Who is the team of the 2010s? This is an open-ended question but it is also a question which can be quantified. So I decided I wanted to quantify it. Of course, the 2010s are not yet over, and the next two-plus months of baseball, particularly the off-season, will go a long way in defining…
You can never have too many good outfielders
Yesterday afternoon, Springfield Cardinals outfielder Dylan Carlson was promoted to the Memphis Redbirds. As somebody with bare-bones knowledge of the St. Louis Cardinals' minor league affiliates, a system promotion that does not involve being promoted to the Majors normally wouldn't be a big deal to me. But over the last 4 1/2 months of professional…
How the Cardinals should incorporate Matt Carpenter and Yadier Molina down the stretch
The life cycle of the scrappy underdog baseball player is a shockingly depressing one. Seemingly, it should be easy. You come into Major League Baseball with minimal expectations, you surpass those expectations, and everybody just loves you forever. But eventually, if you're too good, you transcend scrappiness and become just like any other good baseball…
The moves the Cardinals didn’t make
With the 2019 trade deadline loaded with prospective buyers and limited on sellers (particularly on sellers with anything worth selling), most of the individual non-moves that the St. Louis Cardinals didn't make can be rationalized. Unfortunately, in conjunction with absoultely nothing else, the move that the Cardinals did make doesn't make very much sense. Yesterday, the Cardinals…
Why the Cardinals should be glad they avoided Trevor Bauer, besides the fact that he’s an annoying dork
Editor's (my) note: So, I wrote this post on Monday night about how the Cardinals shouldn't trade for Trevor Bauer and then something happened tonight: he got traded to the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds gave up Yasiel Puig and a top-50 prospect in Taylor Trammell in order to do so, and for reasons you should…
Being “All In” is a Cardinals’ pipe dream
Here's the truth: going "all in" is usually not a smart move. Of course, we need to define the context where this phrase is being used. When you're sitting around a poker table with pocket aces and a dwindling stack, all in may be your best bet. It's a way of pushing hesitant and amateur…
What to do with Harrison Bader
With the exceptions of Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, and maybe Matt Carpenter, no player was a more pivotal focal point of St. Louis Cardinals marketing during the 2018-19 off-season than center fielder Harrison Bader. Not quite a non-prospect but arriving in St. Louis was marginal hype, Bader burst into the regular Cardinals position player rotation with a…
The Importance of Being Idle
In 2019, Major League Baseball has three distinct classes of teams. In the upper class reside the teams with certain playoff futures--the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, and Houston Astros all have projected odds of making the League Division Series of over 96% with over two months left in the season, and there was…
Comparing the Tommy Pham trade to other terrible trades of the 2010s
When it comes to evaluating a trade years in retrospect, there are two essential components to evalute--process and results. Sometimes, a trade can be good in terms of process--the underlying logic behind it is sensible--even if the trade works out poorly. Take, for a famous example, the 1987 trade in which the Detroit Tigers traded…
The St. Louis Cardinals Have a Culture Problem
Eight years after his free agent departure for Anaheim, Albert Pujols made his much-anticipated return to Busch Stadium this past month, and the homecoming was everything all of us could’ve hoped for. Every time Pujols stepped into the batter’s box, he was greeted with a long and loud standing ovation. When he dug in with…
