The organization has been rotting from the head down for years.

They've become extremely difficult to root for at this point.

Exactly. The sum bitch was allowed to pass the blame that's his fault and that's just inexcusable.

I just loved "Ultimately it's not our decision. We laid out a plan, the plan was deviated, and here we are..."

Jack Flaherty taking the hill before he was ready was 'not our decision'....

Can he refuse a rehab assignment? Yup. Can he refuse an option? No, no he cannot. Not if he doesn't have 5 years of MLB service time. And Jack Flaherty does NOT have 5 years of service time.

So if he wants to refuse his minor league rehab assignment, you activate him and then you OPTION his ass. And you stop his service clock. And given that he's literally 2 days over the necessary requirement for FA after next season, he is absolutely not going to want to see that service clock stopped.

So yes, it was absolutely your decision, you feckless ****. You just didn't want to make it. You didn't want to deal with Flaherty bad-mouthing you on Twitter. You didn't what jack-ass calling you racist or something equally stupid. Or you thought the inevitable grievance hearing sounded too icky to deal with because you believe your own bullshit about being a 'model organization' and think the Cardinals are above playing in that mud.

All you had to do was say "okay - you're refusing a rehab assignment because you insist you're physically sound? Cool - sign here..."

Then you activate him and option his ass back to Memphis the next day. If you're feeling charitable, you tell him what his options are before you go through all that. But you do NOT let a guy like Jack Flaherty hold the organization hostage.

It's absolutely absurd and of course Mozeliak found some way to be a smug prick about it while dodging personal responsibility.

Mr Brinks Truck himself gets locked up by a 3-2 hanging curveball in the 9th when all he has to do is put a ball in play to tie it.

I'm sure somehow Ollie will blame this all on Knizner.

4 runs scored in the last 5 games combined with three shut outs

Impressive, very nice.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">How about Corey Knebel surviving the 9th-inning error?!<br><br>Phillies win again. They&#39;ve held the Cardinals scoreless 27 straight innings. <a href="https://t.co/ARG9fiVfhs">pic.twitter.com/ARG9fiVfhs</a></p>&mdash; NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCSPhilly/status/1545879808583802881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

we are on the same page with what’s wrong with this franchise and why it continues on that same mediocre path. But, Arenado is not a problem on this team.

You fail 7/10 times, you’re a HOF’r.
You fail 8/10 times, you probably never play MLB.

Mo on the trade deadline in the STL dispatch. Expected but still **** that guy.


Is this a year the team may consider splurging on something it wouldn’t have in other years?

“We’re not going to blow up our model of how we think about player acquisition,” Mozeliak told the Post-Dispatch. “We certainly understand this is a really fun team to be around. Obviously, we’re coming off a tough road trip, but we still believe, as we get healthier, there are some things we could augment that would make us stronger. So that’s how we’ll improve.”

“When [X] comes back, it will be just like making a trade…”

Literally every single year.

What a monumental asshole.

Folks - he really thinks you’re this dumb. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the BFIB truly are. Cardinal Twitter is full of complete morons.

I’m truly in awe of that word salad. Our little boy is all grown up.

Can you imagine him saying “low hanging fruit” these days? Would never happen. Oh he’d give you the same general idea, but he’d wrap it in five paragraphs of flowery nonsense designed to make the rubes go cross eyed before he tells them that they’ll get nothing and like it.

No - Nolan isn’t the problem.

But did you realize he’s had a dead even WPA over his last 70 games? It’s one of my favorite rearview mirror reviews of what a player is producing in key spots. It’s not predictive that I’ve ever seen - but it does tell you a bit about the past.

He did this last year as well. Your superstar players have to hit when it matters and for most of this season Arenado has been mediocre in that regard.

Matt Holliday used to infuriate me in this way. He would hit great when nothing was on the line. 25 home runs but 20 of them came when we were winning by 5 or losing by 10.

Holliday took a lot of heat for that, yeah. But it was actually unwarranted. His last couple of years were fairly underwhelming in that regard, but from 2009 to 2014, over a 6 season stretch (really 5.5), he racked up nearly 22 WPA. That's 4 points/yr - it's actually exceptional. Goldschmidt is leading the league in the category right now and is likely to end up around 5.5 by season's end.

To average 4/season for around 6 seasons is exceptionally productive and consistent. By comparison, Arenado had 1.8 last season and is on pace for about 1.6 this season.

He's been nowhere close to the reliable offensive difference maker that Holliday was. And that's not to dump on his value - a guy who simply holds serve offensively and is one of the 2 best defensive players at his position in the game is EXTREMELY valuable.

But is that a superstar? Uh.........

Ultimately the game has been on Arenado's bad several times this year - and he hasn't come through with any regularity. He's absolutely been a very good, very valuable player. But he's not without his warts and he's not completely without blame for some of these losses.

You don't make an irrational contract decision to keep the guy if he isn't someone you can count on to come through in those ABs at better than a barely top 50 rate.

He killed our lineup for 2 years. Batted .160. No pop. Now he has 10 HR’s in 20 games.


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">‘Yankees finding ways to get Matt Carpenter&#39;s bat in the lineup’ by <a href="https://twitter.com/eboland11?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@eboland11</a> for <a href="https://twitter.com/Newsday?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Newsday</a>: The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yankees?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Yankees</a> went from not being able to find enough at-bats for Matt Carpenter to doing whatever they can to keep the ridiculously hot veteran’s bat in the… <a href="https://t.co/KdFwyAOddF">https://t.co/KdFwyAOddF</a> <a href="https://t.co/ALMNpHDrt6">pic.twitter.com/ALMNpHDrt6</a></p>&mdash; New York BBWAA (@NYBBWAA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NYBBWAA/status/1546225759869624321?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>