younger guys like a Nolan Gorman, You look at the
• 3:20
  years that he's had, it's he's been better than this.
• 3:23
  So what in the world is going on?
• 3:25
  They just don't expect for all of these guys to continue to
• 3:27
  struggle like this for as long as they are.
• 3:29
  I didn't mention Newpar. He's been rough as well.
• 3:32
  It's it's like 7 guys out of the 9:00 every day that are just
• 3:36
  struggling well below their career norms.
• 3:39
  And so you figure, all right, they'll bounce back to their
• 3:41
  career norms. But the longer this goes on, the
• 3:42
  more you wonder how reasonable it is to expect them just to
• 3:46
  kind of snap it back into place. OK, so.
• 3:49
  Team stats. Right now, Cardinals in OPS 638
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  that is 28th in baseball, 3rd to last.
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  You'll you'll notice as I read off some of these stats that the
• 3:59
  White Sox are right down there. That's why this series is going
• 4:01
  to be fantastic. Can't wait, but let's go to runs
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  and I'll just do a couple for you folks.
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  I won't bore you runs. Cardinals are also third to last
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  28th. There's those White Sox.
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  They are last. You already mentioned you
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  already mentioned home runs. Home runs.
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  Cardinals are now in last with the 21.
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  White Sox second to last with 22 and And you know how fans love
• 4:25
  to place blame. But it's also it's part of our
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  job. When a team is doing great, you
• 4:32
  say, oh, who deserves credit. When a team is doing poorly, oh,
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  who do we blame? And I think I think it's hard to
• 4:39
  blame the front office for this offense because what would you
• 4:44
  have done in the offseason? Would you have said, hey, Jordan
• 4:48
  Walker's going to be terrible? Paul Goldschmidt I understand if
• 4:51
  you thought Paul Goldschmidt was going to take another step back.
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  Did you think he was going to be just absolutely putrid?
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  Did you think no one Arenado would lose all of his power?
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  Like so on and so forth? However, I do think, and I know
• 5:05
  you got into this with some folks on Twitter, of course,
• 5:07
  when the offense is bad, the fire, the hitting coach brigade
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  always comes out. I do think it's fair to wonder
• 5:15
  though, not just with this team, but also when we see a lot of
• 5:18
  guys doing better elsewhere. You do wonder, just
• 5:21
  developmentally, you. You wonder if the Cardinals get
• 5:25
  the most out of their players. Is is that at least a fair
• 5:28
  argument you? Think.
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  I don't think you wonder whether they do.
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  I think you know that they don't in recent years, right?
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  Like when's the last time if you want to talk about development
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  and this doesn't really apply to the struggling Goldie or the
• 5:40
  struggling Arenado, but developing young players through
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  the system, getting them here, maybe they have top prospect
• 5:45
  status, top one hundreds, you know, that type of thing.
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  And they get here. What do they do?
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  Typically, not a lot relative to expectations.
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  When's the last time they've had a guy like that that has come up
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  and has met expectations beyond a year or two?
• 6:02
  Because maybe the answer is going to be a month from now.
• 6:04
  Nolan Gorman, because he came up, he's held his own for the
• 6:07
  first couple of years. He's he's a roller coaster kind
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  of guy because he'll have his ups and downs.
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  Right now he's struggling and so we're looking at the six O 9 OPS
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  and going well. They didn't develop Nolan
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  Gorman. Now maybe he gets a hot streak
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  and it's a different story, but it's hard to see the light at
• 6:23
  the end of the tunnel right now with the way he's swinging it.
• 6:25
  But that's the from a development perspective, that's
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  what I would go to. 1st is, Yeah, I don't even think it's a
• 6:30
  question at that point. I think it's just a statement.
• 6:32
  And then you can ask why, like why have the Cardinals not been
• 6:35
  able to get the most of these young players?
• 6:37
  I understand that. It happens elsewhere, too.
• 6:39
  Jordan Walker is down in Memphis for the second year in a row
• 6:42
  trying to work on his swing. We know Jackson Holiday is doing
• 6:44
  the same thing with the Orioles. We thought he was, you know, and
• 6:47
  India's top prospect. But he comes up to the big
• 6:50
  leagues, struggles at the age as well.
• 6:52
  So it's not exclusive to the Cardinals that this happens.
• 6:54
  But it does seem like when you look around like Lars Newbar, we
• 6:57
  sort of anointed him, right? And you look up and he's got a
• 7:00
  660 OPS and and they're just all kind of little below average
• 7:04
  rather than what we thought was going to be the case.
• 7:06
  Or you could look one through 9 and basically say everybody's
• 7:09
  slightly above average. You did ask a question though,
• 7:12
  that I do have an answer to. The one thing that I think, at
• 7:14
  least I remember saying in the offseason that you could do if
• 7:17
  you really want to be aggressive about trying to, you know, have
• 7:20
  urgency to win this year. I thought Cody Bellinger would
• 7:23
  be a great fit because they wanted good defense in center
• 7:26
  field and you needed a guy who can hit right-handed pitching
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  and he's having a a solid start. He's not over the moon or
• 7:32
  anything, but when you look at the production from center field
• 7:34
  that they have gotten and maybe they should have anticipated
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  Edmond would be a slow play. There's no reason to have known
• 7:39
  that Carlson would get hurt in a fluky way to end spring.
• 7:42
  But like, that would have been the one spot where I said if you
• 7:44
  really wanted to upgrade and guarantee you get both from your
• 7:47
  center fielder, offense and defense, a Bellinger was out
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  there to be had. Now, could you have convinced
• 7:52
  him to come here? Who knows, But that would be the
• 7:55
  one spot elsewhere. I totally agree with you.
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  They didn't have a lot of openings in that everyday
• 7:59
  lineup. Yeah, and look, I I will
• 8:02
  criticize John Mosalok when I when I see fit.
• 8:06
  But even center field look at it like this if they if they knew
• 8:09
  or thought going in that Tommy Edmond was going to be the
• 8:13
  primary center fielder and then they thought OK, this is Dylan
• 8:17
  Carlson's last chance. I'm not even saying that they
• 8:19
  had high expectations. But if you if he was their
• 8:22
  second option and you thought, OK, if option one implodes, if
• 8:26
  option 2 implodes, we still have somebody like Lars new bar and
• 8:31
  hey you have somebody like Victor Scott even waiting in the
• 8:33
  wings I could see how they looked at center field and
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  didn't say hey we have to make a move now I feel like we always
• 8:40
  get back to Tyler O'Neill. You know that's a different
• 8:42
  situation of you traded that guy away because of the relationship
• 8:47
  with Ollie. Let's be real.
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  You didn't really get anything in return for him.
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  But and I'm not even trying to get into that but, but but it's
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  hard not to Big picture when you just you just see that the
• 9:00
  Cardinals for whatever reason have been terrible.
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  They've been just maybe it's the worst thing they've done is
• 9:06
  evaluate outfielders over the last decade or so.
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  They're awful at that. They really are.
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  It's not been good. It seems like whoever they sort
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  of put their weight behind it doesn't go well for that player.
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  And then they're like, well, we got to get rid of this guy
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  because we can't, you know, we just can't keep doing this with
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  him. And then he goes somewhere else,
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  intends to play. Well, it's happening with
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  O'Neill now. I think you can count Lane
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  Thomas within that. But it's like every time that
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  happens that guy with the exception of O'Neill but even at
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  the end he sort of was he's like the 4th, 5th outfielder where
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  you go, well he's playing so poorly or he's hurt so we're not
• 9:40
  going to have him in the line up anyway.
• 9:42
  Palacios is actually playing pretty well from the Rays the
• 9:45
  last that I checked. Although I don't think anybody's
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  going to tell you that wasn't the trade that made sense
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  because Andrew Kittredge has been fantastic.
• 9:51
  Part of the I'm calling them the triumvirate in the back of the
• 9:54
  bullpen. The three guys, JoJo Kittredge
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  and Helsley. I know what you think of that
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  but I agree with the outfielders.
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  It seems to be the revolving door of give a guy a last
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  chance. He doesn't do well and it almost
• 10:06
  like, all right we said this was his last chance so he's out of
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  here. And then to that guy, it's like
• 10:11
  it's almost like cool. I have a fresh start where I can
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  maybe not have this pressure in this threat of if I play badly
• 10:17
  for a couple weeks, I'm out of the line up.
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  Now the other side of that is Cardos fans when those guys were
• 10:22
  struggling. Lane Thomas is who I'm thinking
• 10:24
  of specifically or like get this guy out of here.
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  He's the worst outfielder I've ever seen and he was like with
• 10:29
  the Cardos at the time. I think he had like the post
• 10:31
  COVID haze. But there are some explanations
• 10:33
  for some of them. The arose arena, that's not
• 10:35
  there's not really one for him because they never gave him a
• 10:38
  chance. Although he is hitting 139 this
• 10:40
  year so maybe some of those things don't even last.
• 10:42
  But I I I would agree with you that when you look at who the
• 10:45
  Cardinals tend to put their weight behind in the outfield,
• 10:48
  the the formula is it goes bad for that year and the next year
• 10:51
  he's somewhere else playing some pretty good baseball.
• 10:54
  Yeah, and. And that's why I didn't even
• 10:56
  bring up Palacios. I understood that move and it's
• 11:00
  look, it's young, it's young control for a really good proven
• 11:04
  reliever. And that's why I also Cardinals
• 11:07
  fans are pretty smart. They're not going to complain
• 11:09
  about that. I mean, Andrew Kittredge has
• 11:11
  been freaking fantastic and and so the reason I brought up Tyler
• 11:15
  O'Neill, I think people understood why they parted ways
• 11:20
  with Tyler O'Neill. I don't agree with how Ollie
• 11:23
  handled it last year. It got to a point where they
• 11:25
  freaking had to trade him. They had no leverage.
• 11:29
  And I think why Cardinal fans are mad about it is that they
• 11:32
  didn't get anything in return. If you got Andrew Kittredge in
• 11:35
  return or a player of that ilk, nobody would be complaining,
• 11:39
  right? But if it gets to a point, like
• 11:41
  when I'm thinking about this, I think about Vladimir Poroshenko.
• 11:44
  For anybody watching who's a Blues fan, remember that one
• 11:46
  summer you never would have thought Vladimir Poroshenko
• 11:50
  would ever have been able to return to the Blues after the
• 11:54
  way that relationship seemed to be fractured.
• 11:56
  They're taking shots at the front office and the doctors and
• 11:59
  how they handled his surgeries. And he came back and had an
• 12:02
  amazing year, right? You know why?
• 12:04
  Because Doug Armstrong probably tried to trade him that summer
• 12:08
  and said I can't get a good deal, I can't get a good deal.
• 12:10
  We're not doing it, yeah. That's that's what pisses me off
• 12:14
  about Tyler O'Neill, and I think that's what pisses fans off.
• 12:16
  You could have done the Terasenko.
• 12:18
  I think it is a very much. It's an apartment comparison.
• 12:21
  For fans who know hockey, it's the same thing they they
• 12:25
  publicly were trying to trade O'Neill, but I think they had
• 12:28
  made-up their mind that they were going to do it right.
• 12:30
  Because with teresenko, you're going to put him in your lineup
• 12:34
  and expect that he's going to Senko, whether you drop him down
• 12:37
  a couple lines or whatever, you you kind of figured the
• 12:40
  production you were going to get for him.
• 12:41
  If you kept him, it was the the interpersonal stuff that you had
• 12:44
  to worry about. But it's like, you know he's
• 12:47
  going to keep his mouth shut probably and just play.
• 12:49
  Armstrong made that bet with Vladdy and it worked with
• 12:53
  O'Neill. Everything was so public last
• 12:55
  year, the way that it kind of fractured that I wonder if the
• 12:58
  Cardinals just thought that wasn't an option.
• 13:00
  I will say this though, the player that they got for him has
• 13:03
  a lower ERA than Andrew Kittridge.
• 13:05
  So I I mean Nick Robertson Hive. I don't really know if you're
• 13:09
  familiar with his game, but that is one of the guys they got for
• 13:11
  Tyler O'Neill. But to your point, Kittridge had
• 13:13
  four innings, 4 innings. Kittridge had a much larger
• 13:17
  sample size of a career where you go, hey, this might be a guy
• 13:19
  to get something, but have you seen Palacios?
• 13:21
  His his opsi know you say you don't play fantasy baseball
• 13:24
  anymore, so you may not be on it.
• 13:25
  Guess if you haven't seen it, I'm curious if you don't look it
• 13:29
  up, he's doing it right now. All right, it's for.
• 13:31
  Hold on, you don't have to. Pretend no, I have.
• 13:34
  I have no idea. I was going to Google it.
• 13:36
  I feel like you said he's doing OK.
• 13:39
  I'd say he's doing well, but I didn't even know I had to look
• 13:42
  it up. I hadn't.
• 13:42
  Looked up, so I'm going to guess.
• 13:44
  I'm going to guess 775. It's 895.
• 13:49
  Well, that's freaking awesome. I know.
• 13:53
  I didn't even know it was that high until I until I just looked
• 13:56
  it up. So do you change your tune?
• 13:58
  Are Cardinals fans going to be mad about this one?
• 13:59
  After all his on base is 4/30. He's got a higher, he's got a
• 14:03
  higher OPS than anybody on the Cardinals, like anybody on the
• 14:06
  whole team, including Let. Me find this OK and this is not
• 14:11
  like he's not playing this. Is.
• 14:13
  I mean he's got, he's played 20 some odd games, 87 played
• 14:17
  appearances. It's not a full time, you know,
• 14:20
  it's not a full season, but it's kind of, I mean, 25 games is the
• 14:24
  majority of the games he's. Played.
• 14:26
  You know, and and here's the thing so so here's here's me
• 14:30
  saying Cardinal fans weren't complaining and I still think
• 14:33
  because Kittrick has been has been so so good.
• 14:38
  But but also the problem with this is, you know, This is why
• 14:42
  it gets back to or Rosarena for example, who's not having a good
• 14:46
  year but he's been good for five years.
• 14:48
  It's about what you have versus your needs, right.
• 14:53
  And it's just it's it's a much worse look, when for.
• 14:57
  I mean I think you can go back to the Pascotti Gritschik era
• 15:01
  and I know Taveras obviously was a tragedy, but they just seem to
• 15:06
  never find anybody who can consistently play outfield.
• 15:10
  They, they always seem to miss on these guys.
• 15:13
  And you know, you can say, oh we chose Bader, we chose O'Neill.
• 15:19
  But when you just always choose wrong, like you can go back in
• 15:22
  it if you want to go, OK, but this situation with Adolis
• 15:25
  Garcia and this situation with a Rosarina.
• 15:27
  But Brendan, when you're doing it eight times, OK, so here's
• 15:31
  the situation with a Rosarina. Adolis Garcia, Lane Thomas, now
• 15:35
  Palacios, now Tyler O'Neill. It's become such a pattern that
• 15:39
  you can't avoid it. Bader Carlson is the the most
• 15:43
  recent example right where well and and again the 2022 Juan Zoto
• 15:47
  stuff gets overblown. It wasn't that.
• 15:49
  It wasn't specifically that well we cannot put Carlson in a
• 15:52
  trade. I think it's we're not going to
• 15:54
  trade Carlson and all this other stuff.
• 15:56
  Mason when Jordan Walker like it would have been everybody,
• 15:59
  right. They weren't going to do that.
• 16:00
  So that's not exactly what happened with with the Juan Soto
• 16:03
  deal. But it it does kind of go to
• 16:06
  show like they valued him highly.
• 16:08
  His value has since declined. The Cardinals are never going to
• 16:11
  trade the guy at the peak of his value in almost bet against that
• 16:14
  homegrown player. They're going to bet on that
• 16:16
  homegrown player to stay homegrown and to wear a red
• 16:19
  jacket in 15 years. And it keeps not happening.
• 16:21
  It keeps being that those guys flash a little bit early and you
• 16:25
  think this is the next, we can't possibly part from this guy.
• 16:29
  And then a couple years go by and you're like, oh, that guy's
• 16:32
  kind of average. But maybe it's not that they're
• 16:35
  choosing wrong. Maybe it goes deeper to, as you
• 16:37
  said, the development. They might be choosing the right
• 16:39
  players, but they're not for whatever reason.
• 16:42
  I don't know if it's coaching through the minors, coaching in
• 16:44
  the big leagues, analytics. I don't know what it is.
• 16:47
  I cannot put my finger on it because it's gone over multiple
• 16:50
  managers, like 3 different managers.
• 16:52
  This has been the case that we're talking about the
• 16:53
  Cardinals outfield. So it's not that you go well,
• 16:55
  it's all in normal. Three different hitting coaches,
• 16:57
  maybe four, that we've been talking about this with the
• 17:00
  Cardinal outfield. So I don't think you can look at
• 17:02
  it and say that's it. I've pinpointed the problem with
• 17:05
  why this keeps happening because as you said, the sample size is
• 17:08
  so large at this point. It's not that these guys stink
• 17:11
  because some of them go somewhere else and play really
• 17:13
  well. Now Randall Grichuk is still
• 17:15
  kicking around. Is he a great player?
• 17:17
  No, he's been pretty much average even after he left.
• 17:20
  But a lot of these guys, they do seem to get the bump where like
• 17:23
  Lane Thomas was 1/5 outfielder, that when he would play he would
• 17:27
  fall on the ground and drop the ball and it's like, what is
• 17:30
  happening? You're hitting 190 and then he
• 17:31
  goes to Washington and he's A5 tool player.
• 17:34
  What is the deal with that? And that's something that's
• 17:37
  Thomas, you might say was because of COVID and I I would
• 17:39
  buy that he was not himself that that year, but everybody else
• 17:43
  that it happens with what? How do you explain it?
• 17:45
  I don't. I can't.
• 17:47
  And it's almost like beating the dead horse.
• 17:48
  We've talked about it for so many years, but it keeps
• 17:50
  happening with new guys. That's where you get a little
• 17:52
  bit frustrated. And if the guys that were here,
• 17:55
  we're living up to expectations, nobody would care.
• 17:57
  You say, well, I'm not going to not going to sit Lars new Bar
• 17:59
  for Richie Palacios. Well, this year you would,
• 18:02
  because Lars new bar is not performing and Placios is.
• 18:04
  But the Cardinals were never going to be able to make that
• 18:06
  decision, right? And it probably wouldn't have
• 18:08
  been the right decision if they would have done it here in Saint
• 18:11
  Louis. But I can't explain why that is.
• 18:13
  I cannot put my finger on it. OK.
• 18:15
  But see, you mentioned a bunch of managers.
• 18:18
  To me it comes down to the front office though in this particular
• 18:21
  I I'm not blaming John Moselloc for the fact that these guys
• 18:24
  can't hit right now, especially Goldie and Arenado.
• 18:27
  These are Hall of Fame type players.
• 18:30
  But you know you you say well why can't why can't they?
• 18:34
  They find the guy who's the diamond in the rough.
• 18:37
  Like look at Matt Carpenter. Matt Carpenter was not a big
• 18:40
  prospect at all. You know that.
• 18:42
  He turned into he will be a Cardinals Hall of Famer.
• 18:45
  We used to give John Mosalak so much credit back in the day when
• 18:49
  he traded away the first round pick Brett Wallace for Matt
• 18:54
  Holiday. Brett Wallace went on to to do
• 18:57
  pretty much nothing, but at the time he was a a hot commodity.
• 19:01
  The Cardinals used to be good at dealing away the guys when they
• 19:05
  still had value and keeping the folks and keeping the value and
• 19:09
  and developing the diamonds in the rough.
• 19:12
  And I don't feel like they do that at all anymore.
• 19:15
  And to me, the constant is John Mosalak and the front office and
• 19:19
  the development, whatever you want to put it on, minor league
• 19:21
  development and all that. And again, I feel like I say
• 19:25
  this all the time, but anybody who thinks we're just, oh,
• 19:28
  you're ragging on John Mosalak For 10 years, we gave him all
• 19:33
  the credit in the world for being so good at this, and now
• 19:36
  they're really bad at it. It's really flipped.
• 19:39
  That's the point. And I think fans sometimes take
• 19:41
  it too far in the other direction when they talk about,
• 19:44
  oh, it was all Jeff Luno or it was all, you know, Sig Meg doll
• 19:47
  like. But I would say this, like there
• 19:49
  have been executives that were under MO Zelak that have gone
• 19:53
  elsewhere and have been lead executives and have done really
• 19:57
  well. Right.
• 19:58
  So like, maybe a lot of those front offices.
• 20:00
  It's not that MO was always terrible or that he always was
• 20:03
  going to, you know, not be able to make these types of moves or
• 20:05
  know when to to cut bait on a guy.
• 20:07
  A little early rather than a little late, but I do think they
• 20:10
  had a lot of talent over the years in that front office.
• 20:13
  It's not to say there aren't talented people there now but I
• 20:15
  I I think there were a lot of successful people that went on
• 20:18
  to be very successful elsewhere and they deserve some of the
• 20:21
  credit for the when the the years when they really had it
• 20:24
  cooking under John Mosalak and then those guys depart and it it
• 20:27
  might just be that the mixture they have now is not quite the
• 20:32
  golden age that it was before. I'm not going to go too far in
• 20:35
  the other direction and say oh they're all terrible.
• 20:36
  But like it's fair to ask questions about why the
• 20:39
  developmental trends have sort of flipped and you bring up guys
• 20:42
  like Brett Wallace is a great point because when they made
• 20:45
  that trade it was like damn, like Brett Wallace might be a
• 20:47
  dude but at least they have Matt Holiday and they're they have to
• 20:50
  resign him. That was the whole thing is if
• 20:52
  they can get him to come back, Brett Wallace can go do whatever
• 20:55
  he wants. It's not going to matter to
• 20:56
  Cardinal fans. You know what Matt Holiday is
• 20:58
  and fortunately for them, they were able to do that.
• 21:01
  You brought up Carpenter, that's a great example.
• 21:03
  He might be, though, like the last true home grown guy that
• 21:06
  you developed and turned into a star, 'cause he was, he was a
• 21:09
  star player at his peak. Who?
• 21:12
  Who else? I think Rosenthal was also not a
• 21:14
  big pick. Well, I'm talking about pitcher,
• 21:17
  not pitchers, but like position player, guys that you develop.
• 21:20
  Yeah, on the pitching side, Trevor Rosenthal was certainly
• 21:23
  at that at that peak. I'm trying to think of if
• 21:26
  there's a like. So Brendan Donovan I think has a
• 21:28
  chance to be that. But we're not seeing the
• 21:31
  consistency this year. And so in three weeks, if
• 21:33
  Donovan's OPS is 780 again, we'll go, OK, that Brendan,
• 21:37
  Donovan's it again. So we don't want to get too much
• 21:39
  caught up in recency, but I would agree that that the
• 21:42
  development of those types of guys to not just have one or two
• 21:45
  good years, but to have careers where they can develop them and
• 21:49
  then keep them there for a decade performing at a high
• 21:52
  level, it's been rare that we've seen that.
• 21:54
  I say would probably, since I'm at Carpenter.
• 21:57
  Yeah, and I know that back then you mentioned some guys that
• 22:00
  Mozalak had a lot of talent around him.
• 22:03
  But also when you're the head honcho, it's like the
• 22:05
  quarterback and the head coach in football.
• 22:07
  You're going to get more of the credit than you deserve.
• 22:09
  You're going to get more of the blame than you deserve, but also
• 22:13
  so. So why then?
• 22:15
  Why? Because for years the Cardinals
• 22:17
  were right up there as one of those model front offices.
• 22:20
  Why are the Cardinals no longer that?
• 22:23
  Why? How come they don't have the
• 22:25
  young talent, right, that are coming up?
• 22:28
  So, so basically John Mosalok's lieutenants, Why are they not
• 22:32
  the studs that they were 15 years ago, 10 years ago?
• 22:36
  That's a fair question to ask. And again, if you did a poll and
• 22:39
  I, I saw this this survey the other day, you probably saw it.
• 22:42
  It was about, I think it was, it was an anonymous surveyor poll
• 22:47
  of MLB executives. Did you see this where they they
• 22:49
  ranked John Mozelac? Yes, John Mozelac was not in the
• 22:53
  top 16. Now I don't remember.
• 22:55
  But off the top of my head, I mean if you went back to the
• 22:58
  2011 to 2015 run, if you'd have done that poll and I'm sure they
• 23:02
  did. I just can't remember if you did
• 23:05
  that poll anywhere. In that run, John Mozelac might
• 23:09
  have been the top 1-2 or three executives in all of baseball.
• 23:14
  Isn't that fair to say? And I think I think that's true.
• 23:17
  I think that was accurate. So that's where I'm saying look
• 23:20
  at how far this front office has come where you could certainly
• 23:24
  make the case top three. He was a top three general
• 23:28
  manager or president of baseball operations, whatever you call
• 23:30
  it, in the game of baseball. And now they do that same survey
• 23:34
  and he's not in the top 16. And I think that's fair because
• 23:38
  they've lost on so many massive trades.
• 23:41
  They've let so many good players leave.
• 23:44
  Everybody notices. You don't think the other
• 23:46
  baseball executives noticed that?
• 23:47
  Hell, the fans all notice it. Yeah, I think that's right.
• 23:51
  I I wouldn't put this front office in in that list at this
• 23:54
  point either. And they've lost some trades.
• 23:57
  To be fair, they've won some trades and at the time it's like
• 23:59
  when they trade Elaine Thomas to get a pitcher at that deadline,
• 24:02
  they're trying to make it happen and it like they got the value
• 24:05
  from some of those deals, like a Jon Lester that they were
• 24:07
  looking for. But it's just in the long run
• 24:10
  when the guys that you keep and that you put your weight behind
• 24:13
  continue. It's a it's a revolving door at
• 24:15
  some positions. There's a frustration there and
• 24:18
  they've been doing, we've talked about it with the pitching where
• 24:20
  they've had to do it for the last 3-4 years.
• 24:22
  It's like you get to the offseason, you patch it up, you
• 24:25
  get to the deadline, you know you're going to have to patch it
• 24:27
  up again. You get to the offseason, you
• 24:28
  patch it up. It's just been the revolving
• 24:30
  door on that front with the rotation where it's it's
• 24:33
  development. It goes back to the development
• 24:35
  of homegrown pitchers they've got.
• 24:36
  It always seems like they have some interesting guys, like now
• 24:39
  we're talking Tink, hence is really lighting it up at AA.
• 24:42
  But do we, any of us have faith that when they get Tink, hence
• 24:45
  to the big leagues, he'll be a marquee starter?
• 24:47
  That you don't have to wonder, is he going to make it.
• 24:50
  They just haven't been able to hit that slam dunk on the
• 24:53
  pitching side. Guys like Jack Flaherty have all
• 24:56
  the talent in the world, there's no doubt.
• 24:58
  Did they get the most out of Jack Flaherty while he was a
• 25:00
  Cardinal, I would argue that they did not.
• 25:02
  Now there were some extenuating circumstances.
• 25:04
  He constantly had different injuries he was dealing with and
• 25:06
  so maybe that's part of the reason.
• 25:08
  But the results end up being the results.
• 25:11
  Yeah, and by the way, I love Tink Hens.
• 25:13
  But here's what I will say. I have lost confidence in the
• 25:18
  Saint Louis Cardinals front office to to know if they should
• 25:24
  deal a guy like that or keep him, you know what I'm saying?
• 25:27
  So in me saying this, by the way, I hope Tink hence is
• 25:29
  fantastic. Love the kid, but we also know
• 25:33
  he's not. He's not the biggest dude.
• 25:35
  Will he be able to last in the big leagues throwing 180 plus
• 25:38
  innings? I don't know, right?
• 25:41
  Nobody really knows. But but there are there are
• 25:43
  things that can lead you to to draw conclusions.
• 25:45
  What I'm trying to say is, if you would have asked me the same
• 25:49
  question 10 years ago about whichever version of Tink, hence
• 25:53
  that was whoever, Michael Walker, Shelby Miller, Carlos
• 25:56
  Martinez, I would have had 100% faith that the Cardinals would
• 26:00
  have known to a We're going to keep this guy.
• 26:02
  We really think this guy's going to be a stud.
• 26:04
  Or you know what? We're not sold on him.
• 26:08
  Maybe he won't hold up. Maybe he'll be a reliever.
• 26:11
  Let's flip him. Now, when his value is at an all
• 26:13
  time high. I have lost.
• 26:16
  Confidence that the Saint Louis Cardinals make those correct
• 26:19
  decisions. Yeah, it's really, it's really
• 26:21
  not about whether we think Tin Kent is going to make it or not.
• 26:24
  It's not our job to know. It's fun to guess and fun to
• 26:28
  hit. You know when when you were
• 26:29
  right about a guy, you can brag about it and say, see, I told
• 26:31
  you so. But really, the people that have
• 26:34
  to get it right is the organization, the front office,
• 26:36
  John Mosalek. They have to be making those
• 26:38
  decisions at a high rate because you're leaving, you're leaving
• 26:41
  talent on the table, you're leaving currency on the table.
• 26:45
  These guys are currency via trade.
• 26:47
  If you think, hey this guy does have a lot of value to the
• 26:49
  league right now which you have to have the relationship with
• 26:51
  other GM S to be able to know which way the wind is blowing on
• 26:55
  your own prospects and know, OK, we're getting calls on this guy
• 26:58
  or people are interested in this guy.
• 26:59
  Maybe now is the time to capitalize relative to what we
• 27:02
  think this guy S going to do in the future versus we.
• 27:05
  We kind of just have to hold on because we're not able to
• 27:08
  navigate those relationships the way we used to for whatever
• 27:11
  reason and and deal with the rest of the league in a way
• 27:14
  that's going to bring us the better side of a trade.
• 27:16
  It kind of seems like the Cardinals only trade with like a
• 27:18
  a select few teams, right. They it, it doesn't always seem
• 27:21
  like the whole league is open to the Cardinals in terms of
• 27:23
  trades. You know they've made these
• 27:25
  deals with Boston. They're happy to trade with the
• 27:27
  Rays. There's a few teams that they'll
• 27:28
  do deals with. But I don't know that for the
• 27:31
  Cardinals. It almost seems like the pool is
• 27:33
  you. You shrink it down to begin with
• 27:35
  and you know there are teams that just maybe they don't seem
• 27:37
  to trade with as often. I don't know, Maybe that's not a
• 27:39
  fair, a fair assessment. No, no, it is.
• 27:42
  For years you always had the Indians.
• 27:45
  Now Guardians. Yeah, it was the always the
• 27:46
  Indians. And now it's Seattle and and
• 27:50
  Rays and I I say this when I say half jokingly, maybe only 25%
• 27:54
  jokingly, maybe 5% jokingly, because it's probably not a good
• 27:59
  thing that the Rays always want to trade with you, is that,
• 28:02
  yeah, we'll trade with you, yeah.
• 28:03
  Hey, Yeah. Yeah, guys, we'll trade with you
• 28:04
  again. Sure went so well the last time.
• 28:07
  No, I think it's kind of understandable.
• 28:09
  I think the Cardinals are probably internally reluctant to
• 28:12
  keep doing it because they're like, what do they know?
• 28:14
  What do they know? Like, you're supposed to be
• 28:15
  pretty confident in your abilities as a front office to
• 28:18
  not have those thoughts. But if you're the Cardinals at
• 28:20
  this point, how could you not have those thoughts when Tampa's
• 28:22
  on the phone? It just feels like, And you know
• 28:24
  what else about Tampa? They tried to trade a Rosarina
• 28:27
  this offseason. They tried really hard to trade
• 28:29
  him, and maybe that was the signal to the rest of the
• 28:31
  league. That's like, what do they know
• 28:33
  is about to happen and now he can't play?
• 28:35
  Like it's kind of interesting how they are always right about
• 28:38
  everything, it seems. Yeah, and I don't.
• 28:40
  I'm not going to act like I've been watching a Rosarina's at
• 28:44
  bats. But when I when I heard that
• 28:45
  talk that seemed to me just if we call it Raisian, meaning RAYS
• 28:53
  apostrophe Ian meaning look, he's what is he one or two years
• 28:57
  away from free agency. So we got a ton of value his
• 29:01
  values at an all time high. We're not going to resign him.
• 29:05
  Let's get a boatload of prospects.
• 29:06
  That's what it felt like to me. But then like the Libertor thing
• 29:10
  was more I feel like the race said, you know what, we don't
• 29:14
  think he's going to be a front end starter now.
• 29:16
  Now, look, Libertor has been pretty good.
• 29:18
  Maybe he ends up being a really nice bullpen piece.
• 29:20
  But I think we'd all agree that for a good five years, Rosarina
• 29:24
  has been a stud. I know he's not good right now,
• 29:26
  but for five years he's been really what?
• 29:29
  I mean, what's his OPS plus career?
• 29:31
  Is it one? It's been good.
• 29:33
  I mean, he's been. Is it 140?
• 29:35
  Is it 120? Five, it's more closer to 125.
• 29:38
  I'm going to look it up though 1/21/21, but that's with a 34
• 29:43
  this year and 127 PA. He was probably closer to 125
• 29:47
  before this year. OK.
• 29:48
  But still very, very, very good. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:52
  And they, I mean, I don't know it, you could still say they,
• 29:56
  the Cardinals lost that deal. Maybe if we see Libby turn into
• 29:59
  Andrew Miller, you feel a lot better about it five years down
• 30:02
  the road. If he's just like a a wipeout,
• 30:04
  lefty reliever for a long, long time and starts throwing 98
• 30:08
  consistently because he's going in shorter bursts, maybe that'll
• 30:11
  happen. But I think you're right, like
• 30:13
  the Rays, that he was their first round pick when they did
• 30:15
  that trade, you know, and it wasn't that long ago at the
• 30:17
  time, and it's like you're trading your first round pick
• 30:19
  from two years ago. If the Cardinals did that, you'd
• 30:22
  be like, what did they, why did they pick that guy if they were
• 30:24
  going to trade him right away? I don't know.
• 30:25
  I think there's some merit to that.
• 30:27
  OK, so and we'll talk pitching. But again, just kind of big
• 30:31
  picture as I look at the Cardinals in the standings and
• 30:33
  hey, they're not in last place, those Pirates have fallen off a
• 30:38
  Cliff. But the Cardinals 14 and 17, So
• 30:41
  they're 5 1/2 games back of the Brewers.
• 30:44
  And here's the thing. Look, they're only two games
• 30:46
  back in the wild card, and that's what that's what the
• 30:48
  Cardinals will point to. Oh, we're right in there.
• 30:50
  We got a shot. But guess what?
• 30:52
  Everybody has a shot. Everybody has a shot.
• 30:54
  With all these wild cards and your run differentials -30.
• 30:58
  We know the offense has been horrendous, but how about this
• 31:02
  record against teams about 500? You're 5:00 and 11:00.
• 31:06
  This team, it just it feels like a middle team to me and and I
• 31:10
  look, I think they're going to hit better but they can't not.
• 31:13
  I just. I just don't believe this team
• 31:14
  is going to be bottom three or five teams in baseball
• 31:18
  offensively. But also I just I really feel
• 31:21
  like when I watch the Cardinals when I look at them in the
• 31:24
  standings we really have lowered the bar on the expectations for
• 31:28
  the Saint Louis Cardinals. I feel like we give a lot of
• 31:30
  Atta boys now that we don't that we didn't used to do right.
• 31:34
  I mean, oh, OK, they're, you know, they're 14 and 17 and they
• 31:38
  got a shot. They almost won the series.
• 31:40
  I don't know. I just, I do feel like, yeah, I
• 31:44
  mean, I just feel like we did. And this is where the fans are,
• 31:47
  right? The fans are right to be pissed.
• 31:48
  We we used to hold this team to a much higher standard and I
• 31:52
  feel like we've dropped our expectations as the league has
• 31:55
  dropped their requirements to make the play offs with all
• 31:58
  these wild cards. And a lot of fans would point to
• 32:01
  that. That's the way the Cardinals
• 32:02
  design it. And I don't know if I always
• 32:05
  agree with that, that oh, the Cardinals are just trying to get
• 32:08
  in. They're trying to squeak in
• 32:09
  because it's easier to do that. No, I think they're just
• 32:13
  constantly vigilant of balancing the the long term of the
• 32:18
  organization and they don't want to go take payroll to a level
• 32:22
  that you want them to take payroll to.
• 32:24
  Could they? Yeah, they could.
• 32:26
  And so it's fair to always bring that up because I don't when
• 32:29
  when Bill DeWitt says this isn't a profitable industry, you just
• 32:32
  laugh like it's it's come on, that's just bogus.
• 32:35
  It's a bogus claim. And now you know.
• 32:37
  Now maybe they're going to ask for another 500 million.
• 32:39
  That'll be interesting to see how that goes for the
• 32:41
  renovations to Bush, whenever that's going to come through.
• 32:44
  I almost feel like they're going to wait to announce that until
• 32:46
  they they squeak back into the playoffs again and then maybe
• 32:48
  that's when you ask for it. But I mean you're right.
• 32:51
  Like the the Cardinals in the golden era of like the the 20
• 32:55
  tens, the early twenty 10s and the the the the odds when they
• 32:59
  were winning World Series or going to World Series at least
• 33:03
  it seemed like with some more frequency and NLCS constantly
• 33:07
  that was that was different and they the the bar has been
• 33:11
  lowered since then but like we said you know they would love to
• 33:14
  be in those. They'd love to be in the NLCS
• 33:16
  every other year again. But they haven't.
• 33:18
  I don't know if they have the the structure in place relative
• 33:23
  to the rest of the league to get there at this point because the
• 33:25
  rest of the league is caught up to them.
• 33:27
  The Cardinals used to have an edge in so many different areas.
• 33:30
  It doesn't feel like that edge is there anymore and that's not
• 33:32
  a mean thing to say. We don't have to.
• 33:34
  It's just they they don't like the numbers are there to
• 33:36
  indicate that they've kind of fallen off the path a little bit
• 33:39
  and you you can take that 2019 NLCS they want to playoff series
• 33:43
  and got to the NLCS got whooped once they got there.
• 33:46
  But like it's it's not difficult to see the trend line and I
• 33:49
  think they pushed back against the trend line because they
• 33:52
  would say, well playoffs are random.
• 33:54
  So some of those years when we didn't do very well in the
• 33:56
  playoffs, you know, it's just not really our fault, 'cause
• 33:58
  it's random. I remember when I was a kid,
• 34:00
  they never lost the first playoff series.
• 34:02
  They're always getting to at least the second round.
• 34:05
  They so random or not, they would never.
• 34:07
  Like, I remember O Six, they were playing the Padres in that
• 34:10
  first series and whether they lost the game or whatever, I was
• 34:12
  starting to get a little bit nervous.
• 34:14
  I'm like, man, are they going to lose this first series?
• 34:16
  And I thought, no, they don't ever lose the first series.
• 34:18
  Like it's not even an option for them.
• 34:20
  And now it's like you're just begging to get the third wild
• 34:23
  card. So yeah, the standards have been
• 34:25
  lowered. I don't think that's a there.
• 34:26
  There's anything false or anything, you know, demeaning
• 34:30
  about that. It's just what it is.
• 34:32
  Right. And that's why I think you
• 34:33
  mentioned it even before. But we forget the Cardinals
• 34:36
  never lost the first series, the run where they went to the NLCS
• 34:40
  and they're beating the Dodgers, right, Multiple times.
• 34:43
  They're beating teams that on paper they weren't even supposed
• 34:46
  to beat. The Cardinals were the team and
• 34:49
  and we gave them so much credit for it because they deserved it
• 34:52
  for for five years and and I think people are just being
• 34:56
  being fair about it now so when you look at we'll we'll try to
• 35:00
  be kind of positive here now, OK.
• 35:01
  The bullpen. Now the bullpen ERA has fallen
• 35:05
  off there's been some lopsided games here but I think it's fair
• 35:08
  to say so. So look, right now Cardinals in
• 35:11
  MLB bullpen ERA 3.88, that is 15th in baseball.
• 35:16
  And I like to look, let's look at last year.
• 35:18
  So last year the Cardinals were 4.47, they were 23rd in
• 35:23
  baseball. So that's what I mean.
• 35:25
  We're talking about, you know, .6 of a run better.
• 35:30
  And I think the bullpen is even better than those stats because
• 35:33
  clearly, as you called them, the what'd you call them?
• 35:36
  The trilogy. The the Triumvirate Think it's
• 35:40
  like I would like an empire thing, yeah.
• 35:42
  I'd like to call him the Triad brought to you by Triad Bank.
• 35:45
  If we could maybe get that sponsor.
• 35:46
  I don't know if I don't. Know about that?
• 35:49
  The Triad Bank. But anyway, look, clearly their
• 35:51
  A relievers are arguably right up there, the best in baseball.
• 35:55
  So, Brandon, the bullpen has been really, really good.
• 36:00
  It has been but I think it's fair to you said you're going to
• 36:03
  be positive so you wanted me to be positive but it's also fair
• 36:06
  to go I think beyond the 1st four guys you kind of wonder who
• 36:11
  you've got that you can rely upon the the three have been
• 36:14
  unbelievable. JoJo Kittredge Helsley if you've
• 36:16
  got a lead going into the 7th and those three are going to be
• 36:18
  available to pitch that day you probably won.
• 36:21
  I mean that's just it's been that simple with those guys.
• 36:23
  I'm ready to count Ryan Fernandez.
• 36:25
  I know he gave up the bomb the other day but I I'm ready to say
• 36:28
  that Ryan Fernandez is someone that you can at least trust to
• 36:32
  you know farther than you can throw him.
• 36:33
  That Geo is I don't know what they're going to do with guy
• 36:36
  goes to this point he phase four batters they all scored was the
• 36:39
  case in the 11 to six loss Saturday night.
• 36:42
  So you have half of a bullpen that I think you feel really
• 36:45
  good about. Let's see more from Nick
• 36:46
  Robertson. John King is actually believe it
• 36:49
  on or not is on this team but they he doesn't really pitch
• 36:51
  very much because they don't really seem to trust him which
• 36:54
  maybe that's kind of Fair. You know when they had a 27th
• 36:57
  man for a double header they had to call somebody up.
• 36:59
  Who'd they pick? Kyle Leahy, who has a 6 ERA in
• 37:02
  Memphis and we saw him last year and it didn't really look like
• 37:05
  he was. He was caliber for the big
• 37:07
  leagues. So the, I mean organizationally,
• 37:10
  I think you can say little bit concerning if if they were to
• 37:13
  have an injury or two to the bullpen, suddenly I'm even now
• 37:16
  worried about that unit. But you do feel very, very
• 37:18
  strongly and very good about the top end of the bullpen.
• 37:21
  It may be one of the best trios that any team has to throw out
• 37:25
  there, 789 in baseball definitely.
• 37:28
  There are some questions though at the back end.
• 37:31
  Yeah. And I would just to, you know,
• 37:33
  we like to embrace debate here. You did mention Ryan Fernandez
• 37:37
  and I think Libby. I mean, right now it's really I
• 37:39
  should have. Mentioned too, Yes, I think
• 37:41
  it's. Fair to say they have.
• 37:43
  I always like to do this of how do I feel, confidence level.
• 37:47
  You know if this guy goes in the game now look, Nick Robertson is
• 37:50
  thrown 4 innings, but I think there are five guys right now.
• 37:53
  You mentioned the triumvirate. And then Ryan Fernandez, Matthew
• 37:58
  Liberatore. Right now there's five guys that
• 38:01
  I feel comfortable when they go in there.
• 38:04
  You know Zach Thompson, It's kind of weird, 'cause his role
• 38:07
  is so odd. You know he's.
• 38:09
  Not on the team. He's I, I I know.
• 38:11
  But I'm saying I'm saying big picture when he's in there, when
• 38:15
  he's kind of your long man type type guy.
• 38:19
  So do you think he's going to be down for for a long time now?
• 38:23
  I assume he's starting down there.
• 38:25
  I guess I haven't looked, but yeah, I figure he's part of
• 38:28
  that, the rotation depth, because that was weird.
• 38:31
  He didn't really have a role. You were bringing him in to mop
• 38:33
  things up when things went bad. And if you have to plan for
• 38:37
  things going bad every 3rd or 4th day, then what does that say
• 38:40
  about your rotation in the 1st place?
• 38:42
  So it's almost kind of a difficult spot to even have a
• 38:45
  guy like that around. Currently though it's John King
• 38:48
  that's sort of that guy. But he's not a long reliever.
• 38:51
  So it is if you and and Polante's down there starting
• 38:54
  to, he was a guy that could give you a multiple innings if you
• 38:56
  just had to mop things up it it could get dicey.
• 38:59
  I mean you had Steven Mats give you only 10 outs on a day where
• 39:03
  you had a a complete extra pitcher and you and I get it,
• 39:07
  you played two games that day. But it's like wow, what do you
• 39:10
  do? How do you cover the rest of
• 39:12
  these innings is maybe a bit of a question.
• 39:14
  But you are right. I should have mentioned Libretor
• 39:16
  because I would even maybe slat Libby confidence wise a little
• 39:19
  bit above Ryan Fernandez still but he just absolutely slipped
• 39:22
  my mind when I was talking about it.
• 39:24
  But so yeah, I would say 5 feel pretty good about let's see
• 39:27
  Robertson. Like he's kind of come up in
• 39:29
  that palante spot in the spot where the guys who weren't
• 39:32
  really panning out have gone down to AAA.
• 39:35
  Maybe Robertson is a guy that can stay and stick and do what
• 39:37
  we've seen Fernandez do start out in some roles where you're
• 39:40
  like, all right this is you're just going to get him in there
• 39:43
  when you're down by a bunch of runs to where he's worked his
• 39:45
  way up of hey we're willing to use this guy if we have to in
• 39:48
  some more meaningful spots. They do have to figure out what
• 39:51
  to do with GO though like what would you do is ERA is 9.
• 39:54
  He has been so good for so long but we've seen maybe a steady
• 39:57
  decline from him that really began last year.
• 40:00
  You can say maybe began at the end of 2022 but last year would
• 40:03
  give his hallmark would give up a couple homers if you gave up
• 40:07
  one you knew the second Homer was coming.
• 40:09
  But like the days where he didn't give up homers, he still
• 40:11
  look good. Now it's like, doesn't really
• 40:13
  matter what he's doing right now, he doesn't look good.
• 40:16
  Yeah, he's walking a lot of guys obviously giving up a lot of
• 40:19
  hits. Also I'm trying to look and see
• 40:22
  in the past the years that he's been been good what his walk
• 40:25
  rate is. He is, you know he's striking
• 40:27
  some guys out but but a lot of walks there.
• 40:31
  So here's here's another thing we'll we'll flip it to the the
• 40:34
  starting rotation. And again, I I try to be fair.
• 40:38
  So John Mozelak said this offseason we're going to get 3
• 40:42
  starters, like whoa, that's a lot.
• 40:44
  And they got three. Now getting four would have been
• 40:48
  even more difficult. But I just, I look at the way
• 40:51
  it's not just because Steven Matz has this this back issue,
• 40:55
  but the way they kind of just brought him in slowly from a
• 41:00
  pitch count. It just seems like, OK, you're
• 41:02
  massaging this guy in you. You basically say your whole
• 41:06
  strategy this offseason is getting innings.
• 41:08
  And I get that Kyle Gibson and Sonny Gray and Lance Lynn, but
• 41:12
  then you have this other guy who's not going to be an innings
• 41:14
  guy. I mean, you already basically
• 41:16
  are planning on that. You're saying we think in the
• 41:18
  past he's been hurt because maybe we ramp him up or he gets
• 41:21
  ramped up too early. I don't know.
• 41:24
  It's just he he feels like a guy that maybe makes more sense in
• 41:27
  the bullpen. And and this isn't just
• 41:30
  hindsight, I feel like this conversation was being had this
• 41:32
  offseason. To me, it's all about his
• 41:34
  contract. I understand it's a tough ask to
• 41:38
  have 4 pitchers being added now. The conversation would have been
• 41:42
  OK. Do you go higher end with two
• 41:45
  starters? Would you try Zach Thompson and
• 41:48
  really give him a role now? Clearly Zach Thompson has not
• 41:51
  been good and as you mentioned, he's in the minors.
• 41:53
  I'm just throwing it out there. It just seems like.
• 41:56
  I'm just thinking this year and next year, I feel like Max and
• 42:00
  Michaelis are both going to be given every opportunity to start
• 42:04
  because of their contracts and I don't think that's a good thing
• 42:07
  at all for the. Cardinals it's not a good thing.
• 42:09
  It's like the sunk cost fallacy where you say, well if this
• 42:11
  guy's no is not producing for us, but we're already paying
• 42:14
  him, so we kind of have to. But I think that's what the way
• 42:18
  they operate and it's also a reason by the way, that they
• 42:21
  didn't sign a bunch of long term contracts to pitchers this
• 42:24
  offseason. All right.
• 42:25
  So you, I, I, I do push back because you can't have it both
• 42:28
  ways. You can't have it.
• 42:29
  The Cardinals messed up not getting Montgomery or they
• 42:31
  messed up not, you know trying to sign multiple guys to three
• 42:34
  or four year deals. Gray was the one that you did
• 42:36
  and you felt very confident in him being what he is and what
• 42:39
  he's presumably going to be. But like they said they spent
• 42:43
  money on Steven Matz on a four year they extended Michaelis and
• 42:47
  nobody was asking for that necessarily.
• 42:49
  Although I do think that was the the notion of like the if we go
• 42:53
  in knowing we need 4 and maybe the one that we still have is
• 42:56
  Matt's. So you kind of need 5 like that.
• 42:59
  That's why they felt like they had to resign Michaelis and
• 43:01
  maybe they should have tried to do that with Montgomery instead.
• 43:04
  I think they didn't know Montgomery as well at the time.
• 43:06
  We talked about how if a if a guy is local it's easier to do.
• 43:11
  Michaelis is from Jupiter so they knew he'd be amenable to
• 43:14
  coming back so they just kind of they kind of locked it in and
• 43:17
  and now you maybe regret it because the numbers aren't very
• 43:20
  good for him. But yeah, I and I don't know
• 43:22
  what you do with Steven Mats. I think you're right too about
• 43:25
  that, where probably the IL is what you do with him for now,
• 43:28
  and then you just kind of see what's going on.
• 43:30
  It just seems like this is going to be what we do with Steven
• 43:33
  Mats for his whole Cardinals career.
• 43:34
  He's going to be good for a little bit.
• 43:36
  He's going to really not want to go back to the bullpen.
• 43:38
  They're going to say, but your numbers say you have to.
• 43:40
  He's going to pitch good in the bullpen.
• 43:41
  They're going to go well, Let's bring him back as a starter.
• 43:43
  It'll look good for a minute and then there will be an injury
• 43:45
  there. And it's so not fair because I
• 43:47
  don't want to demean him because he's a good dude, right?
• 43:50
  But he's that's been the story of his Cardinal's career on the
• 43:52
  field, and I just don't know if you can, you can escape the
• 43:55
  magnetism of what that is right now for Matt's and and what it's
• 43:58
  been so far in Saint Louis. Good word there.
• 44:01
  Magnetism. And it all.
• 44:03
  It all comes back to this though.
• 44:04
  It really does. It all comes back.
• 44:06
  We can do this on the pitching side.
• 44:08
  We already did with the outfielders.
• 44:09
  It all comes back to drafting and developing.
• 44:13
  And it is an endless cycle. Because here's why the
• 44:17
  Cardinals. The Cardinals aren't dumb right
• 44:20
  now. Miles Michaelis does feel like
• 44:22
  one of these legacy guys now, right?
• 44:24
  He's one of their guys that they always give too many years and
• 44:28
  contracts to. I don't agree with that.
• 44:30
  I don't think he's legacy, OK, But he he feels like that a
• 44:34
  little bit. He's kind of one of their
• 44:36
  leaders. He's been here a while.
• 44:38
  What I'm trying to say is this. I think when the Cardinals
• 44:41
  signed that deal, the extension, they didn't love it.
• 44:45
  It was out of necessity. Why was it out of necessity?
• 44:49
  Because I'll just throw a bunch of names at you quick because
• 44:52
  the Dakota Hudsons and Jake Woodfords and even Matthew
• 44:55
  Libertor as a starter and Zach Thompson who we brought up and
• 45:00
  maybe I'm missing people. But all of the young guys, you
• 45:03
  know in the past, the Cardinals could have given one of those
• 45:07
  spots to a 24 year old pitcher who had been good in AAA and
• 45:13
  they could have 4 veterans and one young guy.
• 45:16
  They have not produced a young guy in forever.
• 45:20
  They used to always produce the Carlos Martinez, the Michael
• 45:24
  Waka, the Shelby Miller, the Lance Lynn, the list goes on and
• 45:28
  on and on. None of these guys, The guys I
• 45:30
  mentioned there, you know we joke now about Dakota Hudson and
• 45:33
  Jake Woodford. Those were high picks.
• 45:36
  Zach Thompson, first rounder and Matthew Liberatore.
• 45:40
  You traded A stud. He was a first rounder.
• 45:42
  They're not getting any starting pitching production whatsoever
• 45:47
  from their farm system and that's the problem.
• 45:49
  Then you have to throw money at the old guys and give the one
• 45:52
  year deals to the old guys. Yeah, and I think it's maybe far
• 45:56
  enough along now to say like, which, I don't know, like Zach
• 45:59
  Thompson at his height could throw 100 mph.
• 46:01
  So sometimes injury happens, sometimes stuff happens.
• 46:05
  They they said he lost weight this offseason on purpose and
• 46:08
  then it messed up his mechanics. Did you see that?
• 46:11
  That was the that was the word on Thompson.
• 46:13
  Granted, they didn't talk about that until after he'd already
• 46:15
  been sent down, but that like at a different size his it just
• 46:19
  didn't sync up the right way. And that sounds kind of weird,
• 46:22
  but maybe that's true. The the drafting of it is where
• 46:26
  it's like they draft the one I'm going to pick on a little bit
• 46:29
  and maybe he can still be good. But Michael Mcgreevey was a
• 46:32
  first round pick like recently and when they drafted him it was
• 46:36
  kind of like I thought Dave Duncan was going to be his
• 46:39
  pitching coach where like he would throw strikes and maybe
• 46:41
  didn't throw that hard. But it doesn't matter because
• 46:43
  this is what we do with the Cardinals and I think people at
• 46:46
  the time even kind of picked on that pick on.
• 46:48
  There's not really a lot of upside for this guy.
• 46:50
  He's going to get to AAA and sort of Max out.
• 46:52
  That's what's happened so far and he's kind of piddling around
• 46:56
  AAA, not ERA in the high fours, whatever it is.
• 46:58
  Course FO right now is. He was minor league pitcher of
• 47:01
  the year couple years ago, but now he's having that same sort
• 47:04
  of trajectory where ERA in the high fours and you might just
• 47:06
  bring him up and have him start and just see.
• 47:09
  Because sometimes there are differences between AAA in the
• 47:12
  big leagues where you can actually do better in the big
• 47:14
  leagues because it's a different strike zone.
• 47:16
  And there's just sometimes you get stuck at a ceiling in AAA
• 47:19
  and you might just need to breakthrough it and let let a
• 47:21
  guy try before you decide he's no good.
• 47:24
  But it's true. The development thing is more
• 47:26
  true as a problem on the pitching side for me than it is
• 47:28
  even with the outfield stuff. Because it's not that they're
• 47:31
  having these pictures that they try out for a while and then
• 47:34
  they go elsewhere and they're stars.
• 47:35
  That doesn't actually happen with with the guy like Alcantra
• 47:39
  and Zach Gallon. It happened.
• 47:40
  But the Cardinals never actually got to look at those guys.
• 47:42
  They traded them while they were prospects, pretty much.
• 47:45
  Alcantra pitched a little bit out of the bullpen one year, but
• 47:48
  they they didn't really, truly have a a way to ascertain what
• 47:51
  those guys were going to be at the big league level.
• 47:54
  But when it comes to the Dakota Hudsons and the Jake Woodfords,
• 47:57
  they leave and they don't really, you know, they don't
• 48:00
  really pan out. Jack Flaherty is 1 where they
• 48:02
  they did not get the most out of him, but maybe from relationship
• 48:05
  wise it made sense to just go ahead and let him have a fresh
• 48:08
  start somewhere else. And he's obviously was great
• 48:11
  this weekend but has a 4 ERA on the season.
• 48:14
  So we'll see what he has. It's totally the development
• 48:16
  thing. You cannot continue to have to
• 48:18
  dip into the free agent bucket for 40 or 60% of a rotation
• 48:22
  every three months. When you're talking July to then
• 48:24
  you're going to November and then you're doing it again in
• 48:26
  July. That that's been the cycle for
• 48:28
  the Cardinals in every year that they haven't traded away at the
• 48:32
  deadline. You know when they're trying to
• 48:33
  win, they're basically adding pitching at the deadline, trying
• 48:36
  to just scrape together enough Wade Leblanc's to get through.
• 48:39
  And it doesn't work that way. Like, it's not a position of
• 48:42
  strength to be able to play this thing.
• 48:44
  You have to then nail your your little little free agent
• 48:48
  signings like a Lance Lane and a Kyle Gibson.
• 48:50
  And maybe they're nailing those with those guys, but it puts
• 48:52
  them in a spot where you have to because you don't ever have
• 48:55
  somebody making 700,000. That's a #3.
• 48:58
  They've got guys making 700,000 that you're praying can be a
• 49:02
  number 5 and really it just doesn't seem to pan out.
• 49:06
  Right. And that's where it's a big
• 49:07
  problem. Like my my bucket of four guys
• 49:10
  were more of the draft picks from let's say five years ago.
• 49:13
  And then you mentioned the guys more recently, Mcgreevy,
• 49:17
  Griseffo and even look Gerpi, I'll just tell you, I I have a
• 49:21
  friend who's a scout and when he first saw Gerpi playing in the
• 49:26
  low miners, he was very surprised.
• 49:28
  He was a first round pick. So I I don't know if Jerky's
• 49:30
  going to pan out. We shall see.
• 49:33
  But again, the the trend is not good.
• 49:35
  The trend is not good for several years.
• 49:37
  We're talking about. And you know, a generation is
• 49:40
  usually 25 years, But in a baseball generation, no.
• 49:44
  But like in baseball, it's like 5 years.
• 49:46
  The Cardinals have essentially had two generations of bad
• 49:50
  development, right? I mean, that's that's the reason
• 49:54
  they haven't really been elite for 10 years.
• 49:56
  Think about it. I mean, it makes perfect sense.
• 49:59
  They were elite at drafting and developing, and that's why they
• 50:02
  were so good. And in the last 10 years,
• 50:05
  they've fallen off the map and that's why they've been
• 50:08
  relatively average and then just totally lost it last year and
• 50:12
  even this year. I mean, does this feel like a
• 50:14
  good team to you? Doesn't feel like a good team.
• 50:19
  It's just a mid. The kids say mid, this team is
• 50:21
  mid as hell. Mid AF.
• 50:23
  Yeah, I mean, it could it could end up being very mid.
• 50:26
  I I still think there's time for it to turn around.
• 50:28
  In some regards like you said, the hitting is not going to if
• 50:31
  they're the 27th or 28th best offense in baseball, then
• 50:34
  they're not even mid. They're they're lucky to even be
• 50:37
  considered mediocre. But if the offense even gets to
• 50:41
  middle of the pack, 15th in baseball, well, I guess that
• 50:44
  technically would be mid. But I think they're pitching can
• 50:46
  be a little better than equal because the bullpens good and if
• 50:49
  the rotation could be equal, you could be like the 12th or so
• 50:52
  best team and that does tend to get you in the playoffs these
• 50:54
  days. But I don't know.
• 50:56
  I'm not ready to say it's a mid team, but I'm not going to stand
• 51:00
  there and defend it as if it's a good team because they haven't
• 51:02
  shown that they are. They haven't shown that they're
• 51:04
  a good team and the development and drafting thing.
• 51:06
  We like Randy Flores and we want to give him credit for things.
• 51:09
  I think he had a great 2020 draft, but that was almost the
• 51:11
  draft that they were forced out of their comfort zone to be
• 51:14
  like, we have to do something differently because we couldn't
• 51:16
  scout all these college pitchers that throw 89.
• 51:19
  We have to, we have to do something else this time because
• 51:21
  there was no college games played because of COVID.
• 51:23
  So they leaned in a little bit more on where they felt they
• 51:26
  might have had an edge with the high school class, and Wynn
• 51:29
  seems to be painting out. I think Walker's going to and
• 51:31
  we'll see about Team Kent. But he's like when the guys are
• 51:34
  in the low miners. You mentioned Jerky, and I just
• 51:35
  looked up his numbers. It's like a 5 1/2 ERA at Peoria.
• 51:38
  You're like, you want the guys to be just lighting it up down
• 51:41
  there at those levels. Sure, they could stink for a
• 51:43
  while and then be good, but that's if if a guy's going to
• 51:47
  truly be a hit as a draft pick, it shouldn't really take that
• 51:50
  long. If you're in Peoria, may I like
• 51:52
  Cooper? Jerky, maybe he turns it around.
• 51:54
  But you're right. It's kind of like, oh boy, what
• 51:56
  do we at least Tink Hens is, you know, lighting up AA right now.
• 51:59
  That's something that you can feel good about.
• 52:01
  But as you said, do we trust the Cardinals to ultimately make the
• 52:04
  proper decision on what it looks like for him?
• 52:07
  And when you look at that Mcgreevey draft, I just decided
• 52:09
  to look it up the the Indians, at the time, drafted Gavin
• 52:12
  Williams a few spots later. He's a guy who's made an impact
• 52:16
  already at the big leagues. Like, it just seems like they
• 52:19
  have these chances. They're drafting these pitchers.
• 52:21
  But then when do they ever turn into and when is that going to
• 52:24
  change? Yeah, it's funny.
• 52:26
  You mentioned Mcgreevy and I think I was watching the draft
• 52:31
  during that pick. And you know how on MLB Network
• 52:33
  they do the the comps. And I always laugh like I can't
• 52:37
  remember who it was because my memory is terrible.
• 52:39
  But I remember watching one of these drafts in the last five
• 52:42
  years and it was a first round pick, It was an outfielder and
• 52:46
  they did the comp. The comp was Skip Schumacher.
• 52:49
  And by the way, I love Skip Schumacher.
• 52:51
  I mean truly great guy, but I'm thinking for a first round pick.
• 52:56
  I don't, I don't necessarily think and he had a nice career
• 52:58
  don't get me wrong. But I think if you're drafting a
• 53:00
  guy and your first round picks comp is Skip Schumacher like I
• 53:05
  mean I'm hoping the comp is maybe I don't know like I don't
• 53:08
  want to say Aaron Judge but but somebody a little higher and.
• 53:12
  Give me like a chase, utterly comp.
• 53:14
  Give me like a give me. Something and that's where I
• 53:17
  can't remember. And if somebody's watching this
• 53:19
  podcast or listening can go back when they drafted Mcgreevy, I
• 53:24
  feel like their comp was very it was, yes, it was it was middle
• 53:30
  of the rotation maybe back end. You know, it might even have
• 53:34
  been Lance Lynn and and by the way, I I don't even say that
• 53:37
  clearly as a knock because Lance Lynn has been fantastic.
• 53:41
  He's got a great career. But I remember like I was around
• 53:43
  when Lance Lynn was first drafted.
• 53:46
  They weren't talking about Lance Lynn when he was drafted
• 53:50
  becoming the pitcher that he became.
• 53:52
  You know what I'm saying? And that came back to the
• 53:55
  Cardinals used to find Lance Lance.
• 53:57
  Now what was he a second round pick?
• 53:58
  I can't remember. I don't know.
• 54:00
  Was he a sandwich pick? He was.
• 54:02
  He was a high pick. Let's look it up before.
• 54:04
  I yeah, he was. He was a sandwich.
• 54:05
  It was technically the first round, but it was the 39th
• 54:08
  overall pick, so. OK, 39th pick.
• 54:11
  But I remember when I was covering the team back then when
• 54:13
  they drafted Lance Lynn, I don't think people thought he would
• 54:16
  have the career that he had. So he's had a great career and
• 54:20
  and that gets back to my previous point, they used to,
• 54:23
  they used to take guys and get value out of them even more so
• 54:29
  and now it's the exact opposite. Now the first round picks, yeah,
• 54:32
  maybe he'll be a nice reliever, you know?
• 54:35
  Yeah. And that's probably an
• 54:37
  indictment on the drafting and and and I guess the
• 54:40
  identification process of those players.
• 54:42
  Because and look, at the time when you draft a kid, I don't
• 54:45
  really like to do that the day of and maybe if I'm wrong
• 54:47
  someday for it. I'm like, OK, the the random
• 54:49
  person who said this was a bad pick the night of the draft can
• 54:53
  say they were right. And I can say I had some respect
• 54:56
  for the kid and said, look, I don't know enough to know
• 54:58
  whether this kids going to be good or not.
• 54:59
  I liked a lot of what you heard about Mcgreevy.
• 55:01
  But you're right. What they end up doing typically
• 55:03
  with those, with those comps on draft night is it's going to be
• 55:06
  favorable. They're not going to say Kip
• 55:08
  wells. They're not going to say like,
• 55:09
  oh this, you know, they're going to go Mike Marath on a guy and
• 55:12
  say, yeah, he's probably going to be a six starter.
• 55:14
  That kind of flames out. He'll give you some innings, but
• 55:16
  it doesn't really work out. They're going to be nice
• 55:19
  typically about those things. But yeah, I can kind of remember
• 55:22
  a lot of the takes on draft night from a grievous draft
• 55:24
  where it's like, yeah, I don't know if there's a lot of upside.
• 55:27
  Like I think the the the comp for him could have been Dakota
• 55:30
  Hudson. And if you would have gone, oh,
• 55:32
  like they they invested in Hudson and really never got
• 55:35
  fully what they were hoping to get out of him.
• 55:37
  And I'm looking now. Mcgreevey has 18 strikeouts in
• 55:40
  31 innings in Memphis. That's that's Miles Michaelis.
• 55:43
  You know, like, I don't know. I I don't know.
• 55:48
  Yeah, I'm trying to find the name, if I could find the name.
• 55:52
  Go ahead. No, no, no.
• 55:53
  I just are. Wanting to hunt that down with
• 55:55
  what the well. Because I think it's.
• 55:56
  I think it's fun because I remember watching that draft and
• 56:00
  I just, this is not hindsight because hell, I don't, I don't
• 56:03
  know any. Didn't he go to UC Santa Barbara
• 56:05
  or something crazy like that? Yeah, it's not that crazy.
• 56:08
  I mean, it's just California. That should be right up your
• 56:10
  alley. That should be right.
• 56:11
  What? I'm saying is OK, all right,
• 56:15
  well, I'm wrong on this one because I'm going to this is
• 56:19
  last word on sports. But I'm telling this.
• 56:21
  Clemens. Well, the name, I'm telling you
• 56:25
  the name they gave on MLB Network that night.
• 56:27
  Somebody please look this up because I want to know who the
• 56:29
  comp was because I I swear it was like a fourth starter.
• 56:32
  This particular article says Mcgreevey seems to have a
• 56:36
  similar profile to Shane Bieber. Oh man.
• 56:40
  Well, that would be good. Could they get the could they
• 56:42
  get the Shane Bieber version of him?
• 56:44
  That would be the help. But apparently he's also Bieber
• 56:47
  was also a Gaucho, so I think they were.
• 56:49
  I think they were trying to get a guy from the same college.
• 56:52
  OK, either way, I don't know. Hey, Brennan Shaffer.
• 56:55
  I'll tell you what I I have to. Actually, we're not even.
• 56:59
  We're not even cutting off early.
• 57:00
  We're almost an hour. Here an hour.
• 57:02
  It's been good. You know what?
• 57:04
  And I wanted to get the rotation.
• 57:06
  We'll get to that next week. Rotation has been they're
• 57:08
  they're fine, go ahead. Go ahead.
• 57:10
  I do have. I do have one thing that I It
• 57:12
  won't have to take long, but I got to get your take.
• 57:15
  Is it time to have a little Brandon Crawford conversation
• 57:18
  because the Cardinals are like, oh, he didn't have a spring.
• 57:21
  He's good veteran. He'll come around.
• 57:23
  But the the offense isn't there. We saw in the game over the
• 57:26
  weekend he had two at bats. He struck out both times,
• 57:29
  stranded 4 on base when he did it, and then there was a ground
• 57:32
  ball to shortstop that that just didn't turn into an out.
• 57:35
  It was slowly hit, but Mason makes the play 98 times out of
• 57:38
  100 and the average shortstop makes it probably 8888 times out
• 57:43
  of 100. And it just he just didn't make
• 57:44
  the play and Ollie actually removed him from the game after
• 57:47
  the 5th inning to put Mason win back in during a double header
• 57:51
  where like the whole thing with Mason win was be careful with
• 57:53
  the back he we want to make sure we're managing him and it it it
• 57:57
  got untenable is what I think Holly Marmo would have said if
• 57:59
  he was on the the lie detector test to have Brandon Crawford
• 58:02
  out there. And I know fair mean is on this
• 58:04
  roster but it doesn't seem they really want to use him because
• 58:06
  then you have to have a Brandon Crawford conversation about why
• 58:09
  you're not using Brandon Crawford as the backup
• 58:10
  shortstop. But it just, I I know we're in
• 58:14
  an hour and you got to go, but is there, do you have thoughts
• 58:16
  on that? Because I think, you know, fans
• 58:19
  are like, get rid of this guy. And I'm like, yeah, that's not
• 58:21
  very nice, but also it's kind of an untenable situation if that's
• 58:24
  what you're getting production wise.
• 58:26
  Well, you can't take his bat out of the lineup right now.
• 58:28
  I mean, obviously he's hitting. Come on, buck O five with the
• 58:32
  Buck O 5 slug. No, here's the thing.
• 58:35
  You know, I laugh when you said it because you said that's not
• 58:37
  nice. Let me quote the late, great Tim
• 58:40
  McCarver. This is the big leagues, man.
• 58:42
  I know this is not about being nice.
• 58:45
  And by the way, we already know the Cardinals.
• 58:47
  They can never get rid of the guys who are their guys, right?
• 58:51
  If you've played more than five years for the Cardinals, they
• 58:54
  will never cut you. They will never DFA you.
• 58:56
  And now we're doing it just because Brandon Crawford.
• 58:59
  Brandon Crawford is the the Giants version of the Cardinals.
• 59:02
  So, like, the Cardinals are now going to be nice to him.
• 59:05
  Oh, he's such a great veteran player and leader and he won
• 59:08
  championships. We can't be mean to him.
• 59:10
  This is the big leagues. Brandon Crawford is probably
• 59:13
  done nothing against him. He's had a great career.
• 59:16
  He's a really nice player. We cannot talk about being nice.
• 59:20
  We do that too often with the. Criminals, I'm, I'm the one that
• 59:23
  brought it up and said is it time to have this conversation?
• 59:26
  Yes. About maybe so.
• 59:28
  But I I will be as tactful as I can.
• 59:31
  It just doesn't look like they're really getting a lot
• 59:33
  from him, you know. And I think you, I think you
• 59:36
  have to again, could Brendan Donovan play shortstop if he had
• 59:40
  to? Probably about his.
• 59:42
  His range is probably going to be better than Crawford's at
• 59:44
  this point. He's just kind of slow moving
• 59:45
  and I don't know you know, I don't know the reasons.
• 59:47
  I don't know the whole back story.
• 59:48
  So it I don't like to pontificate on stuff that I'm
• 59:51
  not super familiar with why it is the way it is.
• 59:53
  But he was injured last year. Cardinal Stotti would, you know,
• 59:56
  be able to give him something. I think what it was truly is
• 59:59
  that they were worried the week that Mason Wynn had the back
• 1:00:02
  first come up as a problem in spring and then the Tim
• 1:00:05
  Anderson's and everybody else started signing those veteran
• 1:00:08
  shortstops. And they're like, we can't be
• 1:00:10
  left without one in case Mason Wynn can't go.
• 1:00:13
  Mason Wynn looks fine. And maybe, you know that
• 1:00:16
  $2,000,000 insurance policy has has served its purpose.
• 1:00:20
  But I think Fermin doesn't have a good throwing arm.
• 1:00:23
  He doesn't, but he can probably do that at shortstop and he hit
• 1:00:27
  1000 OPS in Memphis. So that's my thoughts on that.
• 1:00:30
  If that's too mean, then I, you know, Charlie could tell me it's
• 1:00:33
  the big leagues and we can be good with it.
• 1:00:35
  But I had to bring that up because it feels like one of
• 1:00:38
  those things where you go, oh, what's the Taylor Mater last
• 1:00:41
  spot on the roster? What's a tie?
• 1:00:42
  Wigginton last. Who cares?
• 1:00:44
  It doesn't matter. I don't know.
• 1:00:45
  Find an edge where you can, and that might be a a place you
• 1:00:48
  could find one. Yeah, I agree and I I think it's
• 1:00:50
  OK when you basically say the guy can no longer make play, he
• 1:00:55
  can't even, he can't even play a full game of a double header,
• 1:00:59
  which the whole reason he's in is to rest Mason win and he's
• 1:01:03
  hitting a buck O five. I think it's fair to say it's
• 1:01:06
  not good. He could play the full game of a
• 1:01:09
  double header. He just wasn't playing well and
• 1:01:12
  all. He was like, I'm going to put a
• 1:01:14
  player in that can play well. That's really.
• 1:01:16
  They didn't play in, they didn't go in planning for Brandon
• 1:01:18
  Crawford to play 5 innings. I know, but.
• 1:01:20
  That's, I don't know if he would say that.
• 1:01:22
  I think he would give you a look and go.
• 1:01:25
  It is what it is, you know. That's kind of where it is.
• 1:01:28
  That's what I'm saying. Like if you're backup catcher
• 1:01:32
  can't catch a full game of a double header at minimum to give
• 1:01:36
  your main catcher a break. Same with shortstop.
• 1:01:38
  Not exactly the same, but yes, that's a huge, huge problem.
• 1:01:42
  Is that a shot at Yvonne Herrera, though, that you're
• 1:01:43
  taking because they sub in hot heads for defense late?
• 1:01:46
  They've done that a lot, a number of times.
• 1:01:48
  OK. But also those guys, at least at
• 1:01:51
  first, could both hit. I understand that.
• 1:01:53
  I'm just saying, like we all understand usage and rest and
• 1:01:56
  there has to be somebody on the team that can at least play
• 1:01:59
  shortstop for about, what, 2025 games at minimum that has to.
• 1:02:04
  That has to happen. Yeah I think fair mean can
• 1:02:07
  probably it's it may he'll make an error or whatever he might
• 1:02:10
  get the ball with. Crawford wasn't even an error.
• 1:02:13
  He just did the play so slowly that it didn't result in and
• 1:02:17
  out. And so I don't even and it's not
• 1:02:20
  the first time right. Like again?
• 1:02:24
  Hilarious. The way you the way you describe
• 1:02:27
  that, it wasn't an error, it was just it was so slow that it
• 1:02:31
  wasn't an out. He just like, look, if they hit
• 1:02:34
  a ball to me at shortstop and I'm the shortstop and I run to
• 1:02:36
  it in my run, my little fastest heart out and I pick it up and I
• 1:02:40
  throw a strike to 1st, but that it develops slower than the
• 1:02:43
  runner. You know, Brendan Schaeffer's
• 1:02:44
  not throwing a guy out at short. First of all, I'm a lefty, so I
• 1:02:47
  have to kind of turn my body and it just doesn't work.
• 1:02:49
  But I don't think they're charging me with an error.
• 1:02:50
  They're just going to go. He didn't make the play and
• 1:02:52
  that's that's what happened on this one.
• 1:02:55
  This is where your great your great franchise folks.
• 1:02:59
  This is this is where the Saint Louis Cardinals have fallen.
• 1:03:02
  This is what we're talking about here on Low Hanging Fruit,
• 1:03:05
  Charlie Marlowe. Brendan Schaefer.
• 1:03:06
  Follow him. B Schafe Daily, his YouTube
• 1:03:09
  channel. He does a lot more than I do,
• 1:03:11
  Brendan. He'll link it.
• 1:03:12
  I'm sure he'll link it in the description.
• 1:03:13
  You can just click that little link.
• 1:03:15
  He'll do. It I always try He's.
• 1:03:16
  Good people. See you guys.
• 1:03:18
  Love you all. Take it easy.