Don’t hate the Lynn signing, but if they don’t sign Yamamoto or 2 other SP, as well as a starting caliber OF, then its underwhelming as hell.

if he’s seen as a #4/#5 starter that’s fine and dandy.

Mike Shildt is set to take over the Padres. They got a good one.

Unbelievable that the ego of the GM needed a yes man instead of either Shildt or Schumaker.

BRB dropping a band on the Padres to win the NL next year

Cardinals just signed Kyle Gibson to a one year deal. Another innings eater

Mikolas, Matz, Lynn, Gibson

What a rotation. Who are they gonna fill out for the """ace"""?

Sonny Gray, COME ON DOWN!!!

Well, it was fun talking Cardinals with you all for the last almost 20 years, but I think I'll be taking a break from this bull**** for a while.

Admittedly I don’t know much about Gibson other than he is a band-aid at this point. Another 4 or 5 option like Lynn?

Yeah - Lynn was a back of the rotation piece that on his face does no damage. Gibson, OTOH, is a trend.

It's now clear what they're going to do. "At least two starters" has been handled. And frankly, it's PREFERABLE to a lot of alternatives (i.e. giving Snell $28 million/season for 6 seasons to save his job while hamstringing his replacements).

These are 1-off guys who are likely to be gone by the time Mozeliak is replaced. They can absorb some bullets from the young arms. When it turns out that Graceffo/Hjerpe/McGreavy and the whole slew of mid/back of the rotation arms we've assembled in our system prove to be about as capable as Matz/Lynn/Gibson by 2025, at least you don't have many resources tied up in redundant arms and new leadership could potentially make something of the freed up resources.

And maybe by then one of the Hence/Roby higher upside arms can step in as a legit 2/3. Maybe Davis or Scott are looking like real OF options. Maybe Saggese has put himself in as a fixture at 2b that allows you to move Gorman over to 3b or full time DH and get leaner/younger still.

At least this demonstrates that MAYBE they understand that there's no 1 year path back to relevance and that we're looking at 3 years here.

Because there's something fairly scary about them signing a 31 yr old 'top of the rotation' arm for 6 years and pretending like that actually makes us matter.

That said - yes, I'll be rooting for the Padres to absolutely fist-**** this team every time we play them. I have a definitive rooting interest in the NL this year.

Former Mizzou Tiger; I saw him pitch a bit in college and thought he might make the show someday but never saw a ton that amazed me.

Apart from that? Just a bullet catcher. A lower variance Lynn. Not likely to be as bad as Lynn could be but also doesn't have the potential to be as good as Lynn could be if he can fix the HR issues.

I wouldn't say he's a league average starting pitcher but he is major league caliber; back end of the rotation type who will absorb innings in a workmanlike and in no fashion impressive manner. I'd put my expectations for him as a little better than Lynn (4.8ish for Lynn; maybe a 4.6ish for Gibson) but their jobs is mostly going to be to pitch 350+ innings at a roughly big league level.

Look at it this way - you had Wainwright, Rom and Woodford give you 37 starts last year with an ERA of 7.2. That's not a misprint, fellas - 37 starts with an ERA north of 7. Lets add Dakota Hudson and Liberatore to it and now you're at 60 starts with an ERA of 6.5.

Lynn and Gibson last year combined for 65 starts and an ERA of about 5.2. Getting to a park in STL that suppresses power output a bit should help them both so I think you could sneak that down a little. In either event, you're talking about 40% of your starts being a full run to a run and a half better per game.

Getting to merely replacement level is such a MASSIVE step up from the shit they ran out there last year that it's sadly a significant difference.

Trading Mikolas for Gerrit Cole would have about the same impact as trading that pile of shit for the pile of lesser shit. THAT'S how bad the back of this rotation was. And really a hell of a statement as to the state of the St. Louis Cardinals.

3 years you say? Well...

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="zxx" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/T1TiQNrqMj">https://t.co/T1TiQNrqMj</a> <a href="https://t.co/YBJgMB6GbP">pic.twitter.com/YBJgMB6GbP</a></p>&mdash; Craig Goldstein (@cdgoldstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/cdgoldstein/status/1727054248737955910?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 21, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Hopefully in 3 years you see the same success.

Is this any fun for you when we hate our team more than you do?