APIAD wrote:

Throwing the towel in already?

Reverse psychology.

I threw the towel in during the offseason.  Sadly molina is a middle of the order bat on this team.

Just bad baseball

APIAD wrote:

Just bad baseball

Peralta needs to be the Cardinals' DH.
 

Im about done with this team.  I have more productive things to do with my summer. 


The only debate is who this team should sell off this year.

Go Cardinals !   

5 runs and this baby is tied .

To quote legendary golfer Ty Webb: "You're not good. You stink."

That is pretty harsh criticism but fair.  I didnt realize Mo was seen as incompetent.

Im not sure i agree with you artie and this is where the criticism of Mo caught me off gaurd.

Leakes contract reflects the market for a serviceable middle of the order starter.  Nobody is really beating down the door to remove leake from his spot in the rotation.  I can see the arguement that the cardinals shoukd have signed a top of the rotation pitcher and not a middle of the rotation.  Still, the cardinals needed a pitcher, got a pitcher and i dont believe the leake contract should stop them from entering back into the pitching market in price or roster spot.

Peralta filled a need the Cardinals had at the time of his signing.  His first two years in stl were functional. I believe his contact was front loaded so the club could deal him.  Why they didnt do that, idk. 

Wong i have never liked.  I wouldnt have extended him so ill agree with you on this.  However they could have got out from under him.  They will have a similar chance with piscotty if they keep their eyes open.  Im not ready to dump him yet.

Pena and broxton fall into the same category.  Both were decent to have on the team at first.  Cards were desperate for both.  Broxton filled an immediate need and pena objrctive was to give yadi some rest.  We all know how the later has unexplainably gone. 

My faults with the Cardinals i guess lies in the same place as the source.  The ablity to evaluate and act.  They seem to be round peg/square hole-ing this shit.  Maybe they are trying to prove themselfs right.  That is a dangerous thing because in that quest you become bias.  See what you want to see.  Teams can change parts, trade player they have signed and extended and alter roles.  This club seems to stick with their ideas till the end, force feeding them to us night after night.  There manager is shit but it isnt his fault a top of the rotation pitcher hasnt been signed.  That wong, peralta and adam remain on the team.  That broxton hasnt been released.  Some of these people just need cycled through. 

My agreement with you is that they cant afford to ride these situations out.  My disagreement is that they were all bad, sink the ship contracts.  All of them had pros and cons.  They all could have been pivoted off of and corrected.  Also the amount of dry powder this team has is dodger like.  They have basicly monopolize downtown stl with ball park village.  They underspend on the field.  This team is in a surplus of cash imo.

Just to continue my rant, the owner has the most to lose in game.  If the cardinals lose it isnt like the marlins.  The Marlins pay there shit payroll, collect the baseball revue sharing check and try again next year.

Dewitt run the risk of having a half empty ballpark, nobody at his bars and nobody wanting to rent retail space in downtown stl.

My issue isn't as much about a single move, it's with the process by which they've reached this point.  There have been a couple of unexpected bad things that happened (Craig's precipitous decline, Tavares' death) that weren't Moz's fault, but ultimately it's his job to make the necessary adjustments.

I've been saying this team doesn't have a legitimate 3, 4 or 5 hitter.  Go back to 2011 until now and look at the "heart of the order."  It's no wonder they are where they are

2011- Berkman, Pujols, Holliday
2012- Berkman, Holliday, Beltran, Craig
2013- Beltran, Holliday, Craig
2014- Holliday, Craig, Adams
2015- Holliday, Peralta, Heyward
2016- Holliday, Piscotty, Molina

The decline begins in 2014.  Again, being fair, they had no way of knowing Craig would fall off a cliff, and Adams had shown promise in 2013.  Tavares offered an option until his death, but after 2014 they needed to add a middle of the order guy and 3 years later they still haven't done it. The only legitimate middle-of-the-order guy they've had was Holliday and he was declining due to age.  Maybe Piscotty can be a suitable run producer, but that still leaves them at least one, probably two players short of a decent lineup.

Then there's the defense (or lack of attention to it).  Someone (Artie??) said it earlier this year, but how many players have the Cardinals tried to make fit somewhere they don't belong.  Holliday at first.  Adams in LF.  Wong in CF.  It's baffling.

In addition to playing people out of position, several of those who play in their ordinary position are just flat out bad defensively, but the organization doesn't seem to care.  Diaz has the range of a traffic cone and a mediocre arm.  Carpenter isn't very good defensively and the closest thing to a third baseman on the roster is Gyorko.

Which leads to pitching.  Leake wasn't an awful signing, but he was an awful signing on this team.  He's a ground ball pitcher pitching for a team that can't field ground balls.  Along with Wainwright, Wacha and Lynn, the team has Martinez and four #4 or #5 pitchers in a good rotation.  Losing Reyes wasn't their fault, and perhaps he would have filled a higher spot in the rotation, but is it fair to ask him at this stage of his career to instantly become the #2 pitcher? No.  

Bottom line, it's just a bad team, and the evolution for how it got here falls on the GM.  Granted, the manager hasn't helped matters with his methods of handling players and lineups, but the GM hand-picked the manager, so that's on him as well.