Revenue does not equate to profit obviously. The fact that they have more money than previous years doesn't mean they should be throwing more at middling players who had one good year. They should be looking to get the highest value from every dollar spent. DeJong isn't it.

l also think it’s sending a message to other prospects. You happily do what we tell you to do with training, play at this level etc. you don’t have to wait for 6 years in MLB to put millions in the bank. Take care of mom and dad.

You're mighty free and easy with the Red Birds money BRC

they have the money. They have went cheap the last few years. It’s time to spend it, and not on a Dejong.

l want them to go hard after Manny. Whatever you think the top of the market could possibly be, pay top $, go first, get him in the #3 hole and we will be legitimate contenders again.

So Lynn signed a 1/12 with the Twins. Rejected the 17.5 million qualifying offer from us.

Weird.

We couldn't have brought him back for that?

Appears the team has no interest in trying to bargain hunt with any of these vets that didn’t get big contracts.

But we'll sing Mikolas off the scrap heap.

Or give $11m to a reliever coming off a bad year.

Well that ****ing sucks. The pick attached to Lynn now comes after the second round, not the first, b/c he gets less than $50 million guaranteed.

So, they sign Mikolas for $2/15.5 and get a pick between the second and third round while Lynn goes for 1/12, and the average value of the pick that replaces him is 1.5 WAR, total.

Mozeliak ****ed that deal up royally.

Did they even talk to Lynn?

Why they wouldn't offer him something like 3/36 after his market wasn't there is astonishing.

because we don’t need more pitching in 2019? Why pay for 3 years because your short on pitching in 2018 when your going nowhere?Maybe stuff was said between Lynn and the Cardinals they can’t take back? Who knows?

30 other teams took a pass on him. Why would it be so surprising that the Cardinals would pass too?

Because the guy has been a rock-damned-solid #3 pitcher for a long time and is all of 30 years old. Teams are passing on these guys because they fear losing the draft pick, but that creates value for their old teams in the process.

Again, assuming that Lynn would take that deal, Mozeliak could have ended up paying Lynn and DeJong 12.5 million for 2018 and 2019, or he could pay Mikolas and DeJong the same amount.

And think about all of the last "big" Cardinal prospects. Rasmus, Miller, Taveras, Martinez, Reyes. What makes you think that these young pitchers are a sure thing?

Inexcusable letting him go for that.

and the 30 other teams that passed on him? If it was inexcusable, why did they pass? They all don’t care about winning?

They're overvaluing draft picks.

probably but still......

In 2019 we will have the best young pitching staff in all of baseball.

Martinez/Reyes/Weaver/Flaherty/Hudson

31 teams are making the same mistake?

Wacha will likely still be ahead of both Flaherty and Hudson. There are a lot of ifs. You can never ever have too much starting depth. Thankfully we do seem to have some options there. Weaver looks like he has taken a step forward. Flaherty has looked better than Hudson despite the numbers. Hudson honestly has not impressed me. If he is starting for us this year, the season has likely gone to crap.

That said, I am an eternal optimist homer. :)

ROFL

TINSTAPP

It was inexcusable for the Cards because they didn't have to give up a pick to sign him. And you are really over estimating the prospects we have. Take off the homer glasses man, Martinez is never winning a Cy Young and you can never have too many innings eaters with ML experience..

They should see if Holland has started to sweat any. I wouldn't mind a low ball deal for him for one year.

l didn’t include Wacha because l think he is the trade bait this coming off season if he has a good year.

this is not a “Cardinals” issue. It’s a MLB issue. Obviously they weren’t interested in a one year deal. We are going nowhere in 2018 so why bother.

The “Cardinals” part is that they have moved on. Yes, you can never have enough pitching. However, we need help with the offense. I’d like them to concentrate money there.

Our opening day pitching rotation just got better.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hello, Jack Flaherty? Cards scratch Wainwright over hamstring issue <a href="https://t.co/bwKeMEzAZX">https://t.co/bwKeMEzAZX</a></p>&mdash; Randy Karraker (@RandyKarraker) <a href="https://twitter.com/RandyKarraker/status/977938367865348098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Waino is a broke dick

Poor Waino

:(

Love the guy and everything he did for us, but his time is over. Needs to retire. Like, yesterday.

This is why they should have given Lynn a 3-year deal he couldn't say no to.

why is that? Flaherty and Hudson have way higher ceilings than him. We need them to excel, not Lynn be stable but average.

izzy got old quick. Waino saved that season. The curveball to move us on to the WS and get pass Beltran who had ruined so many playoff games for us. On the mound when we won our first World Series in 25 years.

Aging stops for no one. His Legacy is established. Go put on the red jacket and listen to the standing O’s on opening days.

Hudson's ceiling is, at best, what Lance Lynn has given the Cardinals for five straight years. He's thrown a total of 160 innings in the minors, and there is nothing special about any of them. He strikes out about five per nine in the minors, and he's walked about three per nine.

Flaherty is a nice prospect, but he's not a future ace, and Reyes has never thrown more than 115 innings or so.

Given that there were only about 15 guys that threw 200 last year in all of baseball, you need innings. Lynn gave you good innings. Wainwright is done, Wacha's shoulder is always a question mark, he's not that good when healthy anyway, and Reyes is not going to be close to carrying a full season load until 2020. So where are you going to get all those innings from?

And Lynn was not stable but average. He was 20th in baseball in WAR from the time he became a starter until his elbow injury and 22nd in innings. He wasn't as good last year, but no one is their first year back from TJ.

Take Martinez's first three years as a starter: 10 WAR, about 190 innings per year, struck out 9 per 9 innings
Take Lynn's first three years as a starter: 9.9 WAR, about 190 innings per year, struck out 8.5 per 9 innings

Why is one an ace and the other one just average and stable? Cardinal fans criminally underrated Lance Lynn, and now they get to enjoy shitbags like Miles Mikolas and wait for guys that never sniffed his MLB production despite being in AA to replace him.

Alex Reyes is still on the DL? What's the word on him? Just handling him softly or what?

his activation date has always been April 1st.

I thought it was May 1st.

sorry, brainfart. You are correct.

You have forgot more about WAR and statistics this morning than I know totally. However....................

There is more to this game than statistics. Lynn never passed the eye test. He rarely shined in a crucial time. Most of the time he wilted when we needed him to step up. He was just another guy.

If the Cardinals were such buffoons for not re-signing Lynn, what about the other 31 clubs? If he has such great talent and value, why did he only get offered a super cheap one year deal from those other 31 clubs?

You need Lynn to eat innings to get you to said crucial time.

Mo is an abomination. Losing Lynn like that is beyond pathetic.

Exactly, we needed a reliable innings eater in the middle of the rotation.

In 2019 Lynn will be 32 and on the inevitable aging downward spiral.

In 2019, the Cardinals are going to have the best young pitching staff in baseball. No other club will come close to the youth and MLB quality we will have in the rotation. No one.

Prospects are prospects and 32 isn't exactly ready to put to pasture

Again, what about the other 31 clubs? Are they beyond pathetic too?

Mo deserves a lot of grief over some of his decisions. Just not this one.

The fact that the other 31 baseball teams wern't interested in having him as a part of their rotation beyond 1 year or unless dirt cheap cant be ignored.

Pardon me if I don't share your enthusiasm about our young pitchers. Martinez has a 10 cent head, Reyes is an unknown until he gets some innings under his belt and Flaherty and Weaver are just prospects.

Yeah, I assume his post All Star collapse will start coming earlier and earlier.

we will see soon enough.

—————————————-

BenFred: Cardinals' bet on young pitching faces early test

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. • Cardinals officials speak of Jack Flaherty as if the prized prospect is a grizzled veteran renting space in the body of a rookie.

He’s an old soul. More serious than silly. Slow to smile, and quick to cover it when he does — even after he received the news he would depart Florida as the Cardinals’ fifth starter for the time being.

“He showed a little teeth,” manager Mike Matheny said Sunday afternoon. “He didn’t try to. But he did.”

“Just a little,” Flaherty admitted as he prepared to board a bus that rolled toward the airport without Adam Wainwright.

What a difference one week makes.

When Flaherty was optioned to Class AAA, the message he received was as clear as the major-league rotation was secured. A strong Grapefruit League performance had cemented his place as first man up. If one of the Cardinals’ starters encountered significant turbulence, Flaherty would get the call. One regrettable session of conditioning sprints later, and here he is.

“You thought I was lying, didn’t you?” Matheny told the 22-year-old.

“To get an opportunity to do something like this, it’s special,” said Flaherty. “I’m just looking forward to helping the team in whatever kind of role or situation my name might come up.”

What had been an extremely upbeat and mostly injury-free camp did not end soon enough. Two bad hamstrings have once again stirred concerns about the Cardinals’ pitching. Is it versatile, or just vulnerable?

The front office believes it’s the former. It has hinged its hopes on promise while shrugging off the lack of proven production.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colum...4de965d96.html

The last Cardinals pitching prospect that was a top 50 guy that lived up to expectations was Wainwright.

Not Wacha, Miller, or even Martinez were what we were told they'd be.

MLB told us what we needed to know about Lynn expectations.

Martinez has been an All-Star. :harumph:

So has Lynn.

The MLB draft also once told you all you need to know about Albert Pujols, Matt Carpenter, Kevin Siegrist, Trevor Rosenthal, and Yadier Molina, while guys like Pete Kozma, Zack Cox, James Ramsey, Tyrell Jenkins were all first round or sandwich guys.

l know I’ve always got the homer glasses on. I can’t change that part of myself.

I’m aware that l was probably harder on Lynn than I should have been. His flops in crucial games count more to me than pitching 6 innings of 2 run baseball in a Tuesday game in June.

You don't get to the former without the latter.

The Cardinals decided that the 2019 closer was ready to do the job in 2018.
—————————————————————-

The conversation started Sunday after hotshot rookie Jordan Hicks blistered through the Washington Nationals lineup in a sudden appearance no one expected him to make as recently as last week.

The Cardinals wondered if he was closer to the majors than planned.

They've decided he wasn't just close -- he was ready.

In a stunning 11th-hour change to the roster, the Cardinals will promote Hicks on Wednesday or Thursday morning for the opening day roster. One of the quickest departures from spring training camp will now be an early arrival in the majors, leaping all the way from High-A to Citi Field in a single week. The righthander will take a spot in the Cardinals bullpen.

To make room for him on the active roster, the Cardinals optioned John Brebbia to Class AAA Memphis. The decision was finalized Tuesday afternoon, an official confirmed to The Post-Dispatch.

The front office, coaching staff, and even catcher Yadier Molina had conversations about whether Hicks was ready to leap from High-A to the majors.

"Stuff is stuff," manager Mike Matheny said.

Hicks, 21, has a fastball that was clocked at 102 mph during spring training, and he throws a fastball at 99 mph that has sink to it. He offsets that pitch with a slider that he can throw for a strike and a changeup that showed greater command and depth this past spring.

These young guys are interesting and completely unpredictable. Should be entertaining.

Gonna let Hicks compete for the closer spot. I like the idea, but don't Rosenthal him and leave him there.

Thanks for posting this. Can you periodically keep posting good articles? My work blocks the ads so STLToday insists that I subscribe to read the article, which I won't do.

Anyone going to opening day?

I think dad and I are gonna make the trip.

Sure. NP

In STL? I am.

Yeah, sorry opening day at Busch.

We are going Thurs, Saturday and Sunday. Staying at the Hyatt at the Arch.

Weaver and Flaherty have looked fantastic in spring training. Hope it carries over into the season.

First year since 2009 that I can't be there for Opening Day. Have fun!

There is really no reason for me to drop $115.99 on the full mlb.tv package when i can just subscribe to the Cardinals one for $89.99 is there? The only other team i ever watch is the Royals and i can always get them on local cable.

(I guess it doesn't include mlb At Bat on my phone)

i’m on Fios. It’s the extra innings package or nothing.

I don’t watch anything but the Cardinals games. I’ll tune in if l see on social media something is happening, no hitter, milestone etc

The mlb online is cheaper and then you can multicast it to the TV if your TV and pc has the capability.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">breaking: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/STLCards?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#STLCards</a> are moving close to a deal with closer greg holland. would fuill their one hole. no details known yet.</p>&mdash; Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/979375607279693824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 29, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Apparently they're moving close to a deal with Holland.

NICE!

They have more than one hole

1 year 14 mil

Now get rid of Norris.

Completely putting aside the fact that Holland was downright terrible last year after the first couple of months, this signing makes no sense to me.

We have a bunch of good young bullpen arms that deserve a chance. We could have given that money to Lance Lynn or another starter that would help this team.

I dont get it guys.

I don't mind the attempt, but why not wait a little longer, the price just keeps going down. It tells me they have some urgency though, because Reyes is back after May 1st giving them even more heat in the late innings. If Holland has a typical bounce back from TJ in the second year we could actually have a pretty deep and flexible pen.

Here we go!

Think I may have scored some green seats for the home opener.

Literally first sentence of the year McCarver calls Marcel Ozuna “Michelle”

Can’t this old piece of shit die yet?

Gyorko sitting.

:rolleyes:

These guys look like dogshit so far lol

Cmart all over the place then Martinez air-mailed a stupid double play attempt into left center.

4 outs into the season and it’s already obvious it’s going to be the same shit as last year.

Yadier bomb 2-1