Basically overpaying for that turd gives him another chance

Think the Dodgers are still going to be involved. Ricketts apparently signed off on any big deal Theo needs to make, not sure if that means trade or FA, however. Everyone is saying the Cubs are in lock down at the meetings and arent leaking shit. I'll believe it when I see it though. They would have to move Heyward and one other contract like Quintana or Zobrist to avoid ****ing up their draft position.

Yup.

But/for his contract, he'd have been DFA'd before the season ended. The only reason he has a job right now is the fact that Mozeliak sucks at his job and gave him a contract he never had a prayer of actually earning.

Cecil and Gregerson are in the same category. Neither of those guys would be on a major league roster if they weren't owed millions of dollars either way.

Gotta love Moe's willingness to double down on stupid.

It's a good reminder that most people in management are more concerned with keeping their jobs than being good managers.

When you add Holland to that list why would we have any confidence in seeking bullpen help through free agency? I would rather they don't spend a dime on these shitty multi-year reliever contracts than spending nothing. They rarely pay off and hampers you from making big moves on position players. The best free agent reliever deal we made was for frickin Bud Norris as basically a reclamation contract. Spend it on position players or proven innings eater starters.

I saw Bernie's column in some online rag and he basically repeated ad nauseam "it's the bullpen stupid." Well yeah, we need to do something there, but not with Harper type money. That is just idiotic thinking.

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what the hell Mozeliak would have to do to lose his job at this point.

His batting average over the last 5 years has been sub-Fowler level.

Bernie's right and he's wrong.

Yes, the Cardinals need to fix the bullpen. No, the answer isn't paying big money on a multi-year deal for a veteran reliever. Reliever volatility isn't even a theory anymore - it's simply a fact of life. If you acquire a free agent reliever and give him a 3 year deal, you're lucky to get 2 good seasons from him.

The Cardinals have a number of arms with plus stuff that could absolutely be bullpen assets. They simply have to find how to slot them and how best to use them. There's no shortage of 'stuff' in this system and if you can't find a way to come up with 6-7 guys that can get 3 outs/ballgame from this system, that's a misuse of assets problem.

Going into the FA market and dedicating 'dry powder' to !@#$ing relievers in an attempt to double down on a bad strategy is just asinine. It's especially asinine when the fact that you're in this mess to begin with is precisely BECAUSE of said bad strategy.

Oh - and a reminder: As the Cardinals owners have gotten wealthier and wealthier with record operating profits over the last 15 years, they've gotten cheaper and cheaper.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I put Cardinals past payrolls in 2019 MLB dollars to see how Cardinals have kept up.<br><br>Cardinals Rolling 5-Year Average ($M)<br>2004 $195 M<br>2005 $199<br>2006 $196<br>2007 $195<br>2008 $192<br>2009 $184<br>2010 $175<br>2011 $175<br>2012 $177<br>2013 $177<br>2014 $177<br>2015 $175<br>2016 $173<br>2017 $167<br>2018 $165</p>&mdash; Craig Edwards (@craigjedwards) <a href="https://twitter.com/craigjedwards/status/1071133409844649985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
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This team cares about one thing and one thing only - profit. They give zero ****s about winning a championship. They've realized that appearing to want to win is more profitable than actually wanting to win. So "our goal is 90 wins" carries the day.

Because 95 wins will cost a hell of a lot more.

I agree getting the big money top relievers is fools gold. Those contracts are worse than signing an aging over 30 hitter to a long term contract.



Trade Jose Martinez for the best LH bullpen help you can get and make your farm or failed starters your bullpen. Your not going to know what you have when you start the season or who will break down, but it has to be next man up. Who does the best, move em closer to the 9th. They do bad, move them farther away.<iframe scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/widget_iframe.9ce180c0c49f44ddce62d99e17b55f5a.html?origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chiefsplanet.com&setting sEndpoint=https%3A%2F%2Fsyndication.twitter.com%2Fsettings" title="Twitter settings iframe" style="display: none;" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe id="rufous-sandbox" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" style="position: absolute; visibility: hidden; display: none; width: 0px; height: 0px; padding: 0px; border: medium none;" title="Twitter analytics iframe" frameborder="0"></iframe>

No one wants to trade for Jose Martinez, I'm not sure why you keep throwing that out there.

middle inning, LOOGY pitchers cant be that valuable.

Dodgers won't be getting Harper unless they start clearing out their outfield.

I just read they are willing to trade 2 of their outfielders and Hill and Wood are available.

Send a couple OFers to Miami for Realmuto and get Harper. That would be gross.

The Astros could actually use him.

But you're not gonna get much for him. Maybe if you're lucky you could 'pry' someone like Cionel Perez away. But it gets back to the same old shit with this team - you seriously don't have your own Cionel Perez somewhere in this system? Have you become so lazy and entitled that the idea of developing relief arms is suddenly beneath you?

I'd honestly punt on the LH reliever crap and see if the Mariners would trade us Vogelbach and a AA arm for him. Vogelbach sucks; less defensively capable than Martinez even. But at least he hits lefthanded with some power and will take a walk.

Look - if we don't trade for someone like Vogelbach, we'll sign Daniel !@#$ing Descalso and call him our bench lefty. Because that's just how unbelievably stupid this organization has become. So we might as well 'lose' a trade to fill a hole in the roster and prevent us from doing something even less intelligent.

If there's an intelligent decision to make, we won't be making it.

They could offer the Marlins their entire OF and it wouldn't get them Realmuto. The only guy they have out there that might be of interest to the Fish would be Verdugo and I'm still pretty sure that guy is fool's gold. I mean maybe Bellinger but I'm still pretty sure he's not an OFer despite their insistence on putting him out there.

"Positionless baseball" works in video games but they're not winning a championship with Cody Bellinger in CF.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Source: The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SFGiants?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SFGiants</a> have gotten a ton of calls on lefty Will Smith and the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/STLCards?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#STLCards</a> are among the most aggressive pursuers. Might be tough as Giants aren’t keen on losing him.</p>&mdash; Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) <a href="https://twitter.com/markasaxon/status/1072536510610726914?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 11, 2018</a></blockquote>
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