87-90 wins, that glass rotation will never hold up
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maybe, but I’d still take our overall pitching over the Cubs and Brewers.
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I would put the over under at 86.5. The NL Central could be brutal this year...no easy wins/series.
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94 wins. Bank it. Mainly based on better defense and relief. Offense and starting pitching just needs to be on par with last season.

Didn't the bullpen give up 70 leads last season? We didn't lose all the games they lost a lead in but that's a horrendous stat.
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Again, Go visit the Cubs boards, they are sooo unhappy with their club not doing something about their pitching. Their owner not spending money while making money hand over fist from the team and all the shit he's built by the ball park. Sound familiar? Their owner has publicly said we don't have money to spend.

Brewer fans are upset that their bullpen is going to ruin their season. Pissed off at ownership for not at least attempting to fix that issue that everyone sees as their weakness.

We all know Martizez is heading to to the bullpen when he returns. Our bullpen besides Hicks sucked most of the year, they had their moments but mostly gave up may too many leads. Martinez/Hicks/Miller/Reyes is the most talented bullpen in baseball. Period. If they perform to their talent level, and stay healthy, they will add at least 4 more wins this year.
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Prospectus final

Beer makers 87
Cards 86
Red Men 80
Pilates 80
Cubbie Bears 79 mega-lollers
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:-) how in the fuck is that even possible?
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Lotta things are gonna have to break right for them to get above 92, hell probably even 88ish.

I don't know that I see it. They have a terrible horrible track record of signing relievers so I don't know that the bullpen will be much improved.
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I get it, I think we are improved over the 88 win team last year. I'm a homer and will always think we have a chance, what fun is it to think otherwise?

However you ask me to look at objective projections I think that 87 wins is pretty legit. Now I think our pitching upside exceeds that of the other teams in the division, however our floor (due to innings limitations, injuries) is lower than say the Cubs.

When you see every team in the division with a legitimate shot at a .500 or better record, that is a factor you have to consider when looking at how many wins you are going to get.
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The Cubs have something like 45% of their payroll plowed into their starting rotation and 3 guys each making over $20 million. That doesn't even speak to Hendricks new deal or the money they torched on Chatwood (or the prospect capital they plowed into Quintana). Cubs fans can be as pissed as they want but the Cubs shot their bullets. This was the approach they favored for a half decade when they were throwing all their draft capital at offense with an eye on buying their pitching staff.

I don't actually disagree with the approach given the volatility of pitching, but Cubs fans have little to bitch about. It isn't as though the Cubs haven't tried damn hard to address that rotation/bullpen.

Their bullpen was in great shape until injuries happened - there's only so much you can do when 2/3 of the back half of your bullpen goes down during training camp.


If they put Martinez AND Reyes in their bullpen they have done so much to blunt their top competitive advantage that they'd deserve the 86 win regular season that comes of it. They absolutely have to figure out a way for Martinez and Reyes to be in that starting rotation by the ASB. You run a starting 5 of Flaherty, Mikolas, Martinez, Reyes and....me....and you'd have among the most dynamic rotations in baseball. With the potential of Hudson and even Wacha as your 5th starter, you have a better than average chance of winning 2/3 of your games down the stretch.

The starting pitching has to get healthy and break right for them to do any damage. If their plan is to put 2 of the 3 most electric arms in their system in short relief roles, the organization is just as stupid as I thought it was.

I'd put the over/under at 88.5 and barely take the over at 89.
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Surely to god they know not to put Reyes in the pen longer than enough time to build up his arm, right?

Same with Martinez.
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They need to send Reyes back to Memphis to build up his service tim...I mean, arm strength.

He needs 65 days in the minors for the Cardinals to get back one of the years of service time they torched with 2 years of retarded handling of him. It still burns me to no end that Mozeliak didn't just take him of the 60 day, option him to Memphis and let him pitch there. By 'saving' a 40 man spot to protect someone they didn't need anyway, they kept him on the 25 man roster while he rehabbed and then when he got injured he burned yet ANOTHER season of MLB service time.

He's ripped through 2+ years of cheap service time while rehabbing injuries that he shouldn't have even been on the damn MLB roster for. At least option his ass back down and get one of those back by only using about 60% of a season this year. Now you still have 4 years of control when the season is done. It's what they should've done last season coming off his previous injury to ensure they still had 5 at the beginning of this year and then they could've used him to their heart's content.

But Mozeliak is functionally retarded so this won't happen.

Reyes is headed right down the Alan Benes path of being ground to hamburger and/or otherwise completely wasted.
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I'm assuming they put Reyes in the bullpen to save innings. Expect him to pitch 2-3 innings backing up Waino or Wacha.

Also hoping the plan is......After the All-Star break go down to AAA and get stretched out to start a playoff game. Like DJ said, Reyes in the bullpen is a waste of talent.

Now Martinez obviously has problems with focusing. Maybe he has severe ADD or some other issue thats not publicly disclosed but whatever it is, when he is focused he can be one of the most dominate pitchers in baseball. When he's not, he's below average.

Because of his mental approach on the mound, maybe the bullpen is the right spot for him. Same issue we have with Carp batting lead off. For whatever reason, we have to bat him lead-off if we want that high level production.
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Heard this point on a podcast when he got injured last year. Forget which podcast but they said the Cardinals couldnt do what you are talking about to stop service time because the contract Reyes signed. That many of the elite players have similiar contracts, injury cant stop the service time from ticking.


No idea if true or not, it was a podcast.
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It's not accurate.

All signing a major league contract earlier in your career does is force teams to start burning up your options immediately (that's what happened with Drew). It forces teams to give guys a shot a little earlier which increases their earning potentially immensely when they get through their 6 years for FA. We know Reyes didn't sign a Major League contract when he first came into the Cardinals organization because we can confirm that he still has all 3 option years intact. So that path is irrelevant.

So if he has options, he can be sent down. If he can be sent down, he won't accumulate major league service time and if he doesn't accumulate the requisite 6 years of major league service time he CANNOT be a major league free agent.

The only thing that could change that is a contract similar to what Mikolas or Cespedes signed where the team that signed him is contractually prohibited from tendering him a salary when he is arbitration eligible. Mikolas, by rule, shouldn't have been a FA after this season but because his deal with the Cardinals prohibited them from offering him a tender, he'd have been a FA anyway. Oh was the same way.

Reyes, as an amateur FA, could've never negotiated a deal like that and if he did we'd have damn sure known about it before now because he's already burned 2 of his 3 pre-arb seasons and would theoretically be in his FA season this year.

Whoever said that is just flat-ass wrong and if it were accurate, you wouldn't see someone like Vlad Jr having his service time fucked with right now. Or Eloy Jimenez. Or Acuna last season. All of those guys were much more highly regarded prospects when signed than Reyes was.

They're just wrong. The best argument they can make is a technical one -that INJURY can't stop it. That's technically right for any player. It's right for all MLB players regardless of contract. But that's not my point - my point is that you're not citing injury here. You're expressly taking him off the 60 day. You're saying he's sound but that he needs to go to the minors to be stretched out.

The Cardinals actually believed that last season. They kept him on the 60 day DL as a roster mechanism to avoid having to clear the additional 40 man spot. But they didn't believe he was still hurt. They could've taken him off the 60 day, activated him to the 40 man and then simply used an option year to 'stretch him out to start'. That has absolutely nothing to do with injury and he'd have no grounds to contest a service time issue. And then when he would've gotten hurt down there he'd have already been optioned off the 25 man so his service time wouldn't have continued to run while in the minors.

The Cardinals had a clear path here but they fucked up.
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