Upon being called up to the Tampa Bay Rays on June 22, 2021, twenty year-old shortstop Wander Franco earned the Major League Baseball minimum of $570,500 for the remainder of the season. The extension which Franco signed with the Rays on Tuesday pays him more than that per each of his 308 career MLB plate…
Since debuting with the New York Mets in 2015 as a lesser-but-not-insignificant prospect in the young pitching core that guided the Mets to their first World Series in *checks, assumes it must be many many decades based on how Mets fans discuss their futility* fifteen years, Steven Matz has been an aggressively average pitcher. Both…
Sports media is an often far too self-serious business. While most other subsections of the media landscape view sports journalism as access-based propaganda (often true) and no more dignified than entertainment reporting (almost always true), its practitioners frequently treat what they are doing as though asking Giovanny Gallegos what he was thinking when Christian Yelich…
In 2019, the season in which he threw 70% of his Major League Baseball innings to this point in his career, St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Dakota Hudson accomplished something that had not been seen in Major League Baseball since 2003 and which no pitcher came particularly close to accomplishing in the two subsequent MLB…
Occasionally lost the hubbub about the pending free agency signing period is that we are looking down the barrel of some contentious labor negotiations. And an oft-cited potential ramification is the institution of the designated hitter in the National League. To be frank, I don't really get it. This isn't because I have a strong…
Yesterday, I wrote a long post about all of the top ticket free agents available this off-season. I noted that Carlos Correa and Corey Seager are great players and will be a wonderful fit for somebody, but that since the St. Louis Cardinals do not have a pronounced weakness at shortstop, with both Paul DeJong…
The time will come, likely quite soon, for keeping our expectations in check. It may soon be time for St. Louis Cardinals fans to talk themselves into how Actually If You Think About It Anthony DeSclafani Is A Game-Changer, but for now, let's fantasize. It's probably a bit unfair to the Cardinals to dismiss immediately…
When it comes to making trades, the primary directive, particularly when dealing with teams which are not your direct divisional rivals, ought to be for teams to improve based on the context of their own specific situation. During the Walt Jocketty era as general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, there was this weird tinge…
Why yes, Game Six of the 2011 World Series will be present.
Demographically, there is a fair amount about Oliver Marmol, who it was first reported by The Athletic's Katie Woo and then confirmed by every baseball reporter under the Sun will be announced this morning as the sixty-fifth manager in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals, that is striking. Marmol, upon taking reigns of the…
St. Louis Bullpen 