Call me crazy, but if your 5th starter is Jack Flaherty v2018...your rotation is solid.
I don't know. It might be throwing him a bone, but it could be the guy's last home opener in a Cardinal uniform and he looked good and healthy in the spring. Pitched well. Is that a good indicator of things to come? Not at all. But I'm ok with giving him the benefit of the doubt and seeing what happens. He's earned that over the years.
He's not the only guy to ever sign a bad contract. Not to mention, at the time, it seemed like a steal compared to what he'd get on the open market. Things happen. He's still one of the top 5 best starters in team history.
eh...it didn't look that good when signed. https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/cardin...am-wainwright-contract-details-cardinals-2013
Perhaps a bit long, but it was likely a better deal in overall value than he would have fetched on the open market. That was still when teams threw big $$$ at proven veterans.
He was a year from free agency. You should get a little discount when signing a guy to what is effectively a 6 year deal. It’s part of why the Yadi extension was a little crazy too. The deals assume consistent performance over a very long time for a player of that age
I thought the strike zone was really tight and the hitters were being really patient. He struggled at times, but overall I didn't feel too bad about that start. He had good velocity and his curveball looked closer to the old version rather than last year's. Should he have been able to adapt to the smaller zone and be ok? Sure. But it was also his first start in a couple weeks due to the hammy. It wasn't a great start, but it surely could have been a lot worse.
Come on man, you act like no one else makes a bad contract decision or overpays a bit to keep a guy around and avoid him hitting the market. Look at the deal Blackmon just signed.
It was a great night at the ballpark until the game started. My first opening day and it is all it's made out to be. Yadi has done nothing to this point that would make you think this was a bad contract. Time will tell!
Dude...He needed 89 pitches to get through 3 2/3. A guy who once had great control either walks a ton of batters, or gets frozen ropes hit all over the yard on him. His fastball is no longer fast, but is straight. His cutter spins and he has ZERO control of it, can't locate it at all. And his hammer is no longer a big biting 12-6, it's very loopy. He's done, and everyone knows it. I think even he knows it, but he's a competitor and won't give it up. His best bet is to pull an Andy Benes, learn the splitty or some other gimmick pitch and try to get outs...from the bullpen...in lopsided games.
It really is awesome, huh? I've gone to one home opener, and I was just blown away. And I'm not really one of those guys to walk around with his mouth open in awe. But I did that day.
Did we watch the same game? He struggled after the 1st 2 innings, but I really thought he was getting squeezed in those first two. He made some pretty good pitches that were called balls that I thought should have been strikes or at the least were borderline and could have gone either way. It was 1 start. CMart was awful in his first start. Granted, he's in his prime, but let's give the guy a few starts to base things upon before we go burying him. If he continues to struggle after, say, 3 or 4 starts, I think it's time to move him to the bullpen and bring up Flaherty.
I didn't say they overpaid some tremendous amount, just that it didn't look like a super amazing deal at the time it was signed the way that, say, the recent Carlos Martinez extension did.
Big difference. They bought out some of CMart's arbitration years for guaranteed $ now. Those deals always look better when they sign them. It's the same type of deal for Pauly D. If he performs, it will be a steal. Even if he's average, it's not a bad contract at all. The guys who have passed arbitration and will be free agents are the ones who you have to overpay to keep.
See Ducky's post below. It's not like this start in 2018 hasn't happened a crap ton in 2017 and 2016. There's a HUGE pattern.
The real Martinez value comes from the option years - he gave away a lot of potential upside in 2022 and 2023.
He just can't throw it hard enough anymore. Yeah. It sure looks like the end is coming.
