Cardinals announce 25-man Opening Day roster for the 2019 season.
Spoiler!
The Cardinals today announced their 25-man Opening Day roster that includes four first-time Cardinals and 13 players that were developed within their organization.
PITCHERS (12): 60 John Brebbia-RHP, 22 Jack Flaherty-RHP, 53 John Gant- RHP, 49 Jordan Hicks-RHP, 43 Dakota Hudson- RHP, 55 Dominic Leone-RHP, 59 Mike Mayers- RHP, 21 Andrew Miller-LHP, 39 Miles Mikolas-RHP, 29 Alex Reyes, RHP, 52 Michael Wacha-RHP, 50 Adam Wainwright- RHP;
CATCHERS (2): 4 -Yadier Molina, 32 Matt Wieters;
INFIELDERS (6): 13 - Matt Carpenter, 12 Paul DeJong, 46 Paul Goldschmidt, 34 Yario Muρoz, 33 Drew Robinson, 16 Kolten Wong;
DISABLED LIST (5): 27 - Brett Cecil (10-day, left hand Carpal Tunnel syndrome), 44 Luke Gregerson (10-day, right shoulder impingement), 18 Carlos Martνnez (right shoulder cuff strain), 3 - Jedd Gyorko (10-day, right calf strain), 67 - Justin Williams (10-day, right hand 2nd metacarpal fracture).
2019 Opening Day Line up
Spoiler!
Starting lineup
Matt Carpenter 3B
Paul Goldschmidt 1B
Paul DeJong SS
Ozuna LF
Yadier Molina C
Dexter Fowler RF
Kolten Wong 2B
Harrison Bader CF
Won the Central Division. Won the NLDS.
NLDS Playoff roster
Spoiler!
Pitchers (12): Miles Mikolas, Jack Flaherty, Adam Wainwright, Dakota Hudson, Genesis Cabrera, Tyler Webb, Andrew Miller, John Brebbia, Daniel Ponce de Leon, Ryan Helsley, Giovanny Gallegos, Carlos Martinez.
Catchers (2): Yadier Molina, Matt Wieters.
Infielders (6): Paul Goldschmidt, Kolten Wong, Paul DeJong, Matt Carpenter, Tommy Edman, Yairo Munoz.
Outfielders (5): Marcell Ozuna, Harrison Bader, Dexter Fowler, Jose Martinez, Randy Arozarena.
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
Players
Main cause is starting pitching. If Wacha starts another game, thats a criminal offense and he should be booed off the field.
Shit relievers that over stayed way past when they should have been sent down or released.
Lead off hitter hitting .200 for 30% of the season
Manager
Too much Matheny in him. Got to stick with my guy. Trust my guy is going to get it done. I thought he was a stat guy when hired?
Some moves that blew up in his face is not his fault. Walking the backup catcher hitting under .200 to get the ground ball and out of the jam was the right move. Thats on Wacha for throwing a 93mph flat fastball right down the middle that any major leaguerd can put good wood on.
But..... when you have lost 14/18 or something like that, its time to change something up. Yet we still are rolling with the same players, lineup, pitchers. Nothing changes including the results. Thats the Matheny playbook.
Front Office
Mo has made bad signings. He has to be forcing them into the lineup. We have better pitching talent in the minors but they stay down in the minors.
We have a glut of possible nig time talent in the outfield and 3B thats going to be ready in 2 years or less. Yet we are locked into large contract with aging players.There was no need to give Carp an extension. He was signed for another year already. :-)
Regardless of whether Carp rejuvenates and takes off on another tear this year, that was in my opinion one of the top bonehead Mo moves.
It screams not knowing the value of a player should you NOT extend right away. He wasn't going anywhere, his value was not going to INCREASE to other teams only decrease yet we paid him for an increase. Just flat out stupid! [Reply]
Originally Posted by Hoopsdoc:
What the heck happened to this team?
Man, sometimes when you're right, you're right....
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
My worry right now is that I think the offense will cool somewhat and the SP may absolutely crash. There are some real alarming numbers under the hood here.
The Cardinals did some stuff shortly after LaRussa where they followed a year with unnaturally good string luck on offense with a year of unsustaintably high strand rates with their pitching staff.
The offense looks to have some staying power but the pitching isn't gonna keep stranding 80% of their runners, not when they struggle to generate strikeouts. Hudson, Wacha and Wainwright are borderline MLB starters right now based on their stuff, IMO. Mikolas has better stuff than his results but he just makes too many bad pitches; he's a poor man's Syndergaard right now in that he's just constantly making a bad pitch at a bad time.
The starting pitching to this point has been bad so many folks assume it's gonna improve. Folks - there's a decent chance the results get WORSE. There's a ton not to like about this starting staff.
Personally I think they need to work a lot harder on un-fucking Carlos Martinez and getting his ass in the rotation. They really need any version of the 2015-2017 Carlose Martinez in there.
Everything wrong with this team comes down to it's starting pitching staff.
The dirty little secret about offenses is that ALL of them are inconsistent. The good ones are simply really really good when they're on. There are a lot of studies done on this and ultimately the conclusion is that we would all be shocked by how much mediocre baseball even the great teams play.
Just about every 'powerhouse' team in recent history plays .500 baseball for most of the season. Few of them are just constantly clipping off weeks where they're 1-2 games over .500 to get to a plus 40 on the season. Rather, most of them have a couple of white-hot stretches where they'll win 30 of 40 and over the remaining 120 games, they'll be just slightly above average.
And in the static you'll find that they aren't generally going out there in those hot stretches and winning a bunch of 1 run games. They tend to just go piss-pound teams over those streaks and play pretty ordinary baseball in the other games.
The problem right now is that the Cardinals have an offense and a bullpen that is good enough to go on a couple of those streaks and then play 'fine' baseball for the remainder of the year. But that goddamn starting staff continues to wreck them. And it's going to barbecue the bullpen as well. You cannot ask a team to go out there and dig out of a 3-4 run hole by the 5th inning every day. You can't ask the bullpen to throw up 4-5 zeroes every day.
This starting staff is completely unacceptable and major changes need to be made. [Reply]
Originally Posted by VAChief:
Regardless of whether Carp rejuvenates and takes off on another tear this year, that was in my opinion one of the top bonehead Mo moves.
It screams not knowing the value of a player should you NOT extend right away. He wasn't going anywhere, his value was not going to INCREASE to other teams only decrease yet we paid him for an increase. Just flat out stupid!
Mozeliak has been among the worst GMs in the sport over the last 5 years. It's truly remarkable how routinely awful he's been at pretty much everything. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
Mozeliak has been among the worst GMs in the sport over the last 5 years. It's truly remarkable how routinely awful he's been at pretty much everything.
Going back and looking at how trades have worked out over the past few years is rough. Even the guys traded away for Goldy are playing well.
Also speaking of Goldy, one very concerning thing is the big second half bounce isnt a career trend even though it happened last year. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Miles:
Going back and looking at how trades have worked out over the past few years is rough. Even the guys traded away for Goldy are playing well.
Also speaking of Goldy, one very concerning thing is the big second half bounce isn’t a career trend even though it happened last year.
Weaver and Pham had plenty of chances to shine here. They had their moments of excellence. But, They were meh or failed during most of their time here. Now, at least currently, they are prospering. Ball players move to new teams and turn their play around. Happens all the time. So we have to decide, is this something we are doing wrong?
It seems at least to me that developing young players is not the weakest area that they need to improve on. We have a lot more deficient areas. Like Mo, a cheapskate owner, a too rabid fan base willing to tolerate missing the playoffs 3 years in a row. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
Weaver and Pham had plenty of chances to shine here. They had their moments of excellence. But, They were meh or failed during most of their time here. Now, at least currently, they are prospering. Ball players move to new teams and turn their play around. Happens all the time. So we have to decide, is this something we are doing wrong?
It seems at least to me that developing young players is not the weakest area that they need to improve on. We have a lot more deficient areas. Like Mo, a cheapskate owner, a too rabid fan base willing to tolerate missing the playoffs 3 years in a row.
As soon as he is healthy and has fastball command.... he needs to be in the rotation in St. Louis. Why waste his innings in Memphis?
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Alex Reyes seemed to get stronger as he progressed. Retired last eight batters straight, including four of his six strikeouts plus four infield outs. In addition to his fastball that peaked at 99, he used his slider and curve. Of course, it is high-A.
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Strong return for #stlcards RHP Alex Reyes for @GoPBCardinals tonight. 70 pitches, 40 strikes, over 5 IP. One 1st-inning ER on 2 singles, 2 BBs and 6 Ks. Fanned the side in his final inning. Fastball was 97 mph, peaked at 99. He was pitching regularly in rehab in Jupiter. pic.twitter.com/3WyQiqOJUC
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
As soon as he is healthy and has fastball command.... he needs to be in the rotation in St. Louis. Why waste his innings in Memphis?
Alex Reyes seemed to get stronger as he progressed. Retired last eight batters straight, including four of his six strikeouts plus four infield outs. In addition to his fastball that peaked at 99, he used his slider and curve. Of course, it is high-A.
Strong return for #stlcards RHP Alex Reyes for @GoPBCardinals tonight. 70 pitches, 40 strikes, over 5 IP. One 1st-inning ER on 2 singles, 2 BBs and 6 Ks. Fanned the side in his final inning. Fastball was 97 mph, peaked at 99. He was pitching regularly in rehab in Jupiter. pic.twitter.com/3WyQiqOJUC
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
he didn’t seize his opportunities. They gave him the starting job on opening day in CF one year. He lost it for cause.
He put up almost 8 WAR in about 700 ABs. That's a ridiculously awesome pace.
Dexter Fowler not only cost the team a first rounder and 80 million, he cost Tommy Pham and continues to hamstring Bader's development.
It's the worst move this team has made since the Mulder trade at the very least. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
he didn’t seize his opportunities. They gave him the starting job on opening day in CF one year. He lost it for cause.
So are you on board with trading Reyes away for a box of chocolates for not seizing his opportunities thus far?
The Pham decision was a mistake both in talent evaluation and fiscally. He was making peanuts and probably would be very economical for the foreseeable future. Another stupid move. [Reply]
At this point I’m just waiting for Mo to announce we have extended Wacha for 5 years and 65 million with a no trade and player option for a 6th year at 20 million. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
he didnt seize his opportunities. They gave him the starting job on opening day in CF one year. He lost it for cause.
Pham played excellent baseball when healthy [Reply]