Cubs going to sign Darvish?
- Thread starter Duck_walk
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I'm holding out hope for Archer/Colome/Longoria. I think it's actually going to happen. Archer would be the arm that I think could make the Birds uber competitive. I truly think Reyes will be an animal. CMart/Reyes/Archer would be as good as any 1-3 in the NL. Wacha and Weaver/Flaherty/Waino (assuming both Weaver/Flaherty wouldn't get moved, it just has to be one of them) are a pretty darned good 4/5. Offense would be good enough. Marp leads off, Pham, middle is some combo of Ozuna/Fowler/Dejong, Longo, Yadi, and Wong...I'm sold!
Time will tell. Darvish is not a done deal. The market seems to be moving very slow so there are a ton of possibilities out there. I think the Birds are set to make a big splash this off season and there is still much more to come. I would use some of their young arms, but none of the top 3 to get a piece and then spend the money to get a bat like Hosmer and a closer Davis, but as always it's not my money.
we still aren't very good when Dexter fowler and Dejong are our power hitters...just saying. But, would be a nice improvement. I still think starting pitching is fine with weaver and reyes coming back...get a closer and another big stick.
Currently? No. With Archer and Colome throwing pitches for the Birds? Yes. Those two are serious upgrades. The lineup, top to bottom, is just fine with Fowler and Dejong in the middle. While 3/4/5 might not be outstanding, the depth of that lineup would be its strength.
I'm just saying dejong and fowler remind me of ron gant and ray lankford brian jordan....
Was starting pitching our issue last year?
Lankford and Jordan would've been fine if Kent Bottenfield wasn't the ace of those staffs.
It wasn't. But counting on Waino and not replacing Lynn (with someone other than a rookie) is a recipe for disaster. Pitching and defense don't go through slumps.
Agreed..and baserunning! Just like what we've done before and will feel much better if we get a closer...even if that's all we end up doing. Would be nice to have another stick at 3rd. Longoria can come join the Cardinal Nation and see a resurgence.
I know for "small market" teams its all about having inexpensive players that you control for x number of years. But I saw the list this morning and there are 174 major league free agents still available. Many of them are better baseball players than some on the Cardinals roster.
That was a good outfield in the mid-late 1990s. Especially Lankford. They were not the problem with those teams.
What matters is where you can add the most wins for the cost. If that is Longoria? Fine. If that is an SP? Fine. If that is another outfielder? Fine.
And I'd argue that they're bat effing ish crazy.
This isn't the Japanese league. It's like real major league baseball.
I think we all agree we just need to do more...what it looks like exactly...not sure. Would be nice to have a nice 1-2-3 punch if we get to an actual playoff series.
No, that'd be the list of guys that toed the slab from about '89-'93 or so. Good gravy, that's just not an impressive bunch of arms.
Nah. Those are Chiefs and Royals fans. This organization has put a competitive product on the field for a long time. It's not an accident. They realized the last couple of years where the issue was.
Speculating some, but they also could have extended Lynn if they wanted to do so, especially after dumping Leake. Might they not be as high on him as some of us are?
And, pretty clearly, they think Mikolas will do fine against real ML competition. His numbers in Japan were ridiculous. He led the league in Ks and had the best SO/BB ratio of any pitcher in the Central league (including relievers.) He also showed real improvement over his time there...it wasn't like he went as a AAA guy and was blowing guys away in 2015. Something clicked in him in 2016 and 2017. He started mowing them down.
The Cards are probably hoping that translates into something like league average performance.
A lot of the stats models with experience adjusting for Japanese experience like Mikolas better for 2018 than Lynn. The scouts don't exactly rag on him, either, he's bringing it in the low 90s with a slider as his out pitch.
I like the lotto ticket aspect of his contract, getting a productive starting pitcher for <$10 M per annum is a heck of a deal. Hopefully it works out. If not, well, he's an affordable sunk cost.
It feels kinda like this:
Martinez and Wacha are the same guys. Probably a slight decline in value here given Wacha was healthier than normal last year.
Lynn and Leake are now Weaver and Mikolas. Leake was bad, and Lynn was slightly below league average. They don't have to be awesome to beat their predecessors (although Weaver was ridiculous in August and September, and that value does have to be replaced)
Waino is Waino with a backstop (Reyes recovery, although I doubt he's in a position to through 150 IP this year, plus Flaherty potential as the next man up?) If the Cards are willing to pull the ripcord fast enough, this is probably fine.
It does feel like another guy would be helpful for 2018 given the potential for injuries + rookie uncertainty, but I don't know that they want to make a long term commitment at full FA prices like they'd probably have to offer Lance. Lynn for one year at $16 M? Fine, but he's going to want 3-4 years, and the Cards aren't going to give him that.
A trade for Archer - even one where you give up Flaherty and also get Longoria - probably makes a lot more sense than Lynn.
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Eh, it was probably both sides of the ledger then. Cards didn't have much pop besides Pedro Guerrero. Todd Zeile doesn't exactly light my heart on fire. Ozzie was almost certainly our best position player in lots of years from, say, 1988-1993 until Ray became good and Ozzie became old.
I vaguely recall Joe Magrane and Ken Hill not being awful. No question, we didn't have a Waino or a Carp, and we had some guys who were pretty bad. I feel like our pitching bottomed out more in the early-mid 1990s than in the late 1980s. I am struggling to think of pitchers who were decent in that time. Stottlemyre? Tewksbury?
When you think about our pitching then, you realize just how valuable Gant/Jordan/Lankford were to the Cards getting back to the playoffs under TLR.
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