Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Job Title: Data Engineer (Full-Time)

Department: Baseball Operations

Summary of Responsibilities:
The role of the Data Engineer will be to design, develop, and maintain modern, scalable baseball data processing systems for the St. Louis Cardinals. This person will collaborate with the Baseball Systems group to ensure that quality data, analytics, and visualizations are accessible in a timely fashion to front office members, scouts, coaches, players, and others in Baseball Operations. This person should be detail-oriented, enjoy collaborating with others, communicate effectively both verbally and in writing, keep up with the latest tools and technologies, and have strong interest in the game of baseball.

The St. Louis Cardinals are committed to building an inclusive organization where we have a diverse workforce as well as a culture where employees feel they belong and can contribute their unique qualities to the team. The Cardinals are dedicated to continuously building a diverse staff, and we strongly encourage candidates who are members of historically marginalized groups which may include, but are not limited to persons of color, LGBTQIA, gender, veterans, and persons with disabilities, to apply. If you meet any of the qualifications listed below we welcome you to apply, or to reach out to us at hrinfo@cardinals.com for more information. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For the sake of diplomacy, we’ll call A.J. Pierzynski a polarizing player, even if much of that polarization tended towards the negative end of the spectrum. “If you play against him, you hate him,” said his own manager Ozzie Guillen in 2006, the year after Pierzynski served as the starting catcher for the World Series-winning White Sox. “If you play with him, you hate him a little less.”

Pierzynski spent parts of 19 seasons in the majors provoking extreme reactions among players, fans, and everyone else, that while making two All-Star teams, helping five teams to the playoffs, and catching more games than all but eight other backstops. A November 2013 article by NESN’s Ricky Doyle, at a point just a few weeks before the defending champion Red Sox signed him as a free agent, summarized the book on Pierzynski to that point:

The most obvious risk of signing Pierzynski involves his accompanying baggage. There’s a difference between having a colorful personality and having a personality that evokes disdain, and Pierzynski’s behavior seemingly strikes a chord. According to an August 2012 article on SI.com, Pierzynski has in his career been voted by his opponents as the player they would most like to see beaned (2006), baseball’s meanest player (2011) and baseball’s most hated player (2012). Men’s Journal polled 100 MLB players on various topics in 2012, and 34 percent of respondents voted Pierzynski the most hated player in the game.

“Everyone wants a villain,” Pierzynski told SI.com’s Ben Reiter in the aforementioned profile. Reiter was able to penetrate the persona to find an introspective, intelligent and hard-working player, not to mention a devoted family man. “Look at what LeBron James has gone through the past few years. My teammates get the best kick of it,” Pierzynski continued. “When we go to Oakland, Anaheim, San Francisco, Minnesota, Cleveland, I get loud boos. Guys on my team can’t wait to see that and to hear that… Now, when those polls come out, it’d be a big upset if somebody else won.” Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

Can we just say 87 wins and call it a day? It feels like that’s what I’ve been projecting for the Cardinals for the last 15 years or so. That’s an exaggeration, but not an extreme one: ZiPS hasn’t projected St. Louis outside the 85–90 win range in a full season since 2011. Going back to the first official ZiPS team standings in 2005 — I only did players in the first couple of years — the team’s projections have been below .500 once (2008) and above 90 wins once (2010).

The lineup rarely has superstars at the top, but the Cards have a knack for keeping their floor incredibly high. Does that line sound familiar? It might; it’s what I wrote last year. And it still applies today. For a while, it looked like it wouldn’t happen in 2021, with the team 44-47 right around the All-Star break. Now, if you still considered the Cardinals an 89-win team or thereabouts, the normal thinking would have been to say, “Oh, OK, so they’ll play at an 89-win pace the rest of the way and finish around .500.” But the Cards care not for you and your fancy-pants Gambler’s Fallacy. After a loss against the Kansas City Royals on August 8, St. Louis stood at 55-56. This was the last time they were below .500, as they went 35-16 the rest of the way, capped by a 17-game winning streak in mid-September. The Cards didn’t just sneak back into the Wild Card conversation; they talked over the Padres and Reds and flipped the table, spilling all the hors d’oeuvres onto the floor. In the end, they made the playoffs with seven games to spare. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2018 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

“A hard-charging third baseman” who “could have played shortstop with more range than Cal Ripken.” “A no-nonsense star.” “The perfect baseball player.” Scott Rolen did not lack for praise, particularly in the pages of Sports Illustrated at the height of his career. A masterful, athletic defender with the physical dimensions of a tight end (listed at 6-foot-4, 245 pounds), Rolen played with an all-out intensity, sacrificing his body in the name of stopping balls from getting through the left side of the infield. Many viewed him as the position’s best for his time, and he more than held his own with the bat as well, routinely accompanying his 25 to 30 homers a year with strong on-base percentages.

There was much to love about Rolen’s game, but particularly in Philadelphia, the city where he began his major league career and the one with a reputation for fraternal fondness, he found no shortage of critics — even in the Phillies organization. Despite winning 1997 NL Rookie of the Year honors and emerging as a foundation-type player, Rolen was blasted publicly by manager Larry Bowa and special assistant to the general manager Dallas Green. While ownership pinched pennies and waited for a new ballpark, fans booed and vilified him. Eventually, Rolen couldn’t wait to skip town, even when offered a deal that could have been worth as much as $140 million. Traded in mid-2002 to the Cardinals, he referred to St. Louis as “baseball heaven,” which only further enraged the Philly faithful. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two narratives to consider with Steven Matz, who signed with the Cardinals last Wednesday. There’s the straight-up baseball story of a solid pitcher joining the rotation of a good team. Then there’s the seemingly never-ending soap opera that is the Mets, whom he spurned in the final moments of his free agency for St. Louis.

Let’s start with the baseball side of things. Matz immediately fills a rotation spot for a Cardinals team that will likely be in the thick of things in the NL Central in 2022. At four years and $11 million per, with the chance to earn an additional $4 million over the life of the contract via performance bonuses, he topped the length and total value, though not AAV, predicted by Ben Clemens in our top 50 free agents list, on which he ranked no. 31, and beat the crowd-sourced numbers in each category.

The lefty will slot somewhere in the middle of the St. Louis starter group, certainly following Adam Wainwright and Jack Flaherty, and if there’s anyone on the market who fits the definition of middle-rotation starter, it’s Matz. As 2020 gets further away in our collective rear-view mirrors, we’ve learned how much data from that season is an outlier, and an extreme one at times, as was the case with him; he was northing short of miserable in his nine appearances that season. And while he had his share of health issues in his earlier years, if you take his three most recent full seasons, he’s been the roughly the same player in terms of both consistent performance and availability.

He doesn’t have the kind of high-spin, bat-missing stuff that teams tend to look for in the modern game, but Matz keeps the ball on the ground at roughly a 50% rate and should benefit greatly from a Cardinals defense that represents a significant upgrade from what was behind him in Toronto. He leans primarily on his 93–96-mph sinker and throws a pair of breaking balls roughly a quarter of the time, preferring his curve over his slider, and for good reason, considering the quality of the pitch. Changeups are rare but shouldn’t be, as he’s added a few inches of drop on the pitch over the past few years, leading to an offering that performs quite well.

During those previously mentioned three full seasons, Matz averaged 30 starts and 155 innings per, so he’s been taking the bump every five days, but going deep into games is not something he brings to the table, as he got more than 18 outs just three times in 2021. He can throw a strike when he has to but needs to play around the edges in order to succeed with his arsenal, leading to deeper counts, more than 100 pitches per six innings, and the need for multiple relievers to finish the job.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to this year’s ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Maris

Casual baseball fans know Roger Maris mainly for his toppling of Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1961, when he beat out teammate Mickey Mantle and hit 61 homers. The more hardcore fans might know that Maris actually won back-to-back AL MVP awards with the Yankees in 1960 and ’61, and helped the team to five straight pennants and a pair of championships. While it’s sometimes presumed that these achievements are enough to merit Maris a spot in Cooperstown, a closer look at the slugger’s 12-year career (1957-68) suggests that he’s exactly where he should be with respect to the Hall of Fame: on the outside. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to this year’s ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Ken Boyer

One of three brothers who spent time in the majors, Boyer spent the bulk of his 15-year career (1955-69) vying with Hall of Famers Eddie Mathews and Ron Santo for recognition as the NL’s top third baseman. An outstanding all-around player with good power, speed, and an excellent glove — but comparatively little flash, for he was all business – Boyer earned All-Star honors in seven seasons and won five Gold Gloves, all of them during his initial 11-year run with the Cardinals. In 1964, he took home NL MVP honors while helping St. Louis to its first championship in 18 years.

Boyer was born on May 20, 1931 in Liberty, Missouri, the third-oldest son in a family of 14 (!) children. He was nearly four years younger than Cloyd Boyer, who pitched in the majors from 1949-52 and ’55, and nearly six years older than Clete Boyer, also a third baseman from 1955-57 and ’59-71; four other brothers (Wayne, Lynn, Len, and Ron) played in the minors. The Cardinals signed Ken as a pitcher in 1949, paying him a $6,000 bonus. While his pitching results weren’t awful, he took his strong arm to third base when the need presented itself on his Class D Hamilton Cardinals team; he hit .342, slugged .575, and showed off outstanding defense.

Boyer’s progress to the majors was interrupted by a two-year stint in the Army during the Korean War; he didn’t play at all in 1952 or ’53. Upon returning, the 23-year-old Boyer put in a strong season at Double-A Houston in 1954, then made the Cardinals out of spring training the following year, and even homered in his major leagued debut, a two-run shot off the Cubs’ Paul Minner that trimmed an eighth-inning lead to 14-4. That was the first of 18 homers Boyer hit as a rookie while batting .264/.311/.425 (94 OPS+); he also stole 22 bases but was caught a league-high 17 times.

Boyer came into his own in 1956, batting .306/.347/.494 (124 OPS+) with 26 homers and making his first All-Star team. It was the first year of a nine-season run across which Boyer would hit a combined .299/.364/.491 (124 OPS+) while averaging 25 homers and 6.1 WAR; seven times, he ranked among the NL’s top 10 in WAR while doing so five times apiece in batting average and on-base percentage, and four times in slugging percentage. Boyer set career highs in home runs (32), slugging percentage (.570) and OPS+ (144) in 1960, then followed that up with highs in WAR (8.0), AVG, and OBP while hitting .329/.397/.533 (136 OPS+) in ’61. He made the All-Star team every year from 1959-64, including the twice-a-summer version of the event in the first four of those seasons.

The Cardinals were not a very good team for the first leg of Boyer’s career; from 1954-59, they cracked .500 just once. With Boyer absorbing the lessons of Stan Musial and helping to pass them along to a younger core — first baseman Bill White, second baseman Julian Javier, center fielder Curt Flood, and later catcher Tim McCarver — the team began trending in the right direction. The Cardinals went 86-68 in 1960, and continued to improve, particularly as right-hander Bob Gibson emerged as a star. After going 93-69 and finishing second to the Dodgers in 1963 — a six-game deficit, their smallest since ’49 — they matched that record and won the pennant the following year, spurred by the mid-June acquisition of left fielder Lou Brock; they beat out a Phillies team that closed September with 10 straight losses. Boyer hit .295/.365/.489 while driving in a league-high 119 runs. In a case of the writers rewarding the top player on a winning team with the MVP award, he took home the trophy, though his 6.1 WAR ranked 10th, well behind Willie Mays (11.0), Santo (8.9), Phillies rookie Dick Allen (8.8), Frank Robinson (7.9) et al.

Though Boyer hit just .222/.241/.481 in the seven-game World Series against the Yankees and his brother Clete, he came up big by supplying all the scoring via a grand slam off Al Downing in the Cardinals’ 4-3 win in Game 4. Additionally, he went 3-for-4 with a double and a homer in the Cardinals’ 7-5 win in Game 7. His brother also homered, to date the only time that’s happened in World Series play.

Hampered by back problems, Boyer slipped to a 91 OPS and 1.8 WAR in 1965, his age-34 season, after which he was traded to the Mets for pitcher Al Jackson and third baseman Charley Smith. Boyer rebounded to a 101 OPS+ and 2.9 WAR, albeit on a 95-loss team going nowhere. The following July, he was traded to the White Sox, who were running first in what wound up as a thrilling four-team race that went down to the season’s final day. The White Sox were managed by Eddie Stanky, who had been at the helm when Boyer broke in with the Cardinals. Though Boyer didn’t play badly, he appeared in just 67 games for the team before being released in May 1968. He was picked up by the Dodgers, spending the remainder of that season and the next with them.

After his playing days were done, Boyer managed in the minors, then took over the Cardinals from early 1978 to early ’80; in his one full season (1979), he guided the team to an 86-76 record and a third-place finish. While he moved into a scouting role and was slated to manage the team’s Triple-A Louisville affiliate in 1982, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on September 7 of that year, at age 52.

Boyer never got much traction in the BBWAA voting, either before or after his death. From 1975-79, he maxed out at 4.7%, and was bumped off the ballot when the Five Percent rule was put in place in 1980. He was one of 11 players who had his eligibility restored in 1985, only five of whom cleared the bar and remained on the ballot, along with Allen, Flood, Santo, and Vada Pinson. He remained on the ballot through 1994, topping out at 25.5% in ’88, nowhere near enough for election. Neither did he fare well via the expanded Veterans Committee in the 2003, ’05, and ’07 elections, maxing out at 18.8% in the middle of those years. Similarly, on both the 2012 and ’15 Golden Era ballots, he finished below the threshold where they announce the actual vote totals so as not to embarrass anyone.

All of which is to say that within this Golden Days group, Boyer might feel like ballast, here to round out a ballot without having much chance at getting elected. That’s a shame, because he was damn good. For the 1956-64 period, he ranked sixth among all position players in value:

That’s a pretty good group! Of course the comparison is manicured perfectly to Boyer’s best years, but even if I expand the range to cover the full extent of his career, he’s ninth on the list, in similar company (Kaline, Clemente, and Banks passes him), and one spot ahead of Santo. Boyer was a better fielder than Santo (via Total Zone, +73 runs to +21), and a better baserunner (+19 runs to -34, including double play avoidance), though not as good a hitter (116 OPS+ to 125).

Even having lost time to military service, Boyer ranks 14th among third basemen in JAWS, just 1.4 points below the standard, with a seven-year peak that ranks ninth, 3.2 points above the standard. At a position that’s grossly underrepresented — there are just 15 enshrined third basemen, not including Negro League players, compared to 20 second basemen, 23 shortstops, and 27 right fielders — that should be good enough for Cooperstown.

If I had a ballot for this group, Boyer would be one of my four choices. I don’t expect that enough voters will see it that way, but I do appreciate that he’s being kept in the conversation, and will get his due someday.

Maury Wills

A switch-hitting shortstop in the majors for 14 seasons (1959-72), mostly with the Dodgers, Wills is generally credited with reviving the art of the stolen base, a particularly useful tactic in the run-parched environment of Dodger Stadium in the early-to-mid 1960s. The electrifying Wills led the league in steals every year from 1960-65, setting a since-broken major league record with 104 in ’62 — a performance that helped him earn NL MVP honors — while playing a significant role on three Dodgers world championship teams.

Born on October 2, 1932 in Washington, DC, Wills starred in three sports at Cardozo High School, earning all-city honors in all three, and drew particular interest from colleges as a quarterback and safety, but “baseball was my true love,” as he later said. The Dodgers, on the hunt for Black players in the wake of Jackie Robinson’s breakthrough, signed him in the summer of 1950 for a bonus of just $500, far short of the $6,000 Wills and his family envisioned.

Wills toiled in the minors for parts of nine seasons (1951-59), twice leaving the Dodgers’ organization via conditional deals; he spent 1957 playing for the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, and went to spring training with the Tigers in ’59. The turning point for Wills actually came in 1958, after the Dodgers reclaimed him from the Reds, when Triple-A Spokane Indians manager Bobby Bragan encouraged the righty-swinging Wills to learn to switch-hit, moving him even closer to first base.

With Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese having retired after the 1958 season, the Dodgers’ first in Los Angeles, the team was in search of a shortstop. With neither Don Zimmer nor Bob Lillis panning out, and with Wills batting a sizzling .313/.387/.391 with 25 steals at Spokane, he was called up in early June. By early July, he was the regular. While his .260/.298/.298 (55 OPS+) showing was subpar, it still represented an upgrade over the even weaker performance of Zimmer, and he sizzled in September (.345/.382/.405) as the Dodgers won a three-way pennant race over the Giants and Braves, beating the latter twice in a best-of-three tiebreaker series at season’s end. Wills started all six World Series games as the Dodgers beat the White Sox.

Finding a home atop the batting order midway through the 1960 season, Wills used his skills as a bunter and base thief to ignite Los Angeles’ offense. He hit .295/.342/.331 while stealing a league-high 50 bases in 62 attempts, good for 2.5 WAR. After stealing 35 bases the following year while making his first All-Star team, Wills swiped a whopping 104 — a mark that stood until it was broken by Lou Brock in 1974 — in 117 attempts in 1962. He surpassed Ty Cobb’s single-season record of 96 in the Dodgers’ 156th game, the same number Cobb needed in 1915 (his Tigers played two tie games), satisfying commissioner Ford C. Frick’s ruling on whether his feat would count as the major league record.

The frequent running took a physical toll on Wills, amplified by opposing groundskeepers adding sand to the clay around first base to make traction more difficult. Still, he hit .299/.347/.373 with 10 triples and 130 runs scored; including his 19 baserunning runs (the highest single-season total in B-Ref’s database) and average-ish defense that nonetheless earned him a Gold Glove, he finished with 6.0 WAR, good for fourth in the league. His performance was such a unique throwback that he beat out heavy-hitters like NL home run and WAR leader Willie Mays and teammate Tommy Davis (.346/.374/.535, 230 hits, 27 homers, 153 RBI) to win the NL MVP award.

Alas, the Dodgers lost the pennant via a playoff versus the Giants — which did enable Wills to set a still-standing record of 165 games played in a regular season — but they would win the World Series in 1963 and ’65, with Wills hitting for a career-best 112 OPS+ (on a .302/.355/.349 line) in the former year and stealing 94 bases in the latter before making a stellar showing (.367/.387.467) against the Twins (starring Golden Days ballot-mates Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva) in the Fall Classic.

Wills made five All-Star teams from 1961-66, but he fell out of favor with his sinking batting averages and on-base percentages, not to mention his going AWOL to play banjo with Don Ho and Sammy Davis Jr. during the Dodgers’ post-1966 World Series trip to Japan to play a exhibition games. With Walter O’Malley already in a foul mood due to the sudden retirement of Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers’ owner ordered general manager Buzzie Bavasi to trade Wills.

Bavasi complied, sending Wills to the Pirates, for whom he had two very good seasons, hitting for a 98 OPS+, stealing 81 bases, and totaling 7.8 WAR. Drafted away by the Expos in the expansion draft in late 1968, he became increasingly unhappy to the point of briefly retiring in early June, but was soon dealt back to the Dodgers along with future pinch-hitting legend Manny Mota in exchange for Ron Fairly and Paul Popovich. He stuck around until 1972, the year that Bill Russell emerged as the regular shortstop and the first piece in place for what would become the game’s longest-running infield.

Wills retired with 586 steals, 21 more than any other player from 1920-72; today, his total ranks 20th all-time. Though he ranked among the league’s top 10 in stolen base percentage eight times from 1960-68, by modern standards his career 73.8% success rate is nothing special. Even so, he was 55 runs above average on the basepaths and another 21 above average in double play avoidance; his combined total for the aforementioned 1920-72 period ranked second only to Luis Aparicio, and overall it’s still 22nd.

For all of that, Wills’ batting line was pretty unremarkable even given the adjustments for his low-scoring environment; his 88 OPS+ is one point ahead of that of Ozzie Smith, but he was merely average defensively, no small accomplishment for a 14-year career at a premium defensive position, but no wizard. Even accounting for his baserunning, he dented the WAR leaderboard only in 1962. He ranks just 48th at the position in JAWS, below every enshrined shortstop as well as current BBWAA candidate Omar Vizquel; Carlos Correa (34.2) will pass him next year. Even giving Wills a subjectively sizable bonus for restoring the stolen base to prominence, and for the level of excitement and entertainment he must have created with his speed and small-ball skills — an aspect that’s not very well captured in WAR — I just don’t see where he’s a strong enough candidate for election.

Not every voter has felt that way. Wills debuted on the 1978 ballot with 30.3% of the vote, a share that portends a reasonable chance of eventual election. By 1981, he climbed to 40.6%, but then things took a turn. The Mariners named him as their manager on August 4, 1980, to take over for the fired Darrell Johnson. Wills’ lack of experience — he had passed up a chance to manage in the minors at Bavasi’s encouragement, though had managed in Mexican winter leagues for a few years — quickly showed. Not only did the Mariners go 20-38 in the remainder of that season and start the next one 6-18, but he made “unconscionable strategic mistakes, third-grade, sandlot mistakes. And he compounded his mistakes by claiming to know all or by blaming somebody else,” to use the description of Steve Rudman of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His brief tenure was a veritable fiasco.

It turns out Wills had a bigger problem: cocaine. Accounts vary as to whether it was the spring of 1980 before he was hired, or the following spring, after a longtime romantic relationship ended with his partner running off with another ballplayer to whom he’d introduced her during the 1980-81 offseason. After being fired, he spiraled downward, freebasing cocaine, drinking daily, and covering his windows with blankets. He had already left a rehab program prematurely when in December 1983 he was arrested for driving a car reported as stolen, and possessing an estimated $7 worth of cocaine. Both charges were eventually dismissed, and Wills eventually cleaned up, with former Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe and executive Fred Claire both playing parts in getting him help. He returned to baseball as an instructor (I spotted him tutoring Dodgers neophytes in bunting in Dodgertown in the springs of both 1989 and 2003, and at an Ogden Raptors game in 2010).

Electorally, the damage was done as far as the writers were concerned. Wills spent 15 years on the BBWAA ballot but didn’t even reach 30% after 1981, and only intermittently broke 25%. He topped out at 40% on the expanded Veterans Committee ballots in 2007, but receded to 23.4% two years later and wasn’t included on the 2012 Golden Era ballot. He did receive 56.3% on the 2015 one, however, placing him fourth behind Allen, Oliva, and Kaat, and so it’s fair to say that he’s got some momentum coming into this ballot. Again, I think he’s far from the best choice available, but if Harold Baines can get elected by a 16-member committee, so can Wills, who at least left a bigger mark on baseball history. We’ll see.

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Front Office Fellowship (Full-Time)

Summary of Responsibilities:
The St. Louis Cardinals are currently seeking candidates for their 2022 Front Office Fellowship. This Fellowship is a one-year opportunity — Fellows will not return in the same position in 2023. At the end of the Fellowship, the Cardinals and the Fellow will jointly determine if there is an appropriate opportunity for full-time employment with the Cardinals. The fellow will report directly to the Video & Technology Team and will work on projects at the direction of senior leadership from the Baseball Development, Domestic & International scouting, Player Development, and Performance departments. Additional training may be provided in topics from scouting to analytics depending on the needs of the team and the Fellow’s interest.

The ideal candidate will have demonstrated strong work ethic, impressive intellect, and a deep passion for baseball and/or softball throughout their life. The Fellowship will provide such a candidate with a broad range of experiences across Baseball Operations and the possibility of full-time employment. Read the rest of this entry »

After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrapup. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below! We’ve already tackled the AL Central; now on to its Senior Circuit counterpart.

Milwaukee Brewers (95–67)

The Big Question
Could Christian Yelich bounce back from a weak 2020 season? His .326/.402/.598 breakout season in 2018 netted him an MVP award, and he may have won back-to-back trophies if not for a fractured kneecap that ended his ’19 season prematurely. And while 2020 was a disappointment, you could at least chalk some of it up to a low BABIP.

The Brew Crew didn’t look like a 95-win team coming into the season, but in a weak division and with possible upside from players like Yelich and the contact-challenged Keston Hiura, you had to like their chances as much as anybody. Helping matters was a pitching staff that took a big step forward during the shortened season. Corbin Burnes provided an ample demonstration of why you shouldn’t freak out about homers allowed for otherwise effective pitchers, and Brandon Woodruff had an entire season at bonafide ace status. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday, the entirety of the baseball world was focused on one thing and one thing only: Game 5 of the National League Division Series between the Dodgers and the Giants, the most anticipated contest of the year. But that afternoon, the Cardinals created an unexpected distraction by announcing the firing of manager Mike Shildt, the man who led them on a historic winning streak as part of a second-half surge that took St. Louis from a game under .500 on August 8 (the day their FanGraphs Playoff Odds bottomed out) to the National League Wild Card game. The Cardinals ultimately lost that game to the Dodgers, marking the end of their season and the last game in Shildt’s tenure with the team.

St. Louis’ President of Baseball Operations, John Mozeliak, spoke briefly with the press following the announcement, citing vague “philosophical differences” and admitting that Shildt was as shocked as those on the outside by the decision. Shildt offered little more during an even briefer set of remarks on Monday during which he took no questions, admitting that there were differences but choosing not to go into detail; his decision not to air his (or the team’s) dirty laundry is understandable, as he instantly became a legitimate candidate for any and all of the league’s current managerial openings. 

So what’s behind the separation between the two parties? The Athletic’s Katie Woo noted some midseason stress over the team’s poor performance and uninspiring trade deadline, as well as some in-season clashes concerning analytics. Shildt admitted to some of that being true but also talked about it not being the “entire picture.” In other words: All we have are guesses and theories. Read the rest of this entry »