***Official 2023 STL Cardinals Thread ***
 

2023 thread. Walker makes the roster. I'll update the rosters and opening day lineup when its official

2023 Opening Day Lineup

2022 Opening Day roster.

For the new Cardinal fans that joined the Planet since last year, here are some of the historical threads going back to 2006.

First for fire Mozeliak

I'd like to think that keeping Carlson in CF is a run prevention scheme rather than refusal to admit a sunk cost.

I'd rather see Gorman at DH and Walker in LF against righties, which Manoah is, with O'Neill in center and Carlson on the bench. Given Tyler's fragility, I'm sure there will plenty of starts to go around in the OF.

Noot should be in CF and frankly they should have Gorman in AAA playing LF because he's a butcher on the IF and isn't big enough to play 1b. And I think Walker ends up at 1b in a few years anyway.

Then you have a Burleson/Yepez platoon at DH.

Pretending like Gorman is a 2b is going to derail any chance he has to develop into anything more than a high strikeout hacker who runs into a few hangers.

They face a stiff challenge tomorrow.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Two more hits tonight (so far) for Jordan Walker.<br><br>Here&#39;s where the <a href="https://twitter.com/Cardinals?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Cardinals</a>&#39; No. 1 prospect currently ranks among ALL players in Spring Training:<br><br>AVG: .452 (1st)<br>SLG: .839 (1st)<br>OPS: 1.291 (1st)<br>TB: 26 (1st)<br>H: 14 (1st)<br>XBH: 6 (T-1st) <a href="https://t.co/ORZqaxMpwp">pic.twitter.com/ORZqaxMpwp</a></p>&mdash; MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) <a href="https://twitter.com/MLBPipeline/status/1634358371414319106?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Walker could be Hal McRae or Edgar Martinez just be a lifer DH. Nothing wrong with that.

Carlson has no doubt been uninspiring with the bat, but sunk cost is a bit much to describe a 24-year-old.

these two after the game?

Gorman has more potential than that. On a rate basis, nobody in baseball barreled the ball more than he did last year. Only Mike Trout had a lower ground ball rate.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nolan Gorman is *the* post-hype prospect of 2023. Surface struggles overblown as he posted 107 wRC+ and .341 xwOBA as rookie<br><br>Young for his level across MLB/MiLB and will start on strong-side of platoon. 30%~ K doesn’t matter when you hit hard as he does<a href="https://t.co/NdXvnueaJI">pic.twitter.com/NdXvnueaJI</a></p>&mdash; Kev Mahserejian (@RotoSurgeon) <a href="https://twitter.com/RotoSurgeon/status/1641109522872954881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 29, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Here it is. Guess Marmol has soured on Carlson. Maybe should have given him up in the trade to get Soto? But, we have Mo.:banghead:

That was 3 weeks ago and fueled by a single massive game that boosted his rate stats due to a small sample size.

Walker ended the spring at about a .790 OPS and per bref his average quality of competition was a roughly average AA pitcher. He also struck out 15 times to only 2 walks.

Personally, I don't think he's ready. He's too aggressive a hitter to produce as little loft as he does. I'd have started him in AAA. There are changes he needs to make to his swing, IMO. And if he's going to remain this aggressive, he's going to get himself out on weak contact a LOT.

That's my fear too. He'll end up either riding the bench and getting no ABs or getting sent back down. Why not just start him there and see how he does?

I don't disagree, but he has things to work on still and if he's doing that while trying to focus on playing 2b, it's going to get in the way of that. Moreover, his body just can't handle it, IMO. He puts too much strain on his back when he swings. His mechanics are pretty violent. You have him swinging like that and then crouched over on the IF grass, you're asking to have a guy who's battling back troubles for big chunks of the year that undermine his ability to take a confident hack. Muncy was a really good example of that last season.

Stop ****ing around with the 2b experiment and just let him play OF and develop as a hitter.

Well damn - I can't even grouse about Marmol's lineup today.

That's about a perfect lineup construction, IMO. I friggen love Donovan/Noot at the top of the order, though having L/L there might make matching up a little too easy later in the game. The good news is that Edman hits lefties well in the 9 spot but he probably doesn't have enough power potential to really scare teams into avoiding putting a lefty against him.

So if you're in the 6th/7th inning and get to the 9 spot, you bring the lefty in to face him, Donovan and Noot, you satisfy your 3-runner rule and bring in a righty for the meat of the order.

When was the last night both sides of the state have actual lineups that nobody is complaining about? Pretty crazy what competent managers are.

What does having a competent manager have to do with Ollie Marmol?

Too risky, keeping the powder dry.

Why? So he can blocked there as well? His realistic chance at playing time is 2B/DH.

Waino sings a slow national anthem but it wasn't half bad...

O'Neill is gone when he hits FA and Carlson is on his way to a bench role. Walker will end up at 1b. He'd be the starting LFer no later than 2025.

He still wouldn't even be arb eligible and he'd be 24. This isn't an old kid - take your time with him and actually DEVELOP him. There's a lot of runway in front of him still.

We'll see where Walker ends up. I know he didn't project at 3B long-term but the reason he moved to OF was to accelerate his timeline to St. Louis. I also don't know if O'Neil will leave. You're probably right about Carlson.

I'm not giving up on Gorman, but I think his bat would be more appealing at 2B/DH. Burleson projects better in OF than Gorman does. Ideally, you have a combination of Winn/Gorman/Edman in the 2B/SS/DH.

I can't see Walker moving to 1B until/unless Goldschmidt's defense starts to decline to the point where you're forced to play him at DH.

Great start Mikolas

Solid hard hit single to start Walker's career.

Announcer called that one

Bum ass Mikolas about to give that HR back

Is there somewhere I can stream the game? Shockingly they aren't showing it here.

Burleson is an awful OFer. He's a DH.

Walker is 15 years younger than Goldschmidt - he's gonna replace Goldy at some point and it may be sooner rather than later depending on his contract demands.

He was goddamn awful today.

I wanted to give him credit for 6 ks, but I just couldn't do it.

Nice to see the big name acquisition limp of the field in game 1 of 162

The jays haven’t barreled up anything today but still have 8 runs.

I'm not sure how anyone expected anything else.

Someone tell Helsley it isn't October anymore

Cards going to have a four hour opening day game. Royals game went 2 1/2.

Helsley is done. The Phillies game skull ****ed him.

I'm utterly shocked at the terrible pitching we saw today. No one ever could have guessed that this was coming.

17 singles and I'd say maybe 5 of them were well hit.

Hicks was ****ing vile and couldn't buy a break.

I don't think I've ever seen that much soft contact find a hole. It was nuts.

Gio will get the first shot but if Hicks can command his stuff like he did today, he'll be closing by May.

Well at least this offense has a chance to be the best offense we’ve had since….. the Workd Series?

Mo forgot that a team also needs pitching too.

Brutal game. Fun atmosphere

Who could've seen that coming?

It probably bodes well for you guys overall that the Cardinals lineup gave Manoah maybe his worst ever start in the majors? He's been a top 5 SP in the league since he entered it a few years ago and I can't recall him ever being as bad as today.

Hicks was touching 104 with command today. Absurd stuff.

That is encouraging. Unfortunately that wasn't even the 5th worst outing Mikolas has had since becoming a Cardinal. ROFL

Noot....opening day 2 hitter...jfc

Mikolas wasn't good, but the Jays got pretty lucky today overall. A lot of seeing eye singles/bloopers like we were channeling the 2015 Royals. Springer had 5 hits and I'm not even sure he hit the ball hard all game?

Nope - Springer got 5 bloops.

Helsley deserved a loss. A leadoff 4 pitch walk in the 9th of that kind of game is just absolutely unacceptable.

But I've never seen a team get that many seeing eye hits in my life. 17 singles and I'd be surprised if 5 of them were over 90 mph. Irritating as hell.

Dude is backing his shit up at 100+ on the black then throwing breaking balls right at the edge of the zone. It was the most dominant stuff I've ever seen from him.

But the Jays just got the same stuff they were getting all night. He was making outstanding pitches and they just found grass.

Knizner ****ing sucks. This dude is my scapegoat going forward.

Knizner is what he is. Not a ton of quality backup catchers around. If he plays more than 35-40 games that’s MO’s fault.

Yes bashing a backup catcher is a low blow. But the pop up bunt and not catching the foul tip was horrible. Helsley also picked up where he left off.

Cards lineup is good enough. Pitching is dumpster fire AIDS.

I think that's what becomes of the outfield, eventually. You and everyone knows Tyler will go down for more than 10 days a couple of times this season.

Unfortunate that Contreras taking a Hicks fastball to the knee is going to put him in much earlier than anyone hoped for.

Astros are winning it all again, nothing matters.

In case y'all were wondering, Jack Flaherty still sucks.

He seems to suck even worse. No snap on his breakers, fastball at 88-90. Shit control.

He might be able to get his slider to work before he hits 100 pitches, but that's it. Nothing else he's throwing looks to be be major league caliber.

So I'm snooping around the 2007 draft (it's when we took Marmol).

It's also the year we took Pete Kozma and one that John Mozeliak has openly admitted was so bad that it to them changing how they approach the draft. And yes, I always knew it was bad but mostly because I was white-hot pissed the second they took Kozma over Rick Porcello.

But I didn't realize HOW bad.

Would you believe that the Cardinals actually got a negative WAR out of that draft? They could've literally skipped the draft altogether and been better off. And what's more amazing still is that 80% of the positive value of that draft came from one guy - Sam Freeman - who racked up 2.9 WAR...1.9 of them for Atlanta.

That's just a hilariously awful draft. -1.9 WAR from a whopping 13 players to make a single big league appearance out of 52 selected. And that's if you give them credit for WAR that ended up being earned elsewhere.

Nice catch

Shouldn't have been remotely necessary.

Jordan Walker is a god-awful outfielder.

Full time DH isn't a bad thing.

It is for a 20 year old kid with solid athletic ability.

Don't pigeon hole him. He can be an adequate OFer. He's just going to have to learn on the job.

And I just think that's gonna be an awfully tough ask for a kid that's also adjusting to big league pitching after skipping AAA outright.

Yeah, he's not Yepez.

Athletically no - he has the ability that Yepez doesn't.

But man, I think he might actually be a worse OFer than Yepez right now. He's making mental mistakes just about every time he has a chance to. Bad breaks, bad reads, awful decisions with the ball.

He's a mess defensively.

He’ll learn, and as you said, he’s only 20. He only started playing OF in August last year.

While I’d want him to be a stud defensively, if he’s able to hit, I don’t care as long as he isn’t a complete black hole on the field defensively.

Wish I could have live bet Pallante blowing the no-no

Agreed.

I don't need Heyward out there in RF.

But he's gotta be credible and right now he's not that.

Oh, and LIFT THE DAMN BASEBALL, JORDAN!!!

(still don't like his swing; too much natural power for a swing path that flat)

Send hicks down

Pretty please learn to lift the ball, Jordan?

I mean he's hitting absolute rockets out there. I don't need a 20 degree launch angle here but man if you can just get that up to 12% instead of hitting missiles into the dirt, you're gonna be a DAMN dangerous hitter.

His hustle actually caused that error. Classic case of a guy having plenty of time to settle and throw but he saw Walker sprinting down the line and Biggio rushed the throw. That should've been a pretty routine smother/throw sort of out but Walker's hustle forced the mistake.

the team that put 10 runs on us last game was no hit by him. Yeah 9 walks was bad but he put up the zeros.

Imma assume you didn't watch him.

He sucked. No life on anything he threw. The slider was working a bit in his last inning but prior to that the hitters were just standing there waiting for him to throw them something.

He essentially lulled them to sleep.

He was bad today, ERA be damned.

Having 9 walks through 5 innings while pitching like dog shit isn’t a good thing.

this is a good thing <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Jordan Walker was obliterating baseballs today (Exit Velo):<br><br>105.3 mph <br>105.8 mph<br>107.0 mph<br><br>Yeah, that’s a good sign. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/stlcards?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#stlcards</a></p>&mdash; Cardinal Metrics (@CardinalMetrics) <a href="https://twitter.com/CardinalMetrics/status/1642273954885763072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Gausman was good and the Jays sort of blew that any chance at that game. Flaherty was there to be crushed and they let him off the hook repeatedly.

Makes up for the Cardinals getting BABIP’d to death yesterday.

Yeah, so it goes in baseball.

His tank is empty, I doubt he makes it to the all star break without breaking down again. Jake Woodford will be a more reliable starter and that isn’t a good thing.

Big day for Gorman so far and love seeing Noots ass on the bench and Burleson contribute. Mo still sucks...but love seeing the LeBluejays beat down

This offense is looking good so far.

The offense was never the question.