Max wrote:

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.

 

I think edmonds run of playing with a handfull of club post st louis hurt his opinion.  3 of those teams were from the central.  It was his fault but imo it tainted him as a cardinal.
 

Max wrote:

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.  

If Molina had the neck tattoos when he first came up you probably would have been correct, but his popularity was well established before he got the tattoos.  

As AP said, I think Molina's popularity really picked up when he converted himself from a .200 hitting offensive liability into a good hitter.  Every now and then he'll fail to hustle on a ground ball and he'll hear about it, but right now Molina is easily the most popular player on the team and I'd venture to say there isn't a close 2nd.

Now that I think about it, probably a decent way to judge is how much does the team charge for the player's autograph during Winter Warm Up.  I've only attended one year, around 2007-08 (it was right after they acquired Troy Glaus), and I seem to remember Molina was the 2nd most expensive autograph behind Pujols.

"right now Molina is easily the most popular player on the team and I'd venture to say there isn't a close 2nd."

From 2,000 miles away, I'd guess Freese is 2nd, but I'm getting a sense that his teen idol status after the 2011 WS has waned.
This may go without saying, but part of Yadi's bump in popularity is due him signing an extension not long after his best friend on the team left for Los Angeles. It also helps that he followed that up with his best offensive season, and in the first two months of this season he's the hands down, slam-dunk, no-brainer MVP of the National League.

APIAD wrote:

Max wrote:

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.  

how many prospects did walt trade off?  The cardinals did draft better but i dont think that was walts fault for the poor drafts.  

Well, "we" could get in an argument again as to what a "prospect" is, but let's just say, young cost-controlled players.  The major criticism was trading away Haren, followed by Barton.  But he also traded Coco Crisp, Adam Kennedy, and many others that could be remembered with a bit of effort.  In doing so, most people believed he was following La Russa's will--get veterans.  But it is also the case that people were criticizing the Cards for drafting porly specifically because the owners were reluctant to cough up the money necessary to sign top draft picks, and that wasn't Jocketty's fault, as far as we know.

In any event, I was a HUGE supporter of the LaRuncanocketty triumvirate, and have been a vocal critic of DeWitt's systematic dismantling of that group.  And yes, I think that as far back as 2006/7, DeWitt began considering the problems of contract extension negotiatins with Pujols, if he had a GM like Jocketty, who had just paid Edmonds (and maybe one other veteran?) a bunch of money for past performance.  

"From 2,000 miles away, I'd guess Freese is 2nd, but I'm getting a sense that his teen idol status after the 2011 WS has waned."

Significantly.

"This may go without saying, but part of Yadi's bump in popularity is due him signing an extension not long after his best friend on the team left for Los Angeles. It also helps that he followed that up with his best offensive season, and in the first two months of this season he's the hands down, slam-dunk, no-brainer MVP of the National League."

All of these factors helped, but Molina was really popular even before Pujols left for Anaheim.

"Forgive the stereotypes, but Whitey's image was of the quintessential Midwestern guy - crew cut, no nonsense, didn't take any crap from his players and beat the big bad team with more talent from the big city. La Russa is a Northern California intellectual who won't even eat a hamburger. And he can be kind of full of shit when he wants to.  People conveniently forget that Herzog walked out on the team that he put together when it wasn't winning, and La Russa was a more successful manager with the Cardinals in every respect."

Ding, ding, ding--we have a winner.  The only thing I'd add is that Herzog's departure was hastened by the death of Gussie Busch, Jr. who gave Herzog unlimited authority to do whatever he pleased with the team.  When August Busch, III took over, he dramatically scaled back Herzog's authority and payroll and Herzog bolted mid-season.

forsberg_us wrote:

Now that I think about it, probably a decent way to judge is how much does the team charge for the player's autograph during Winter Warm Up.  I've only attended one year, around 2007-08 (it was right after they acquired Troy Glaus), and I seem to remember Molina was the 2nd most expensive autograph behind Pujols.

That sounds like a cool metric!  And I can see statisticians getting a hold of it, to adjust yealry values for inflation and whatnot.  

Pujols had a lot of the qualities I have heard people listing for Molina: doesn't run off at the mouth, works harder than anyone else, etc.  I say again, it's too bad they couldn't have found a way to make him a Cardinal for life.

Your contention that they should not have coddled him is odd to me.  In the fields I have worked in, stars are coddled.  For example, when universities interview job candidates, they probably pay for 3-4 to visit the department.  In any given year, there is often one superstar, who already has publications in Nature and/or Science.  That candidate is typically coddled.  Same goes for high school athletes: the supertars are definitely coddled by recruiters.  Why wouldn't DeWitt make a personal pitch to Pujols, visiting him at his home, playing on the floor with his kids . . . why wouldn't he do that unless for his own arrogance and pride?  We may never know. 

I grant you all of that.  My point is that we don't know what was said, and apparently Edmonds was not going to be allowed to age gracefully into the role of Mentor Centerfielder in the way that he hoped.  He also might have been thinking about HoF.  In any case, the Cards weren't going to give him what he wanted, and he asked to leave.  

Once again, we don't know how far apart the two sides were, but it is another case where a very popular franchise player did not play his days out in St. Louis. Surely it is mix of player and FO, and in the case of Edmonds, I think it hurt both.  

 "Why wouldn't DeWitt make a personal pitch to Pujols, visiting him at his home, playing on the floor with his kids . . . why wouldn't he do that unless for his own arrogance and pride?  We may never know."

Maybe it's me, but DeWitt doesn't seem like a playing-on-the-floor-with-the-kids kind of guy. Anyone's kids. Even his own. I don't think it has to do with pride and arrogance. He's just not programmed that way.
Pujols' mouth did get him in trouble at least twice that I know of - when he said Glavine sucked after the Mets beat the Cardinals in Game 1 of the '06 LCS, and after he said he should have been the MVP instead of Ryan Howard. Yadi rarely speaks to the media, though part of that may be becuase Pujols also had the advantage of being in the U.S. a lot longer than Yadi before they respectively arrived to the majors. Yadi's English is still pretty bad. 

"My point is that we don't know what was said, and apparently Edmonds was not going to be allowed to age gracefully into the role of Mentor Centerfielder in the way that he hoped.  He also might have been thinking about HoF.  In any case, the Cards weren't going to give him what he wanted, and he asked to leave."

Max, I don't know too many occupations where the employee is allowed to dictate the terms of the end of his employment to management. It would be convenient if every athlete walked away before their skills started to erode, but 99 percent of them are programmed differently. And by the time their skills do start to recede, their contracts are usually at their most prohibitive.
There's no player I've enjoyed watching the last 15 years more than Jim Edmonds. We all know it would have been a nice story if Edmonds had been allowed to play out the remainder of his career with the Cardinals, but his production didn't warrant a status as the every day centerfielder of a contending team.
There are fans like you who are loyal to players, and that's a good thing. There are fans who want to see the team always at least compete for championships, and that's not a bad thing either. But there are times when those two philosophies collide, and with so much money at stake these days, prudence often dictates striving for the latter.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (5/28/2013 11:41 am)

Max wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

Now that I think about it, probably a decent way to judge is how much does the team charge for the player's autograph during Winter Warm Up.  I've only attended one year, around 2007-08 (it was right after they acquired Troy Glaus), and I seem to remember Molina was the 2nd most expensive autograph behind Pujols.

That sounds like a cool metric!  And I can see statisticians getting a hold of it, to adjust yealry values for inflation and whatnot.  

Pujols had a lot of the qualities I have heard people listing for Molina: doesn't run off at the mouth, works harder than anyone else, etc.  I say again, it's too bad they couldn't have found a way to make him a Cardinal for life.

Your contention that they should not have coddled him is odd to me.  In the fields I have worked in, stars are coddled.  For example, when universities interview job candidates, they probably pay for 3-4 to visit the department.  In any given year, there is often one superstar, who already has publications in Nature and/or Science.  That candidate is typically coddled.  Same goes for high school athletes: the supertars are definitely coddled by recruiters.  Why wouldn't DeWitt make a personal pitch to Pujols, visiting him at his home, playing on the floor with his kids . . . why wouldn't he do that unless for his own arrogance and pride?  We may never know. 

I would bet my last penny pujols was coddled plenty.  The fo just didnt risk future years on a emotional decision. It has been wrten how pujols got treated different as a star player.  I believe it was a post game interview pujols skipped that got him alittle grief.  I believe the media walked on egg shells around him.  Dewitt not writting him a blank check doesnt mean his wasnt coddled. 
 

Edmonds: I don't think we're saying differnt things, just saying it differently.  Thanks for helping to remember some of the details.  The two sides could not find a way to allow Edmonds to finish his career here.  No, Edmonds should not be allowed to dictate his role, but yes, there is added value for teams to build "tradition" and part of that comes from the legends of the player.  As we can see, by not securing Edmonds, his "legend" as a Cardinal was damaged.  Assigning a value to these intangibles is hard, but I don't see it as controversial to assert that they have value.  All of this is oh-so-much-more-true of Pujols.  

Pujols: Was he coddled?  I saw no evidence, and hear no evidence of it other than "it must have happened" sorts of statements.  The damage to the relationship was done at least as far back as 2010, when the team did not tender an offer after indicating it would be the ideal time to do so, and also Moz made an uneccesary public statement that the team would not pay for past services.  Both of those should have been taken as insults, and I suspect Pujols did.  The tone of public statements changed a bit; I remember one along the lines of, "yes, I'd like to be a Cardinal for life, but what am I supposed to do, hold a gun against their head and force them to offer me a contract?"  By the time he made the statement, the damage had clearly been done.  Any "coddling" after that is not, by definition, coddling, but rather "damage control".  So, please, there's no reason to run around in circles, if you do no agree that the negotiations were seriously hurt by the time the 2010 season began, then we just disagree.   

Loyalty: My loyalty is to the franchise.  Neither the players nor the owners truly own that.  It is an intangible historical entity.  It is mostly owned by the fans, themselves.  

Last edited by Max (5/28/2013 3:38 pm)

The team makes concessions, the player makes concessions, if they can't find a middle ground, the player must move on.  Did the team do enough to save either player's value to the franchise?  Dunno, but DeWitt was being a real cheapskate in that period when the damage was being done: selling urinals, cutting payroll, etc.  Where the evidence supports it, I prefer to blame the owners and preserve the reputations of the players in my mind.  You seem to do the opposite.  There is enough that we do not know that either argument is defensible.
 

If Carpenter makes an unreasonable contract demand, then of course the honus is on him.  

You are correct that the issue was most likely more about La Russa, not the FO, as far as we know, and I was being cavalier, going back and forth between "the FO" and "the team". Maybe Edmonds deserves the lion's share of the blame there.  Frankly I don't quite remember what the original point was and how it has shifted as the debate developed, and as we saw with the very lengthy debate on Holliday' hard slide, and La Russa position on the hard slide at home, it is very important to keep track of all of that, otherwise we wind both winning an argument, slam dunk, only we were arguing two different things by the end.