John Jay article on viva el birdos

[oldroundballer]

Kind of a scathing view on John Jay. Some interesting points and numbers which you can twist pretty much any way you want.


http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2014/10/22/7025065/jon-jay-is-the-problem-and-apparently-always-will-be

 

[Neutron Monster]

There's a difference between evaluating who were your best players in 2014 and evaluating who are likely to be your best players in 2015.

 

[oldroundballer]

Mo has stated that based on Jay's play this year he will be the CF next year. Said they will keep Bourjos and look for ways to use him too. I suppose Bourjos would still be a threat to take some of Jay's PT if he falls off. That may be enough to get another decent year out of him.

 

[Duck_walk]

3.5 million people bought tickets to STL home games in 2014.

I believe we deserve to have deals made to find sure things in the outfield in 2015.
This "hoping" that prospects come thru and "hoping" jay repeats his career year
is getting old. We need a right handed hitting or switch hitting outfielder who is an
offensive threat. Holliday is on a down swing. If we don't want to get passed up by
Chicago and their power, we need to find some of our own. The way they outhomered
us in head to head games is embarrassing.

And we had a lot of people regress this year: Siegrist, Rosenthal, Martinez,
Wacha, Holliday, Carp.....the list goes on.

 

[Eagles_Ball]

Hard to argue about any of that. Basically states what most of us around here agree upon, Jay is what he is. Nothing to sneeze at, but nothing too special either. LOVE the statement about the manager's ability (or lack thereof) in judging value of the players. There couldn't be truer words spoken.

 

[Neutron Monster]

Some of that year over year regression is the counter to Jay - some of them had performances that were a little unlucky and we should expect somewhat of a bounceback from at least 1-2 of them.

You also left out Yadi and Shelby as ones who regressed. Plus Craig was worse than 2013 (although he's not coming back).

I suspect, on their own, the Cards likely hit a few more HR next year (Carp, Adams, and Molina will likely hit more, Peralta less, and the RF spot will hit more from Grichuk/Taveras). Absent a transaction, this team is likely to still be below NL average in HR, though.

It's hard to see the Cards signing OF power just from the perspective that they have enough good young OF that they're unlikely to dedicate a bunch of money to a long term signing at that position. If you're running the Cardinals, you already have Holliday, Jay, Taveras, Grichuk, Bourjos, and Pisciotty. If you're going to spend money at that position, it may be more likely to involve a trade of an asset than through FA.

2015 outfield FA are also rough - Nelson Cruz is sort of an OF, I guess. Beyond that? Morse? Rasmus? Chris Young? There's not that much power out there. Cruz is likely the only guy projected to hit even 25 HR from that group. Not enough to spend a bunch of money on in a contract of more than a year or so.

I think the idea of an OF trade is intriguing to me to a certain extent, because we have more bodies than we really need, and there is value in certainty as a playoff caliber team. And, they are the real power problem - our IF is producing league average pop overall.

 

[Eagles_Ball]

Originally posted by oldroundballer:
Mo has stated that based on Jay's play this year he will be the CF next year. Said they will keep Bourjos and look for ways to use him too. I suppose Bourjos would still be a threat to take some of Jay's PT if he falls off. That may be enough to get another decent year out of him.

I wonder how much of that is Mo posturing...and how much is true...much like the article/post says. Mo is a smarter man than to show his panties to the other GMs. Or at least I hope he is. Had he not shipped out Ramsey for Masterson, I'd be certain. But that one has me a bit gun shy.

 

[3Rfan]

Duck the ONLY time this was a career year for Jay was during the playoffs. He's a career .290+ hitter in the bigs and last year he had 76 RBI with his lower average and lesser defense. I cannot for life of me figure out the dislike for a guy that has done what he has in career. But then again you don't like, and say you have never liked, Holliday so that tells me all I need to know on your judgement of players.