Remember a few years ago, when everyone suddenly woke up and decided Joey Votto was a Hall of Famer because he was having a late career renaissance season? And then the next year Votto was old and not nearly as good and *poof* he sort of became entirely forgotten again?
Yes, in 2022 he was an MVP. Yes, last year his numbers were a lot worse – near career lows in every category. As a result, in 2022 all the talk was people waking up to the reality that they were watching a future Hall of Famer. In 2023 all of the talk was about if this was the beginning of the end.
With that, people suddenly will go backwards. Decide they are on the fence again. They’ll glance at his numbers – shy of 2,000 hits, 10 homers short of 340.
I mean does this sound like a Hall of Fame first baseman to you?
For a lot of people it doesn’t. But yes, even if he retired today, he’d absolutely belong.
No, he doesn’t have the milestones yet, but who the Hell cares about yet?
This is his age 36 season, and his last under contract. Which would be worrisome, except this is the DH era. Does anyone think that Paul Goldschmidt won’t be playing at 37 and beyond if he wants to? Andrew McCutchen is still playing, people!
Will Paul Goldschmidt, who had 159 hits and and 25 homers last year, while posting a 120 OPS+ manage to get 91 more hits and 10 homers over the rest of his playing days? Yeah, I’m thinking that’s an OK bet.
Now he’s not getting 3,000 hits or 700 home runs like some OTHER first basement have done. He may not be putting up Jimmy Foxx numbers. That’s OK. He’s still a Hall of Famer.
His road is a bit harder because chicks and writers dig the long ball, and because the best defensive 1B get screwed when people glance at their WAR.
Goldy has taken home 4 Gold Gloves, which SHOULD be an indication that he’s bringing a lot of value over there. Want to know his career DEF? It’s -109.3. Positional adjustments man. No one would ever look at those numbers and say, “hey! He was some good gloveman!”
Keith Hernandez is the platinum standard of 1B defense. No one comes close. Want to know what his career DEF is? 0.3. At a glance, people would look at his numbers and think of him as an average 1st baseman.
As a result of this stuff, David Ortiz, PED tests and all, is a 1st ballot Hall of Famer. 500 homers baby! Do you think anyone at all cared about his base running ability? Do you think anyone cared that he didn’t own a glove most of his career?
I have news for you – Paul Goldschmidt is already 6.4 fWAR ahead of Ortiz, and he ain’t done yet.
Let’s discuss what that means, because what I think you hear is “he still has a few pretty good years to tack on and pad some stats!”
That’s not what I mean.
Here’s a little stat for you: xwOBA. I quote it often. Essentially it takes your batted ball numbers – exit velocity, launch angle, and it tells you what sort of wOBA it would expect.
In 2022, Paul Goldschmidt’s MVP season, he had an xwOBA of .367.
In 2023, Paul Goldschmidt’s decline, one foot in the grave season He had an xwOBA of .367.
He’s still hitting the ball every bit as well as he did during his MVP season.
His exit velocity went up. His hard hit % went up. His xwOBA on fastballs? (Cardinals fans spent all last year talking about how he couldn’t hit fastballs) was .387. The exact same as the year before.
The big difference lies here: his actual wOBA in 2022 was .419, and in 2023 it was .350. Holy drop batman!
So is the answer here luck? Was he super lucky in his MVP season, and unlucky last year?
Maybe a little, but I think the answer is more simple:
Goldy hit to the opposite field 32.4% of the time last year. 5% higher than the year before. His pull percentage dropped the same amount.
OK, so?
People who pull the ball to the short fence almost always outperform their xwOBA – see Mookie Betts.
I’m assuming this was on purpose. The numbers are a pretty big jump not seen before in his career, and it’s something that teammate and good friend Nolan Arenado talked about a LOT last year.
No, Nolan Arenado isn’t Paul Goldschmidt, so maybe it’s unfair to attribute it to both of them, but basically as far as communicating with the press goes, Nolan Arenado is Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and Goldy is his good friend Beaker.
Baseball players have always had this deep seeded love of hitting the ball with authority the other way. That and “squaring up the ball” by hitting it back through the box is a sign your swing is on point. In my opinion, Goldy and Arenado were on this train together. And both of them had down(ish) years as a result.
Now, look. I’m not saying hitting the ball the other way, or up the middle is a bad idea. Indeed, I buy in to the notion that when it comes to getting yourself right – when it comes to getting your proper timing – a nice up the middle hit is a great sign. It’s something you can aim for.
But there’s a reality that comes into play here, and that reality is that when you’re hitting that ball up the middle, you’re usually hitting it to the deepest part of the ballpark. And when you’re hitting that ball the other way, you’re doing so away from your power.
It’s basic logic. That left field foul pole is something like 330 feet away. And the more you work on NOT hitting the ball there, the more you’re going to hit a ball 10 feet to the right instead, where your homer now becomes a double. 10 feet to the right of that? It becomes a routine out.
Solid contact up the middle? Count me in. A batter putting a two strike pitch through the right side? I love it. Paul Goldschmidt attacking a pitch? Dude, put in the air, toward the shortest fence, and toward your strongest side.
There’s no way I won’t be able to dwell on this when it comes to Nolan Arenado, but I have to use him as an example because it’s so perfect:
Statcast has a stat called EV50. It’s the average exit velocity of the best 50% of balls you hit.
There are 9 qualified Cardinals on the list. Nolan Arenado is ranked 9th. Behind Tommy Edman, behind Brendan Donovan, behind freaking Alec Burleson. Arenado is a weakling up there compared to everyone else. But do you know what he does really, really well? He doesn’t smash 102 mph balls on the ground to center. He lofts them in the air down the left field line. And it’s made him a hundred millionaire. That’s something that isn’t broke, and doesn’t need to be fixed.
Last year, it looks like he and Goldy decided to fix it anyway, and instead they decided to make their balls, well, easier to catch.
Who knows what will happen going forward for Goldy. Will he continue down this path? Or would he like to jog more without concern for where the ball actually leaves the ballpark?
I dunno. But the strength is still there. The swing is still there. The superstar is still there. It wouldn’t stun me if we’re watching his 400th home run in a few years. There’s no reason he can’t get there, unless he prefers line drives the other way.
Choose wisely Paul Goldschmidt. One path is going to take you the Jeff Bagwell path to enshrinement, and the other path is going to bring you on the Fred McGriff journey. Maybe don’t listen as much to Nolan Arenado. If a friend wants to get you in trouble, then he’s not really your friend. If those boys try to tell you to do something that gives you that “uh oh” feeling, “Come on Paul! Dump a single over 2nd! Everyone is doing it!” You just tell them no, and walk away, and hit a 3-run homer in the bleachers. Those other kids are headed for trouble. Stay Golden, Goldy boy. Stay Golden.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard” said one writer to future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn. “How could you say a thing like that, as long as you’ve been around baseball?” said another.
Richie was just trying to help.
And the Phillies needed help. They couldn’t stop Vince Coleman.
Richie had an idea. When you have 2 outs in an inning, and the pitcher coming up, WALK THE PITCHER.
It’s simple. He’d rather Coleman bat with two outs and a slow-footed pitcher in front of him, then to let Coleman lead off the next inning. Give Coleman a chance to run – and well, you were in trouble.
It was 1987, and Lance Parrish was the Phillies brand new catcher. He seemed to be the perfect person to stop the Cardinals running game.
Parrish had spent his entire year in the American League and had once led the league in caught stealing with 49%. Just the year before he had caught 44% of runners. That was 10% better than league average!
And the Phillies needed someone like that, if ONLY to stop Vince Coleman and the Cardinals.
Vince Coleman came up in 1985. He stole 13 bases against the Phillies, he was never caught.
In 1986, Coleman attempted 20 steals against the Phillies. He was never caught. That’s 33 in a row to start his career for those scoring at home.
So in 1987 the Phillies went out and got themselves a star catcher. Lance Parrish was here to put out the fire.
Parrish’s very first spring training game was against…the St. Louis Cardinals. And in the very first inning, Vince Coleman and Ozzie Smith both got on base. Naturally, they attempted a double steal. Naturally, they were both safe. Parrish threw to 3rd trying to get Coleman, and the play was close. Philadelphia papers gushed at how close he made it! One even argued Coleman was actually out!
That’s how it was back in those days. Someone ALMOST got Vince Coleman out, and it excited a city.
Well, it didn’t last long. The Cardinals would attempt 52 bases against the Phillies that year and would steal an incredible 43. Joining the National league, Parrish would watch his caught stealing percentage drop from the mid-40s, all the way down to 28%. There it would remain for the next few years, until it would jump back to his usual numbers…once he was back in the American League.
The National League was playing a different game, and the Cardinals were the kings of it.
The first regular season game against the Phillies and their new star catcher, Vince Coleman led off with a walk.
Phrustrated Phillies manager John Felske said, “We start off our meeting talking about not walking Coleman, and we walk him leading off the game.” 8 games later, Felske would be fired.
Coleman did what he was supposed to do after the walk. He stole 2nd, and later scored on a sac fly.
The next inning, Coleman blooped a single and stole second again.
In the top of the 4th, the Phillies managed to keep Coleman from attempting a steal, by giving up a triple to him, where he later scored on a groundout.
But his next time up, Coleman would single again. This time he would steal 2nd, and 3rd, and score on a sac fly. The Cardinals won 12-8. Coleman stole 4 bases and scored 3 runs. One unnamed Phillies official called the game, “like Chinese water torture.”
Well, not if you were a 1980s Cardinals fan.
That’s when Richie Ashburn couldn’t take it anymore and came up with the idea of just walking the pitcher in front of him. Please. Anything. Put more runners on base. But STOP LETTING VINCE RUN.
He was crazy they told him. Of course they did. And later that game Coleman had an infield hit that advanced a runner an extra base when he forced an error. He then stole 3rd and came home on a grounder. Ashburn was right about one thing, if you didn’t have a way of slowing Coleman down, he was in scoring position.
“It’s very frustrating,” Lance Parrish said. “I can make a good throw and they get there. Then I’ll rush myself and won’t make as good a throw. We’re trying everything we can, but it’s awfully tough.”
Yeah Lance. That’s the point. I don’t know which two, but Richie Ashburn lamented that in the series, Vince Coleman stole two bases – ON PITCHOUTS – and made it easily. The 1980s Vince Coleman Cardinals broke baseball, and it was glorious.
Of course, all things come to an end. And I’m here to tell you that the very next day, Vince Coleman was indeed caught stealing.
In the 2nd inning, Vince got on in his typical fashion, by dropping a drag bunt. Now, on first, the Phillies and pitcher Kevin Gross had a problem. How do you stop him from stealing 2nd? Well, the answer was quite simple: Coleman ended up inducing Gross to balk. Coleman got 2nd for free and scored on an Ozzie single.
In the 4th, the Phillies had a chance to take Ashburn’s advice. 2 outs, and the pitcher up, they could have walked him to put him in front of Coleman. They chose not to. In the top of the 5th Coleman walked and proceeded to steal 2nd and 3rd.
In the top of the 8th, Coleman hit a soft chopper to the left side of the mound. That’s an easy single.
So what did he do? He stole 2nd, for his 3rd steal of the day. Then he advanced to 3rd on a groundout.
That made him 8 for 8 in steals in the series, 41 for 41 lifetime against the Phillies.
And, noting Gross had a slow windup, Vince took off for home.
Gross, seeing this, hurried his windup to make it a normal throw instead of a pitch, and Vince Coleman’s 41 base streak was over – on what was most likely an uncalled balk – on a steal of home.
Coleman and Herzog both argued the play. Herzog later said, “I can’t believe four umpires couldn’t see that.” Coleman said there was “no doubt in my mind” that Gross balked on the play.
But it goes down instead as a caught stealing, and Lance Parrish didn’t even get to throw him out.
For the record, Coleman stole 8 more consecutive bases against the Phillies that year, before Lance Parrish DID throw him out at 2nd. Congrats, Lance!
Well, kind of:
The Philadelphia daily news reported that Coleman actually stole 2nd base twice. The pitch before, he had the bag easily stolen, but the umpire sent him back to first, ruling that he’d interfered with Parrish’s chance to throw, even though the Philly paper admitted that he was clearly going to be safe anyway.
The next pitch, Coleman took off and was called out at 2nd. And once again, the Philly paper admitted that replays show that Coleman was no-doubt safe.
Coleman stole 2 more bases a game later, but Lance Parrish finally really did have his say (I mean, as far as I know), that September.
On September 21, Coleman – who was now 51 out of 53 against the Phillies in steal attempts, with BOTH times caught being gifts from the umpiring crew – Coleman was caught stealing 2nd by Lance Parrish.
To make matters worse, Coleman was picked off attempting to steal the next inning, which counted as another CS in the books.
The streak was definitely over.
Then, in the 5th inning, with the game tied 1-1, Vince Coleman hit a 2-run, game-winning homer.
Sorry Philly, you can’t stop Vince Coleman.
I tell you this, when you get annoyed with people talking about how fun the 80s Cardinals were. Well, sorry. Those old curmudgeons are right about this one. The 1980s Cardinals didn’t just beat other teams, they humiliated them. They slapped infield choppers, and ran themselves silly, while musclebound professional athletes found themselves helpless to do anything, until some poor umpire took pity on them. It was a thing of beauty.
And I’ll tell you this too – you probably had no idea of Vince Coleman’s 41 stolen base streak against the Phillies to start his career. How??? How is this not brought up from time to time? 41 steals to start his career, spanning years of games against the Phillies and it’s just lost in history?
Well, yeah. You see, there was an even better catcher on a more hated team. And against that team, Vince stole far more bases. 41 consecutive steals? Pah. 41 is nothing. This wasn’t the good story. This was the forgotten one. No one ever cared about this one.
Maybe, perhaps, I’ll tell that story. Today though, the focus is the Phillies, who spent the mid-80s up in arms and totally perplexed with how to possibly stop Vince and the running Red Birds. All the while, Cards fans were focused elsewhere, on other teams. And thus 41 bases in a row? Incredible. And you didn’t even know about it for over 35 years.
Philadelphia, Vince Coleman might have destroyed your soul, but Cardinals fans didn’t think about you at all.
Just trust me – watch the video. You don’t need my behind the scenes comments below. Just click through and watch the video.
You’re still here? Fine. I’ll tell you how this happened.
The 1934 World Series is the earliest World Series we have with full game radio broadcasts available today (There’s a rerecording of the 1926 World Series game 7 out there – most people think that’s the real thing, but it’s from the 50s.)
Let me tell you. We’re talking 1934 quality. We’re talking 90 years of static hiss. It’s incredibly hard to listen to.
It’s an amazing series to listen to. To hear Hank Greenberg referred to as a kid time and time again – to hear Dizzy Dean charge toward the umpire in anger over a bad call. Joe Medwick hitting a home run?
Glorious.
And amazing for how the times have changed. Waiting on a foul ball to be thrown back in play before realizing someone actually wants to keep the ball? Listening to the announcer have to wait until a reliever is on the mound and they can see them before they know who it is. Hearing the left field wall get called a “barrier” every time. Changeup? No. It’s a ‘change of pace.’ – It’s such a fun listen. But also, a headache inducing one.
Until one day, out of nowhere, I decided to pass a snippet of the game through a few AI tools to see what they could do with them.
And tears nearly came to my eyes.
I was lucky too, I ended up experimenting with different systems over and over – most of them were so disappointing and robotic that I would have never decided to go on. Instead, I couldn’t believe how good it sounded.
“OTHERS HAVE TO HEAR THIS” was my immediate thought. Naturally, that meant YouTube.
I thought I was going to throw it on youtube, and tell people it was the best they’ve ever heard this game sound, and call it a day. You could finally hear it! No more straining! No more migraines!
And then I thought – well this is youtube. I need a picture for the background, right?
Suddenly my next 6 weeks became consumed within this project. I grabbed every highlight I could find. Every picture that was in the paper the next day. My site partner @CardinalsGifs made custom cards – 1934 style naturally. We rebuilt the 1934 scoreboard. Do you know know how much research it takes to find out how a specific 1934 scoreboard works? I admit, I still am lost on some of it – and chose some other changes for modern eyes.
I wrote BackToBaseball.com for permission to use their baseball gameday simulator.
And then I made thousands and thousands of edits – I wanted people to hear the game. What happened in the end is, I hope, this is as close as anyone has come in 90 years to experiencing the game.
It was a cherished time for both the Cardinals and Tigers, full of amazing personalities, that are reduced to little more than stat sheets and short stories today. This should bring you closer to both teams – and indeed, the entire era of baseball, than you’ve ever gone before.
Much has been said about Jordan Walker’s defense this year. It’s easy to see why. He’s been one of the worst defenders we’ve ever seen. This isn’t his fault. He’s playing a new position, for a team that has repeatedly handled his development like they have no idea what they are doing.
Jordan was drafted as a 3B back in 2020. Of course, that was 2020, so Jordan didn’t get any professional baseball experience, and we can only presume that he spent that year practicing at 3B, his “natural position.” – more on that “natural position” stuff in a minute.
Now, in 2021, Jordan was able to play pro-ball for the first time, and spent the entire year at 3B. 76 starts between A and A+ ball, all 76 at 3B. This was despite the Cardinals having acquired Nolan Arenado during the off-season.
That’s not a criticism, just a replaying of events. Jordan Walker was 19, and was signed to hit his way to stardom. I personally wouldn’t want Jordan Walker’s intro into real baseball to be “now you have to hit much better pitchers, and also you have to learn a completely foreign position, all while being the Cardinals most heralded prospect. Good luck kid.”
I’m all on board with letting Walker develop and get comfortable, with the position change coming later.
But make no mistake, the position change HAD to come. Jordan Walker is listed at 6’6 245. And this is as someone barely entering their 3rd decade of life. The dude is bound to fill out, and he already weighs more than his 3B transfer comp Albert Pujols did last year.
Albert may have stuck at 3rd. The behemoth walrus that Jordan Walker is likely to become was never going to be able to. Mobility will one day be an issue.
Let’s also discuss this whole “natural” position thing, since I put it in quotes earlier. Natural, in this case, usually means the position the player was playing the position in High School or College when they were drafted. But, of course, there’s usually nothing natural about it. When talent levels are that depreciated, so often your most talented players are going to get playing time and development in the hardest defensive positions.
Jordan Walker’s High School coaches were not going to stick him in Right Field since that’s where his future would lie. They were going to stick him at 3B, because he can rifle the ball to first, and little 4’6 Johnny Freshman cannot.
Therefore we have the idea that Walker is a “natural” third baseman. There’s nothing natural at all about Jordan Walker playing 3B. Third just happens to be the position Walker had the most experience playing, and that experience helped him commit 40 errors across only 146 games at 3B in the low minors. So natural!
Yes, I’ll take a moment to argue with myself here. 3B, in the low minors, with some terrible 1B missing one-hoppers, and infields that closer resemble Stonehenge, are riddled with errors.
Nolan Arenado made 29 errors across 130 games in rookie and A-ball as a teenager in the Rockies system, and he’s Nolan Arenado.
So I don’t say that the 40 errors alone is an indicator that Jordan Walker was going to be a terrible 3B in his career, although, he wasn’t a savant, ok? If you compare all of his numbers against Arenado’s – there’s a clear victor ok? But it’s not like Jordan Walker wouldn’t have improved, and maybe couldn’t have handled it at higher levels.
It’s just that the time when that was going to work was going to quickly run short. Albert Pujols was moved off of 3B at a young age, Mark McGwire was moved off of 3B at a young age, and so Jordan Walker, who will likely be a much bigger guy, needed to be moved off of 3B too.
Walker put up impressive hitting numbers in AA the next year, and come August, the move happened to the OF.
This had to have happened because the writing was on the wall: Jordan Walker, especially with the new CBA rules that were encouraging it, was going to be bringing his bat to the Majors very soon. And for a multitude of reasons, it wasn’t going to be at 3B.
Again, I don’t blame them for playing him where he felt the most comfortable to start the year. He was a developing 20-year-old playing at the AA level. However, that’s where it gets confusing to me. Because there is a time limit on these things. Nolan Arenado was the 3B. No matter what anyone thought of Walker’s defense, that fact remained true. Whenever it was that he was going to the majors, it wasn’t going to be a third base.
So you can want him to develop his bat for a while and develop a position a little later – fine. That likely delays his MLB promotion, but it isn’t really an issue. What’s wrong with the guy coming up at 22? As I said, I get that. Or you can change his position immediately and hope that he’s able to handle developing both. Those are your choices, and the Cardinals decided instead they wanted to have it both ways. They wanted Walker’s bat to be MLB ready in 2023, and, well, we’ll figure out that whole defensive thing later.
Jordan Walker had about two months to develop into an MLB acceptable outfielder. That is one freaking tall order for a 20-year-old trying it for the first time.
Jordan Walker is BASICALLY a clone of Giancarlo Stanton in every way. Both are athletically-gifted hulking monsters of human beings, and playing RF makes a lot of sense for both of them. Walker has the athleticism, speed, and arm to spend his 20s playing RF. It’s also a major value jump. If he can be a league-average RF – 1B and DH become much more flexible positions for whatever your team needs are. It’s far easier to stick big, established bats there. Obviously, with Paul Goldshmidt here through at least 24, and a premium defender at 1B, making Walker a competent right fielder is the clear best choice.
Thus he spent his 1st two games in left field. That was barely a year ago, on August 2nd. That’s puzzling to me, as Walker’s arm is such an obvious asset, that you want that baby in right. But no matter. Walker was not an outfielder. Walker has never played OF before. If you’re going to commit to the idea that Walker might be a major leaguer, and you have two months to make him learn a position, then you GLUE HIM TO THAT POSITION AND YOU STICK WITH IT.
That’s not what happened.
Walker spent two games in Left Field, and then never went back to there again.
Walker spent the next two games in Right Field, and then spend the next two starts in Center Field. Then 4 games in Right Field, and then 2 more games in Center Field. I’m getting dizzy.
And I’m sorry, but who looked at Jordan Walker, with all the defensive history he had at that point in time, and how little outfield experience he had at that time, and with the calendar telling us it was the middle of August, and said to themselves,
“LET’S HAVE HIM TRY CENTER FOR A WHILE!”
On August 20th, Walker finally went to right and stayed there for the rest of the season – a whopping 19 games. Opportunity lost.
Then Walker went to the Arizona Fall League. That’s a decision that makes a ton of sense for getting game time for your young player learning a new position!
Walker played 21 games in the Arizona Fall League:
RF – 12 CF – 8 LF – 2
Opportunity lost.
I have no idea how much control the Cardinals might have over their player’s usage in the AZF, but for a guy who had such limited time to cram in as much experience for a player in a new position as they could, Walker spent a splendid amount of time NOT playing the position he was destined to play on the 2023 Cardinals.
(And if you’re going to tell me that OF is all the same, and that as long as he was in the OF, everything is fine. Yes, I know that there are some big similarities, and that playing one OF position is helpful to playing the others. But still stand out in left, and stand out in right, and tell me the balls move the same. They don’t. It’s fine to disagree – we all have different opinions on baseball — but I can tell you now that you’re and mine are vast oceans apart. There’s no need to tell me how stupid I am, and how smart you are. I concede. You are the genius. I am the idiot. You can stop reading and go away.)
Then came Spring Training.
Jordan Walker played 5 games in Right Field.
Jordan Walker played 13 games in Left Field.
Opportunity lost.
The Cardinals brought Jordan Walker to Spring Training – and primarily played him in the position he had the least experience in – and declared him good to go for making the opening day roster – where he played Right Field?
Can anyone explain this to me? Honestly?
When was the last time this kid was put in a position to help him succeed?
Now, it’s Opening Day, and Jordan Walker is as bad a RF as we’ve ever seen.
As an aside – The defense and the management of the defense has been bungled worse than anyone can imagine. While people are (rightfully) complaining about the lack of pitching, it’s the defense that sank this team, and often because of completely baffling decisions like these. So if you’ve read this, and thought to yourself, “Man, why did they screw up Jordan Walker so badly?” rest assured, this isn’t a Jordan Walker problem. This is an organization-wide analytics problem.
No one ever takes public responsibility for stuff like this – the last time I saw blame cast upon anyone it was the WBC – but wherever the buck does truly stop on this team, I’d like to have a word with them.
Now, let’s get back to Jordan Walker, and give you the good news:
In spite of the Cardinals doing everything they could to mess up Walker’s progress before this season (and in it too!), Jordan Walker really HAS developed as a Right Fielder.
Here! I’ll show you!
The season statistics are bad. Like, really, really bad. Jordan Walker is a -15 in DRS. He’s a -11 in OAA, he’s a -10 in RA. His UZR/150 is an incredibly bad -24.
And if you don’t know what those mean, it totally doesn’t matter. Just know that any one of those is a shockingly bad statistic.
I’m not here to tell you that Walker is a good outfielder. I’m not here to tell you that Jordan Walker is an average outfielder. I’m here to tell you that there is evidence that Jordan Walker is less bad than he was.
Intuitively that makes sense. We’ve just passed the 1 year point of Jordan Walker becoming an OF. That was a year in which, as I’ve pointed out, they’ve decided to complicate his development as a RF – even though that’s clearly where he belongs. You don’t need 20-20 vision to see that Walker is an incredible athlete, and thus experience alone will make him a better OF.
How can we see his development?
Walker can catch a fly ball right to him, like anyone. Walker is going to miss all 105 mph hits just over the 2B. But if we look to those middle plays – the ones where a hit or an out are up for grabs among typical outfielders, that’s where we can see changes happening.
Now, there are different difficulties of outfield plays, of course.
Statcast divides them up into star rankings, depending on how likely the fielder is to make that catch:
You’ll note you don’t earn any stars for the easiest can of corn pop ups hit right to you.
I’ll give you a spoiler alert right now: Jordan Walker has not made any 4 or 5-star plays this year. He’s 0-18 on those. That’s not a big shock. Laars Nootbaar is 5-54, and all of the successful ones are 4-star plays. Dylan Carlson is 0-64 on 5-star plays. The Cardinals have only made 7 5-star plays all year.
Those are balls that are supposed to go for hits. Those are balls that are plusses for your staff if you get the out. No one thinks Walker is anything like a plus, yet.
1-3 star catch chances? Well you ought to be close on those.
Let’s go through Walker’s season on these balls. EVERY SINGLE ONE (there aren’t many) And I promise, you can watch him develop through this:
First, April 2nd, 95% catch probability. You can see the play should be about as easy as can be – and Walker catches it, though I’d say the certainty is probably less than 95% due to his clear unease:
April 11th he catches an 80% probability, but this isn’t a whole lot different from the first one. Again, he’s drifting back, Walker is TERRIBLE at going back at balls (And he’s terrible at going in on balls too!) Walker has a half-second less to run 2 more feet at this ball, and thus the %s drop pretty wildly – but it still looks routine.
The next day, Walker absolutely bungles this 55% catch. Now look, it’s 55%. But these percentages aren’t exact. I know it wasn’t an easy play, but the dude spins the absolute wrong direction, and the ball hits him in the glove and he misses it. It’s really hard to imagine any OF with his starting location not catching this ball. Like I said, Jordan Walker cannot go back.
The next day, Jordan Walker makes a 2-star catch. 85%! And he plays it into a 5% catch. Like, this has to be the ugliest successful play of the year right? I mean this is flat out awful, and one of his better plays. Take note of this:
A few days later Walker gets a chance of a 3 star 65% catch, and you can see his slow jump, and strange decision to slow down at the end means that a catchable ball ends up going without him getting a glove on it:
And finally, his last mid-tier opportunity before he’s sent to the minors, and it’s this 95% 1 star catch. He makes the catch, but you can see the starting, the stopping, with announcers commenting on him fighting the lights. This routine catch is almost not routine at all:
From this point Jordan Walker was sent to the minor leagues. He had started 19 games in the field, and each and every one of those games were in RF.
Walker went to the minors, and finally, PROPERLY, all 26 games he played in the field at Memphis were in RF. He was now getting day-in and day-out time in RF.
Walker came back to the majors, and went back to Right Field. And his 2nd game there, he had a 1 star 90% catch.
Now, folks, stay with me. Watch that video. Walker takes a good route. He makes a long run (87 ft) and he catches the ball smoothly. The guy has just spent something like 45 games in a row getting used to right field, and he made a MAJOR LEAGUE CATCH. It’s not the most difficult catch. You’re supposed to make those 90% of the time, but look at the ones he’s already had with those percentages. None of them were smooth! This was so much better! Playing him in Right Field every day was maybe paying off????
The next day he made his first start in left.
Who else hears circus music?
Why in the name of all that it good and holy did they suddenly move him to left? Folks, this wasn’t done at the minors. This was a major league decision. He hadn’t played an inning of left field since SPRING TRAINING. And now, 19 of his next 22 starts would be in Left Field.
It was a disaster. Are you ready for this disaster?
It starts off ok, he gets the out. But it’s a 95% that he once again doesn’t play like a 95%. You can see his route starts to zig zag a bit as he tracks the ball. After all, this is a lefty slicing the ball the other way, how many times had Walker seen a ball off the bat like this?
70% chance. Single. He’s clueless. Doesn’t go for a catchable ball, it almost gets by him in fact. It’s not like he was close to catching this thing. But…he stays in left!
90% – once again, he’s not even close. Runs under the ball for a double. This was at a time when the Cardinals were pretending they still had a chance. This is most player’s worst play of the year. This wasn’t his worst play in left over these few weeks.
OH THANK GOD IT’S AN OUT. Ok, it’s 95%. It’s not hard to catch this ball, and it’s still scary to watch. But it is an out, and we had a long string of them not being outs.
Same game. That fun is over. 65%, and what is this? Just awful. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s always setting himself up to slide instead of run through the ball. It’s not his worst play in LF, like maybe he’s getting better? But, it’s still flat awful.
The next day. 75%. Tyler O’Neill makes this play without a thought. Walker does not, of course. It’s a single, and I actually think it’s far better than the play before. At the very least he plays this ball safe. His lack of confidence is a plus here!
Walker was a disaster in left field, but just like I said when his first two OF games ever were in left, it doesn’t make any sense to me, but fine. Put him out there, and eventually he’s going to get better. He’s going to learn.
This is a 75% catch. This is Walker’s 1st 3 star catch of the year. It’s a smooth enough play. And again, 75%. Not exactly great shakes here, but he plays it well.
So yeah, he didn’t catch the previous 75% play, but I didn’t actually blame him for that. He played it well for his strengths. We’ve watched hard hit balls get by, or almost get by Walker all year. He played the first one correctly. The second one, he actually ran down rather well! 19 starts in left field, and maybe we’re starting to get somewhere!
That was Walker’s last start in left.
Yes, the next day he went to right, and that’s where he’s been for the last month. For now.
But look at all of those plays that have happened in the last month. Once again. I am not cherry-picking. You’re seeing every 1-3 star play he’s had.
Now he’s back in RF, and relearning RF again, and boy was this a lucky play, to only be a single.
But here’s what to note about this play. It was a 60% catch. This is an actual hard play to make. But Walker was able to actually GET there this time. He didn’t make the play, but he did actually get his body in front of it. He’s spent all season whiffing at plays that were easier.
Same game. 60% once again, and Walker makes his play of the year:
This isn’t a coincidence. Walker couldn’t come close to a 60% play earlier this year. Now, in the same game, he came close to two. One he actually caught! This isn’t just a lucky play, I mean it is, but it’s more than just luck. He’s actually improving to have the chance to make a lucky play like this.
That’s a 90% chance, but he played it perfectly, right? That’s not an easy play, but it’s a play an MLB outfielder makes. His jump was solid, his glove-work was impressive, and frankly that could have been a triple in April.
95%, but there are different kinds of 95%. For Walker, this is one of the harder ones. Because Walker cannot move back.
Except this time he did everything right. He sprinted to the spot of the ball. He stopped in the correct location. He caught is relatively routinely. You’ve seen, on this list, more than once, this ball go for a double.
You need more proof?
The next challenge he had was a 90%, over his head, moving to his right. The same as the previous play, but much more difficult:
I’m not going to say the route was perfect – it wasn’t. But it doesn’t have to be for a 90% ball. He gauged his speed well, and he kept his balance and his focus for the catch. Folks, this is the list. You can look back. This didn’t happen to begin the year.
Now, I have to be fair. There’s more data. He gave up this bloop single on a 60% ball. It was a 104 foot run, and he didn’t get there.
I think most importantly, it was played for the situation. No one was on. There was no reason to go for it. Walker didn’t dive it into a triple. He played it safe. Sometimes that your job as an OF. I have zero issue with this play.
He’s getting better.
Now, is Walker ever going to be a spectacular OF? Yeah, I doubt that will be a word used to describe him. But is Walker the same guy that racked up -15 DRS over the course of a few months of the season? No. He’s not good. Heck, maybe he’s a dreadful -15 over a FULL season guy now, I don’t know. I suspect he’s a tad bit better than that. But that’s far ahead of where he was earlier this year.
And I’m going to give this guy a break. I don’t expect giraffes to be smooth fielders. I don’t expect 21-year-olds to polished, and I especially don’t expect it when his own team seems to change course with him over and over again within the course of a season.
Keep Walker in right all the rest of this year. Keep him in right in all of his winter practicing. Keep him in right in Spring Training. Next year maybe he’s just bad instead of historically awful. One thing I know is that whatever braniac is making decisions about Walker is hurting his development, and hurting his team. But as for Walker – and whoever is working with Walker (McGee?) it’s paying off, and will only continue if this freaking team can just set a plan and stick with it for once.
Walker is going to be fine, through all of the chaos. His talent and work will win out. He’s that good.
I don’t know. I have to be honest. It’s hard to keep up.
Arenado wants to stay a Cardinal, or he only wants to be a Dodger, or he wants to get out and be anywhere. The TV news networks seem to think this is a good idea, and it’s going to happen. Maybe with the money saved the Cardinals can push more on top of their Flaherty, or Hicks extensions that they are doing last-second negotiations on, or maybe they aren’t. Where does Chris Stratton fit in with all of this? I’ve just GOT to know.
It’s a crazy time in Cardinal Nation, and it’s made crazier by the fact that every single person is vying for our clicks. The Internet has brought us all closer together; it has brought breaking news to our fingers before anyone has a chance to even think about if it’s possibly true. How lucky are we, as Cardinals fans, that every single morning we get to wake up to brand new, completely unheard of rumors, that are a complete change of course from every single thing we knew before, from our official MLB writer – only to have the beat writer dispel them within the hour?
Who knows what’s true? No one. We won’t even know after the deadline is over. We’ll know what transactions actually transpired, but did the Cardinals and Dodgers ever get serious about Nolan Arenado? If he isn’t dealt – we won’t know the answer. Frankly, even if we are flat-out told it was never true, we still must consider how much we trust our sources. And even if we get some sort of Freedom of Information Act breakdown that proves it never happened, the fact that the rumor ever existed will continue through time as canon, much in the same way that people still talk about the absolute verifiable fact that the Cardinals refused to trade Dylan Carlson for the truth about the Kennedy assassination.
This is life as a baseball fan, right? RIGHT?
Let me take you back to 1964. The 9th place Cubs (boy I love writing that. The NINTH place Cubs!) were in desperate need of pitching a month before the trade deadline of June 15th. They started calling teams, looking for a pitcher. One of the teams that they contacted happened to be the St. Louis Cardinals. The Chicago Tribute happened to catch wind of this, and thus we got the following headline on May 26, 1964:
Yeah, I don’t know how many of you realized this, but the reason the Cardinals ever got Lou Brock in the first place, is because the CUBS went knocking. It was the CUBS that wanted a pitcher, and they were happy to offer up Brock.
I think that people have the wrong impression about the Lou Brock deal now. Lou Brock looked nothing like a Hall of Famer at the time, Ernie Broglio is only remembered as the loser that was traded for Lou Brock, and so this is seen as an under-the-radar trade that happened to work out miraculously for the Cardinals. They knew what they were getting all along!
It’s not true. First of all, Lou Brock wasn’t awesome yet, but we’re talking about an everyday starter, and the Cubs leadoff hitter, and a guy who was still young. Brock was being offered up in a deal BECAUSE he could bring so much in return.
Ernie Broglio was only 28 years old, won 18 games the year before, and 21 a few years before that when he finished top 5 in Cy Young voting.
Ray Sadecki, the Cubs initial quest, was a 23-year-old lefty who had already found success in the big leagues and happened to be on his way to winning 20 games himself that very year.
This trade was a big deal.
You’ve been through trade deadlines. You can imagine the fury that took place after the rumors broke. It was all people could talk about for weeks. Which players might be included? Who had the better end of the deal? What if a 3rd team jumped in? How would this impact the rest of the teams’ rosters?
And the rumors clearly stated Brock had been talked about, but the Cardinals turned down the quest for Sadecki, so what other players might be able to get this done?
I know you can see in your head all the various updates, the deal is hot, the deal is cold, the deal now includes Ernie Banks, etc., etc., etc.
Except, I’m here to tell you, none of that really happened.
A few papers printed the story over the next week. The Cubs tried to get Sadecki in exchange for Brock, but the Cardinals turned them down, end of story.
Then after a few weeks of complete silence (so far as I can tell), the Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio completed deal made headlines all across the country. As I said, it actually was a big deal.
This was a completely legit rumor, once that was obviously true, one that was actually confirmed by both teams at the time. Most importantly, it’s one that actually led to a huge trade actually happening. But the lead-up, the rumors, the gossip, the speculation? That wasn’t a part of the reporting at all.
It’s almost eerie. People follow their favorite teams day in and day out, always looking for the slightest snippet of information, but 60 years ago, you had none of that. Your favorite team was making huge deals behind the curtain, and you basically didn’t know about it until after it was done.
I don’t want to live like that! I need my information, now! Is Mozeliak on the phone as we speak? What is Arenado’s opinion of the L.A. restaurant scene? Does he prefer avocado toast to toasted ravioli?
Then it dawned on me, that all of this is fake. It’s bad enough we have joke accounts completely making up rumors just to cause trouble, but in this age of needing clicks – we get embellished, insane rumors from dishonest parties that care more about your feeding into the hysteria than their own dignity.
This is the way we treat everything now. Are you a political junkie? I’ve been one. There’s a new crisis every single day. We’re captivated every single day. We cannot believe what’s going on every single day. And then we’ve forgotten all of this Earth-shattering news within a few days. It’s out of our heads and out of our hearts and minds because we’ve gone on to the next crisis to outrage us. And they’ve GOT us, man, they’ve GOT us. We’re hooked. We’re addicted to the lies. We’re addicted to the idea that there is breaking news every second of the day and if you don’t tune in to Mr. or Ms. Media person, you’re going to be missing out on vital information.
I was invited to a show today. I had a little bit of resistance in going because I might be missing trade deadline news. Of course, any trade deadline news that’s worth knowing, I’ll find out immediately after the show. But that’s hard. I need to know it IMMEDIATELY.
That’s because I’m dumb, and I keep feeding into this culture that rewards the charlatans for fooling me time and time again. And I keep going back to the same well, when it’s obvious that if I just stopped paying attention right now, today, I would have all of the same relevant information in 5 days that everyone else did, just without the tremendous mountain of crap.
Lou Brock was barely a rumor to go to the Cardinals in 1964, but he did. Whether your paper picked up the possibility or not a few weeks before, it doesn’t really matter. Brock for Broglio. That was the trade. That’s what goes down in history. If you never had any idea that Ray Sadecki was the initial target, your life – and history – aren’t one bit different from it. And those people back then did not have to endure 3 weeks of absolute lies for everyone to froth and go crazy over.
I’m not one to say the ‘touch some grass’ stuff. I hate it actually. One person on their smartphone argues that some other person on their smartphone is spending too much time on their smartphones, while neither ever actually encounters a blade of grass.
The trade deadline is in a few days. Everything will be worked out by then. In the meanwhile, it would be nice if we stopped feeding the trolls intent on praying on our rotting brains. Touching grass is always a good thing. But maybe you can read a book, talk to a friend, heck, wouldn’t a nap be nice?
Me, I’m going to a show. I’m going to miss a lot of fake news. It’s true, I may even miss some real news. You might find it out 20 or 30 minutes before I do. That’s ok. I’ll be fine. I’ll be better, even.
I have been waiting for years for the Cardinals to get rid of Jack Flaherty.
And by years, I mean, almost since the beginning. Since well before his 2019 post-All-Star game Gibson imitation.
I believe my rationale for this was sound.
First of all, I was never of the belief that Jack Flaherty was all that good. This could be a mistake on my part. Pitchers are the hardest position to project out. There are plenty of pitchers that are late bloomers. Even if you do pitch well in your early years, like for example Verlander and Scherzer, how does one project the studs they would become in their 30s?
But Jack Flaherty falls along the classic lines that many Cardinals prospects do – that Masyn Winn is encountering right now – he was a mid-100s prospect that Cardinals fans treat like an immediate MVP candidate. Whereas the simple reality is, there are 30 teams, with proper dispersion a Winn or a Flaherty is but a team’s 2nd best prospect. How many 2nd best prospects are destined for immediate stardom?
Flaherty, for his part, DID his part. His rookie year was as good as one could hope for. And I was happy to cheer along. A Cardinals pitcher with a 10.85K/9? Be still my heart! The Cardinals NEVER have strikeout pitchers. We’re a fan base that has spent our time cheering for Seth Maness.
There were signs that Flaherty was lucky – his BABIP that year was .257, which broke the SABR rule (now completely destroyed) that any number straying from .300 was a matter of luck. That was always a bad way of thinking, but .257 seemed beyond the pale at that time.
But most importantly for those that had visions of Flaherty’s HOF plaque emblazoned with a Cardinals hat: contract negotiations with the Cardinals went terribly from the word ‘go.’
When a player is in their 1st 3 years of the majors, they can sign contracts, or a team can renew their contract for the following year.
The player has absolutely no power in this process. The team can offer you more money, and you can accept, or you cannot accept, and…oh well. They are going to pay you what they are going to pay you.
Usually, the best rookies will get modest pay bumps as a gesture of goodwill, an olive branch going forward if you will. Giving a guy $50K extra now might save you a million dollars in the future and might get you better production going forward because you don’t have an angry and bitter player on the field.
Around the time Jack Flaherty was coming up, the Cardinals created a cold, hard calculation for how to deal with these matters.
Jack Flaherty was offered $572,100 dollars for his 2nd season. The MLB minimum that year was $555,000.
A player can expect a modest raise above the minimum in their 2nd year, and in this case, the raise was approximately $17K, for a guy who finished 5th in ROY voting in spite of starting the year in the minor leagues.
Flaherty rejected the offer.
Uh oh.
I’m not here to tell you the Cardinal’s offer was bad. The team has the power to do whatever they want in this case, so anything above the MLB minimum is essentially free bonus money given away from a franchise that historically can’t talk enough about how limited its resources are.
I’m not here to tell you it was good, either. I don’t know that it was. What I do know is that the Cardinals went a full decade without renewing a single contract until the year prior, when it happened with Tommy Pham. And then, before the 2019 season it happened again with Jack Flaherty. Oh, and you can throw Jordan Hicks in there as well. Zero renewals for a decade, and then three in the span of two years. I don’t know about you, but it kinda sorta sounds like a penny-pinching change in philosophy for the team? It’s a little bit of bullying the most powerless members of the club – but also the ones that are supposed to be leading your future?
I can’t say that. Honestly.
Because there are two sides of the coin here, and one of those is Jack Flaherty, who in a position of zero leverage, refused to sign on for free extra money.
So what does this tell us about Jack Flaherty and his compatibility with the tight-wad Cardinals going forward? Does this sound like a guy who is going to be gushing about the team and is going to sign a long-term contract to cement his legacy here? Or does it sound like a guy determined to get every last penny a team is owed to him?
I know what it sounds like to me, and that’s a player that, like it or not, isn’t a match for the Cardinals. Players who prioritize money are not good fits for a management team that prioritizes, well, money.
And then there’s what happened next:
After rejecting the Cardinal’s offer of $572,100, the Cardinals could renew Flaherty’s contract for any amount of money. They were willing to pay him $572, 100. They renewed him for $562,100.
The Cardinals punished their star rookie for $10,000 for not bowing down to them.
And for me, at that point, the answer was simple. TRADE HIM! TRADE HIM! GET VALUE OUT OF THIS ONE! YOU DONE POISONED THE WELL!
Look, no amount of apologies are going to fix a relationship when you run over the girlfriend’s dog. It’s best to stop trying and start the healing process faster.
It’s not that time doesn’t heal wounds, and it’s not that players can’t go through this stuff and sign long contracts, it’s that $10,000 here – which was already less than Jack felt he earned – was probably going to cost a lot more in the future to make up for it. And again, we’re talking about the St. Louis Cardinals. Not a team notorious for being the highest bidder.
So the calculation looked like this: Jack Flaherty the superstar, was going to leave the St. Louis Cardinals. Jack Flaherty the not-superstar wasn’t going to be worth keeping. Ergo, Jack Flaherty ought to be permanently on the trade market, especially when his value is at its peak.
The next year was Flaherty’s fantastic 2nd half stretch, which one can disagree with the true value of:
Through July 2nd, Flaherty had an ERA of 4.90 After July 2nd, Flaherty had an ERA of 0.93
So was Jack Flaherty the new Bob Gibson? Or was he the new Todd Wellemeyer? There’s a bit of a gap in those there comps.
Naturally, the truth was in the middle, but fans – and the organization – became enamored with the idea that this guy had unlocked the key to being completely unhittable, and was an ace going forward.
The metrics would tell you differently. They wouldn’t tell you he was bad, but just that he wasn’t a top-of-the-rotation ace.
Ignoring his ineffective call-up in 2017, here are Flaherty’s FIPs from 2018-to 2023 so far:
As a prospect, Flaherty was seen as an average MLB starter (which is very good, remember, we’re talking about STARTER, not PITCHER) who could also be an above-average MLB starter. That’s REALLY good! That’s still different from an ace.
When you look at those FIPs, and remember his amazing 2nd half is included in those numbers, the Jack Flaherty people swore existed, and that everyone has been waiting on, was a guy that never actually existed. He had an amazing, stupendous 2nd half, and the Cardinals have spent years waiting for that run to reappear. Not only has it not happened, but he hasn’t come especially close to duplicating his full-season success, which included half of a terrible season!
But I digress.
At the end of his amazing age-23 run, Flaherty could have been traded for all the tea in China. And I have no idea how much tea there actually is in China, but he could have been traded for every last drop of it, and more. Their seltzer water? Yeah, he could have fetched that too. Any cold-brew coffee? They’d be happy to throw it in. Here was the superstar pitcher of the future.
What happened with Flaherty’s contract after the season?
He was offered $614,500. He once again rejected the offer. The Cardinals once again penalized him $10,000 for doing so.
As for a long-term deal, apparently, it was explored, and Derrick Goold wrote at the time that they “were not able to find common ground for the discussion of an extension going into this spring training,”
Once again, I invite you to blame whom you would like for this, however, when you have a situation where a young player isn’t even accepting your forced deals, let alone finding enough common ground to work out an extension through his arbitration years – what does it say about the future of the relationship between team and player?
Was Flaherty a stubborn moron? Were the Cardinal’s cheap bastards? Was it something in the middle? I don’t know and I don’t care. What I do know is that Flaherty needed to be traded then.
The Cardinals steadfastly refused to trade Flaherty then. Even when they were in talks for a guy named Nolan Arenado.
From there, Flaherty’s stock began to slowly drop. His 2020 was bad. But it was 2020. There’s not much analysis worth doing. Flaherty was still seen as an ace thanks to his late-2019 success. His value was still high around baseball, and the Cardinals were still on unfriendly contract terms.
Jack Flaherty and the Cardinals were finally in his arbitration years. Jack Flaherty finally had leverage.
The Cardinals were a team that historically never went to arbitration. They had spent 15 seasons not going to arbitration with a single player. But like they introduced a new calculation for pre-arb players that was suddenly getting rejected, they also purposely went to arbitration with Michael Wacha before the 2017 season. From MLB.com:
“The organization recently adopted a trial-and-file philosophy, which meant that once it exchanged arbitration figures with Wacha in mid-January, independent negotiations ended.“
It was another indication the Cardinals were now going to be playing hardball with the cheapest and weakest of their players. As a result, you guessed it, they went to arbitration with Jack Flaherty after it was revealed that the two came within $300,000 of an agreement.
Jack Flaherty won his case. The first time the Cardinals had lost an arbitration hearing since 1994.
And while his surface numbers looked good – 9-2 with a 3.22 ERA – his peripherals didn’t tell the same tale of success. Furthermore, he managed just 78.1 innings on the year and would be starting the 2022 season on the DL.
Perhaps as a result, for the first time in his career, Jack Flaherty and the team agreed to a contract. He would be paid $5 million dollars for the 2022 season. To me it’s a sign that even Jack Flaherty knew that his stock was dropping.
And what’s amazing about this journey is that the Cardinals kept depending on him being an ace. He was always the answer to their pitching problems. He was always the offseason optimistic output that “with the return of Jack Flaherty…” Hey! The top of the rotation actually looks pretty damn good!
Of course, it got worse from there. Jack managed a total of 36 innings in 2022. They weren’t great. It wasn’t to be unexpected. He was years away from both health and success at this point.
And that took us into 2023. Jack Flaherty once again agreed to a contract with the Cardinals, this time for a modest raise up to $5.4 million. And Jack said a curious thing when asked about his contract situation.
When talking about staying with the Cardinals for his entire career, Jack said, “That would be awesome.”
Yeah, I bet it would buddy! After years and years of not agreeing to anything, suddenly Jack, at his absolute lowest value, is ready to sign a long-term contract! Why, I’m astounded at this turnaround in opinion!
And while Jack was at the lowest value, guess what? There are reports that the Cardinals never went into contract talks. Well, of course not! That ship had sailed!
That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Why are you going to sign a long-term contract with a pitcher that has been so unreliable? Forget all of the contract animosity. A few years before, you’d be willing to commit 5-10 years to Jack easily. Now? Forget it! Who would have been crazy enough to do that after last year?
That’s all well and good, except it was the Cardinals who purposely were depending on him. It’s the Cardinals who sought no additional pitching help. It’s the Cardinals who, once again, went into this season hyping Jack in the rotation. Mo said he “never felt better” about him.
Never felt better! About Jack! The Ace! That they won’t offer a multi-year contract to! At a time when they had basically no pitching under contract for the following season!
So, if you don’t mind me asking, after a season of absolutely maddening pitching and a “who-da-thunk it?” attitude at the ineffectiveness of the staff, why were we made to think once again that Jack Flaherty was going to be the answer to the team’s need for a top pitcher when the team itself clearly didn’t believe it?
Now here we are at the trade deadline. Jack hasn’t had a great season. He’s an average starter. Again, an average starter is a good thing. But an average starter isn’t an ace. He isn’t your go-to guy. He’s an average starter.
And 4 days before the trade deadline, 4 years removed from Flaherty’s multi-month glimpse of stardom, we find out that the Cardinals are hoping to extend his contract at the last minute before the deadline sands disappear.
Excuse me while I puke.
This is, of course, not a sign that the Cardinals are trying to win next year. Jack Flaherty wasn’t a piece for them to win this year. It’s not a sign of a bold, new standard in spending money on pitchers – which was just reported to us two days ago. It’s a sign that Jack Flaherty, average starter, has had his stock drop so much that now he suddenly looks like just the guy the Cardinals sign again and again from Lohse to Leake to Mikolas to Matz. He’s an average starter getting an average starter’s salary. Let’s play it safe, boys. We need to compete again in 2024, and how we’re going to do that is with the same formula we used in 2023.
Perhaps the Cardinals have seen that their return packages for Flaherty are just not worth it. I can see that. They’ve bungled this from the beginning. What did I say before? Superstar Jack was never going to stay, so trade him. Not-superstar Jack isn’t worth keeping, so trade him.
Instead, the Cardinals have let day by day and year by year tick by until there became an option 3. Non-superstar Jack has fallen so low, he’s cheap enough to stay. And Jack is smart enough to know it didn’t work out the way he had it planned. But he still gets to be rich, and suddenly the Cardinals might just be in the ballpark of what his best offers are going to be.
So I’ve waited for years for the inevitability of Jack Flaherty being gone, and perhaps, strangely enough, he’s going to stay.
You might think I’d be miffed at this. And I am. In my opinion, The Cardinals have been meticulously screwing this up for a half-decade. I’m still bewildered and frustrated at the front office.
But I’m not mad at Jack. I’ve spent years labeling him one way, before seeing him as another. I try my best to remember that players are humans. I’m never going to personally insult a guy. I’m never going to forget that they have weaknesses. If you have a 12 ERA, I’m going to say you suck because at a MLB level, you do. But I don’t mean it at a personal level, and I don’t want your 2nd cousin reading it and being upset by it. I have tried to keep both aspects in mind at the same time. There’s a cold-hearted business here, and there are humans here.
Flaherty when asked if he thinks he'll be with the #STLCards after the deadline: "You kind of get a feeling of the way things are going. It's a business, and I've got my job to do which is to go out and win games every time I take the mound. … Everything is out of my hands." pic.twitter.com/NH2O1ozLag
— Bally Sports Midwest (@BallySportsMW) July 26, 2023
I watched Jack’s post-game interview. I watched his emotions. I watched how sad he was to be leaving. I don’t know what that sadness is. I remember being sad to leave my High School, but thrilled to go to college. Maybe that’s all this is. But humans are complex creatures like that. I wrote off Jack saying he’d love to stay in St. Louis before the season, as being a calculated talking point, but that was a mistake of mine. What I saw out of him yesterday was real. What I assigned to him before yesterday from afar upon my couch, was a person who didn’t give one flip about the Cardinals as an organization. St. Louis was a means to an end for him.
Well, try as I might, I continue to have a perfect score of being a moron.
I dehumanized his level of depth and complexity and found that, albeit for different reasons, here was a person who shared the same goals for, and love of the St. Louis Cardinals that I do.
And thus here I am, on the precipice of the moment I’ve been waiting years for – Jack Flaherty to finally be gone – And I find myself just so, so sad that it might happen.
Welcome back to Cards Clapback, boy the Cardinals are looking set up for 24 already aren’t they? It’s been about 10 days since we last talked, and it that time they’d DFAd a few guys and made a deal for a rookie league catcher. I for one am thrilled with their aggressive approach for improving the team!
Hey, they still have a week left, so we will see what happens, but the fact of the matter is there has already been some evidence that if you were hoping to see some bold action, it’s not going to happen. First of all, there’s the reports that the Cardinals are rebuilding their team around Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldshmidt, Jordan Walker, and Lars Nootbaar. That’s interesting for multiple reasons, one being that Goldy is only under contract for one more year! Another is that Godsend Nolan Gorman is not on that list. How is that even possible? And finally it doesn’t have a few long contracts like Miles Mikolas and Willson Contreras. If anything, it would be a showing of goodwill to have their names included. With their names not included, it has to make you wonder why.
Then came reports that Willson Contreras was in fact, on the market.
But then the Cardinals demoted Ivan Herrera, which means that he must stay in the minors for 10 days before he comes back up, which is after the trading deadline. So in order to trade Willson Contreras, the Cardinals would have to do an additional move with their 40 man roster, either by DLing another player and losing THEM for a period of time, or Promoting and dumping an internal catcher, or finding a local barber to live out their dream and be a major leaguer for a few days? I don’t know, but that’s a steep price to pay for a guy you aren’t willing to commit to, but also are making it more difficult to trade.
Then we find out that Tyler O’Neill is unlikely to be traded? OK. I don’t believe this. I refuse to believe this. Because it’s just so dumb.
Over the last 5 years, Tyler O’Neill has been an injured and ineffective disaster in 4 of them, and a demi-God in one other. His entire trade value is centered around hoping that he can be Mr. 2021 again for a playoff run, but obviously betting on him to regain MVP abilities for next year, his final and most expensive year before Free Agency, is a pretty crazy bet. It’s also the bet the Cardinals have placed and lost 2 years in a row. Why, if you’re hoping to compete in 2024 and beyond, would you think Tyler O’Neill heading out of his prime would possibly be one of those pieces?
So yeah, I personally suspect these reports of not trading him are just trying to make teams have to up the ante on him. Or at least I hope so. He was never going to have a huge return on his own anyway, because he just hasn’t been good. He’s too much of a gamble. That’s why you’re trading him.
Look, I am 100% willing to be wrong here. Maybe the Cardinals have decided competing in 2024 means Tyler O’Neill is in their outfield. Fine.
The Cardinals have had a terrible year, and a lot of fans are hoping this means that the team will be sparked into changing their philosophy and really truly pushing the payroll and aggressiveness into fielding a team that doesn’t just compete for a wild card spot, or win a bad division, but is an actual World Series contender.
Uh, no. If you’re looking for bold and decisive action, remember this team can’t even fire their no-experience manager in one of their worst team stretches of the past 100 years. That’s every other team’s first change when they have a bad year!
People don’t change like that. They don’t want to fix problems, they want to alleviate pain. When you eat an entire pizza covered with hot sauce and spend the entire night hating your life in the bathroom, do you respond by becoming a world class fitness guru? No. You commit yourself to changing, and you eat one fewer slice the next time.
And so here are the Cardinals, a week before the trading deadline, showing their dedication to competing in 2024 by balking at the idea of moving their players.
Sure, trades will happen. Players who weren’t going to be here next year anyway will probably be dealt. And Mozeliak will find out if one less slice of pizza will be enough to get the team back to making a run at that coveted 6th wild card spot.
Whatever your hopes were that this season was a delineation point between the old goals, and new ambitious goals, well I suggest you cheer on Waino’s great start and hope he gets to 200, because we’re not going to have a milestone like that to keep us tuned in next year.
Thanks as always. See you next week when we will evaluate whatever Nolan Gorman for Mike Leake like trade we have to look forward to.
As we head into the 2023 trade deadline, the Cardinals sit, let’s see, a gazillion games out of the playoffs, and with every intent to be sellers at the trade deadline. Being sellers may fittingly send the team to the cellar as they would then play the remainder of the season with a bullpen made up of guys who were house painters two weeks before.
Naturally, a sizable portion of the fan base isn’t interested in the odds, reality, or standings. They want the Cardinals to go for it. They want the Cardinals to go for it because they’ve seen it work.
If you’re a boomer, you’ve seen two once-a-century runs by the team, in 1964 and 2011. Just a few years ago, you watched a once-a-century streak where the Cardinals won 17 games in a row. I ask you, why not ask for one more centennial moment, since they seem to be nearly annual for this franchise?
Lazarus only rose from the dead once, but let’s face it, Jesus could have gotten that guy up and walking again any number of times. It ain’t over until it’s over. Play a hard 162. You’ve done it before, now DO IT AGAIN!
This isn’t that team. They aren’t a struggling team just hovering over the .500 mark, who could possibly put it all together to make a run. They are one of the worst teams in the league, trying to make their way into the “everyone gets a trophy” NIT bracket of baseball. The reality is, put this team in any other division, or any other playoff combination, and there’s really no hope.
In other words, this team doesn’t have a chance because they might really be good. They have a chance because everyone else could be that bad. It’s not a hopeful combination. Jose Fermin is playing 2B as I type this. That’s not a team that’s going to make a run.
So yes, logically, you need to make deals. You need to try and gain talent for the future. You need to not be excited about 6 game winning streaks following month-long painful slogs.
That’s the brain. And the brain is right.
But I have a heart, too! I have feelings! There are certain McDonald’s commercials that have been known to make me teary! And it’s very hard to give up on something so long as there is still the slightest bit of hope – especially when there’s a blatant example of the Cardinals NOT making a trade that wound up winning the World Series 2 months later.
The Cardinals weren’t sellers in 2011. They also weren’t aggressive buyers. This isn’t going to shock anyone who has lived through the Mo era. MOST seasons the Cardinals find themselves at a middling place at the trade deadline, needing help, but not good enough to justify it.
Mozeliak often treats the team much like a bad healthcare plan. We aren’t going to cure you. We aren’t going to fix the underlying condition. You certainly aren’t going to feel any BETTER. But we are going to stop the bleeding, and wish you luck the rest of the way. Here, put on this JA Happ Band-Aid!
That describes 2011 as well.
Their big 2011 addition was Rafael Furcal, who was aging and hitting below .200 at the time. Their other big trade featured the headline of getting rid of Colby Rasmus. That’s what the headlines were. Yes, the Cardinals ended up getting major pieces of their 2011 run in that deal. Yes, I guarantee you that it wasn’t even remotely part of the plan.
The Cardinals weren’t going for it. Shouldn’t have been expected to go for it, and in fact there was another team that wanted a 1B – and approached the Cardinals to get one.
No, no one else was clamoring after Albert Pujols, though he was at the end of his contract and arguably he could have been on the block. Teams were calling about Lance Berkman.
And the Cardinals, in late August 2011, were listening to their brain. Frankly, if you could make a deal for Lance Berkman, you should probably take it.
Berkman’s deal had a no-trade clause in it, and thus the Cardinals were forced to discuss with Lance in advance if he would accept a deal.
If Lance says yes, he would have been gone. And his 2011 heroics would have been gone with him.
Remember Berkman’s game-tying single in the 10th inning of game 6? Of course, you do. But do you remember his 2 run homer that started that game? Berkman hit .423 that World Series with a 1.093 OPS. He was a monster. In most World Series contests, he was good enough to win MVP. For some reason he didn’t in 2011, some other guy must have. But let there be no doubt in your mind that without Lance Berkman, the Cardinals absolutely do not have those amazing moments. They do not have that 11th Championship. Had the Cardinals traded Berkman, who hit .374(!!!!) during their September surge, the Cardinals don’t make the playoffs at all.
Remember all of your 2010 Cardinals memories? That’s what 2011 could have been. 300 hours spent watching the team only to become a blank empty space in your brain.
Perhaps you’re thanking your savior that Berkman said ‘no’ to being traded.
But he did not say no.
Lance Berkman took the idea back to his wife. The conversation, apparently, did not go well.
At the beginning of 2010, Lance Berkman was playing for Houston. He was traded to New York at the trade deadline. He signed with St. Louis in 2011. And Cara Berkman was not excited about a 4th city in barely the span of a year.
Still, Lance didn’t say no. Not really. The Cardinals were interested in bringing Lance back in 2012. He was interested in coming back.
Lance’s response to the team, as he described it, was “If y’all plan on bringing me back next year, don’t trade me.”
Don’t you love that? Haven’t you been through that in your life? There’s no chance you didn’t tell some kid when you were 4 that they could definitely go and play with some other kid, but if they did, you were no longer friends.
Berkman looked Mo in the eye and gave him the divorce ultimatum.
He chose wisely. The rest is history.
What’s more interesting is what team was it that wanted Berkman to play 1B? That would be the Texas Rangers. Imagine the 2011 Rangers WITH Lance Berkman. Basically, God ensured that Berkman was going to get his World Series ring no matter what.
Luckily, miraculously, he got it with the Cardinals.
What’s amazing is that you have to think if there were any team that Berkman would have accepted a trade to, it would have been the Rangers. They were actually good! Berkman already lived in Texas. The Texas Rangers were the team he chose to close out his career with just a few years later! Hell, did you notice that ‘y’all’ in his response? How could someone like him NOT go play for the Rangers?
The answer was because he loved St. Louis:
“I think we have a good group. Even if we don’t get where we want to go this year, I still believe in the group that we have going forward next year. I think St. Louis great place.”
Remember, Lance said this when the season was at its lowest point. When every rat would want to jump off the ship. But he didn’t. He wanted to stay in St. Louis. He thought it was a great place.
Damn, I love Lance Berkman.
Now we look at 2023, and over the next few weeks, we’re all going to be screaming our expertise. We’re all going to be certain of our opinions. Some will be furious, some will be happy, all will be clueless. John Mozeliak decided not to trade Lance Berkman in 2011, because he wanted him in 2012. He got him. It didn’t go well. Had the Cardinals not won the World Series, it would have proven to be a terrible decision. Instead, it was a stroke of genius, and only because of a result that wasn’t a thought in anyone’s mind, a result that you’d have been crazy to try and plan for. But it did. And it was the best.
You can’t predict baseball. But I don’t get upset when people bet on dreams, there’s not much better worth living for.
Welcome back to Cards Clapback, the All-star game is over, the Cardinals sit at minus 14, at 38-52, and well out of contention with nothing super exciting to talk about on the field. But it’s TRADE SEASON, with the deadline just a bit over two weeks away! Now usually at the trade deadline, Cardinals fans get dreams of trying to go after the top talent on the market and end up with JA HAPP. But this year, we get the opposite. We get to wonder exactly what players will be excised from the team, for some other teams 23rdranked prospect. This is hard and stupid to talk about because you never know what’s going on behind closed doors, who is available, what the cost is, what alternate offers have been made, etc. But for the Cardinals Front Office is boils down to one question, Do you intend to compete in 2024? Mo has indicated that they do, so we’ll take their word because we have no other choice, and our analysis will be based around that fact. Here’s the other part, and it’s the part I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else. We will assume, perhaps to our own detriment that the Cardinals goal in this is to actually improve their future, as opposed to dumping salary. The team does not need to dump salary in the same sense that a millionaire doesn’t need to cancel their Netflix when it goes up a buck. But the team sure does LIKE to cut salary, lest anyone forget the 2019 deadline when Mo was working around the clock to get a deal done, and did – when he sent Jedd Gyorko to the Dodgers for a pitcher who was out for the season because it gave a scintilla of salary relief. We will see with any upcoming deals how much salary gets thrown in either way, but if it becomes apparent the Cardinals are giving up on better prospects in order to get a lighter wallet for a few months, I mean Cardinals fans may have to J6 Busch stadium. I don’t need to tell you that if the Angels offer JC Romero for Ohtani, that deal should be made, so let’s just talk about a few of the more logical moves or non-moves coming out of St. Louis. 1st of all, Farewell Jordan Hicks. I mean, I’m not going to be heartbroken over losing any reliever, but Hicks in particular is a perfect sell high candidate. After his abysmal start, we said here that Hicks had to turn it around immediately, or be dumped. He turned it around immediately. And for the first time in his career he’s striking out batters. He is as unhittable at the plate, as he is uncatchable for soft tosses to first base. I don’t know how long it will last, but I know Hicks is heading into free agency, and it will be a major failure if he does so in a Cardinals uniform. Jordan Montgomery is next up, and in my humble opinion, the Cardinals would need an incredible haul to let him go. First of all, he has thrived in St. Louis, and the Cardinals need pitching going forward. Losing Jordan Montgomery in Free Agency, for a team that plans to compete in 2024, is opening up yet another gaping hole in a rotation full of it. But even if they do lose him, he’s an obvious Qualifying Offer Candidate. So not trading Jordan Montgomery means that at best you sign him to an extension, or he accepts a one year QO – and that’s one question answered for the future, or at worst you get a reasonably high supplemental pick out of him. So trading him at the deadline requires an offer to be so good that it’s worth the price of losing Jordan forever AND a high draft pick that comes with him. I don’t see this happening, personally. But I’d be happy if it does! Jack Flaherty on the other hand, needs to go. He’s another player peaking on value, after 2 consecutive 6+ inning shutout starts have gotten his season ERA up to AVERAGE! WOO! AVERAGE! Average starters have a lot of value. Not a lot of value that excites you in the qualifying offer sense – I think Flaherty might actually be forced to accept one at this point, and the Cardinals obviously need better than Jack, if they want to compete. So trade him now while he looks great because the next Chornobyl-type start is going to be just around the corner. Ok, lets talk position players. The outfield/DH is bloated, and severely devalued. Tyler Oneill, Juan Yepez, Dylan Carlson, Alec Burleson, Luken Baker, happy for all of them to be trade enhancements, but I don’t think any one of those players can bring any sort of exciting return, especially for 2024. But the Cardinals have SO MANY of these guys that if throwing one of them, or seven of them in on a trade bumps up the return to an exciting-ish player, then do it. Walker is off limits, obviously, and so is Noot, if only because he’s our best chance of getting Shohei, and while that absolutely will not happen, it keeps the dream alive. One of Tommy Edman or Paul DeJong should be traded. DeJong has cheap options that can be picked up to bridge the gap to Wynn, or whomever the next long-term answer is. Those cheap options and his renaissance season also give him some actual value at this deadline. Edman has a great deal of value, to teams in need at many positions, and is one of the Cardinals best trade chips. I’d love him to stay, personally. But also I’d love for Oli to use him correctly, and that means at SS every single day. If this isn’t going to happen, might as well get value out of him somewhere else. And of course, the world is abuzz about Arenado and his comments, as well as the ongoing rumors of Goldy’s availability. Arenado has a long term deal currently with a no-trade clause, and frequent comments about how much he loves and wants to stay in St. Louis. His contract is also relatively cheap, made even cheaper with salary deferments and Colorado paying portions of it. I cannot imagine a world where trading Arenado is even discussed by Mo, but if it is, it would be a grand waste of time to spend the next few weeks working out a complicated trade deal that by all indications he would reject. So stop thinking about this one. Goldy, is a little different. I don’t THINK the Cardinals want to trade him, but he’s a free agent after next year, and is in his age 35 season. Trading Goldy would mean that the Cardinals don’t intend to compete in 2024, because he’s quite good, and replacing a plus defensive middle-of-the-order threat on pace for 5 WAR this year is not going to be easy. It makes your team worse. The goal is…to get better. But if the Cardinals are throwing in the towel for the next few seasons, then yeah, you have to dangle the carrot, and you have to get safe, highly touted prospects in the return. If the return isn’t for multiple potential stars, and it looks like a salary dump, well, I already said how Cardinals fans should react to that. Thanks for joining, no clap next week with the lack of games, but we’ll see you later in the month as the Cardinals rummage sale heats up. Bye now!
With how bad the Cardinal’s season has been, you’d have almost thought that the All-Star break would be a welcome relief from all of the misery. Nope. It’s been a spotlight on the front office’s failures, as fans watched Randy Arozarena and Adolis Garcia reunite like two long-lost lovers in a Sleepless in Seattle remake.
While we’re at it, why WASN’T Lane Thomas an All-Star too? I know why Patrick Wisdom wasn’t, but he’s still proving a lot better than a guy you cast off for nothing.
When it gets right down to it, you could possibly build a better team from the guys the Cardinals have let go than they currently have chosen to keep. And that’s without mentioning players like Luis Robert, whose stardom was predicted by all, but the Cardinals chose to go in a different direction, and this year the direction is last place.
Of course, we haven’t even mentioned the NL starting pitcher, Zac Gallen, who participated in having some pretty brutal reviews of his time in the Cardinals system. And as of now, Zac is actually the second-best player the Cardinals gave up in that trade, with the 2022 Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara taking top billing. That’s all it cost (well there were other players thrown in too, honestly) to get 2 mediocre and sometimes embarrassing years out of Marcell Ozuna.
I’m open to the idea that someday we may look back on that trade as the worst in team history. It’s not there yet.
Not when Steve Carlton is out there. Yes, you know about the Steve Carlton trade. Well, maybe you know the basics. Maybe you’re aware that Carlton was traded over a contract dispute that, according to him, at one point got to under $10,000. This led to Steve Carlton winning 250 games outside of St. Louis, along with a couple of rings, and giving the Cardinals fans the pleasure of Carlton coming back to Busch Stadium to win his 300th game against the Cardinals. The gift that keeps on giving!
And for quite a few of those years, you could say that the Cardinal’s inability to field a playoff team was because they were exactly 1 Steve Carlton short.
What you MAY not know is that Gussie Busch’s rational at the time for not doing the trade was that he…needed to follow the orders of Richard Nixon.
Yup.
Things always worked out for the best when you listened to Richard Nixon.
Perhaps you’re intrigued. Perhaps you want to know more? Well too bad. Because this is about the worst trade in Cardinal’s history, and I have news for all of your grandpas: It wasn’t the Steve Carlton trade.
No the trade we’re discussing here is so dumb, so egregiously stupid, so obviously idiotic, that I find it nearly impossible that the Ozuna trade will be able to amount to such a catastrophe when all is said and done.
You see, there was this pitcher. His name was Jack Taylor. Jack Taylor was very, very good. In fact, Jack Taylor won the ERA crown in 1902. It was a 1.29. He started 34 games. He completed 34 games. Chip Caray would have been orgasmic over this guy.
Only one problem. Jack Taylor was also pretty well known for throwing baseball games. I don’t mean pitching baseball games. I mean purposely losing baseball games because a gambler is paying him.
After the 1903 season, Jack Taylor was accused of throwing a series against the Chicago White Sox. This was a big deal because, this was the city series – at that time it was the annual championship series played by the interstate rivals, the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs.
Oh yeah, Jack Taylor played for the Chicago Cubs.
This friends, is about a trade the Cardinals made with the freaking Cubs. And every sentence of this is only going to get worse.
You might question if Jack Taylor, one of the premier pitchers of his time, was really throwing games. Maybe he just lost? It’s not unusual for crazy fans to think crazy things just because a player has an off-day.
Well of the incident Taylor said, “Why should I have won? I got $100 from Hart (Cubs’ President – ed) for winning, and $500 for losing”
Well, I guess THAT answers THAT.
An official commission found that Taylor “wasn’t an honest ballplayer.” Though, honestly, he was honest about his dishonesty. So that’s nice.
Now the Cubs had a problem. Who was going to take a player that was purposely trying to screw his team over and lose? Well, as Taylor was a star, there were rumors all over the league – but those rumors didn’t pan out. I mean, sure, the Giants wanted to get rid of future Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan, but also…they wanted to win.
But not the Cardinals apparently! The 1903 Cardinals were 43-94, so perhaps the idea was that they were going to lose anyway, so they weren’t really out anything!
Except, this wasn’t their stated goal. Frank Robison, who co-owned the team with his brother Stanley, bragged, “This is only the beginning. I have a few more cards to play, and by the time I get through, St. Louis will have a team second to none in the National League.”
And he was correct, that is if you consider his work to be through around 1926, 18 years after he died, when St. Louis finally won its first National League pennant. If not, then I regret to tell you that St. Louis continued to be one of the worst teams in baseball, year after year, putting up the worst seasons in Cardinals history until…
Well, until this year, to be honest.
Of course, it’s not just that they took a dishonest cheater off the Cubs hands, they had to give someone up, right?
Ever heard of Milton Henry?
Me neither. He never pitched in the big leagues as far as I know, and trading him to the Cubs for a premier pitcher makes sense, in reading the Post-Dispatch on that fateful day of December 12, 1903, perhaps you say, “who cares! A good pitcher who tries most of the time is better than Milton Henry!”
But the Post-Dispatch was wrong. The Cardinals actually included a pitcher called “Miner” Brown, who you probably also don’t know under that nickname. But if it helps, his actual name was Mordecai Brown, and if you’re still not getting it, the nickname he’s known by today is “Three-Finger.”
Yes, perhaps you didn’t know Three-Finger Brown was once a Cardinal, but he was! And he was good, of course. In fact, his 2.60 ERA was the best among Cardinals starters in 1903.
The St. Louis Republican said, “On the whole, it does not look like the Cardinals did better than making an even break.”
Yup. That’s true. And an understatement. But it’s important to note that this trade was first-guessed. And it didn’t even mention that the player the Cardinals got was one who was being dumped because he was easily compromised by gamblers. Huzzah.
Over the next 7 seasons, Brown only had an ERA above 2.00 one time – in 1905 when it was 2.17. He became the ace of a pitching staff that dominated the National League and brought about far and away the greatest era of Chicago Cubs baseball. His 1.04 ERA in 1906 is the lowest in recorded history – When we talk about Bob Gibson we have to say the “live-ball era” – why? Because of a Chicago Cubs pitcher the Cardinals traded away.
Brown led the Cubs to 3 pennants and 2 World Series titles. In those titles, he pitched a total of 20 innings and gave up 1 run. It wasn’t earned.
When people make fun of the Cubs for having a huge World Series drought that started in 1908, well you never know, it might have been even longer, if not for the St. Louis Cardinals handing them the most dominant pitcher on the planet.
As for Jack Taylor, he had a few up-and-down seasons for St. Louis where – and this will shock you – he was accused of throwing THEIR city series against the Browns, too! I for one am stunned that an unrepentant, unpunished cheater would continue to do so. But that’s the guy the Cardinals got!
Yes, eventually they dumped Taylor. It was in 1906, when they traded him…to the Cubs, after Hart had left the team.
Taylor pitched well, and the next year, in 1907, he got to say he was part of a Championship team himself when Three-Finger Brown led the Cubs to their first World Series title.
Aronarena is good, you say? The Cardinals gave up 2 aces in one deal, you say? Steve Carlton was a cheap-out deal that screwed the team for decades, you say?
Spare me. The Cardinals bailed out the Cubs for employing a known cheater, and in return, gave them the leader of their 2 World Series titles. You’ll excuse me if, 120 years later, I still need to puke.
