The Cardinals

[raisincharlie]

What league are you talking about?

 

Gorman is one of five 19 year olds in FSL and is only doing worse than Wander Franco (great prospect in his own right) and Jose Devers (guy in Stanton trade). Both good prospects.

 

Your other point is noted.....thanks. Not trying to troll but just cutting the BS that Gorman isn’t “anything special.”

[Tryptamine]

What league are you talking about?

 

Gorman is one of five 19 year olds in FSL and is only doing worse than Wander Franco (great prospect in his own right) and Jose Devers (guy in Stanton trade). Both good prospects.

 

Your other point is noted.....thanks. Not trying to troll but just cutting the BS that Gorman isn’t “anything special.”

 

A good prospect absolutely. I have no problem with him being a top 100 guy, but some people putting him top 30 is just absurd. He's a guy who is going to have to provide 90% of his value with a bat and quite frankly he hasn't been all that great with the bat outside of his stint in rookie ball. Since last August 8th, following his promotion from rookie ball, he has posted a .236/.315/.423 line 19HR with a 30.9K% in 615PAs. Yeah he's super young for A+, but when your bat is your value then you have to hit. Let's compare him to Mason Martin another guy whose value is going to be basically entirely from his bat. 20 years old and his line between A and A+ this year is .254/.351/.558 with 35 bombs and a a 30.2K% in 556PAs. He isn't even sniffing top 100 lists. Long story short, Gorman is good but he isn't some elite prospect that Card fans should be drooling over. Save that drool for Dylan Carlson.

[raisincharlie]

This isn’t popular with my Cardinal fan buddies but Gorman will be a much better player than Carlson.

 

I know the FSL and how hard it is on young hitters I’m not that worried. He will crush the Texas League. Hell Carlson struggled mightily until he was promoted. Carlson’s ceiling is the sky but I have the same reservations scouts have on him despite great numbers. I think Gorman could be very special. His defense is also impressing so it’s not all stick.

 

I’m not worried about his strikeout to walk ratio yet. Especially seeing the same struggle of some of today’s biggest stars had in the same level and league and age.

[Cubswin11]

What league are you talking about?

 

Gorman is one of five 19 year olds in FSL and is only doing worse than Wander Franco (great prospect in his own right) and Jose Devers (guy in Stanton trade). Both good prospects.

 

Your other point is noted.....thanks. Not trying to troll but just cutting the BS that Gorman isn’t “anything special.”

He’s a fun prospect and I’d gladly take him in the Cubs system but to act like he’s a “watch out for this guy” type prospect is a joke. Much like his top ~30 prospect rankings.

[BigSlick]

Who cares about all this other stuff I need some place to whine about the Reds playing us hard as hell and rolling over for the Cardinals

[Tryptamine]

This isn’t popular with my Cardinal fan buddies but Gorman will be a much better player than Carlson.

 

I know the FSL and how hard it is on young hitters I’m not that worried. He will crush the Texas League. Hell Carlson struggled mightily until he was promoted. Carlson’s ceiling is the sky but I have the same reservations scouts have on him despite great numbers. I think Gorman could be very special. His defense is also impressing so it’s not all stick.

 

I’m not worried about his strikeout to walk ratio yet. Especially seeing the same struggle of some of today’s biggest stars had in the same level and league and age.

 

Yeah the FSL is notoriously hard to hit in, but what was his excuse at A ball where he was just OK? A .241/.334/.448 is hardly thrilling.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

What league are you talking about?

 

Gorman is one of five 19 year olds in FSL and is only doing worse than Wander Franco (great prospect in his own right) and Jose Devers (guy in Stanton trade). Both good prospects.

 

Your other point is noted.....thanks. Not trying to troll but just cutting the BS that Gorman isn’t “anything special.”

 

My point is that being young while failing doesn’t give you extra credit(fwiw its the same point i’ve made about Cubs prospects like Ademan). In the MWL Gorman was barely in the top 10 of fellow teenagers in offensive performance. In the FSL there are very few teens, but he’s still been outight bad there, and the things that were suboptimal about his MWL performance have been even more worrisome. That doesn’t mean that Gorman isn’t a good prospect, not completely collapsing in the FSL at 19 is commendable. But being 19 doesn’t mean its a given you’re going to start destroying that league and the multiple leagues between there and MLB, especially when his MWL performance wasn’t elite and he plays a position that requires a big bat to be valuable. Gorman remains a good prospect and a big part of the Cardinals organizational depth, but if you’re writing him in a future MLB lineup in pen, or treating him in the same caliber of actual elite prospects(past STL examples being Taveras and Rasmus), you’re putting the cart before the horse.

[PackLandVA]

TT>>>>>>>>>>RC

[raisincharlie]

A lot of goal post moving here.

 

First off, Brennen Davis didn't get promoted and there's no telling what Gorman would have done with a full season in Midwest League. It's a straw man argument that compares two different players entirely. I don't see the point.

 

This whole argument about Gorman started because someone said the Cardinals are getting old because of contracts. That was shot down quickly if you look at average age of the team and the fact that Molina is on his way out, Fowler will get be a backup if he's bad since he's in the OF. Carpenter is the only real issue and he's just a gap to Gorman anyways. Carlson up next year at freaking age 21.

 

Cardinals have DeJong, Wong, Knizner, Carlson, Bader next year. Edman also only 24. Gorman sometime in late 2021. Not an "old" team.

 

CMart only 27, and then Flaherty, Hudson, Hicks, Helsley, Gallegos, Brebbia, Gant, Ponce de Leon, Reyes, Junior Fernandez... who cares about Miller's age and nothing-contract? What's the average age there?

 

I was just disputing the fact that we're old. And Cubs have several old starters. Your whole rotation is old. Azolay is already an older prospect. Marquez is years away. You also have a lot of position players getting up there and Bryant contract ready to jack up payroll.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

A lot of goal post moving here.

 

First off, Brennen Davis didn't get promoted and there's no telling what Gorman would have done with a full season in Midwest League. It's a straw man argument that compares two different players entirely. I don't see the point.

 

The point is that Gorman is not “blowing away his peers”, most organizations have a player with a similar age/production profile. He had a .623 OPS in the month before his promotion, so it’s quite an assumption that he would have been wrecking the MWL if he stuck around.

 

But if you want to leave that tangent, if you’re trying to talk up the long term viability of either team, you need to start at the top of the roster. The Cardinals have missed the playoffs 3 straight years not because they don’t have role players like Bader or fringe major leaguers like Edman, but because they’ve lacked star power, guys who can put up a 5 win season, and preferably with consistency. The Cubs are in their most precarious roster position in the last half decade, but they still have multiple years of Bryant, Baez, and Hendricks, plus guys who have very recently done so(Rizzo) or could make the small leap to that echelon(Contreras). The Cardinals still don’t really have anyone to count on in that regard, since Goldschmidt and Carpenter have fallen flat and have decline in front of them. You can maybe squint and see DeJong or Flaherty in the Contreras sense, but the roster still lacks starpower. If the solution to that is Carlson, an avalanche of roster fill, and far off prospects like Gorman, then their long term prospects as a team are going to be as dim as their recent past.

[Andy]

Go celebrate your suddenly horsefeathering invincible 2019 pennant winners somewhere else and leave us in our misery, would you?

[raisincharlie]

I don’t think individual WAR is useful in grading team success and sustainability. Mostly because a guy like Hudson will never have a good WAR but always pitch well enough to keep his team in games and win despite a no good FIP. Until pitching WAR figures out that ground balls have significant meaning, it’s a flawed stat. And small sample UZR numbers mean nothing when you need several years of samples to get it close to an accurate number. Cardinals have a great team defense and base running value. Speed and defense has been a huge reason we failed in the Matheny years. That’s finally been corrected. And I don’t think Bader is a role player. He’s putting up starter WAR if that’s the measuring stick. Wong is having a 4 bWAR season finally and is peaking. Plenty of competitive baseball until Carlson and Gorman mature.

 

That rant aside, we’re not really an old team. I mean when comparing to the Cubs, we’re on par. We have an ace in the making in Flaherty. Another top 5 prospect in Reyes, who had flume injuries and can still figure it out and be valuable. And tons of young, nice bullpen pieces. Jordan Hicks has an amazing ceiling. Mikolas’s age doesn’t matter too much because he’s a soft throwing ground ball pitcher. I see why they extended.

 

Cubs have Lester, Hamels, Hendricks, and Darvish. With no one coming up the pipe that is scary. What’s the plan there? I mean if it’s about “your team vs my team” I just see an inverse of the same age problem.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Nothing I have read in 25 years of online baseball message boards has convinced me anyone who posts on them can actually make meaningful predictions about A-ball teenagers.

[ManEatingTarp]

In think Gorman will land somewhere between HOF and washout.

[raisincharlie]

I agree on the star power. I think Goldy is a nice anchor, despite approaching the age cliff, but he's not homegrown. Hoping Carlson and/or Gorman can change that.

 

I hate being above average but just bad enough to miss playoffs. Awful spot to be in for three years.

 

There are days where I wish we would just tank for picks like you guys did. But our owner would probably not allow it.

[NonProfitCow]

There are days where I wish we would just tank for picks like you guys did. But our owner would probably not allow it.

You either weren't paying attention to July of 2018 or didn't pick up on what was happening.

[raisincharlie]

There are days where I wish we would just tank for picks like you guys did. But our owner would probably not allow it.

You either weren't paying attention to July of 2018 or didn't pick up on what was happening.

Firing Matheny and trading Tommy Pham? There wasn't any tanking...? Enlighten me then.

 

The team made a few lateral moves and pushed some money around. A poor man's Yankees style "rebuild" more than anything.

[ManEatingTarp]

There are days where I wish we would just tank for picks like you guys did. But our owner would probably not allow it.

You either weren't paying attention to July of 2018 or didn't pick up on what was happening.

 

 

The Cubs intentionally lost for half a decade so they could shed bad contracts, pick in the top 3 in the draft and stock up on international signings and money. It got them a WS, so they did it right. Good for them.

Saying the Cardinals 2 month reorganization last year is anything close to that is just stupid.

[Andy]

There are days where I wish we would just tank for picks like you guys did. But our owner would probably not allow it.

You either weren't paying attention to July of 2018 or didn't pick up on what was happening.

 

 

The Cubs intentionally lost for half a decade so they could shed bad contracts, pick in the top 3 in the draft and stock up on international signings and money. It got them a WS, so they did it right. Good for them.

Saying the Cardinals 2 month reorganization last year is anything close to that is just stupid.

They intentionally lost for 3 years, to be fair. 2010-11 was Hendry incompetence, unless your position is that trading Chris Archer for Matt Garza was a long-term move.

[NonProfitCow]

There are days where I wish we would just tank for picks like you guys did. But our owner would probably not allow it.

You either weren't paying attention to July of 2018 or didn't pick up on what was happening.

 

 

The Cubs intentionally lost for half a decade so they could shed bad contracts, pick in the top 3 in the draft and stock up on international signings and money. It got them a WS, so they did it right. Good for them.

Saying the Cardinals 2 month reorganization last year is anything close to that is just stupid.

Stupid would be not recognizing that they were conceding the season and claiming that trading away a 5 WAR pre-arb player for nothing is "reorganizing."

[weis21]

Our small collection of Cardinals fan here all signing on to argue with each other is the most NSBB thing ever

[squally1313]

You either weren't paying attention to July of 2018 or didn't pick up on what was happening.

 

 

The Cubs intentionally lost for half a decade so they could shed bad contracts, pick in the top 3 in the draft and stock up on international signings and money. It got them a WS, so they did it right. Good for them.

Saying the Cardinals 2 month reorganization last year is anything close to that is just stupid.

Stupid would be not recognizing that they were conceding the season and claiming that trading away a 5 WAR pre-arb player for nothing is "reorganizing."

I'd argue the reasons for trading away Tommy Pham were a little different/worse than trying to parse between 'reorganizing' and 'rebuilding'.

[raisincharlie]

Stupid would be not recognizing that they were conceding the season and claiming that trading away a 5 WAR pre-arb player for nothing is "reorganizing."

Tommy Pham was traded because we have a fragile owner who didn’t like him firing off to the media about the organization.

 

Zero to do with rebuilding. Silly you think that.

 

Plus we had to make room for Tyler O’Neill and Bader one way or another.

[ConstableRabbit]

Stupid would be not recognizing that they were conceding the season and claiming that trading away a 5 WAR pre-arb player for nothing is "reorganizing."

Tommy Pham was traded because we have a fragile owner who didn’t like him firing off to the media about the organization.

 

Zero to do with rebuilding. Silly you think that.

 

Plus we had to make room for Tyler O’Neill and Bader one way or another.

Trading one of the team's best players who didn't make anything for O'Neill and Bader is certainly a strategy.