Then you and I are never going to be able to come to terms with this, because I think that one when party is repeatedly insulting, the other party is not obliged to respond.  The honorable thing to do is to walk away.  

The question then becomes whether the DeWitt group was repeatedly insulting to Pujols.  I say the evidence in the press is enough to state an "equivocal yes". 

Max wrote:

The question then becomes whether the DeWitt group was repeatedly insulting to Pujols.  I say the evidence in the press is enough to state an "equivocal yes". 

Not surprisingly we disagree. I don't remember a single insult. Did Dewitt treat Pujols like a pampered child?  No. Should he have?  No. 

That's always been our disagreement Max, and it's why we'll never agree. You saw/see Pujols as some special treasure that Dewitt was obligated to coddle for the betterment of baseball and fans. I saw/see Pujols as an aging player who had put together possibly the best 11 year stretch ever, but who was in decline and who needed to accept a contract consistent with what he would do in the future, not what he had done in the past. 

I'll be the first to admit that I thought Pujols would return and was wrong about that. But I never believed Dewitt was going to meet Pujols' demands. I took Pujols at his word that he wanted to stay and would take less to do so. I was fairly confident your estimate of 10/$300M would never materialize and that Pujols would take his best offer, ask the Cardinals to come close and then sign with St. Louis. I was wrong. 

 

artie_fufkin wrote:

"So, I seem to recall we once agreed that Jocketty was most likely fired because he found himself on the opposite side of DeWitt on too many institutional struggles."

I recall a lot of that had to do with Jocketty's penchant for trading away young players for veterans, which pitted Jocketty against Luhnow, and ultimately DeWitt sided with Luhnow. That may have been because younger players are cheaper, but Luhnow's record since then seems to bear out that DeWitt picked the right horse.

That was part of it, but I think it also had to do with Luhnow's belief that he could evaluate talent through statistical metrics with little to no regard for scouting reports. Luhnow's first few drafts were less than stellar. They got better when the team turned back to scouting and considered all available information, not just statistics. In that regard Jocketty wasn't completely off-base. 

I believe TK's words back then were, "it was clear that the game had passed him by."  

Maybe TK lit a fire in his belly.

APIAD wrote:

Also id say that tlr and duncan had alot to do with the roster during their time.  

Absolutely.  I got the impression that LaRuncan would lay out their requests to Jocketty, and Jocketty would be their salesman to the boss, hence, LaRuncanocketty.  Overtime, I think DeWitt desired a more traditional heirarchy, where the GM worked to implement the boss's vision, and the manager worked to implement the GM's vision.  So, 2007-2012 was a two-step transition.

But I don't think Jocketty's firing had almost anything to do with his ability, or lack thereof, to be the GM for a competitive franchise, but rather it had almost everything to do with his holding a different position from DeWitt on multiple key issues.  


 

Last edited by Max (5/26/2013 10:28 pm)

Well, I think the big thing that changed after Jocketty got fired was that the team started drafting better and designating their prospects as "hands off".  So, you could make the argument that 2007-2010 was a rebuilding period in which the team better than might be expected.  

Thanks for the analyses, TK.  It seems to me that Wainwright's deal should have been a bit of a bargain, because he had not yet proven he was fully recovered from TJ surgery.  Maybe you factored that in, already.

I think your contention that Wainwright and Molina are headed towards being the most beloved franchise players since Brock could start a long debate.  Ozzie, Edmonds, Carpenter, and Pujols all spring to mind as guys who currently eclipse, or should eclispe, those, two.  But I am not in the city and don't have a feeling for who the local news teams praise.  I realize Pujols is probably viscerally disliked these days, but that is a whole separate debate.

So much for home grown talent.  The bigger question is, are outsiders coming here and signing contracts for less because "it is a great place to play", such as Isringhausen reportedly did?

choosing between similarly sized contracts is not the same as taking a discount.  it just meant he preferred here over Cleveland.  It didn't mean he preferred here and less money over Cleveland.

I'll have to trust you about sports talk radio as I don't go there, but many calls does not indicate a prevalent opinion on its own.  On Craiglist, there is one idiot who flags all the musical gigs that don't pay, or don't pay enough, or anything else that aggrieves him.  It's gotten so bad that the most recent response appears to offer a $500 contract on him, which is awful and ought to get removed, but it is what it is.  Point being, if you didn't know it was a single person (and how can you know on Craigslist?), you'd think there was this vast Bellingham Music Mafia out to crack down on venues that don't pay musicians a fair wage.  I think Edmonds was very popular.

 

Last edited by Max (5/27/2013 12:42 pm)

The only time I agreed with Rick Pitino was when he termed sports talk radio "the fellowship of the miserable."

Googling around: Franklin signed for less, in order to help the club conserve resources to sing Holiday and DeRosa:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4438164

tkihshbt wrote:

Edmonds was immensely popular, but there's also a fair amount of people who were turned off by him. Especially when he asked to be traded to the Cubs. 
 

After players do not receive the treatment from the FO that they felt they earned, thier rhetoric often changes.  I did not expect to hear much from Pujols about his willingness to work for less money in order to have a competitive team after the events of January 2011, and I don't he did.  After the club was not going to allow Jim Edmonds to play the "aging mentor" role he desired, his rhetoric changed a bit.  So, in that way, the FO has a bit of a say in who the fan favorites are, since they can effectively terminate any player's relationship with the club before their playing days are over, and thereby start the downward cycle.  Since I dislike this FO, I choose to edit that stuff out of the equation, and by my reckoning Edmonds and Pujols are the two most popular players of the past decade by far.  Not everyone shares my opinion, though.  :-)
 

I would have thought that Molina's neck tatoo would turn off St. Louis fans more than would Edmonds's west coast frosted 'do, but what do I know?  I don't drink Bud, I don't use Purina products (or even own a pet), and I sure as Hell don't have any soft sentiments for Monsanto.  From my perch in Wash. U. grad school I probably never had a finger on the pulse of the city, even though I lived a couple of blocks from the Mayor.  

I heard the rumors about Anti LaRussa-ians but I never faced it much, except a bit on this board.  I also heard the rumors about Edmonds hot-dogging it to make the highlight reels, but I never witnessed him do that.  I have caught a ball, and rolled after the catch, simply because it was easier on my body than catching myself would have been on my knees.  Edmonds was great in so many ways: the way he defended Ankiel when he came back, the way he led the clubhouse in Sept-Oct. 2006, the way he got elective surgery in order to remain a Cardinal.