I'll admit it. When I saw that the Cardinals didn't offer arbitration to Braden Looper, I was more than a little bit puzzled. It seems like a win/ win proposition to me; either Looper signs elsewhere on a multi-year deal, and the Cardinals take the draft picks, or Looper accepts and comes back in 2009 to help shore up the backside of the Cards' rotation. Not a bad deal either way.

Well, after further reflection, as well as discussing it with several people, I still kinda just don't get it. Reading over the comments section from yesterday's post here, I see that a lot of people are of the opinion that the economy is beginning to have a real impact on the way teams are approaching player signings and retention this year. I suppose I can see that; when the Yankees don't offer any of their players arbitration either, it's clear that something pretty serious is going on here. Even so, I still think that not offering Looper arbitration is the kind of move that could very well come back and bite the Cardinals in the ass if they don't make some sort of additional moves to shore up the pitching heading into next season.

Anyhow, I think the economics of the thing have been debated pretty thoroughly here; I really don't have a whole lot to add. What I wanted to do today is take a look at the type of draft pick the Cards are passing up here by refusing to offer arbitration to Looper, both from the Cardinals' perspective and in a more general sense.

Someone in the comments yesterday went through the Cards' drafts from the last thirty years or so and came up with how many players they've gotten contributions from out of the first and supplemental rounds. I didn't get nearly that involved, as I was more interested in the recent drafting habits, specifically since the Cardinals overhauled their scouting and drafting wing. 

In the 2008 draft, the Cards had one pick in the compensatory round, and they used it to take Lance Lynn, a college righthander out of the University of Mississippi. The actual value of Lynn won't be known for quite a while, so any speculation on how well the Cards did here is essentially useless at this point. However, I will say that two of my very favourite players in the entire draft went in the supplemental round this year. Jake Odorizzi, the high school kid from Highland, Illinois, went to the Brewers with the 32nd overall pick, and Ryan Flaherty, a shortstop out of Vanderbilt, went to the Cubs at 41. Flaherty especially hurt me, because the Cards passed on him to take Lynn, and I think that Flaherty could have been a part of the Cardinal middle infield sooner rather than later. 

Of the other players in the supplemental round in '08, the most notable might be Conor Gillaspie, a third baseman out of Wichita State who a lot of analysts are saying may be the closest player to the majors of any 2008 draftee. Still, it's too early to really rate many of these players. Got to give it some time. 

Going back to 2007, we've got a little bit better view. The Cardinals had a sandwich pick in '07, and they used it to take Clayton Mortensen, the sinkerballer out of Gonzaga who finished up his first full season in Triple A. Mortensen's ultimate ceiling is certainly debatable, but he's almost guaranteed to contribute in some fashion at the major league level in the next season or two. Not a bad deal. 

Other notable players from the '07 sandwich round: 

• Josh Smoker, LHP- #31 (Nationals) 
• Nick Noonan, SS/2B- #32 (Giants)
• Todd Frazier, SS- #34 (Reds) 
• Brett Cecil, LHP- #38 (Blue Jays) 
• Sean Doolittle, 1B #41 (Athletics) 
• Josh Donaldson, C #48 (Cubs) 
• Nick Hagadone, LHP #55 (Red Sox) 

That's a pretty good group, to be honest. Smoker is a high school lefty with a big ceiling. Noonan is likely to move to second eventually from his drafted position of shortstop, but his bat is very real. Frazier has pretty much zero chance of playing in the middle infield at the major league level, but is proving to be an absolute monster on the offensive side of the game. Josh Donaldson, the catcher that the Cubs nabbed at 48, was a part of the package that brought them Rich Harden this summer. 

Like I said, this is really a solid group. All the players listed above look as if they could very well end up being major league players before all is said and done. Of course, there are also plenty of other guys taken in the supplemental round that haven't done anything to impress yet, but I think it should be clear that there are some very good players available in the 31-50 sort of range that the supplemental round usually covers. 

The Cardinals had a sandwich pick in 2006 as well, and they took the Wild Thing himself with said pick, Mr. Christopher Perez. So far, it's looking like a fantastic draft pick, as Perez has put himself into position that one could consider him the favourite to close for the Birds next year in less than three years since his was drafted. He's not perfect, of course, but even if Perez doesn't end up improving his control enough to close, he already has a ton of value in a trade, or as a setup type reliever. Excellent value overall. 

The 2006 sandwich round was not, to be honest, a particularly distinguished one. The Dodgers started it out by taking Preston Mattingly at 31, and Mattingly has failed to distinguish himself in pro ball to this point. Unfortunately, that appears to have set the tone for the entire supplemental round that year, as there are only a couple of names that really jump out at you. 

• Joba Chamberlain, RHP #41 (Yankees) 
• Emanuel Burriss, SS #33 (Giants) 
• Adrian Cardenas, SS/2B #37 (Phillies) 
• Pedro Beato, RHP #32 (Orioles) 

Like I said, not a whole lot of players here that just absolutely jump out at you, but there is one pretty serious name on that list. Chamberlain was seen as a risky pick at the time, a heavy kid with a good fastball but work ethic and injury issues. We all know how things have gone since then. Burriss is looking like the Giants' second baseman of the very near future, and projects to be a solid top of the order type hitter with good speed and a glove that most consider to be a bit better than average. Cardenas' name has been tossed around a lot in trade rumours, and he has very good value. 

Going back to 2005, the Cardinals had two, count 'em, two sandwich picks. They used the first one, at 43, to take Mark McCormick, the fireballer out of Baylor that hasn't been able to stay healthy (or throw many strikes), as a pro. At 46, they took Tyler Herron, a RHP out of high school in Florida. Herron has moved slowly in pro ball, ending this season in High A after gettting knocked around in his first taste of Double A, but he still has a good amount of promise. He's not going to wow you with his stuff, but his walk numbers have been consistently solid and he could end up in the middle of a big league rotation someday. McCormick probably needs to be tried in the bullpen. I don't have a whole lot of hope for him, but I do think the Cards will probably get some contribution from at least one of these two. 

Other notable 2005 sandwichers: 

• Chaz Roe, RHP #31 (Rockies) 
• Travis Buck, OF #36 (Athletics) 
• Luke Hochevar, RHP #40 (Dodgers) 
• Clay Buchholz, RHP #42 (Red Sox) 
• Jed Lowrie, SS #45 (Red Sox)
• Garrett Olson, LHP #48 (Orioles) 

The Red Sox certainly did alright for themselves in the '05 draft, didn't they? Lowrie will likely be their starting shortstop in 2009, and looks to be a solid regular, while Buchholz has already thrown one no hitter and has a sky-high ceiling, even after fighting injuries in 2008. 

Travis Buck is looking like a solid, valuable pickup for the A's. He's had injury issues (seems like pretty much every Oakland player does anymore, doesn't it?), but the guy can hit, and he plays a competent outfield. Hochevar, of course, didn't sign with the Dodgers, as he and Boras established a new paradigm with the whole indy-league-for-a-year-then-reenter-the-draft thing that a couple of other Boras clients have followed since. Still a pretty good talent in the supplemental round. Olson is another name that gets bandied about in trade talks; he's not what you would consider an impact player, but at league minimum, he could very well be pretty valuable. 

2004 is as far back as I went. That was the first year that Jeff Luhnow was a part of the Cards' drafting department, and I'm really interested mostly in what the Cards (and other teams), have done recently with these types of picks.

In '04, there were only eleven players taken in the supplemental round, but the compensation rules were different then, too. Anyhow, the Cardinals didn't have a sandwich pick that year, so not much to talk about there. The notable picks from '04: 

• Gio Gonzalez, LHP #38 (White Sox)
• Jay Rainville, RHP #39 (Twins)
• Huston Street, RHP #40 (Athletics) 

The 2004 supplemental round was all about the Athletics, as they snagged Huston Street, who closed for them and then helped to acquire Matt Holliday from the Rockies. A lot of people are down on Street, but I'm still a fan of his. I think he's probably better as a setup man than a closer, but at the very least, he's been plenty valuable while he's been cheap. The A's also ended up with Gio Gonzalez (who has been traded fifteen or sixteen times already, I believe), and the young lefty has blossomed into one of the top prospects in all of baseball. he's got great stuff, especially for a lefty, and should step right in to the Oakland rotation in 2009. Rainville has been kind of all over the map for the Twins, but could still end up contributing something at the ML level. 

All in all, there's some very good talent that's been picked up in the supplemental round over the past several years. Of course, the percentages on these guys is still quite low, but that's true of the draft process pretty much as a whole. The point is, when (or if), any of these players manages to make even a minimal contribution at the major league level, it ends up saving the team a big hit on payroll in free agency. I know, we've all heard it before, but I think it bears repeating. 

I know the value of a sandwich pick has been approximated somewhere in the range of $3.5 million by Baseball Prospectus, and that seems about right to me. The question, of course, is whether or not that $3.5 mil payoff was worth the gamble that the Cardinals would have been laying down on Looper accepting arbitration and coming back next season.  I can't really answer that question definitively, to be perfectly honest, but my personal opinion? I think letting him walk without at least trying to get the picks was at least a minor misstep. 

Well, that was weird.

If there's an immediately apparent reason for not offering Braden Looper arbitration I haven't quite come upon it yet—the Cardinals simply do not have enough starters, as currently constructed, to get through a season without molding their fifth starter out of replacement pitcher-loaf, and there's no reason to start out in that hole when the worst-case scenario is that Looper accepts arbitration and is paid the market rate for an innings-eating starter.

And if the Cardinals aren't interested in him... well, he's probably not interested in them, either, and I've got to imagine that someone will be ready to hand him two or three years on the open market, particularly since he wouldn't cost them a draft pick. Since 4.16 to 4.94 seems like a reasonable band of expectations for Kyle Lohse's ERA over the next four years, the team's unwillingness to fill a major hole with Looper at a similar price makes me utterly confused about the team's valuation of their new long-term third starter in the first place. Either the Cardinals have wasted a shot at a supplemental draft pick, here, or they just do not put a lot of value in bulk innings.

Of the, uh, other players strangely not offered arbitration, Randy Wolf and Joe Beimel seem to be the best possible fits for the Cardinals, but I'm not sure I like either player. Wolf gets a lot of strikeouts, and was solid last year, but his 33 start years in 2003 and 2008 bookend four in which he made no more than 23 starts, and I'm not sure signing another injury risk is a great way to fill out a rotation that needs bulk as much as it needs everything else.

Beimel had a very pretty ERA last year, and his splits against right-handers are better than the average LOOGY's, but his strikeouts and walks do little to inspire confidence that that's going to hold up in the future. If he can keep allowing, as he has in 2007 and 2008, one home run every 116 innings, then I guess I'll be wrong. But if I am the GM of a team looking for a LOOGY who has decided it can't afford Braden Looper, I'm going to take my chances looking elsewhere. 

I was looking for the Cardinals' 2009 picture to clear up a little after last night's deadline, but now it's only gotten hazier. If Mozeliak is saving his pennies for something in particular, it looks like we won't know the shape of the team we'll be rooting for until after next week's Winter Meetings.

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Meanwhile, the Astros were kind enough to take the year's most terrifying prospective Dave Duncan Reclamation Project off the table. $2 million is actually not a bad deal for a guy who's been marginally effective when he's managed to pitch, but if Randy Wolf is what you would call a health risk Mike Hampton is a health guarantee—he is likely to be unhealthy enough that you'll have to set his rehab starts in the major leagues to get maximum value out of him. Aside from that he also has a frighteningly low strikeout rate to worry about, which was even a concern during his last healthy stint with the Braves. 

##

Finally, this piece about Ron Gant's debut on the Hall of Fame ballot brought back memories about my beloved 1996 Cardinals. The what-could-have-been tone—I'm guessing this was written for the Braves.MLB site—seems a bit forced, though; I mean, the guy followed that Hall of Fame-career-ending dirtbike accident with OPS+'s of 145 and 125, and stole 59 bases over his next two years. If he got in another dirtbike accident between 1996 and 1997... well, that explains a lot. 

I don't remember ur-prospect Ron Gant, though; my memory, like a lot of peoples' here, I imagine, is of the one guy hacktastic enough to make the Busch Stadium faithful grudgingly enjoy Ray Lankford's work at the plate. If Lankford had had Ron Gant 1997 as a foil for his entire career there would be a giant statue in his honor outside beautiful new Ray Lankford Stadium. 

Hey, everybody! There's a real baseball deadline today! At 11 PM we will have the non-tenders and non-non-tenders to talk about, and Russ Springer and Braden Looper to discuss in particular. Trever Miller still hangs in the balance. 

Matthew Leach's summary of the Cardinals' arbitration situation is a good take on what seems like a fairly straightforward situation. Isringhausen: absolutely not. Looper: absolutely. Springer: Er, ah, we'll see about it. 

The downside to offering arbitration to Springer seems pretty low, to me, but the upside is lower than it seems if the Cardinals really don't think they need him next year. It seems almost absurd to say that, since he was far and away their best reliever in 2007 and 2008 and he stands to get only a minor raise if he accepts arbitration, but the Cardinals have a lot of right-handed relievers coming down the pike and Springer, even more than most really good relief pitchers, comes with a lot of built-in uncertainty. To recap:

• He is really old
• He wasn't very good for most of his career
• He is a relief pitcher

A couple of years ago, many of us thought that Scott Rolen might retire and enter the Hall of Fame as a Card. Unfortunately, two major collisions, about 17 shoulder surgeries, and 1049 arguments w/ Tony later and Scotty is languishing up in Toronto while former postseason stud Troy Glaus mans the hot corner for the Cards. In one of Mo’s shrewdest moves to date, the Cards’ GM sent Rolen, along with the 3 years and $37M owed to him, north in exchange for the bad-kneed Glaus and his 2 year, $23M contract. Glaus outplayed Rolen last year by anywhere from half a win to 3 wins but, even if their performances were equal, the fact that Mo saved the organization a year and $14M by exchanging the contracts was a big victory for the Cards.

This year we enter into the final year of Glaus’s contract. He’ll make $12.5M in ’09 and turns 33 in August. He’s no spring chicken and, you’d have to think that given the state of his knees, probably won’t age well into his mid-30s. The Cards can probably count on a pretty good season from him in ’09 but he’s probably not going to be in the Cards’ plans after the season.

Last year, Glaus was outstanding for the Cards – better than I expected him to be, frankly. Glaus ended the season w/ batting splits of .270/.373/.474 for an OPS of .847. His EqA was .296 and his wOBA was .371. Only Chipper, ARod, David Wright, Aramis Ramirez and Evan Longoria were better, offensively, than Glaus was last season (among all third basemen). Justin Inaz has Glaus as nearly a 4 win offensive player last season.

Defensively, there’s some disagreement as to how good Glaus was. First of all, it’s pretty clear that he was not as good as Rolen but, considering how good he was offensively, it didn’t matter much. The fielding bible has Glaus as a +6 defensive player last season but most of the other metrics has Glaus at about average to slightly below average. PMR has Glaus at about 5 plays per 100 below average last season. According to RZR, Glaus was middle of the pack among NL third basemen. These are the numbers that led Justin to conclude that Glaus was good for -3 runs defensively in ’08. Over at BtB, they used the PMR numbers to determine that Glaus’s defense was worth approximately -14 runs defensively in ’08. BP, the defensive measure I have the least confidence in, had Glaus at 3 runs above average last season.

The only real concern about Glaus this season is his health. He played 151 games and had 637 PAs last season but there is reason to question his ability to do it again. Fortunately, with the depth the team has at the hot corner, his is probably the injury (among the team’s most important players) the team could withstand the most.

The organization’s next three third-sackers – David Freese, Allen Craig, and Brett Wallace – all spent a fair amount of time at AA or higher last season. Freese, who turns 26 in April, had 510 PAs at Memphis last season. Craig, who turns 25 in July, had 568 PAs at Springfield last season. Wallace, the team’s first round pick last June, had his final 57 PAs in AA last August. Their combined numbers last season:

* -- Wallace’s numbers came in 234 combined PAs w/ low-A Quad Cities and AA Springfield.

There’s, obviously, lots to like in all these players. Freese is the closest to the majors, as he should be considering the fact that he’s about 15 months older than Craig and nearly 3 ½ years older than Wallace. Wallace is one of the team’s top prospects but there is some concern about his ability to stay at third (as there is w/ Craig as well).

Let’s look at Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections for this season:

According to the ZIPS projections, there’s reason to think that any of the other 3 could be competent at the hot corner this year. None would likely be as good as Glaus, but, if Glaus could be moved for something of value, any could probably be adequate in ’09. I’m not suggesting that Glaus should be moved necessarily, b/c I doubt that his trade value is that high. He likely provides more to the team this season than the combination of his replacement at third and the person(s) he’s traded for would provide. Still, it’s good to know that, if he went down for an extended period of time, third base would probably be in capable hands.

Finally, let’s look at the 3 prospects’ minor league translations. The first set of numbers is the players’ regular translation – what we might expect from these players if they were called up to the big leagues this season. The second set of numbers is the players’ peak translation – a translation to determine how good the players might be at their respective peaks.

* -- Wallace’s counting stats not included based on limited PAs last season. The MLEs use the same number of PAs for their calculations.

Considering Wallace’s distance from low-A ball to the majors, his translations are least likely to be accurate. Freese is certainly the closest to the majors and probably the best defender of the 3 but he also, in all likelihood, has the lowest ceiling. If it turns out that Craig and Wallace can handle the position, they’re probably the Cards’ best options for the future, though it’s unclear whether they’ll be ready in 2010 when Glaus leaves. Still, there’s reason to think that the position will be in good hands, regardless of whose hands they are, following the 2009 season – thus leaving Mo the ability to reallocate Glaus’s $12.5M toward solving one of the Cards’ other needs.

Let’s acknowledge first off that we’re all Cards’ fans here and predisposed to believing that Simmons probably does belong – at least more so than fans of the Cubs or Mariners might be. I want to try and look at this objectively and to assess his candidacy from a non-Cards’ fan standpoint.

We have to begin by understanding what a truly great catcher Simmons was. His career OPS+ is 117 – better than Gary Carter and tied w/ Carlton Fisk for 9th among Hall of Fame catchers. For those who argue he spent too much of his time at DH, Simmons caught 1771 career games – more than Berra, Bill Dickey, Piazza, and Bench. His career wOBA is .346 and he had seasons of .393, .339, .386, .387, .370, and .384. Just for comparison, Brian McCann had the highest wOBA of any catcher in baseball this year at .387. So imagine putting up 6 straight seasons of the highest wOBA in baseball from behind the dish. Chase Utley’s wOBA this year -- .391. Simmons was better than that in 1975. He was an outstanding offensive player. Compare him to other catchers who’ve entered the Hall in the last 15 or so years.

Geoff Young, in the THT article linked above, goes to great lengths to compare Simmons to Hall of Famer Gary Carter. For most of their careers, Simmons OPS+ is better than Carter’s. Simmons had more great seasons at the plate than Carter did. Now, FWIW, Carter is in the Hall as much b/c of his defensive accomplishments as his offensive ones but it’s fair to say that Simmons compares favorably to another Hall of Famer and, in fact, was likely a better offensive player than Carter. Young isn’t convinced that Carter’s even deserving of entrance to the Hall but Jay Jaffe at BP calls Gary Carter "#2 among all Hall catchers, behind only Johnny Bench." According to Bill James’ ranking – referenced in Young’s article – Simmons is the #10 catcher of all time. His is the highest ranking for any catcher eligible but not yet in the HOF. He has more career win shares than Hall of Famer Bill Dickey.

One knock against Simmons’ candidacy is the aforementioned time he spent at DH. To me, that doesn’t hold a lot of water considering the number of games he spent behind the dish. And Paul Molitor – who is deserving, by the way – is in the Hall of Fame and he spent 44% of his career resting every half inning. Simmons spent 76.5% of his career games behind the dish.

A second knock against Simmons is that the last several years of his career were spent playing positions other than catcher. He wasn’t really a full-time catcher, so goes the argument, those last few years so any numbers he put up during those years don’t really count. Young squashes this argument by comparing him, once again, to Carter. Carter gets credit for staying behind the dish toward the end of his career but he was so awful during his last few seasons that it shouldn’t get any more credit than Simmons playing 1B, 3B, and DH. Remember, Bench played a grand total of 13 games behind the plate after he turned 33, instead playing 76 games at 1B and 149 games at 3B.

Over at BP, Jaffe has created his JAWS system (defined in the BP article linked above) to evaluate the candidacies of prospective Hall of Famers. It involves taking the average of a player’s WARP3 and their PEAK, which is sum of their WARP3s in their 5 best consecutive seasons. Then he compares them to the average Hall of Famer at the player’s position.

Going by the JAWS scores, Simmons may fall just a tiny bit short but his all-time WARP3 can keep up w/ anyone. It seems that, if anything, Simmons loses a little b/c his peaks weren’t as high as his competitors and he gains points for longevity. Jaffe seems to agree w/ that assessment saying that Simmons, along w/ a few others "had longer careers with lower peaks than the average enshrinee." Still, if you add BRAA to FRAA for total runs above average – the average HOF catcher had 258 (197+61) and Simmons had 255 (271-16). Pretty close.

It’s tough to argue that Simmons clearly belongs in the Hall but it seems to me, as it does Young and Jaffe, that the voters in 1994 gave him short shrift. He was clearly a notch below Fisk and Bench but seems to be pretty comparable to Carter. If you look again at the wOBA table at the top, you see Simmons finished 3rd among the 4 catchers. I mentioned earlier that one of the primary critiques of Simmons’ candidacy was that maybe he stuck around too long – becoming less of a catcher and more of a DH. However, his last 5 wOBAs were .260, .327, .298, .319, and .272 – all 5 well below his career average. But what if he had hung it up after 1983 – his age 33 season?

If he didn’t have those 5 down (for him) years on his record, his career wOBA would be around .356. Now he’s ahead of Fisk and just a few points behind Bench. I’m not so stupid as to believe that most Hall voters consider (or even know what the hell wOBA is) but voters might have better memories of him as a great catcher rather than as a player who hung around playing every position except catcher. He still wouldn’t have the MVPs or Gold Gloves on his record, but I think it’s a lot more likely he’d have stayed on the ballot for a while and then, who knows…

Jaffe said, of Simmons and some others (Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, Dwight Evans – just to name a few), that "they may not all belong in the Hall of Fame, but their cases deserved better airings than they got." I think that’s where I stand, too. I’m not at all convinced he belongs. In fact, I might lean to the he-falls-just-short side. But 3.7%? Are you f-ing kidding me? If he doesn’t belong, he’s pretty damned close. He certainly deserved a better fate than he got, Cards’ fan or not.

Not that I expect all of you to be, at this very moment, in line for $300 laptops and 32 inch Pyongyang-branded plasma TVs, but I get the feeling that traffic might be pretty light today. With that in mind—that and the knowledge that when we acquire either Trever Miller or Arthur Rhodes you won't need an RSS feed to alert you because something in your heart will just feel right that's never really felt right before—this is something of a stop-gap post as we drift back into reality and Viva El Birdos's more typical pattern. 

So let's talk about shortstops. Not the free agents—there'll be plenty of time for that—but the ones who are dictating that the Cardinals acquire a free agent shortstop, and how long they commit. Here are your options:

CLOSE TO THE MAJORS, FAR FROM PREDICTABLE

Here, rapidly approaching the major leagues, you have the kind of players whose eventual ascent to the bigs will be borne more of necessity than desire. Tyler Greene (above, courtesy momup), at the rate he's going now, will end up with major league playing time not because La Russa can't wait to play him but because he has no place else to go. You've measured free agent shortstops against replacement players before; well, meet the replacement players. 

Tyler Greene is the number one pick, for obvious reasons; he was, well, a number one pick, back in 2005 (or After Rasmus year 0) and he is apparently a legitimate defensive shortstop.

Back when he was drafted Greene's reputation was not all that unlike Peter Kozma's; he was, we were told, a defense-first shortstop whose bat might struggle to adjust at the upper levels. It was true, but it failed to take into account the awesome way in which his bat has not adjusted at the upper levels.Because Tyler Greene is the single coolest maladjusted defense-first shortstop of all time.

It's like this: most of the time, social disfunction produces marginal characters who exist on society's outskirts and express its disaffection and anxiety through crime and decay. You get gangs and car thieves and muggers. But occasionally, those same forces come together and produce the Fonz, an avatar of both social distrust and how cool reading is, of counterculture and being respectful to your friends' parents.

Tyler Greene is the Fonz of failing to adjust to major league pitching.

This is not your father's failure to adjust, the overpowered-by-real-pitchers .250/.300/.300 line that all would-be David Ecksteins produce when pressed into service as utility infielders. This is the bad Richie Sexson playing shortstop.

In what amounts to a full season of AA ball, cut in half by a serious knee injury in 2007, Greene hit 24 home runs, stole 24 bases, struck out 161 times, and managed 38 walks. I haven't gotten to see him live, yet, but sometimes I get the feeling that his approach at the plate is akin to when a pitcher who has a lot of power goes up there once or twice a start and just swings as hard as he can three times.

After Brett Wallace finally started hitting as expected Greene replaced him as the designated Arizona Fall League surprise. He hit .287/.380/.506, his three homers and two triples seeming to encapsulate everything he can do pretty nicely. The problem is that in 87 at-bats packed with so many optimistic indicators he still managed to strike out 29 times.

Striking out in a third of your at-bats makes predicting major league success pretty difficult, but depending on how the Cardinals' internal metrics and scouts see his defense come Spring Training I wouldn't be stunned if he earned some real MLB playing time at short, should the Cardinals fail to land a Name. .220/.280/.370 seems just about unbearable until you start a guy who slugs .309 over an entire season. 

And most importantly of all, he would fail awesomely.

FAR FROM THE MAJORS, OUR MINDS: PETE KOZMA

Even with the top-ten prospect lists looming large Kozma seems to have drifted out of our collective conscience, which is somewhat ominous since he did almost exactly what was expected of him headed into this year. 

The rule-provingly rare polished, medium-upside high schooler, Kozma spent most of his year in low-A Quad Cities—a small victory—and showed off what has always been described as a broad-based skill-set. His perfectly decent .284/.363/.398 line is the result of a hot start, a terrible slump, and a nice finish that led him to an ugly month in high-A. He walks a lot, he doesn't strike out too much, he plays shortstop well, he hits for a little power, and since he was 20 and spent his year in a pitcher's league where he was a little young he gives you just enough to wish on. He is the rare player who is commended with faint praise, a rousing chorus of it from all directions. 

I wasn't (and am still not) a fan of the Kozma pick, but I think he is—mildly, in true Kozma fashion—underrated heading into this year, especially when the free agent market leads us to look at our future options. His performance screams college-player-not-dominating-the-low-minors, even though he was a high schooler; since he's so well-adjusted there's nothing to What-If about. But if he were to regress from 2008 he would still be spending all of his age-21 season putting up average numbers in another pitcher's league. (Greene was 21 when he was drafted, and put up marginal, surprisingly punchless numbers in short season ball and high-A.) He's got a few years before being just passable is a death knell. 

Combined with Nico Vasquez, a toolsier but less predictable alternative who will ideally be chasing him up the ranks, Kozma should give us some hope that this time in 2010, when the Cardinals are either hoping that someone signs Edgar Renteria before the arb deadline so they get some draft picks or that Tyler Greene's .211/.233/.580 line doesn't price him out of their range, they won't be spending another few years on the Middle Infield Free Agent Carousel.

So if there are people out there today—perhaps on their iPhones, while in line at Best Buy for another iPhone—here is your prompt: the Cardinals' internal middle infield options, today (literally) and tomorrow (figuratively.) Discuss. 

(Or you can just talk about what you ate yesterday.)

Albert Pujols -- How could we not be thankful for #5? He's the greatest player in the game. He's the best offensive player and among the top 5 or 10 defensive players at any position in the game. Tangentially related, I'm thankful for...

Pujols' contract -- The big guy is signed for 2 more years + a team option at $16 M per season. While most would say it's ridiculous to pay a man $16 M to play baseball (and I might be inclined to agree), the contracts that are paid by baseball teams every season tell me what a tremendous value Pujols is to the organization. The fact that he's paid less than half of what he's worth is huge coup to the organization. It frees up the ownership and Mozeliak to spend more money to bring in other quality players to supplement Pujols, thus making the team that much better.

That the BBWAA finally got it right. With the Cards' 4th place finish this year, the BBWAA had every reason they needed to ignore Pujols' excellence this year and go with someone like Ryan Howard, C.C., or Manny for MVP. Though many of them don't really have the foggiest idea what they're doing, most of them were able to figure out that Pujols deserved the MVP this season, despite the Cards' 4th place finish. Where would we have finished without him? (Hint: it would have been ugly!)

Adam Wainwright -- Here's hoping that Wainwright can stay healthy all season long and prove to the rest of baseball what we already know -- that he's one of the best young pitchers in the game.

John Mozeliak's patience -- there have been a lot of opportunities over the last year or so for Mo to make the wrong moves -- most recently by giving up Ludwick + prospects for Matt Holliday. I'm thankful that he inquired on Holliday's availability, and even more thankful that he made the correct decision.

Ryan Ludwick's resurrection -- the Cards found this guy as a minor league free agent and he has been everything the A's hoped they had found when they drafted him nearly 10 years ago. I don't know how long this ride will last, but I'm thankful he's on it.

Rick Ankiel -- What more can be said about Rick? Though I'm on record as saying that it's time to trade Rick, his story is a tremendous one and I'm thankful that it's been scripted with him wearing the Birds on the Bat.

the 2006 postseason -- it's hard not to still be thankful for that tremendous run 2 years ago. I'm ready for #11, but still thankful for that curve that Wainwright threw to Beltran, the slider he threw to Inge, and the homer Molina hit. And while we're on the subject...

Molina's arm -- it's the best in the game. I'm thankful he was finally recognized for his defensive excellence and thankful for what he does for the team defensively.

Colby Rasmus -- I truly believe this guy's going to be special. I further believe that he's going to be able to step in this year and our OF will experience little to no dropoff whatsoever. Over the next 6 years, he'll become one of the best CFs in the NL.

Jeff Luhnow -- This man is little known inside Cards' fandom but he's been the architect of the team's improving farm system. Just a few years ago, our farm was one of the worst in the game. Now, it's in the top half and improving every single year. Luhnow doesn't deserve all the credit, but he's been the guide and should be recognized for it.

the Cards' fanbase -- I know it's hackneyed and arrogant, but I truly believe it's the best fanbase in the game, and probably in all of professional sports. There's nothing like being in St. Louis on a summer day. It's awesome!

Larry Borowsky -- LB created this community and fostered an environment that allowed everyone to feel welcome and built a communtity where we could all talk Cards' baseball intelligently and respectfully. I'm also thankful that he asked me to take a more active role when he decided to step aside. Though I was sorry to see him go, I knew that he created such a high standard here that I know I must take my responsibility very seriously. Everyone here deserves that.

This community -- I'm thankful that we all maintain the community that LB created and thankful that you all have accepted me and Dan in LB's absence.

I hope all of you have an excellent Thanksgiving Day. Rememeber all that you're thankful for and spend the day with the most important people in your lives.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the holiest day of the year for competitive eaters everywhere. And while it is a wonderful, glorious holiday for family and togetherness and food and all of those things, let's face it: Thanksgiving tends to not be so good on the baseball side.

Not that it's bad, mind you. There just generally isn't that much going on. right around now for baseball, and this year holds true to form. The local paper is, quite honestly, breathlessly reporting on the contract talks between the Cardinals and a player who will likely throw all of 40-45 innings in 2009 if everything goes right. That, my friends, is the very definition of a slow news day.

So, in what is quickly becoming an annual tradition around here, let's take a step back from the hot stove talk, and the stat projections, and the roster construction. I'm going to just make this a free, wide-open thread, to talk about whatever you like, with an emphasis, of course, on what you may be thankful for this year. I've often heard it said that listing the good things in your life is a very healthy, life-affirming exercise; I don't know how true that is, but hey, let's give it a shot.

Me? Well, I could say that I'm thankful for Ryan Ludwick's big campaign. Or just another season from Albert. I could say I'm thankful for the exciting play we saw from our rookies, or the future that we could glimpse at times watching them take those first, Bambi-like steps toward big league success. I could say that I'm thankful for a season that turned out to be better, and more competitive, than I ever would have believed before it began. But in the end, all of that's just a wordy, detailed way of saying something very simple: I, dear friends, am thankful for this game. All of it.

See, I've had one of the worst years of my life this year. I really have. It hasn't been all bad, of course; I've attained a fair amount of professional success this year. But what good there has been has really served mostly to highlight a hole in my life. I lost someone very dear to me this year, and everything else has been tinged with that.

But as has nearly always been the case in my life, the game of baseball has been there for me. Night after night on the car radio as I drive to the rest of my world, a companion that gives so much and asks so little in return. For those of us who love this game, calling it a diversion seems almost a sacrilege, and yet there is perhaps no greater praise we can heap upon it. No matter how bad the economy may be, or what worries you may have about your family, or the fact that the half of your bed you thought you had finally filled is emptier than ever and will remain so, at least a little, you can always sit down, turn on the ballgame, and let it take you. It may be cold comfort some days, but comfort it remains.

I'm also thankful for internal inconsistency. What do I mean by that? Well, I'll tell you what I mean by that. See, yesterday I was looking for something on the internet. I was looking, in fact, for a song that was on an episode of Chuck (which, by the way, remains one of my very favourite shows; I cannot recommend it highly enough to you), and in doing so, I happened across a review/discussion sort of site. Well, there was a post, reviewing the episode in question, discussing the quality of the writing, the action sequences, and what have you. Then there was a comments section, much like this site and virtually every other discussion site in existence.

Well,  I found the song I was looking for, and then I began reading the comments. And what I found was people who really enjoyed the show, but then plenty of others who just absolutely ripped on the show for having a lack of internal plausibility, having tons of logical flaws, and just in general being sort of unrealistic. I found myself thinking, "My god, what miserable bastards. These are the same sort of people who used to watch Friends and focus on nothing but how big the apartments were. I mean, really? That's all you can think about? How much does it suck to be that unable to just enjoy something?"

Now, why am I telling you this, you ask? Why am I, quite possibly, insulting many of you with my diatribe against people who break down television into waaayy too much detail? Well, because I once had an argument with my friend Travis over the production quality of the percussion track of The Arcade Fire's "Intervention" that lasted close to two hours. (By the way, in case you aren't familiar, "Intervention" isn't an album, it's a song. 'Bout four minutes long.) See, I've always thought that, as brilliant a track as it is, the drums are way overproduced, much too smooth to fit in properly with the overall feel of the song. I want something sloppier, rougher, and with more noise to it. That's right, folks. Two hours of just that sort of talk. Brutal, I know. And of course, I also realised the number of hours I've spent on this here website, debating arcane formulae and which acronym is best used to determine whether or not someone is worth a three- or four-year deal. I'm willing to bet that more than one person would read over the discussions we have here and scream at all of us, "It's just a friggin' game, people! What the hell is wrong with all of you? Can't you just enjoy this shit, without having to turn it into some sort of giant ordeal?"

And so I'm thankful for that. I can treat different aspects of life completely differently, without ever really noticing any sort of incongruity between them. I can also look down on people who see things differently from me; in the end, I think that may be the greatest gift of all.

Lastly, I'm thankful for all of you. I started writing here at Viva El Birdos last year on Halloween, and the gig has been wonderfully gratifying. The feedback, both of the positive variety and the, "Dude, you suck. WTF?" variety is always appreciated. (Well, one a little more than the other, but what can I say?) I'm thankful that I have a place like this to indulge in one of my great passions, with a group of people so very learned, who are just as passionate about the game as I. So thanks to all of you for making this place special.

And have a very nice Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope you all have lots to be grateful for this year.

And lefty relievers somehow begin another day atop the news cycle. I've never had sympathy for 24-hour news networks, and I probably never will so long as Nancy Grace is gainfully employed, but if I were ever going to gin any up it would be while blogging about baseball in late November. Trever Miller probably appeared less often in his high school paper than he has in the Post-Dispatch in the last week.

Arthur Rhodes is an interesting case, but I'm not sure what to get out of what's there. He's got a nice career platoon split—.614 OPS v. lefties, .735 v. righties—but when he was Arthur Rhodes, the name reliever for whom the Cardinals would, in part, be paying, he was notable for having no platoon split at all; he mowed down righties and lefties indiscriminately, and while he was brought in primarily to face tough left-handed hitters he still typically faced as many righties in a season. It's mostly in his dotage, and earlier in his career, that he's shown a particular distaste for right-handers. 

But in 2008, while putting up that gorgeous 2.04 ERA—maybe it's just too early for me to be awake, but that seems, in its slight asymmetry and false precision, to be a perfect back-of-the-baseball-card number—he was just about the LOOGY-est LOOGY who ever did LOOG. Not only did he face 55% lefties in his stint, he threw his 35.1 innings over 61 games. That sort of average, 2.4 plate appearances per game, should give you uncomfortable memories of the 2005 version of Ray King, whose shiny ERA was cold comfort when he was in the process of turning another right-handed batter into Joe Jackson. 

To use a reliever that selectively—a reliever who is not Mike Myers or Chad Bradford or some other pitcher who is more or less physically incapable of throwing the baseball to certain types of hitters—is to invite a lot of suspicion into the already suspicious, alchemic art of signing a kind of pitcher whose very job description makes it difficult to accrue enough numbers for anything to be meaningful. 

Then there was the Edgar Renteria signing and unsigning. Now that we have what was presumably some kind of offer out in the open—two years, $18 million—I feel a little like I'm cheating off of Brian Sabean's notes. Oh, that's what it's going to take, or almost take? Tell me more. 

I think Renteria's proximity to the Robbie Alomar Dead Zone might be a little overstated, because not every over-30 middle infielder turns to dust and his defense, having slipped below average, is not therefore guaranteed to immediately force him into an infield corner. But if there's any question at all of continued decline the main problem, with Renteria, is less that decline in and of itself than weighing that against his bizarre pattern of upside. There's just no way of knowing what a true Renteria recovery would look like; 2003 and 2007 seem to have been placed into his career more or less at random, and without them his career hitting numbers are less Jay Bell and more a taller, less gritty David Eckstein. 

That said, somebody's got to play shortstop, and as much as I love Tyler Greene and his Two True Outcomes stylings he's not the guy. If Edgar is still available after the arbitration deadline and two years under twenty million is less a jumping-off point than an offer on the table there could be worse options. His offensive decline, at least, seems no more certainly real than Cesar Izturis's defensive renaissance.

Finally, over at Beyond the Boxscore Mr. Vince Coleman is the poster child for a list of the best base stealers since 1900. (I guess Sliding Billy Hamilton will just have to wait for some other list.) I've come of age as a Cardinals fan in a weird time for Vince Coleman valuation—it seems like I'm stuck in the moment between "That tarp machine cost us 1985" and "That Vince Coleman cost us 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989." So it's weird to see what Coleman could do, heretofore relegated to vague, intangible notions of throwing the pitcher off his game or getting rallies started, begin to be evaluated statistically.

A commenter on BtBS put it the most succinctly: "In 1986 Vince Coleman got on base 199 times. He stole 107 bases and was caught 14 times." That's just shockingly effective. It's like being a LOOGY—sorry, Trever Miller has devastated my capacity for analogy—and just not allowing any left-handers to reach base. It's perfect, and according to BtBS it was worth 18 runs. 

... Of course, he hit .232/.301/.280 that year.

This is almost certainly the least suspenseful contract jockeying of all time. Trever Miller is not a bad pitcher, and I don't mean to act like he is, but his inconsistency from year to year, when combined with his low upside, makes him indistinguishable, to me, from any of the minor league fliers that the Cardinals could take heading into the season. He might help you out some, he might hurt you a little, but he's probably not going to put you on his left arm and say "don't worry about it, boys—this is my team now" anytime soon. 

Over his last five years Miller has had two good seasons, 2006 and 2004, and three marginal ones. He's 35, so he might lose it, but he's a lefty, so he might not; he's got good control sometimes and bad control some other times. I don't see any particularly brilliant way to suss out whether or not his next fifty innings will be good ones or bad ones, short of counting the number of left-handed hitters he's slated to face in each one.

It's proven less true the last few years, when the Cardinals have increasingly signed free agents and developed prospects to fill the back of the pen, but the Cardinals have a history with that Beyond the Boxscore perennial, freely available talent. Through scouting and luck the Cardinals occasionally, after going the minor league route, come up with a useful player. When they don't—well, as Bill Pulsipher would vouch, they either make the team and disappear or end up a Spring Training memory, harming nobody in particular. 

So let's say that, in addition to Trever Miller, the Cardinals were scouting a reliever named Talent Available Freely—you can name him whatever you want, but my reliever is Moe Szyslak's acquaintance's brother—who put up the following lines over his last four seasons. 

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