SB Nation User Blog: mtalken

FJM closing their doors.

mtalken — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:46:37 -0000

It's another sad day in sports blogdom.

I've become very attached to reading sports blogs. I've tried to create my own, but without any significant niche that made mine unique, it kind of went to the wayside, so I appreciate how difficult it is to have a very good sports blog that gets decent readership. I check in from time to time all over the SBNation network. I try to check out Future Redbirds from time to time to see the good work they're doing there. There's the intermittent posts by MLB.com Cardinals writer Matthew Leach that give new insight into what's going on in and around the clubhouse. But there are only a few blogs that have entered my regular rotation. I always check VEB, I always check MLBTradeRumors, and I always check Fire Joe Morgan (http://www.firejoemorgan.com -- The link thing seems to be broken right now otherwise I'd link it the right way).

Sadly, they are closing their doors. If you've never checked them out, it's still worthwhile even though there won't be new posts most likely. They do an excellent job of ripping apart bad sports journalism. Many of the articles are very prominent writers who get quite a bit of coverage on a national scale, including an article fairly recently by the LA Times' Bill Plaschke. Of course, the original purpose was to bring down Joe Morgan, by pointing out how ridiculous and contradictory he really is, and they did an excellent job of keeping up with the regular Joe Morgan chats on ESPN.com, but with the news that Joe Morgan will quite possibly no longer be doing Sunday Night Baseball, and with time constraints taking them away just like they did with lboros, Fire Joe Morgan will be no more.

The writers do acknowledge that there might be an occasional post if they find something really egregious and want to do a post, but those of you who are regular viewers, like myself, will certainly not find the amount of new content going up to be what you're used to.

So, with lboros hanging them up, and now the boys over at FJM ending their shenanigans as well, it's certainly a sad period for blogdom (at least for MY regular viewing of blogdom).

My plan for fixing the team

mtalken — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:52:13 -0000

Of course, the plan at this point is always to put enough out there to help the team make a run at the playoffs without actually selling the future, so with that in mind, here's my thoughts on the subject:

While Matt Holliday is certainly the sexiest name we've discussed on this board as of late, I don't think that noticeably improves our team. Our needs, in this order, are: bullpen help (especially from the left side), starting pitching, middle infield.

To improve all three, we either need to get incredibly lucky or we'd have to sell most of the farm, which we don't want to do, but I think the first two can be helped without doing too much damage. The Mariners beat writer for the Seattle Times wrote a blog entry stating which players he expected to see traded and in what order. The list was this:

1) Arthur Rhodes

2) Erik Bedard

3) Jarrod Washburn

4) Raul Ibanez

5) Adrian Beltre

The URL for the full article is: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/mariners/2008/07/trade_winds_blowing.html

Now, having said that, with what Seattle gave up for Bedard, I don't think they'd accept any package from us that didn't include Rasmus plus others. But the other two guys at the top there are both options.

Jarrod Washburn, according to the writer, would pretty much be a salary dump. Now, his stats look REALLY bad, and early on, he was exactly that. He currently sits 4-8 with a 4.83 ERA. However, since May 25th, he has pitched in 9 straight games, going at least 5 innings every time, and over that time, he lowered his ERA from 6.99 to the current 4.83.

Rhodes would be the one that would take a real prospect to get. I still don't think it would be a king's ransom, by any means, but he would take at least something to get. He makes league minimum, as his contract was a minor-league contract, and he currently has a very non-Cardinals like 3.06 ERA from the pen, and most importantly, he's a lefty. I know the whole of the bullpen sucks right now, but I think the biggest need, seeing how Villone and Flores have been, has been the left side of that bullpen.

If the Cardinals could work out a deal to get these two, and the injured players eventually come back, we could see this as our pitching staff:

Starting Rotation:

Adam Wainwright
Todd Wellemeyer
Kyle Lohse
Jarrod Washburn
Braden Looper
(If someone falters) Joel Pineiro/Jaime Garcia

Bullpen

Tyler Johnson (L)
Arthur Rhodes (L)
Ryan Franklin
Kyle McClellan
Russ Springer
Chris Perez
Jason Isringhausen

Obviously the bullpen isn't entirely fixed with this move, but this leaves Perez and Izzy as the only guys who should really scare you on the mound. (Kinda sad that those are the past and potential future closers, isn't it?)

All-Star traded before the ASG?

mtalken — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:51:34 -0000

I saw this question on another forum that I look at, and no one had an answer, so I thought I'd pose the question to all of you, since all of you guys have a pretty impressive amount of sports knowledge.

Obviously CC Sabathia this year was NOT selected to the ASG, and for good reason, but let's say hypothetically he was. Having been selected to the ASG for the AL-affiliated Cleveland Indians and then being traded shortly before the ASG to the NL-affiliated Milwaukee Brewers, what would happen with Sabathia?

He made the team, of course, for his achievements as an Indian, but there's just no way, both for marketing reasons but also because of the "This Time it Counts" idea that they'd let him play in an Indians uniform.

Does he forfeit his right to be an all-star? Does he go as an additional representative of the Brewers? Is he considered an active player if he does go? And if he does, does someone get bounced in order to balance the roster?

My guess is this: The player would be invited to the ASG, but would not be allowed to play because of the roster issues involved.

What I ask of you guys is this: Is there any historical precedent for such a thing? Surely an All-Star has been traded prior to the ASG at SOME point in the ASG's 79-year history. I started digging through archives from 1994-2007 and found nothing, but that's certainly far from complete.

If anyone is aware of a historical precedent, please post it here.

Oswalt to St. Louis? A little "what would you give?" game.

mtalken — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:59:31 -0000

Link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bb/5729414.html

In a Houston Chronicle article, apparently some reporter asked Oswalt about the possibility of a trade, since apparently he's coming up on free agency.

Oswalt's comments basically indicated he's happy in Houston, but that if the team asked him about a trade, he's consider waiving his no-trade clause. Furthermore, while Oswalt himself made no statements concerning who he'd be willing to pitch for and who he wouldn't be, "people close to him say he wouldn't want to pitch in the New York market and that he'd only consider the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves."

First things first. It's crazy to really think this is going to happen, at least at this point. We're trying to get younger, we're trying to build for the future, and we're trying to see who's worth keeping around and who's not. Furthermore, Oswalt is happy and the Astros are certainly far from considering entering selling mode (afterall, we're 20 games into a season after their GM traded for Miguel Tejada). So, please, by no means consider this post to be a legitimate possibility.

The game I thought I'd play though, is twofold.

1) What would you give up to get Roy Oswalt, if we're still in it at the All-Star Break and Houston was willing to trade him?

2) What contract would you be willing to give Oswalt in order to keep him? (Because he would most definitely want a contract extension to waive his no-trade clause.)

Assumptions for the game, so we're all on the same page.

1) Oswalt will waive his no-trade if given a chance to pitch in St. Louis and given a contract extension he is willing to sign.

2) Oswalt will be the same guy he's been the last 3 years (2.94, 2.98, 3.18 ERAs from 05-07) and not the current 6.00 ERA guy he is now.

3) Don't worry about what you think you could get Oswalt for, say what's the most you'd be willing to give up. Of course, we would all assume you'd start lower, and hope the GM would be silly enough to go for a Brad Thompson for Oswalt trade, straight up, but that's no fun. Would you give up Rasmus? Would you give up Garcia? Perez? Izturis? (haha). No dumping players with negative trade value and saying Houston would want them, either, Kennedy and Izturis shouldn't be part of your trade.

Anyway, have at it. What would you give up? What would you offer Oswalt in order to get him to waive his no-trade?

Brad Thompson as a Starter

mtalken — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:28:25 -0000

Looking at the conversation about who’s most deserving to be in the rotation between Reyes and Thompson and people citing Thompson’s overall statistics made me wonder if you took out the starts only, would he look like the better option?

Having said this, I don’t know why we can’t have both of them in there, and boot one of the other people (probably Wellemeyer in my mind, deserving of that scorn or not).

Regardless though, in looking at Brad Thompson’s overall stats and his stats as only a starter, it’s very interesting reading.

	2007 Overall	2007 Starting	Career
ERA	4.73	4.66	4.00
K/9	3.69	3.30	4.26
GB/FB	1.61	1.76	1.89

To start, it’s easy to see Brad Thompson’s success comes from his ability to get ground balls. When he gets more ground balls, his ERA stays low. More on this later. It’s also easy to notice that when Thompson took the starts, he looked even less to strike batters out, striking out just 3.3 batters per 9 innings.

I also split out Thompson’s quality starts vs. his other starts. In 17 starts in 2007, he had 8 quality starts. It’s not shocking to think that in quality starts his ERA is very good, while in other starts, it’s pretty bad, but here are the exact numbers:

	ERA	K/9	GB/FB
Overall	4.665227	3.304536	1.762376
Quality Starts	2.470588	3.705882	2.0625
In Other Starts	8.114754	2.704918	1.408163
In Starts with a GB/FB >2	2.25	4	3.2

The interesting things here are that in quality starts, he has a good ERA and a ground ball ratio of over 2. This led me to look at his ERA ONLY in games where he posted that 2/1 ratio, where he is obviously dominant, posting a 2.25 ERA in 6 starts (17 total starts). This is also true of Thompson when he pitched in relief in 2005 and 2006, posting GB/FB ratios of better than 2 both years and posting ERAs of 2.95 and 3.34 those two years.

Now, this isn’t the only way possible for him to have success. If you go start-by-start, you see that in late July, he posted back to back quality starts where he didn’t hit that ratio either time, and in fact, on July 22nd, he pitched 6 IP and gave up 2 ER, while getting only 9 ground balls to 8 fly balls, a very un-Thompson-like ratio. However, looking at this two starts, there is no reason to think that this is anything more than the exception that proves the rule, as he seemingly did nothing else better those two starts to compensate.

The other interesting thing about Thompson can be found on his “Splits” page on ESPN.com: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=6264

If you look at his splits, in his first 30 pitches, he tends to give up lower batting averages, but still high OBP. Later in his pitch counts, he tends to walk fewer, but the OBP stays the same, as he gives up about a .340 batting average from pitches 31-75. To give comparison, I go to everyone’s favorite whipping boy, Anthony Reyes. Reyes struggles slightly more than Thompson during his first 30 pitches, but then settles down considerably during pitches 31-75, where Thompson just switches from walks to hits.

This shows us that Thompson is consistent throughout and we really are getting the real Thompson, whereas Reyes simply needs to get his focus, control, or whatever it is he lacks in his first 30 pitches. (Of course, a secondary part of this is that he might only get PAST the first 30 pitches when he’s pitching well, but either way, it proves the same point for Reyes—that there is reason to believe he can improve considerably over last year’s numbers, whereas Thompson is likely to stay the same guy).

Reyes’s splits: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=6225

I have no hatred of Thompson or problem with him being in the rotation, as his 4.66 ERA starting for league minimum is certainly better than paying Kip Wells several million to pull an ERA of 6.27, but, Thompson’s spot in the rotation ought to be based on two things: his ability to get ground balls (his key to success, noted long before this post) and the lack of options with more upside, since he is who he is.

The Importance of Escape

mtalken — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:07:59 -0000

As many, if not all of you are aware now, there has been a terrible tragedy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. As a current resident and grad assistant at NIU with a wife attending the law school, the last 36 hours have been very stressful.

Natural questions of why the guy did what he did, why he chose the classroom he chose, why those people died and why people like my wife, who was in a building less than a block away, remained pretty much completely safe have been through my head.

However, despite all of that, I can say that with pitchers and catchers reporting I had planned to wear my Cardinals jersey to school today (the teachers at my H.S. typically do a casual Friday thing), and between the fact that it brought up discussions with colleagues and students about sports, the fact that I have spent much of the last 36 hours either watching the news or frequenting websites like Viva El Birdos, Matthew Leach's blog and MLB Trade Rumors, and the optimism of a new baseball season just around the bend, I can say without hesitation that baseball has given me momentary escapes from the continuing coverage that wouldn't be possible in any other way.

I know I'm an unscathed bystander in this horrible tragedy. I was not directly affected in that no one I know was hurt or killed. However many other people I know who work in this town were affected directly. I can't imagine how many of them have retreated to their favorite pastimes, whether it be one of the many Chicago sports teams, such as the Bears, Bulls, Cubs or White Sox, or for many of them the Green Bay Packers or their college teams, including even the teams of Northern Illinois University or the University of Illinois, where the shooter was apparently studying.

That's the beautiful thing about sports. Whether we root for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, or the New York Yankees. Whether we root for the Detroit Red Wings or the Indianapolis Colts. Whether we root for the UCLA Men's Basketball team or the U of Florida football team. We don't embrace these players and these teams because it's relevant to our everyday lives. We embrace them because they AREN'T relevant to our everyday lives. We embrace them because they help us escape our everyday lives.

So while we may all argue about whether Izturis warrants a roster spot or whether the Glaus for Rolen trade was good or bad for the Cardinals or even LBoros's recent posts about Jocketty's legacy, please join me in taking a step back and just appreciating the fact that we have sports to distract us and entertain us when we want to escape what is often a monotonous, stressful everyday life.

Best signings so far this off-season

mtalken — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:03:48 -0000

Seeing another bargain pitcher sign a one year deal (Jon Lieber with the Cubs for 3.5M), I thought "Wow! What a good deal, I'd have been stoked if the Cards got Lieber for 3.5M!" and thought to myself about what other signings so far this off season have just been really good signings.

So here's my list of the great signings (no trades, someone else can do that one, or you can just talk about that in the comments). Order is alphabetically, not based on any type of ranking. However, I did cut it off at what I thought were the 10 best deals that I remembered or found easily.

Milton Bradley - Rangers - 1yr/5.0M

A VEB favorite. We all would have loved to see Bradley, even as dysfunctional as he is, to be manning one of the corner outfield spots for 5M a year. Bradley adds a switch-hitting who had over a .900 OPS in 2007. He's a very good bat at this stage in his career and in hitter-friendly Texas, he could have another very good year with the bat. He would make more, but a combination of injuries and personality conflicts have kept him from ever achieving his financial potential.

Michael Barrett - Padres - 1yr/3.5M

Barrett had a crappy year last year, but 3.5M is a good amount to pay him hoping for him to rebound to his career average OPS of .748. .748 may not sound that great either, and it wouldn't be--if it were coming from a corner outfield position or 1st base. From the catcher spot, it's pretty solid.

Mike Cameron - Brewers - 1yr/7.0M

This is both a reasonable signing for dollars (afterall, fellow center fielders Rowand and Hunter cashed in for 5 year deals for being only marginally better by most stats) and it helps the Brewers. They can now move players all around the diamond, putting Hall back into the infield and getting Braun's abysmal glove into left. Good signing for the Crew.

Matt Clement - Cardinals - 1yr/1.5M

A bargain bin purchase and at 1.5M base, it's a very good deal. If he ends up sucking, they'll pay him very little. If he turns out to be better, he'll still end up with a bargain-type deal.

In my mind, Clement has always been underrated, going back to his time with the Cubs. Prior to his injury-riddled 2007, where he posted an ERA over 6 in about 60 innings, his career high in ERA was 5.14. In his three years in Chicago, he pitched like #2 guy, posting ERAs of 3.60, 4.11 and 3.68 and averaging over 190 innings over those three years.

Adam Everett - Twins - 1yr/2.8M

Another name mentioned a lot on VEB. At first glance, I saw this and thought, "Wow! Another bargain!" but I have to say I'm thinking more and more that this is about what Everett's worth. He's an excellent glove, but his career high in OPS is .702 and his average is .656. That's pretty bad. I'm leaving this on my list just for kicks, but I think I must have only seen games where Everett was good, because I thought he'd be a .700 average OPS kinda guy, and then, with his glove, this deal would be excellent.

Kosuke Fukudome - Cubs - 4yrs/48M

This signing may turn out to suck, but right now, I like it. I believe there was a posting fee on top of this contract, if I remember, but it's still a good deal. The Cubs will sell more jerseys in Japan, will probably sell more MLB-TV subscriptions to Japanese fans, and he's a left-handed bat who is supposedly at least decent defensively. Kosuke could be a great signing.

Jon Lieber - Cubs - 1rs/3.5M

God, I hate putting the Cubs on this list twice (of course, as a Cardinals fan, I've always hated them, but living near Rockford, IL and being exposed to them as much as I am, oh my god are they obnoxious!), however this was a great deal. Lieber's injury last season was a tendon in one of his legs and was a non-pitching related injury, so he should be fine to go. If he's league average, the Cubs win big on this deal, and speculation is that it opens up the possibility for the CUbs to trade Marshall in a deal for Brian Roberts, so it could have a domino effect for the Cubs.

Alex Rodriguez - Yankees - 10yrs/275M

The Yankees needed A-Rod and A-Rod needed the Yankees. They're the only ones who can afford him, but can you argue with what the Yankees are getting? Probably the overall best player in baseball and at worst, the 2nd best hitter in the game right now (arguably behind our own El Hombre), and he plays a tough position. In addition, this deal should keep him in Yankee pinstripes long enough for him to not only break Bonds' record (assuming he remains healthy), but for him to break a LOT of records and probably post 800+ homers

Carlos Silva - Mariners - 4yrs/48M

A sinker-baller with a low 4 career ERA in the AL going to Seattle. With another pitcher friendly park, Silva should continue being a better than league average pitcher. We all drool over Burnett at 11M a year now, I think Silva could be the same way in a few years. Oh yeah, he's also only 28 right now, so he's still got a chance to get better.

Josh Towers - Rockies - 1yr/400k

Not a great pitcher by any means. While his name was mentioned at lot here on VEB, he's actually pretty bad. A career ERA of 4.96 and last season at 5.38 are not really what you want to add to your rotation. However, he's only 2 years removed from a 3.71 ERA (in the AL East, no less), and at 400,000 a year, this is a no-risk, high-reward move. Even if he makes your rotation and sucks, he's the #5 guy, and everyone outside about 4 teams in baseball have crappy #5 starters. And oh yeah, those 4 teams pay their #5 guys a LOT MORE than 400k a year.

Anyway, there they are, in my opinion. The 10 best signings so far this season. Banter away, fellow VEBers :)

Some reasons for optimism -- This off season hasn't been THAT bad.

mtalken — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:40:15 -0000

Players either let go or traded:

OF So Taguchi (38)
OF Preston Wilson (33)
OF Jim Edmonds (37)
IF Miguel Cairo (33)
IF Russell Branyan (32)
SP Kip Wells (30)
SP Mike Maroth (30)
C Gary Bennett (35)
C Kelly Stinnett (37)

New arrivals:

IF Cesar Izturis (27)
SP Matt Clement (33)
OF Brian Barton (25)
C Jason LaRue (33)

Numbers in parentheses are the players' ages. I know some of the signings have us scratching our heads and wondering if this "new direction" is lip service or reality. However, looking at the players on these two lists, it becomes pretty evident that so far Mo has done a good job of getting rid of some of the aging or ineffective players on the roster.

Taguchi's obviously a fan favorite and had a pretty good career as a bench player for us, but he's a 38 year old version of Skip Schumacher. Should Schumacher/Taguchi be on the roster? Maybe. Maybe not. But at least this time, if one of them IS going to be on the roster, it's the one in his mid 20's, not his mid to late-30's. Wilson is gone, and I can't imagine any one of us is anything but happy with that departure. Same with Cairo and Branyan.

On the pitchers, neither Maroth nor Wells panned out last year, and while it may be a no-brainer, Mo didn't bring either of those pitchers back either, moving on from mistakes made. The two catchers, Bennett and Stinnett, both were the no-risk, no-reward type of players that Aaron Miles is, where they're certainly not going to hurt us, but they certainly aren't going to exceed the humble expectations handed to them as bench players.

Jim Edmonds is the only controversial player to move on from this list, and with the news that he wanted to leave, and with our outfield depth, this isn't necessarily a bad move either.

Now, look at the new guys. Two guys in their 20s, which if you look at the outgoing list, you notice NONE of those guys are in the 20s. Even Izturis, who none of us are overly high on, has SOME possibility for actually becoming better. Of the two older guys, Clement's actually a good investment. If he sucks, we lose less than 2M and we reject his option moving forward. If he returns to what he was at his peak, then we have a #2/#3 type pitcher.

LaRue is a guy we're buying low on. If he sucks, we basically have this year's version of Bennett or Stinnett, except better defensively. If he returns anything to his former state, then we have a viable option to fill in 40-50 games without a significant dropoff, giving Yadi more rest and allowing him to be more effective later in the year.

Overall, I know there are moves most of us disagree with, most notably the Aaron Miles resigning, but let's not lose complete sight of the fact that this off-season hasn't been completely horrible yet.

Free Agent Pitchers: What will they likely get?

mtalken — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:54:48 -0000

To get a basic idea of what several of the pitchers this year might get, I looked at what the 2006 free agent class pitchers got.

I focused on the pitchers right around the age of Silva and Lohse, so I focused on pitchers from 28-30.

2006

Pitcher - Age - Career ERA+ - Free Agent year ERA+ - Salary/Years

Eaton - 29 - 88 - 90 - 3yrs/24.5M
Marquis - 29 - 96 - 74 - 3yrs/21M
Meche - 29 - 101 - 99 - 5yrs/55M
Padilla - 30 - 101 - 102 - 3yrs/34M
Armas - 29 - 95 - 85 - 1yr/3.5M

And our 2007 Free Agents

Silva - 28 - 102 - 103
Lohse - 29 - 95 - 98
Jennings - 29 - 99 - 68
Kennedy - 29 - 94 - 88

Silva's closest comparison by the stats is Padilla, but Meche is probably a better comparison. Both Silva and Meche were both considered up and comers. Figure there's always inflation from year to year, so probably something like 5 years/60 million is a fair expectation.

Lohse is along the same lines but a little less, but he'll probably get 4 or 5 years at around 10-11 a year.

Kennedy's closest comparison by these numbers is Adam Eaton, at 3 years/24.5M.

Jennings might be a relatively cheap investment overall if we could pick him up for what Marquis got. If you recall, Marquis' contract seemed out of line with what everyone else of his talent got. In fact, the only thing he did better than Armas was stay on the mound. I think it's actually a reasonable expectation that Jennings might get a very similar contract to what MArquis got, without any inflation at all. 3 years at 7M per stands as a relatively cheap deal in this market.

The issue with Jennings of course is whether he's actually healthy or not. He missed considerable time with tendinitis and pretty much sucked when he came back, posting a career low ERA+ and posting an actual ERA over 6.

My projected guesses on contracts for the almost-30s:

C. Silva - 5 years/60M
K. Lohse - 4 years/45M
J. Kennedy - 3 years/27M
J. Jennings - 3 years/24M or a 1 year contract to rehabilitate his image.

Would you want any of these guys for these prices? Or any arguments why these numbers might be off considerably?

La Russa and Prospects

mtalken — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:23:28 -0000

Many people have brought up the idea that Tony La Russa is against playing young players and that he and Duncan have done a bad job in the way they've handled top talent. With the focus on the organizational aspects of talent development over the last few months with the hiring of Luhnow and the firing of Jocketty, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at how TLR has handled top prospects and to see if it really does seem to be HIS fault or if he's not being given the young players that have the pedigree to uproot the proven veterans he has obviously favored over the last few years.

To really make this a good cut-off, I've decided to look at the top 50 prospects St. Louis has had over the TLR period, according to Baseball America.

I do want to say that while I obviously have my biases going into doing this, I have NOT looked at the lists nor drawn conclusions prior to making this diary.

Top 50 Prospects, listed by name, rank(highest rank if multiple years), and year(year of highest rank if multiple years)

Anthony Reyes (41, 2006)
Adam Wainwright (49, 2004)
Blake Hawksworth (47, 2004)
Jimmy Journell (44, 2002)
Bud Smith (39, 2001)
Albert Pujols (42, 2001)
Rick Ankiel (1, 2000)
Chad Hutchinson (42, 1999)
J.D. Drew (1, 1999)
Braden Looper (32, 1997)
Eli Marrero (33, 1998)
Matt Morris (25, 1997)
Alan Benes (6, 1996)

A few of these players can't really be used for the purposes of what I'm doing here. Blake Hawksworth, who spent this season in AAA and has been progressing through the system at a good pace, hasn't played for TLR ever, so we have to leave him out. I contend that Hutchinson is in the same camp, since he pitched a total of 4 innings under La Russa, and was never really successful even at the AAA level, posting a 7.9 ERA in 98 innings in 2001, the same year that he pitched in St. Louis.

Braden Looper was basically shipped off before he had any representative number of innings.

Now, let's look at players who were of marginal to good use to the team in some way:

Eli Marrero: An excellent utility player, although without looking up random sabermetric stats, I'm guessing not really a player who ever had a VORP that is befitting what you'd expect from a #33 prospect.

Bud Smith: Had a very good 2001, where he finished 4th in the Rookie of the Year, going 6-3 with a 3.83 ERA. He following this up with a less than stellar partial season in 2002, before being part of the package that netted St. Louis our current third-baseman, Scott Rolen. He bounced around Philly's system for a couple years and now seems to be out of baseball.

Alan Benes: Two very strong seasons. In 1996, he was in the RoY voting after winning 13 games (Although he did post an unimpressive 4.90 ERA). The next year, he went 9-9 with a 2.89 ERA. I believe 1998 was when he was out due to injury and it seems like he never came back effectively from the surgery. With only 160 innings or so in his last season before his injury, I don't see much that TLR can be blamed for on this one, so we'll call this another neutral case.

Busts: The following players were basically busts for all purposes under the TLR time period, and TLR actually had a chance to deal with them, so you could make the case it's his fault at least on some level, if not mostly him.

Jimmy Journell: He didn't spend significant time with TLR, so this one is certainly debatable, but regardless, he did spend several years where he went from AAA to the majors. Since 2005, he's been out of baseball, so this is most definitely a bust, no matter who you blame it on.

Rick Ankiel: Obviously he's come back as a very good outfielder, but he wasn't the #1 prospect by Baseball America because of his bat. We don't need to go into the chronicles of Rick's struggles, but he's got to be considered a bust, due to his massive pitching potential and how it all fell apart.

Anthony Reyes: Obviously his pitching chances aren't over and he could turn it around(although it seems unlikely to happen here in St. Louis), but his massive step backwards this year seems very much caused by the way he's been handled by La Russa and Duncan, so this one I certainly won't argue going right at TLR.

Successes: These players have been successes(at least, so far) under the La Russa era in St. Louis.

Matt Morris: 3rd in the Cy Young voting in 2001, won a lot of games for St. Louis and was entirely homegrown. Maybe Morris wasn't the top-tier ace that we all hoped he'd be for a decade, but he's been a very effective starter, an ace a couple years, and could easily be argued as a #2 or #3 starter the rest of his career.

Albert Pujols: Duh. I know injuries pushed him into the lineup, but La Russa has found ways to keep other players out of the lineup despite injuries, so if you're going to blame every bust or every mediocre player with no playing time on him, then you have to give him Pujols.

J.D. Drew: Injuries seemed to derail him every time he was really hot, but this kid showed all the talent to be a top player, and for several years here in St. Louis, he had big years. Again, like Morris, maybe he didn't turn into the perennial MVP we all saw him being, but he was very very good, and he certainly got plenty of playing time.

Adam Wainwright: As much as it seems like Anthony Reyes has been mishandled, Wainwright has been handled beautifully. His year in the 'pen has, if anything, prepared him even more for this year, his first full year as a pitcher. He was the staff ace, and while maybe that was by default, he has shown the ability to be a future ace or at the very least, #2 pitcher.

Looking at this, you can certainly judge TLR as not being the best as developing top talent, but you certainly can't say he's been as bad as many people have claimed. The fact of the matter is, you look at the prospects coming up, there haven't been any that have been major league ready outside Wainer and Reyes.

As much as I'd like to see players like Brendan Ryan get playing time, if he doesn't turn into Alex Rodriguez or even Edgar Renteria, or doesn't even get the playing time to TRY to do so, then it's not Tony's fault that Ryan can't put up an OPS of .900 or better in a full season.

Anyway, I'd love to see what other people have to say about this, because obviously there have been lesser-rated prospects, and you could measure this in other ways, but I think this way is at least a good start to judging the La Russa era and his ability to develop top-tier talent.