I have started looking at LaDunc’s success with rookie pitchers since they arrived here.  Seems to be a general view that they aren’t good with rookies.  I’m going to try to look at rookie hitters as well later.

 

1996 -1997 are two good years for Cardinal Rookie pitchers.  Two big names who come out of the minors are Matt Morris and Alan Benes.  Matt clearly becomes one of the best Cardinal pitchers of all time under LaDunc.   Benes starts strong and then is felled by arm injuries before he reached his potential.  Mark Petkovsek had already had some success prior to LaDunc, but is still a borderline AAAA coming into 1996.  He proceeds to have several good years for us and Anaheim before ending his career.    Finally, TJ Mathews, recognized mostly for his contribution to bringing McGwire to St. Louis, starts his career here and goes on to have a solid career for several teams.  No streets named after him anywhere, though. 

 

What about those pitchers who came up for a short look in 1996.  Only three have any success either with the Cardinals or later and wouldn’t be considered anything other than replacement level:  Manny Aybar, Jan Frascatore, and Sean lowe.  

 

Others on the list from 1996 who you probably can’t remember.  The killer Bs:  Barber, Batchelor, Beltran and Busby.  Eiland and Erick Ludwick make up the others who get a sniff of LaDunc and then go on to anonymity. The short list of cups of coffee for 1997 are Croushore, King, McGraw and Raggio.

 

The combined ML record of all these re-treads is 85-90 with 9 saves, so it doesn’t look like LaDunc have misfired yet. 

 

In 1998, we see three new names that provide more value for the Cardinals in trade bait than they ever did as pitchers.  Juan Acevedo hits his high-water mark with the Redbirds before bringing Fernando Vina in trade.  And Looper is centerpiece for future hall of famer (just kidding) Edgar Renteria.  Cliff Politte nets us Garret Stephenson.  Suffice to say that none of them are here long enough for Duncan to four-seam them out of town, so hard to render a verdict. 

 

A couple other names appear briefly before receding into baseball history.  Jose Jiminez who has a Kip Wellsian season for the Redbirds and Bryan Eversguard for a cup of coffee.

 

1999 begins the saga of “the Natural”.  He bursts onto the scene late in the year and into the Cardinal rotation by 2000.  Hard to argue that LaRussa wouldn’t play the rookie.  Garrett Stephenson also wins a spot in the rotation – although not a rookie, he has been on the cusp until this year.  This is it for 1999-2002 – the dark years. 

 

The list of pretenders is long and painful including Stechschulte, Mike Mathews, Hackmann, Britt Rheames, Mike Crudale, Jimmy Journell, and Bud Smith (4th in Rookie of the Year balloting) who becomes Scott Rolen who becomes Troy Glaus who becomes …. a Type B draft pick in 2009.  None of this crew amounts to anything. 

 

Jason Simontacchi – let’s give this man a nice round of applause for having a most improbable year in 2002. 

 

In 2003,  Dan Haren and Kiki Calero hit the big leagues. Once again the curse of Steve Carlton intercedes and takes Dan/Kiki away in 2004 for Rick Wise (no, I’m sorry Mark Mulder).  We are left to wonder what a rotation of Kyle, Ankiel, Haren, Carpenter, Wainwright would look like.

 

2004 is notable for the very few number of pitchers employed by the major league club.  In the minors, a number of recognizable names are showing up including Wainwright, Flores and Thompson.  Jason Marquis is not technically a rookie, but gets his break with the Cards in 2004.  His best career year is in 2004.  Interesting that Marquis will win 100 games in his career and will likely finish with a similar career to Matt Morris (who woulda thunk it?)

 

In the 2005-2007 period a big crop of rookies arrive including Thompson, Wainwright, and Reyes, amongst the group that sticks.  Others that come and go are Dennis Dove, Troy Cate, Brian Falkenbourg, Tyler Johnson, and Josh Kinney

 

So what does this all mean?  Well, I can’t find one pitcher that LaRussa gave up on too early who then went on to further success.  The list is not inclusive of everyone I looked at but here the names that they had to work with:  aybar, barber, batchelor, beltran, busby, eiland, frascatore, lowe, ludwick, cruoshore, king, mcgraw, raggio, jiminez, eversguard, heiserman, Hutchinson, brunette, hackman, stechschulte, karnuth, mathews, rheames, smith, Rodriguez, Molina, Joseph, Duff, Pearce, Smith, Cali, Falkenbourg, jiminez, Dove, and Cate.  I would go further to say that many pitchers who went on to other teams never even had the middling success they had under LaDunc.

 

Looper, Smith, and Haren were traded so hard to judge LaRussa on these guys.  Alan Benes and Josh Kinney got hurt.  A few endings have yet to be written.  So we are left with three enigmas:

 

1. Anthony Reyes who was never really very good but had a couple good games. 

2. Jason Marquis who had his best year with Duncan in 2005 and while he never approached that success again; he has been eating innings for quite a while.  He would have been better than some of the other awful number 5 starters we threw out there albeit, much more expensive.

3. Rick Ankiel who had a nervous breakdown. 

 

In reading through a decade of pitchers coming through the system I conclude the following:

 

1. Walt Jocketty did a nice job cultivating some real assets for some very marginal players offset by that one horrible Haren trade.

 

2. LaRussa/Duncan has never had much internal talent to work with and not much of a conclusion on their ability to work with rookie pitchers can be drawn from this other than they know a bad pitcher when they see one. Not a bad talent actually.

 

3. Our ability to take Garret Stephenson, Jason Simontachhi, Kent Bottenfeld, Woody Williams, Joel Piniero etc etc and make them into serviceable starters is at the heart of our success.  I assume Duncan gets most/all of the credit for that.

 

I’m left to wonder a couple points.  First, I wonder whether LaDunc’s bad experience with Ankiel led them to bring Haren along more slowly.  Looking back, if they had put Haren in the rotation for the entire year in 2004, he may have blossomed and the “trade not to be talked about” wouldn’t have happened.  His Memphis numbers were great that year.  We’ll never know.

 

Second, how many real starting pitchers does a team have a chance to develop in decade? What’s shocking to me is how few of these guys ever made it big.  In 10 years it’s basically Morris, Looper (kind of), Marquis, Haren, and Wainwright.  Thompson and Simontacchi are on the fringe.

 

Hope I didn’t miss much, feel free to correct me if I made a glaring error

We are well into the new regime for daily posters at VEB.  Thought it would be interesting to hear what everyone thinks of the new lineup and changes in format over the last few months.

 

First of all,  would like to thank all of the daily contributors for the effort.  I certainly don't have the time and creativity to come up with something interesting to say every day.  So kudos to all of them for keeping VEB interesting.

 

Second, as a general rule I like the way that FANPOSTS have been self-edited to big topics.  It works much better in the last year and the posters generally put up some interesting topics.  In fact, one of the nice things this year is that some of the fanposts becomes the de facto daily/weekly site for comments which takes some of the pressure off the main posters.

 

Third, love the Red Baron and his draft analyses.  It's nice to delve so deeply into the draft.  I wish we had more regular updates on the minor league season but Gould does a nice job on that this year so I get my fill from there. 

 

Fourth,  I like that all the games have separate game threads now instead of the daily post becoming a game thread but it does seem they don't always come up in time.  Is that just me?  Also, I don't like the Cards box score at the top of game threads because if I haven't been following the game, I don't like to log in and see the score before I get a chance to troll through the thread.  Is there a way to block that? 

 

Fifth, as far as the posters go, I think their main goal is to generate some discussion with new insight and I think they do a good job of that.  My only recommendation is to get the daily post up earlier.  I used to love waking up at 6:00 am last year and seeing a new post for the day.  They seem to be later this year.  Also, it would be interesting to have a weekly or monthly post on a review of the rest of the major leagues.  I love the Cardinals but would like to see a broader post from time to time.  Llboros used to do a session where he would answer five questions for the opposing team's poster on their site and we would get to see a discussion of five points about the opposing team on our site.  Are you still going to be doing that?  (I'm not a daily reader so apologies if I have missed these).

 

Sixth, can we get more Anthony Reyes posts  -- seriously what does one have to do to get an Anthony fix anymore :)

 

Seventh,  can't say enough about some of  the great consistent comments from Sleepy, Viva, Tom S, Hardcore, Fourstick, and others.  Always a good way to kill an hour every night. 

 

As the title says, let's keep any comments constructive.

Verducci has an interesting piece today that discusses Hamels/Shields contracts and attributes Hamels much higher aggregate salary in his new contract to the fact that Hamels was called up too early in May to be a super-two. 

Interesting topic as it relates to Rasmus.  What exactly is the economic argument for bringing up Colby before June 1?  With a glut of OF already doesn't it make sense to keep him at AAA for 3 months and then bring him up so he doesn't lose a year of cost control?  What kind of numbers would you need to have aplayer put up to justify breaking camp with him. 

Only difference I can see is that Colby is an everyday player so if he makes roster you might get 60-70 games from him whereas with Hamels they only got two starts.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

Still working my way through Xmas gifts.  I got the complete NY Times history of great Cardinal moments.  It is a newspaper with selected pages from key days in Cardinals history as written by the NYT baseball staff.  Pretty interesting in that it is a non-biased view of events.  Starts in 1926 and goes through modern times. 

Many, many interesting features but one of the oddest is that when the Cards clinch in 1930 there is a separate article on that page discussing Babe Ruth coming out to pitch the final regular season game in 1930 for the Yankees against Boston. 

Guy hasn't pitched in 9 years and to the best of anyone's knowledge was not practicing for weeks/months ahead of time.  So after a nine year layoff, he comes out and throws goose eggs at Boston for eight innings.  Goes the full nine for the win, and from all appearances  dominates the opposition (ok, Boston only won 52 games that year).

A few quotes from the article below.

"Babe Ruth stepped to the mound for the first time in a decade..and to 12,000 visibly and audibly impressed fans demonstrated  that the mighty left arm... still retains its power."

"on the pitching slab, he dealt speeds and curves in a manner that utterly bewildered the Red Sox"

"all four hits...credited to Sox in the first six innings...were scratches.  Until the sixth no Sox reached second base."

"In the second inning and again in the third, the Babe, with a man on first, picked up a hot smash off the bat, and started a double play by deft throw to second."

The Babe also went 2-5 hitting. 

No one on this site needs recitation of the great pitching career of the Babe, but still what an amazing story.  How many ML pitchers could take nine years off and pitch a complete game win, let alone dominate, another ML team.  Without practice.

Not to mention, he starts two double plays from a position he hasn't played in 9 years and goes 2-5.

Makes you wonder what he would have done had they let him pitch for the Yankees.  Figure conservatively, an average of 20 wins a year for those great Yankee teams and he could have come close to 300 wins AND 714 home runs.

Final question.  Does the P-D offer any historical distillation of Cardinals reporting?

 

 

 

 

 

I opened up my presents and got a complete set of 2008 Topps cards for Xmas.  Been perusing them all morning.  Was looking at a couple names that you don't hear much for the HOF but have accumulated some nice career numbers.

Omar Vizquel.  Slick glove.  Let's assume he gets 3000 hits (2600+ right now).  Only pure SS with 3000 hits.  Can you keep him out?

Gary Sheffield.  Pure hitter.  Pretty consistent over a very long period.  Had a reputation as the most feared hitter in the NL for years and always seemed pretty clutch. 

Pudge Rodriguez.  Never saw this guy play much but he is clearly on the cusp.  Could use two more good seasons.  Does he have anything left?

Andy Pettitte.  Perpetually retiring and seemingly uninterested but he has a HOF career going if he work up enough enthusiasm to stick it out 2-3  more years.

Chipper Jones.  Backbone of a lot of good Braves teams.  Could end up at 500/3000 but will probably fall a bit short.

 Jones/Sheffield go in on my ticket.  I love Pettitte.  He won a lot but he might be in the Hall of the Very Good.  Jones.  Looks like he will go.   But you gotta love Vizquel.  If he can keep on keeping on he'll be hard to keep out with 3000 hits.  Did the Giants re-sign him?

 

 

Belatedly reading some of the Pujols tributes and noticed a quote from Albert himself on BP saying that the nerve operation was an attempt to fix elbow problems caused by ligament damage but that there was a 25% chance he would need the ligament replacement surgery. 

 

Pujols said. "The doctors are optimistic that this surgery will work and I'll be fine for next season. I know there's a 25 percent chance it might not work, but I'm staying optimistic."

 

Was that explained at time of surgery?  I thought the nerve operation was unrelated to his longer term problem.  So, do we really have a 25% chance that Albert can't go out there this year?

 

Does that make it much less likely the Cards will dive in and make any big acquisitions this winter?

 

 

Many saw Kozma as a bit of an overdraft last summer, but the pool of middle infield talent was anything but deep, and the Cardinals wanted to ensure that they get their guy. So far, he’s looking like a legitimate first-rounder after a 5-for-15 weekend that included his first two home runs of the season. That stretch upped his averages to .322/.420/.492 in 16 games for the River Bandits. The reason Kozma may be underrated is that he lacks that one plus-plus tool to get excited about, but at the same time, he’s one of those players whose greatest strength is a lack of weaknesses. He’s a good hitter, a good fielder, and he has a good arm and runs well. It’s hard to see superstar potential in him, but at the same time, if you’re starting a pool of current 2007 high school draftees who will turn into everyday big league starters, take Kozma early.

Looks like our 2007 draft is looking up

 

 "A new front office faces the challenge of a team with one star and one burgeoning one, and little else around which to build. It could be a few years before the Cards contend again, which inspires the question: when does Albert Pujols become a piece to be moved?"  This from BP yesterday.

Seems there has been precious little said on this board about the topic.  Albert is a hero and they will retire his number at Busch but realistically isn't trading him now for an upgraded system make sense?

1.  Declining production last year with MV3 a distant memory made Albert seem a bit more human
   
2.  Chronically bad feet -- does anyone think this will ever get better.  No, it will get worse.
   
3.  Likely to miss half a season when his elbow finally goes.
   
4.  Cards at least two-three years from being a serious contender.  
   
5.  Market is paying up for stars right now.  Albert could bring 2-3 young major league  players and a couple prospects or a bunch of prospects.  Pujols for David Freese II in 5 years sounds unappetizing.
   
6.  Reasonable contract for one of the top 5 in baseball.
   
7.  Everyone says Albert is a good baserunner --but it seems to me he runs into a lot of outs.  That's my personal pet peeve and certainly not a reason to trade him, just saying.
   
8.  Josh Phelps -- need I say more.
   
9.  Cash.  Nice way for the owners to line their pockets (let's not forget, they aren't in this for altrusim).
   
10.  Mo is exactly the kind of temporary GM who can make this trade.  He'll disappear into obscurity with the epitaph -- "he traded Pujols".  A big name GM could never do it.

Are Albert's best years behind him?  I read on a recent thread where his lifetime numbers don't project out all that well.

I'm a win now guy and Albert is a winner, but if we really are going to rebuild shouldn't we go "all-in".

Thoughts?