Archive for Cardinals

As far as very good Major League outfielders go, Matt Holliday is probably among the most anonymous. Despite owning a career 139 wRC+ and signing a $120 million dollar contract in 2010, he’s probably best known for getting hit in the beans that one time and not touching home plate with the winning run that other time.

But year after year, Holliday methodically bangs out .300/.390/.500 seasons. He hits enough home runs to be a power threat but not enough to elicit “oohs” and/or “ahhhs” from visiting fans. He looks enough like The Thing to keep from holding the casual fan’s gaze for too long. He just sort of exists, a very productive presence on the outside of the collective unconscious.

In his own way, Holliday is the physical embodiment of the team he plays for, the St. Louis Cardinals. Unsettlingly consistent, easy to overlook but difficult to beat, and extremely annoying for opposing fans and players. Like the villain in a really boring horror film.

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The field for the National League Most Valuable Player Award is wide open, and in a good way. There are a bevy of well qualified candidates, and even if voters may now be uncertain as to what do with Giancarlo Stanton now given his injury, there are still three no-doubt top-of-the-ballot candidates: Andrew McCutchen, Clayton Kershaw and Jonathan Lucroy. These three have been in the spotlight all season, and with Stanton, figure to be the ones who take home the hardware. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones for whom there is a case worth making. There as many as six other players who deserve recognition, and with white-hot finishing kicks could put themselves into the mix with the top dogs.
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Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Here’s the scouting data (not the text report) from what I wrote on the Rangers list, their top prospect, Joey Gallo.

Hit: 30/45, Game Power: 60/70, Raw Power: 80/80, Speed: 40/40, Field: 45/50, Throw: 70/70
Upside: .260/.350/.500 (30-35 HR), fringy 3B or solid RF
FV/Risk: 60, High (4 on a 1-5 scale)
Projected Path: 2014: AA, 2015: AAA/MLB, 2016: MLB

For this, we’ll focus on the hit grade and upside and risk sections. I’ve re-posted a table from the introduction to this series, showing the scale most clubs use to project the hit tool.
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Just a couple of weeks ago, the Cardinals were just behind the Brewers in the National League Central. Just over a week ago, the Cardinals pulled just barely ahead of the Brewers. Today, after taking three of four against Milwaukee, including yesterday’s 9-1 crushing, the Cardinals are five games up on the Brewers, who are actually now in third next to the Pirates. Over the last week the Brewers’ rotation has not exactly made its defenders look good.

While one could go on about the Brewers’ fall, the Cardinals are the main story. They have never really been out of it. At the beginning of the season, St. Louis was a solid favorite to win their division. Two months ago, when they were four games behind the Brewers, the Cardinals’ chances of winning the division were roughly the same as the Brewers. Today, they are overwhelming favorites.

The 2014 Cardinals are not clearly dominant in either pitching or hitting. In particular, on the offensive side they have not hit nearly as well as the 2013 team. Yet they again are poised to win the division. In many ways, the regression was predictable. But does that mean the Cardinals made mistakes when preparing for 2014?

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Most pitchers are bad hitters, as we all know. Most pitchers look so out of place at the plate that it is a great source of both comedy and debate. Why should we continue this charade? Why should this paean to a by-gone era, propped up under a pretense of “strategy,” continue to degrade the quality of the game we all love?

That debate is better left until another day in another setting with well-established ground rules and adult supervision. Today, we can just look at the impact of pitchers hitting, specifically on their impact on the Wild Card chase.

On Tuesday night, Clayton Kershaw made more than his typical contribution to the Dodgers’ cause. Sure, he pitched brilliantly and shut down an otherwise powerful offense. But Kershaw worked his way on base against Doug Fister in the fifth inning and then “helped his own cause” by dashing from first to third on a bounding single to center field. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wainwright would tell you himself: he’s currently in a funk, and he’s been in a funk for about a month and a half. It’s not like you have to dig very deep to find out why he feels that way. After blanking the Pirates on July 7, Wainwright’s ERA stood at 1.79. Since then, it’s been in the mid-4s. Through July 7, he threw 67% of his pitches for strikes. Since then, he’s come in at 62%. The walks are up, the hits are up, the strikeouts are down, and Wainwright’s frustrated, looking for clue after clue so he can get back to what he was. They say no one in baseball’s better at making adjustments than Adam Wainwright. He’s still looking to make the right one for this most current slump.

It feels like this could be easy to explain. Wainwright’s almost 33, and he’s had Tommy John surgery before. Last year he threw just about 300 innings, which is an extraordinary total, and earlier this season he missed a start with non-UCL discomfort in his elbow. He’s also pitched through illness and a sore back without alerting the media, so it could be he’s still feeling something and not owning up to it. Injury, fatigue, fatigue leading to injury — we don’t know. It could be anything. But what if the answer’s a different sort of simple? What if Adam Wainwright just misses pitching to Yadier Molina?

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his change-up, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. Often, those will be the same grades. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades. – Kiley

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Wondering if the Cardinals felt good about Michael Wacha‘s shoulder or Shelby Miller’s general existence? Wonder no more, because less than 24 hours after picking up Justin Masterson from Cleveland, they’ve now added John Lackey from Boston, for the not-insignificant price of Joe Kelly and Allen Craig.

Yesterday morning, the St. Louis rotation looked something like this:

1. Adam Wainwright
2. Lance Lynn
3. Joe Kelly
4. Shelby Miller
5. Carlos Martinez / Marco Gonzales

Now, it’s potentially a bit more like this:

1. Wainwright
2. Lynn
3. Lackey
4. Masterson
5. Miller / Martinez

Is that better? It’s certainly different. Read the rest of this entry »

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

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For some time, it’s been evident that the Cardinals could use some help in the starting rotation. They matched up well for all the big names, with the only question concerning the organization’s willingness to part with a major prospect. Word is, the Cardinals might still part with a major prospect for a big name, but midday Wednesday the Cardinals zigged and dealt for a guy who was good a year ago, a guy with a 5+ ERA.

Justin Masterson, who’s still on the disabled list, is going to St. Louis, and going to Cleveland is prospect James Ramsey. The Indians aren’t giving up, but they no longer had room for Masterson, and they turned him into actual value. Meanwhile, the Cardinals have at least addressed a short-term hole, improving without dealing from the top of the farm. At best, Masterson is an impact splash. At least, even the somewhat troubled version is a better fit with the Cardinals than with the Indians.

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