2018 STL Cardinals Thread

[BigRedChief]

Opening day lineup

Fowler RF
Pham CF
Carpenter 3B
Ozuna LF
Martinez 1B
Molina C
Dejong SS
Wong 2B
Pitcher

Edit:
Matheny fired 07/14/2018




Opening Day Roster

Spoiler!

St. Louis has opted to carry 12 position players and 13 pitchers to begin the new season, with a four-man bench and eight-man bullpen.

Outfielders:
Dexter Fowler
Tommy Pham
Marcell Ozuna

Infielders:
Matt Carpenter
Paul DeJong
Kolten Wong

Catchers:
Yadier Molina
Francisco Pena

Utility:
Jose Martinez
Greg Garcia
Yairo Munoz
Jedd Gyrko

Starters:
Carlos Martinez
Michael Wacha
Luke Weaver
Miles Mikolas
Jack Flaherty

Relievers:
Dominic Leone
Tyler Lyons
Bud Norris
Brett Cecil
Sam Tuivailala
Matt Bowman
Jordan Hicks
Mike Mayers

On the DL:
Adam Wainwright
Luke Gregerson

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Dejong with 2 homers, Ozuna and Pham with 3 hits each. Bowman, Hicks and Leone looked fantastic in relief. Matheny didn’t make any bonehead managerial moves today.

Where’s all the grumpy old men?

I wasn't panicking early.

I actually think they are putting together a good young team. Probably wont win it all but I like what they are doing.

They aren't over committed on a single player and have a bunch of young talent.

[VAChief]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

I wasn't panicking early.

I actually think they are putting together a good young team. Probably wont win it all but I like what they are doing.

They aren't over committed on a single player and have a bunch of young talent.

This...we have better options than the past two years.

[oldandslow]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

I wasn't panicking early.

I actually think they are putting together a good young team. Probably wont win it all but I like what they are doing.

They aren't over committed on a single player and have a bunch of young talent.

I agree. This is going to be a very good team, maybe sooner than later.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by VAChief

This...we have better options than the past two years.

Despite Mo's bumbling and Meathead's gameday management, we have another winning window opening up in 2019.

We have so much young talent in pitching and the outfield plus supposedly the best young catcher in the game that we can trade for offense and still have that coming window.

We have the money to compete in that window starting in 2019. We must have a #3 hole hitter to complete this window. We can pay the $300 million to get Manny and still have our window. If other teams offer $300 million, we should offer $325 million or $350 million. The young cost controlled pitching and outfielders will help balance out the payroll. Manny is the missing #3 basher we need to shape our offense into a championship winning team.

[bdj23]

Mikolas 2 run dinger for his first MLB hit.

Lol

[Marcellus]

DeJong appears to be the real deal.

[O.city]

Really hope they intend to get Hicks into the rotation sooner than later. Dude is filth

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by O.city

Really hope they intend to get Hicks into the rotation sooner than later. Dude is filth

they had Martinez, Waino, Reyes and Wacha pitch in relief their first year in MLB. Then next season moved them to starter.

Why should Hicks be different? What’s the rush? He doesn’t even turn 22 until late Sept. He spent last season pitching in “A” ball for crissakes.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

they had Martinez, Waino, Reyes and Wacha pitch in relief their first year in MLB. Then next season moved them to starter.

Why should Hicks be different? What’s the rush? He doesn’t even turn 22 until late Sept. He spent last season pitching in “A” ball for crissakes.

See Trevor Rosenthal

[BigRedChief]

The Cardinals think they have the front-end talent in the back of their rotation

https://theathletic.com/297984/2018/...heir-rotation/


When experts shied away from picking the St. Louis Cardinals going into this season, they often cited a vanilla starting pitching rotation.

A lot of Cardinals fans wanted the team to sign one of the remaining name-brand starters as spring training kept going and a few remained available.

The Cardinals didn’t budge in that direction, and here’s why: They think they could have one of the deepest rotations in the game before long. Judging by early results, they’re not necessarily crazy.

The area of this Cardinals roster with some of the dimmest name recognition also has some of the most exciting upside.

After Adam Wainwright strained a hamstring and then Carlos Martínez and Michael Wacha pitched duds in New York, the relative no names have steadied the ship.

Luke Weaver and Miles Mikolas soothed Cardinal fan nerves with solid starts. Jack Flaherty could pitch the Cardinals to a three-game winning streak with a good start Tuesday.

Wainwright likely won’t pitch for another week or so, and top prospect Alex Reyes is about two months from joining the rotation, but the Cardinals believe what they have now is good enough to get them through this. Once they get healthy, they could have enviable depth.

A burly right-hander, Mikolas is, for now, best known for swallowing a live lizard while in the Arizona Fall League (hey, we all did crazy stuff when we were 22, right?).

He is with the Cardinals on a two-year, $15.5 million deal because scouts Matt Slater and Jeff Ishii liked him and the Cardinals analytics department loved him. Why? One phrase:

“A high strikeout rate in a contact league is interesting,” Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said.

In three seasons pitching for the Yomiuri Giants, Mikolas had a strikeout-per-nine rate of 8.1. It was an indication to the Cardinals that Mikolas not only continued to have good command but that his raw stuff had enjoyed an uptick. In MLB, where hitters often sell out contact in a bid for home runs, Mikolas might be roughly as effective as he was in Japan and that’s saying something. He was 31-13 with a 2.18 ERA.

The Cardinals saw surprising velocity from Mikolas all spring. He looked pretty strong dotting a 97-mph fastball on the outside margin of the strike zone to strike out Ryan Braun on Monday, when he held the Brewers to four runs in 5 2/3 innings.

“The more we watched, the better he looked,” Matheny said of Mikolas’ spring.

Weaver started his season promisingly with five strong innings against the New York Mets on Sunday and helped shake the pitching from its sluggish start. Beforehand, Matheny said he doesn’t view Weaver as he might another pitcher with just 18 major league starts.

A lot of perceptions changed when Weaver came up for his second taste of the big leagues on the eve of Independence Day last summer.

He was different. In 2016, the Cardinals watched a rookie pitcher who gave too much credit to major-league hitters and walked too many. When he tired of giving free passes, he threw too many strikes and got hit hard. Then, he showed up the following summer.

“He just had a physical confidence on the mound that relayed into how he was executing pitches,” Matheny said. “I’ve seen enough from him. I don’t think the rest of the baseball world has – maybe Cardinal fans who pay close attention – so he’s done enough to take away a lot of those doubts.”

Weaver’s approach is not typical of a young pitcher. With two runners on base against the Mets, Weaver – his jersey sleeves flapping in a cool, westerly wind in Queens — faced a possible make-or-break moment in the first inning.

He showed Wilmer Flores everything he had in a nine-pitch at-bat and, as a result, he got away clean. That allowed the Cardinals to get their first lead of 2017.

He threw four different pitches, starting with an 82-mph curveball for a strike. When Flores fought through changeups and cutters, then fouled off two 94-mph four-seam fastballs in a row, Weaver froze him by throwing an 81-mph curveball on the outer edge for a strike. Here's the video.

The least-known commodity, Flaherty, will make just his sixth major-league start when he faces the Brewers on Tuesday. The Cardinals hope Flaherty, like Weaver, benefits from having already gotten major-league time last season. While he wasn’t terribly effective, pitching to a 6.33 ERA and 1.55 WHIP, he did show a sometimes-devastating slider. In the spring, he refined a sinker to give him a five-pitch mix.

“The kid’s got pretty special stuff,” Matheny said. “You watch him, and he competes and prepares like a guy who’s been around a whole lot longer than he has.”

Flaherty’s first stop in St. Louis this season could be a short one. Wainwright, according to all accounts, should be ready to return after just 10 days on the disabled list, meaning Flaherty likely will be sent to Triple-A Memphis. Still, two starts, if they’re strong, will keep him in his current role: as the Cardinals’ No. 6 starter.

What – or, in fact, who — the Cardinals have going for them as they try to bring along the untested back of their rotation is Yadier Molina. He spoke highly of the young pitchers he saw this spring, taking special care to get to know their unique repertoires and competitive styles throughout camp. There’s a reason he has a reputation as one of the best handlers of pitchers the game has seen.

Molina encourages the pitchers he doesn’t know to shake him off as much as they want the first few times he catches them.

“That’s the best way for a catcher to learn a guy, not sit back and go, ‘I have a whole bunch of Gold Gloves, and I can show them to you if you need to see them. So, do what I tell you,’ ” Matheny said. “It’s never that conversation. It’s, ‘Show me what you’re thinking. Do your thing, and then trust the fact we’re not going to let you do anything stupid.’ ”

The Cardinals will stay on the lookout for rookie mistakes. Meanwhile, they sound pretty confident in their least-tested starters.

[Rams Fan]

Can someone explain to me why Gyorko should be on the bench vs Martinez starting at first?

Martinez can flat out rake, but he can not play defense worth a shit.

Best everday line up should have Wong/Marp/Gyorko in it.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Rams Fan

Can someone explain to me why Gyorko should be on the bench vs Martinez starting at first?

Martinez can flat out rake, but he can not play defense worth a shit.

Best everday line up should have Wong/Marp/Gyorko in it.

full article here:

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/platfor...mp-thump-thump

All aboard the Jose Martinez train

If you weren’t already, it’s probably time to go ahead and let yourself get all hyped up

This probably isn’t news to you if you’ve been following along closely over the past year. It isn’t like Jose Martinez has completely flown under the radar. VEB’s John Fleming, in particular, has been banging the drum for Martinez with some frequency this offseason. A national baseball nerd-blog writer who has since been hired to help run a team in real life asked if Jose Martinez was the new J.D. Martinez is September. I’m not covering new ground here, and I have little big-picture information to add to those pieces. If you want lots of detail supporting the idea that Jose Martinez might be awesome now, read those. For our purposes today, I’ll just play the hits:

The fancy cameras in MLB stadiums that track batted-ball velocity and angle off the bat let us calculate average results for each batted ball given its characteristics off the bat. By that metric (xwOBA) Martinez was the 5th-best hitter in all of baseball last year (minimum 200 PAs).
That elite result was driven by the 15th-best xwOBA on balls hit in the air (minimum 100 such events), combined with a better-than-average 19.5% strikeout rate. Lots of contact + good quality contact on balls in the air = great overall production.

Martinez was comically good against lefties in 2017: best xwOBA in the league by 38 points.

For good measure, he was the 7th-best hitter in the league when going the other way in 2017 (minimum 40 events).
Jose Martinez creamed the ball all of 2017. He creamed it during Spring Training this year. He creamed it in the opening series against the Mets. He appears to be a guy who creams the ball. There are many compelling pieces of evidence pointing that way.

Which is to say, it’s time to seriously entertain the possibility (if you hadn’t already, which you should have!) that Jose Martinez is great. A guy the Cardinals got for cash considerations after the Royals designated him for assignment in 2016, because he was too old to be a prospect and didn’t seem to be much good. A guy I remember squinting at when he came into a clutch spot against the Cubs late that year, in a game I happened to be at, and thinking this guy, who is this, this won’t work (it didn’t, but that’s not the point). A guy many of us, myself included, scoffed at when he made the roster after a strong 2017 spring.

There’s a real chance that this guy has become the best hitter the Cardinals have,

[Pasta Little Brioni]

I like Jose

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by Rams Fan

Can someone explain to me why Gyorko should be on the bench vs Martinez starting at first?

Martinez can flat out rake, but he can not play defense worth a shit.

Best everday line up should have Wong/Marp/Gyorko in it.

Martinez has the best batting average and slugging % of all Cardinals since late in 2016 when he first got a taste of the majors with the Cards.

[Marcellus]

Gyrko headed to the 10 day DL most likely due to a hamstring.