forsberg_us wrote:

" I think he's much more involved now than merely giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a contract."

Based on what?  You're belief that Mozeliak isn't qualified?

I think there was a quote from la Russa somewhere along the way where he mentioned that DeWitt wanted someone who was more in step with his vision, or more compliant to the organization's plan, or something like that.  Whatever the wording was, it meant that DeWitt wanted someone who would run the team his way.  That's fine if the owner has the professional qualifications of Walt Jocketty.  It is arguable that neither DeWitt nor Moz could match Jocketty's baseball CV.
 

We disagree on much of that.
 

As is often the case when you and I debate a subject, your flippant comments belittle my position, and mine might well do the same to yours.

For example, nobody traded crappy prospects for Edmonds.  We traded Bottenfield, an 18 game winner and NL All-Star, and Adam Kennedy, who was a first round draft choice and who had been the Cardinals' minor league player of the year in 1999 and rated as one of baseball's top young prospects.  Secondly, Edmonds was in the last year of arbitration elegibility, was coming off an injury plagued off-year in which he managed only 55 games, and had developed conflicts within the Angels, such that it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they would trade him, despite FO protestations to the contrary.  Add to that the fact that the Angels were desperate for pitching, such that they were probably willing to hope that lightening might strike twice and Bottenfield would repeat a bit of his success.

Somebody (Jocketty seemingly made the offer) saw a deal that could be pitched as a win-win, and it kind of was, considering the Angels were going to unload Edmonds anyway and that Kennedy went on to become a key component on the Angles championship team three seasons after the trade, and win the MVP in the ALCS that year.  

Whatever you want to believe Max. Polanco has had a nice career. Adam Kennedy was/is insignificant. Bottonfield was terrible (his WHIP in the season he won 18 was over 1.5), Smith was worse AND injured, and Timlin was a dime-a-dozen RH set up guy. 

If you take out Polanco, the remaining 4 guys in the Edmonds and Rolen deals weren't as good as what the Cardinals got in exchange for Colby Rasmus. 

"you can choose your beliefs but not your facts"

Yet that's exactly what you do--either stating facts which are blatently wrong or filled with so much spin they're intentionally misleading.

Adam Kennedy
"#1 prospect in our system"
- Kennedy wasn't the #1 prospect in the Cardinals system.  He wasn't even #2.  In 1999, the Cardinals had a prospect who won the Baseball America and USA Today Minor League Player of the Year.  He was a 19 year old left handed pitcher.  You may have heard of him.  He nearly won Rookie of the Year in 2000 as a pitcher, later won Comeback Player of the Year as an outfielder.  Last I checked he was patrolling centerfield for the Mets.  BTW- per Baseball America, Chad Hutchinson was the Cardinals #2 prospect after 1999.


Kent Bottenfield
"All-Star"
- Yep, he was an All-Star.  Plenty of crappy players have made an All-Star Game.  Know who was in the All-Star Game last year?  Brian LaHair.  That would be the same Brian LaHair who is curretly startin (I assume) for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.  Maybe we should buy him out of his deal and see if we can trade him for Tulowitzki
- Let's take a closer look at Bottenfield's "All-Star" season.  ERA- 3.97,  IP- 190.1,  H- 197,  K- 124,  BB- 89,  WHIP 1.50.
- So your "All-Star" averaged 3 baserunner every 2 innings and had 3 walks for every 4 strikeouts.  Wow, I wish we could find a guy that good for the 2013 Cardinals
- Bottenfield was 31 when traded.  He had a career record of 36-34 and had spent most of his career pitching from the bullpen. 
- The Anaheim GM (assuming he survived the 2000 season) was so enamored with Bottenfield that he traded him to Philadelphia. Bottenfield was out of baseball a year later.

Bud Smith
"the guy who was #4 in RoY voting the previous year"
- He got 1 point in the voting.  Know who got 1 point the year prior?  Chuck Smith.  Bud was in great company.
- The Rolen trade was a midseason deal.  How was Bud Smith doing at the time of the trade--let's look.  1-5,  ERA- 6.94,  Games/Starts- 11/10.  IP- 48,  H- 67, K- 22, BB- 22, WHIP- 1.85
- Spin those numbers anyway you want- Bud Smith was a crappy prospect at the time of the trade.  He was a pitching version of Bo Hart.
- Know how many games Smith pitched for the Phillies?  As many as I have.

Mike Timlin
- 36 years old at the time of the trade
- The Phillies were his 5th team in 6 seasons.  He was considered so valuable they let him walk to Boston in the off-season rather than pay him $1.8M

- Edmonds wasn't a rental.  He was traded for in the Spring of 2000 and signed to an extension 2 weeks later.

- You're correct, only Smith and Kennedy could be considered a prospect.  Smith completely sucked.  Kennedy ended up slightly better than Luis Alicea (another Cardinals 1st rounder).  Bottenfield was Todd Wellemeyer, and Timlin was an aging set-up guy.

You can try to polish turds all you want Max, the Cardinals gave up Placido Polanco and Adam Kennedy and garbage.  Ask yourself if you think the Rays would trade Evan Longoria for Matt Carpenter, John Gast and Octavio Dotel (yes, I realize we no longer have Dotel, but we don't currently have anyone comparable to Timlin) because that's basically the Rolen trade.  The Edmonds trade is Kolten Wong and Jake Westbrook for Jacoby Ellsbury. 

And please, feel free to point where any of those facts are incorrect.

Last edited by forsberg_us (6/07/2013 9:29 pm)

It's really simple.  Hit the reset button, retract your statement that "other teams would no longer trade players like Edmonds and Rolen for crappy prospects" and we can continue.  Otherwise it is me debating evolution with a creationist who is just making crap up.

This was your flippant comment: "other teams would no longer trade players like Edmonds and Rolen for crappy prospects."

Your premise was factually wrong.  It belittles the fact that Jocketty was a great GM, great at the trade. To say otherwise belittles the skill of the 29 other GMs who either traded "stars" for "shit", or failed to offer better "shit" for "stars".

That's where your premise is simply factually and demonstrably wrong.  

Without accepting that your premise is wrong, there's no point going forward and critiquing your second point: "The organization saw a need to draft better and develop cheaper talent while filling out its roster where the farm system couldn't. Jocketty resisted that paradigm shift and was forced out."

 

Last edited by Max (6/08/2013 1:16 am)

Not a cop out.  If anyone is trying for a cop out it is you.  Why bother to debate someone who begins with the premise "other teams would no longer trade players like Edmonds and Rolen for crappy prospects", when we both know that neither Edmonds nor Rolen arrived as a result of a trade for crappy prospects?

Last edited by Max (6/08/2013 1:23 pm)

Well at least we are getting somewhere.  It is arguable that none of the five players traded for Edmonds and Rolen were prospects.  I was being kind to your argument by offering that Kennedy and Smith might be considered prospects.  Bottenfield, Timlin, and Polanco clearly were not.  

Two other issues need to be addressed before moving onto your second point.  Point one leads to point two:

1) If the players that the Cardinals offered in trade were crappy compared to what they got, then why in Creation didn't 28 other GMs simply offer a slightly less crappy bundle of players?

How many teams in March 2000 had a better CF than Jim Edmonds?
How many teams in July 2002 had a better 3B than Scott Rolen?

Surely among the 28 other teams in the majors, there were plenty of teams who could have improved their team by trading crappy players for stars?  How was it that only Walt Jocketty figured out that crappy players could be traded for stars?

 

Consider this piece from The Hardball Times

JOCKETTY’S STRENGTHS

Jocketty built arguably the premier National League franchise of this decade.  Since 2000, the Cardinals own more regular-seasons wins than any other NL team, won more playoff games, won more league titles, and, of course, won it all in 2006. 

How did Jocketty do it?  First of all, he was fearless.  A master wheeler-dealer, nobody did a better job turning lemons into lemonade, often flipping questionable talent for marquee players. 

Consider:

Jocketty landed, via trade, Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds, Edgar Renteria, Darryl Kile, Scott Rolen, Dennis Eckersley, Todd Stottlemyre, Fernando Vina, Larry Walker, Will Clark, Adam Wainwright, and Woody Williams. 

Here are the most notable players he gave up to get them: Eric Ludwick, T.J. Mathews, Kent Bottenfield, Adam Kennedy, Braden Looper, Pablo Ozuna, Manny Aybar, Jose Jimenez, Placido Polanco, Bud Smith, Steve Montgomery, Jay Witasick, Juan Acevedo, Chris Narveson, Jose Leon, one year of J.D. Drew, and the waning days of Ray Lankford’s career.

It’s an astonishing haul.  Generally Jocketty would use the same formula: go after some established but underappreciated star, give up a few middling prospects for him, let him soak in the cozy St. Louis fan experience, win ballgames, re-sign the guy to an extension (often with a hometown discount), win more ballgames, then repeat the whole process as one big feedback loop.  Jocketty was a master at that (and he was probably the best trading-deadline dealer there ever was – that’s how he got McGwire, Clark, Williams, Rolen, Walker, Chuck Finley, and Fernando Tatis).

(emphasis added)

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2007/10/brian-gunn-on-w.html

Last edited by forsberg_us (6/08/2013 8:47 pm)

Now, onto your second point: "The organization saw a need to draft better and develop cheaper talent while filling out its roster where the farm system couldn't."

A struggle developed within baseball at the time, mostly due to the success of the Moneyball phenomenon, and this struggle played out within the Cardinals organization as well.  I remember the PD reports at the time talking about the differences within the organization between the "baseball men" and the statisticians.  That in itself leads to two ways to frame the issue, 1) an ideological struggle, and 2) personal struggles.  Both were occuring within the Cardinals: ideology (baseball men vs. statisticians), personal (old timers vs. Luhnow and the up-and-comers).

Herein lies a key point that I think your argument skipped over.  It was not me who argued on this board that it was not so much that the organization recognized that they needed to draft better, but rather, they needed to be ready to cough up the money to sign quality draft picks.  That wasn't my argument at the time, but it seems to have been the case.  If true, then one major issue within the FO therefore must have been: where should the money come from?

Here is where my speculation begins:

With an independent voice like Jocketty, my hunch is that he argued: if we keep winning and increasing attendance as a result, then the money to pay for better drafts should be new money, and not taken away from payroll.  Up-and-comers are the same all over, and will do whatever they can to push the old-timers aside, and I imagine they were speaking up in meetings that payroll didn't need to go up, and whispering behind backs that the old-timers were out of touch.  This is the way it always is.  

So, think of this, what actually happened in the battles between:

"trade to build" vs. "draft to build"
"increasing payroll" vs. "flat or decreasing payroll"
"more money for drafts" vs. "less money for drafts"
Jocketty vs. Luhnow

During the years 2007-2008 the club was in turmoil as the battles played out, but with time, as the new prospects matured we had a home grown talent filling holes, building from a trickle into a flood.  But also by 2009 we were trading away prospects--good ones--to rent Holliday and DeRosa.  We managed to sign Holliday, DeRosa slipped away.  Similarly, we rented away Rasmus in 2011, and got little in return, other than a championship.  After a dip and a lull, payroll was WAY up.  Presumably they also spend more on their drafting and minor league system.  In other words, they were doing ALL of it.  So, who won?  Here's the irony;  BOTH Jocketty and Luhnow are gone.  

 

Last edited by Max (6/08/2013 9:21 pm)

Ultimately this entire conversation comes back to one simple question--do you believe the organization is in better shape now than it was at the end of 2007 when Jocketty was fired.  To me the answer is clear, and that answer seems to be confirmed by just about anyone with any involvement in the game.

I very much enjoyed the Jocketty years.  I very much liked Jocketty.  I met him a few times through Chad and got to know him a little better because he ate lunch in the restaurant in our building at least twice a week and he would occasionally invite me to join him if I was eating alone.  But the fact of the matter is that Jocketty left the organization with the worst minor league in the major leagues.  The major league roster included a couple of expensive, oft-injured veterans and a very poor pitching staff.  It wasn't Jocketty's fault that Carpenter got hurt, but it was his fault that the minor league system had nothing to replace him with. 

The current system is much more business-like and you don't like that part of it.  I understand that.  But in the Jocketty model, we got Todd Wellemeyer and Cement-head.  The current model gives us Shelby Miller, Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha.  Between the two, I'll take the current model.

Where did their payroll rank in '07 compared to now?