Cardinals Not Pursuing Major Position FA?

[Guest]

just please don't let them get cargo

[Tryptamine]

just please don't let them get cargo

 

No stats to back it up, but he seems to absolutely destroy the Cubs each and every time they play. Hopefully it's just Blackmon.

[Guest]

just please don't let them get cargo

 

No stats to back it up, but he seems to absolutely destroy the Cubs each and every time they play. Hopefully it's just Blackmon.

 

I envision him hitting a HR every time he goes up to the plate at Wrigley.

[MarkMero23]

Is Piscotty going to be good? Or, expected to be?

 

Probably a 3 win player on an average season, could have a spike year and peak at 4. Very good hitter, average defender. Not much of a base runner.

[MarkMero23]

Cardinals will be carried by the pitching. If Wainwright, Martinez, Wacha, Leake make 30 starts and they get a half season from Garcia with the middling prospects being stop gaps whenever the inevitable injury happens, they'll be a 90 plus win team. Probably off pace for a division title, but enough to grab one of the two wild cards. Now, Grichuk and Holliday could play full seasons and hit a combined 40+ homers and Adams could get back to being a 2 win player and that changes things quite a bit.

[Guest]

Is Piscotty going to be good? Or, expected to be?

 

Probably a 3 win player on an average season, could have a spike year and peak at 4. Very good hitter, average defender. Not much of a base runner.

 

FWIW he didn't even play on a 3 win pace last year when he BABIPed .372 and had a .305/.359/.494 slash line in 63 games (just for the sake of perspective).

 

I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if he ends up what you're saying he is, but I'd say saying he'll "probably" do that is a little too far to go.

[MarkMero23]

Is Piscotty going to be good? Or, expected to be?

 

Probably a 3 win player on an average season, could have a spike year and peak at 4. Very good hitter, average defender. Not much of a base runner.

 

FWIW he didn't even play on a 3 win pace last year when he BABIPed .372 and had a .305/.359/.494 slash line in 63 games (just for the sake of perspective).

 

I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if he ends up what you're saying he is, but I'd say saying he'll "probably" do that is a little too far to go.

 

Fair enough.

[treebird]

the cardinals "letting" heyward walk and trading for that duck dynasty looking [expletive] charlie blackmon would probably very strongly appease the fanbase

[Clem Fandango]

just please don't let them get cargo

 

No stats to back it up, but he seems to absolutely destroy the Cubs each and every time they play. Hopefully it's just Blackmon.

 

He absolutely destroys the Cubs. 1.079 OPS against them. Next highest is Blue Jays at 1.007, which he's only played 10 games against. In fact, he has a .900 OPS or better against every NL Central team except the Cardinals.

 

Now, that being said I'm gonna play devils advocate and say all this from a "which move hurts the Cardinals more in the long term" perspective:

 

I think CarGo is who I'd prefer they go after for the following reasons:

 

1) He's the oldest of the bunch

- 30 years old

 

2) He has trouble staying healthy for a full season

- His 153 games this year was a career high. He played in 180 total games over the previous two seasons combined

 

3) His defense is not that great

- He can play all over the outfield, technically, but by any metric his defense has never been truly stellar over the course of any full season of his. If anything he's been well below average.

 

4) He has the fewest amount of controllable years available of the bunch

- FA after 2017. Blackmon is a FA after 2018 and Dickerson 2019

 

5) He's the most expensive in terms of salary

- $37 million over the next two seasons. The others are still in arbitration.

 

6) He's likely the most expensive in terms of what the Cardinals would have to give up to acquire him

- Because of his pedigree, star status, and the fact he still has two years of control vs. being a rental, I suspect he'd likely cost the most in quality players going back to Colorado, making it possible that the Cardinals sacrifice some quality in the future to try and win now with the aging core they have.

 

7) Even if he may seem like the scariest option of the three, he probably still doesn't put them over the top.

- In a year in which he hit 40 home runs, he was worth only 2.4 fWAR. To put that in perspective, here are a few other players with WAR figures between 2.5 and 2.3 fWAR:

 

Derek Norris

Neil Walker

Brock Holt

Billy Burns

Austin Jackson

Kolten Wong

Steven Vogt

 

His defense really dragged him down. Even though he's had some success defensively in RF in recent years (small sample sizes), his defense will never match up to Heyward, and he will lose some pop moving away from Coors. Could he put up a 3.5-4.5 win season? Sure he could, but the odds of him being fully healthy is not in his favor, his defense is declining each year, he'd be leaving an extreme hitters park, and he's going to be on the wrong side of 30 before too long. Even if he puts up a 3.5 win season, that's still a sharp downgrade from Heyward. The Cardinals are not going to get that WAR back with Cargo in RF.

 

I think Cargo will give the Cubs fits all the time, no matter who he's with, but I don't think he makes the Cardinals some sort of juggernaut like I suspect many in the media and public would seem to think.