Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2284: Season Preview Series: Astros and Cardinals

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s new sound-dampening windows, listener defenses of MLB’s altered two-way-player rule, and the latest intolerable “breakout” pick, followed by Stat Blasts (15:49) about the teams with the most winless, non-lossless pitchers and the all-time past-their-prime/time-travel teams. Then they preview the 2025 Houston Astros (32:41) with The Athletic’s Chandler […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2284 of Effectively Wild, the Fangrass Baseball Podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Meg Rowley. That has been Limber. Here we are. Hey Ben, how are you? I'm okay. I'm sitting in my newly sound dampened office.

As you know, I just got some inserts on the interior of my windows that are supposed to cut down on the sound from outside and do as advertised. The downside is that I'm sitting here in this office huffing fumes for this entire preview pod from some glue of some sort that is drying. So if I sound a little loopy on this pod,

perhaps that is why. But these are the sacrifices one must make to podcast. And living in the heart of New York City, it's just not a very audio friendly environment. And I think the sirens will still be audible. See the downside of sirens, I mean, really it's the selling point of sirens. They're supposed to cut through glass. You're supposed to be able to hear them so that you can get out of the way of the emergency vehicles. So that's a feature, not a bug, unless you happen to be living in an apartment in that city and recording lots of podcasts. And I'm not in the way of the ambulances and fire

trucks and police cars, et cetera. So I don't need to hear that, but that's just, it comes with the territory, literally. So I don't think the sirens are entirely dampened, but they are somewhat suppressed. So if you hear a little less street noise, that's why. That's your Patreon dollars at work, funding and upgrade to the podcast studio here, which I'm actually reliably informed is a tax write-off. So assuming the government is still collecting taxes,

then perhaps I can take that off of mine. I'm gonna let that pitch sale by, because it's Friday, but I think a little background noise is fine, we're too sterile about these things. I remember, and I don't mean this as a knock on Dylan, but I remember Dylan bemoaning a wind chime outside the house and I'm like, why? Jared Sussman Oh, yeah. That could be pleasant. Yeah.

Beth Dombkowski There's a wind chime. It's nice. Like, you know, we're not in space where they can't hear you scream, you know? Jared Sussman Well, ambiance, ambiance, however you say that. Yeah, a little set in the mood, a little local color, a little atmosphere. Yeah, chimes are nicer than a siren, of course. So there is that reality to acknowledge. The problem with sirens on podcasts I'm given to understand as a non-driver who has heard from drivers who have said this, that sometimes if you're listening to a podcast in the car

and there's a siren on the podcast, then you think that there's something behind you and you're looking over your shoulder, you're pulling over. Yeah, it's just a phantom emergency vehicle. So sorry if I've caused that for anyone. All right, a couple of quick things here. We talked about the Otani rule, the specifically the two-way player rule

and the designation of such and how MLB, you know, without exactly broadcasting it, changed that rule a year ago such that Otani qualifies from the start of the season because now to qualify you only have to have fulfilled the criteria in one of the past two seasons or the current one instead of just the one previous season and the current one. And we got a couple of people responding to us just to defend the change. And I guess not necessarily on the grounds that this was the most forthright way to announce it

or to implement it to avoid any appearance of Dodger's favoritism or whatever. Yeah. The timing of it changing it so that Otani can qualify again, the entire rule is so Otani can qualify, but still, but a couple of people have pointed out a, which is something that MLB told me that promoting two way play is in general a positive, right? Can we agree on that?

That we want it to be easier or more permissive and incentives to be there for two-way players. And then the other thing is that, okay, maybe the sequence of the alterations to these rules, not ideal, but that maybe it just should have been this way from the start that maybe this is better to have it be the two prior seasons because why would you want to punish someone for getting hurt? Right? It's just, okay, you suffer an arm injury. That doesn't mean that you're no longer capable of being a two-way player. I mean, I guess you could say, well, you have to prove it. Now you got hurt, you come back,

you got to put up or shut up and show that you can still do that at this level, but you don't really generally want to disqualify someone from doing something if they're still capable of doing it because they missed a season with injuries, injuries that are really routine these days. So Robert wrote in about that. Someone said the same on Reddit. I think there's some merit to that, that's why strip someone of the two-way status just because they were forced to sit out a season as a pitcher at least. Look, I think that we acknowledge that the incentive here, the one that is a little more innocent is that you want there to be more two-way players. And we said that we also want that. We like two-way players. We have to be more two-way players. And we said that we also

want that. We like two-way players. We have no problem with two-way players. And perhaps you're right. Maybe the rules should have been that way from the jump. That makes a tremendous amount of sense. You don't want to punish someone because they blew out and they're trying to come back. And now there's this additional hurdle of being able to convince their club to know, let me be a two-way guy. I can do it. I know it's going to monkey with the roster for a little while here, but no, I'm sympathetic to all of those arguments and I think that they're good ones, but we should just be clear-eyed about what's going on here, which is Otani got hurt and needed surgery and they were like, oh, that's inconvenient. We're just, we're going to change the rule now. We're going to change the rule right quick. We're going to do a little bulls**t.

And look, maybe you're sympathetic to that bulls**t. That's fine. You're entitled to be sympathetic to that bulls**t. And if, if it had been that way from the jump, I would have been like, yeah, that makes a tremendous amount of sense, but it wasn't. And so we are simply saying, hey, we know what you're doing over there. We got eyes on work and a brain that's sensing. That's all.

We want to watch Otani Pitch. We're in on the Otani pitching experience, bent to a point that is frankly alarming sometimes, and so we're not trying to get in the way of that, but here's what I am here to say. Nothing was getting in the way of that. The Dodgers were just going to pitch him, you know? And if it had cost somebody else a roster spot, guess what? It would have cost them a roster spot. They're just going to do it. It's not a strictly pro-Dodgers rule in the sense that, as we noted last time,

this is really about Otani. But guess who Otani works for and likely will for the rest of his natural born playing career? The Los Angeles Dodgers. So everything that benefits Otani benefits them by default. That's what we're saying. This is a little bit of bullsh**. Is it the worst bullsh** that's ever happened? No. Does it rate among the things that are bullsh**t that's ever happened now. Like, it doesn't rate among the things that are bulls**t that are happening right now elsewhere in the world? Absolutely not. But it is among the bulls**t. That's all I'm saying. It's bulls**t. Yeah. Okay. I'm with you. All right. And we also got an email from listener Sam, long time first time, first time long time. He said the first way. He said, I just needed

to relay the below push notification to the two of you because I'm no longer mentally capable of seeing someone talk about a breakout without relating the claim back to your conceptual breakout discourse. We've ruined everyone. Yeah, now I guess this is Sam's fault for not disabling the push notifications in the first place. But he wasn't opting into this one probably.

This is an ESPN push notification players to watch. It's got the eyes emoji and a baseball emoji. Will 2025 be the breakout year for Cole Reagan's? No, no, no, it will not. No, last year. Oh my God. I, I cannot. Okay.

What are we? He, he finished more than Tsai Yong voting last year. He was an all star. He stars right there. It's right there in the designation. Yeah, I can state definitively categorically that 2025 will not be the breakout year for Cole Regans because not only was 2024 won,

I would argue that maybe 2023 won because I was upset with people who were calling Regans a breakout player last spring because he broke out in 2023 after he was traded from Texas to Kansas City and then they put him in the rotation and he was a regular in the rotation from early August on and from August on, he led all pitchers in FanGraphs War. And Tarek Scubal was a very close second. And so everyone coming into last year forecasted Reagan and Scubal as breakout players and hey, you were right.

They were fantastic. But also it was kind of clear that they were good because they had already been good. Now okay, if you want to say they hadn't done it for a full season, now they're going to be doing it for a full season. Fine. All right. I again wouldn't use the breakout terminology, but you could certainly make the case they'll be better. They'll be more valuable. This will be their best year yet. Okay. Coming into this year, though, I just don't see the case for Cole Reagans. And I looked up the article this came from, and it's mostly inoffensive. It's not even explicitly a breakouts article.

It's just MLB Spring Training 2025, one player to watch on every team. Okay. I mean, I will watch Cole-Regans. So this is a push notification problem. Well, that's what I thought at first. I was all ready to just blame the push people, the social media folks, but we can't

lay this solely at their feet because the blurb for Cole Reagan's, it acknowledges how good he was in 2024. It's not a surprise that he was good. It just says the thought from some evaluators is that Reagan still has another step to take. He sat out a three year stretch from 2018 to 2020 because of two Tommy John surgeries and a canceled minor league season. Didn't spend a full year in major league rotation until last year, but then it ends with the 2025 season could be when Reagan's truly breaks out.

No, no, I was, I was with you up until then. Oh, fine. If you want to say he could be even better. I mean, sure conceivably up until then. Oh, fine. If you want to say he could be even better. I mean, sure. Conceivably he could. Totally. It would be difficult. He was, I think by fan graphs were the second most valuable pitcher in the

American league behind scoobble and fourth overall in baseball, both baseball reference and fan graphs had him pegged at exactly 4.9 war, which was also good for top 10 overall in baseball reference pitching war. So everyone agreed he was great. The peripherals were fantastic, even better than the ERA. He's really good. Okay. But no, there's no truly breaks out because he already did that unless he did that. Like he threw 186 and a third innings. It wasn't even like it was only a hundred innings. He was just a really good starter who made 32 starts and finished fourth in the Cy Young

voting. I love it when our war and baseball reference war are bang on for pitchers. It doesn't happen very often. No, it doesn't. And I do side with FanGraphs on pitchingitching War, not as a partisan, not as someone who hosts a podcast at FanGraphs, just because I do prefer the framework of FanGraphs Pitching War. But yeah, is there room for improvement? Sure, there always is. Sure.

But no, he has broken out. He has already broken out. I don't know. We need like, I just need like editors to get like, like very mild, so mild, like mild enough that they might be like, was that something or did I just like shift funny and my nerves did something weird? But like, I do wonder if we at all times need to be hooked up to something that gives us a very minor shock when we entertain these notions. Just like the smallest shock, you know? Not going to hurt you, not going to mess with a pacemaker, but make you go, oh, right, you know? Is this guy a breakout or am I just recently paying attention to him?

You know? Like ask yourself that question every day. And I feel bad because we're always coming down on the, this guy's not a breakout side and we're not providing the pro breakout case like here's who is actually a breakout candidate, which is hard to do given the way that I define it, which I acknowledge. But I do think we should maybe provide the other side here and

reinforce good breakout picking model, more sensible breakout behavior, which there is precious little of. So maybe we could talk to RJ because RJ has his annual list of breakout picks, which has not come out yet, but will be out later this month. And that's always celebrated by me because he abides we have similar ideas when it comes to breakout candidates. The analyst Thomas Nestico, he published a list of breakout candidates this week, which I think was good in terms of who was actually eligible for those lists. So maybe if we get a little bit of a breather in the preview schedule at some point, we could have one or both of them on just to show, just to illustrate what we're saying should be a breakout candidate. I think that you are quite conservative with your application of breakout as a term. And there's,

I mean, there's like a lot of distance between your selections and say, Cole Regans. Yeah. But, you know, I think that you could be a little, a little looser than you are and it would be defensible and totally fine. But Cole Regans, like tiny shock, tiny shock applied. And like, like on the tip of your finger, you know, not in like a sensitive spot. I'm not, I'm not a monster. I'm not trying to be weird about this, but I am trying to incentivize different behavior and I feel like we've yelled

about it enough, you know? We really… Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's why I want to provide a more constructive segment where I show… Oh, I just want to torture people very slightly. Yeah, you're just Stanley Milgram over here, but… Yeah, but just like a little bit, you know? Non-harmful shocks, just, you know, like, you know, you touch something in winter after you've been brushing against something else.

Yeah, after you walked around in socks. Okay, last thing before we get to our previews. I teased A Stat Blast earlier this week and now I will deliver. Okay. Okay, so very quick little warm up stat blast, just stretching my fingers before I get into the real stat blast here. Not that I'm someone who stretches, as you know, certainly not static stretching, but you know, steepling my fingers before I get to the main event here. This was a question from Corey, Patreon supporter in the Discord group the other day, prompted by the signing of John Brebbia, the reliever John Brebbia, who is now a Detroit Tiger.

Love John Brebbia. John Brebbia makes me believe in Superman. Not like he is the best, but John Brebbia with beard and without beard makes me think that the people who like didn't know it was Clark Kent were not actually very stupid, which has been my belief before. I'm like, oh no, I get it. Like the glasses might've made enough of a difference. I see you. Well, Corey, Patreon supporter, was moved to ask, John Brebbia is one of 14 White Sox pitchers, this is last year, to pitch in a game and have zero wins, but one or more losses. Oh.

Is this... Oh no. Is this a record? Oh no. So the winless White Sox pitchers. Wow. 14 of them last year. And Cory wants to know whether this was a record.

John Brebbia was 0-6, but look, it's not his fault. It's mostly the White Sox fault. What a mean little stat list. What goodness. Yeah. Anyway, yes, it is a record, Cory. This was a quick one. This is stat-hettable from our friends at Baseball Reference and the White Sox did have 14 of them. from our friends at Baseball Reference and the White Sox did have 14 of them. And that was the most ever. The second most is 12,

which is a tie between the 2021 Diamondbacks and last year's Marlins. So there's a theme here. I guess there's an 1884 team that also has 11, the 1884 Kansas City Cowboys, but mostly it's recent teams. Well, I mean, not entirely. Actually, there are a lot of teams, you know, like 1915 A's who were horrible and 1919 A's and 1926 Cleveland elites. So it's actually kind of an interesting mix, but there are a bunch of

recent teams as you'd expect just because there are a lot of pitchers on pitching staffs these days and more games than there used to be. And also, even though there's decent parody in baseball these days, the terrible teams are still pretty terrible as the White Sox illustrated. So yeah, makes sense that a team like the White Sox in this era that was as bad as the White Sox were, would be on this list. The White Sox may be mentioned in the main stat blast here. I teased that I would be doing a stat blast

about time travel teams basically, like past their prime teams, prompted by the angels who have dedicated themselves this off season to signing a bunch of guys who used to be better than they are now and Used to be better like several seasons ago in many cases 2019 was a good year for these guys This probably worked a bit better when Anthony Rendon was still theoretically playing them for them this year because he was excellent in 2019 World Series champion, but yeah a lot of guys fit that mold. And so I was wondering what other teams fit that mold of, gosh, if we could just

transport the players on this current roster back to their selves from several seasons ago, this would actually be a great team. Yeah. And Ryan Nelson, frequent stat blast correspondent, took a look at this one for me, and he ran it a number of different ways and different criteria, but ultimately he ended up with, I think, a pretty clever method. And he gave me the teams that would have been better in increments of several seasons earlier. So three years ago, four years ago, five years ago, six years ago, and seven years ago.

And I'll give you the leaders for each, although they are similar. There's some overlap here, but here's how he described the method. It takes the season three, four, five, et cetera, years ago and adjusts it to 500 plate appearances for batters and 162 innings pitched for pitchers. If a player surpassed those marks, then it takes their war and pro rates it down. But if a player came up short on those milestones, it does not extrapolate their war per played appearance or innings pitch, but just assumes that the player would be replacement level the rest of the way. Which in some cases, perhaps an injury shortened Byron Buxton season is not the likeliest outcome, but is the best way

to control for journeyman gets five plate appearances and happens to Homer in one of them. And so is on pace for 20 war scenarios, but it should tell you how good that player was on a rate basis. So it's, it's comparing how good they are in the current season and kind of accounting for playing time and then saying, but how much better would they have been if they were their selves from several years ago? So for example, if a player got six war in 600 plate appearances in the past season, then their full season mark in this method is represented

as five war in 500 plate appearances, since that's the baseline full season for the sake of this math. But if a player has four war in 400 plate appearances, it assumes four war in 500 plate appearances, not five since we assume any shortcoming and plate appearances would be replacement level. Okay. You don't need to know all of the details there, but some people will want to. So the main takeaway is, which teams were better years earlier? And I'm here to tell you that there's a lot of early

to mid 2000s New York teams on this list. Yeah, so this is like looking at the entire roster and saying like, would there were have been better if they had those players from several seasons ago. And that's basically, even if the young guys that they currently have, like maybe some of those guys weren't even playing five years earlier. And so you're getting something from them in the current year, but you're getting zero from them in the time travel scenario. And so that's accounting for this and still saying that these teams would have been better on the whole.

So for example, okay, if we look at six years earlier, which was what I was curious about, cause that's kind of the angels scenario, the 2003 Mets show up here as they would have been like 26 war better. And for example, as Ryan notes, the 2003 Mets, they had washed up Mike Piazza, Jeremy Bernitz, J Bell, David Cohen, Roberto Alomar, Mo von, Tom Glavin, Mike Stanton, among others. That's the reliever, Mike Stanton, not the John Carlo Stanton, who once went by Mike. So all of those guys had solid 1997 seasons,

six years before 2003, they combined for 30.7 pro rated war in that season, but basically produced almost nothing collectively in 2003, 3.1 total war. So that's just a huge amount of war that you're getting from those guys. I remember that team like, you know, it was just old, like a bunch of big names, you know, brand names, but guys who were watched at that point basically. And so, you know, kind of fun to still see them, but you're thinking of them as they once were because they're kind of

shadows of their former selves at that point. And those Mets were not a good team. 66 and 95 finished fifth in the NL East. So that tracks. However, we also have another New York team represented here. If we look at the seven years ago method, they are number one on that list again, about 26 war to the good. And they show up on some of the other increments too. If we look at say five years earlier, they're number one with like 32 war more than they actually had in 2005. They're tops on the four years earlier also with 35 war. It's the 2005 Yankees,

a team that I was watching, following closely, still rooting for. The impressive thing about this is that even though the Yankees had lots of guys who were watched and who were way better, say seven years earlier, that was still a really good team. They still won 95 games and won the AL East before they got knocked out in the division series to the angels. So that team had the following guys

who were way better in 2000, well, 1999, I guess, or 1998 even, which was an even better year for the Yankees, but Randy Johnson, Derek Jeter, who was still good and not super old at that point, but he just had a huge year several years earlier, Kevin Brown, Mike Messina, my beloved Bernie Williams, A-Rod, Gary Sheffield, Al Leiter, I could go on, just a lot of old guys whose best days were behind them there. And so it's kind of amazing that they were still as good

as they were carrying a lot of dead weight on that roster and a lot of money that was not really translating to wins. And that kind of tracks because the 2005 Yankees were by one method at least, the highest spending team of all time, not in raw dollars, but in terms of like relative to the league and you know, baseball inflation adjusted. This was actually the subject of a previous stat blast when Zach Cram from the ringer joined me to talk

about the highest spending teams of all time. Cause he was very adamant that the 2023 Mets who everyone was saying were the biggest payroll of all time, which was true in a sense, but not really true inflation adjusted and certainly not in terms of MLB inflation and the inflation of payrolls in baseball. And so the 2005 Yankees, they were far and away the biggest spending team because the second placed team that year in the payroll rankings was the Red Sox

because the second placed team that year in the payroll rankings was the Red Sox at 125. And the Yankees were at like 210 million. So just an enormous percentage difference between number one and number two, let alone the Rays that year were at like 30 million. So you know, many, many, many multiples of the payrolls of other teams at that point. So that's how they were so good. They were outspending everyone so dramatically, much more than say today's Mets or Dodgers are relative to their peers. And thus they were able to be a first place team, even though many of their players had seen better days. Other Yankees teams show up and teams that I was kind of past the point of rooting for them and

maybe that was for the best because they were no longer good. I guess I got out at the right time, not that I jumped off the bandwagon, I just you know kind of organically lost my fandom and it happened to be a relative down period by Yankee standards so obviously they still had a winning record because you know that's a down year for the Yankees when you don't make the playoffs, but you still have a winning record. So the 2013 and 2014 Yankees, which, you know, 85 wins, 84 wins, didn't make the playoffs either year, the horror, I know. So if you look at like teams that were, their players were better three years earlier, the 2013 and 2014 Yankees are at the top of the list. And they also show up on some of the other leaderboards too.

You also in the three year, you get the 2006 Red Sox, you get the 82 Yankees, you get the 1980 Angels, in the four year leaderboard, you get 2005 Yankees, you also get 2023 White Sox. Now the 2023 White Sox weren't nearly as bad as the 2024 White Sox, but they were disappointing and they had a bunch of players who were better four years earlier. They looked like they were going to be something and then that didn't pan out so much. So they show up there as do the 1983 angels, the 2003 Mets again, the 2012 Red Sox, the 2013 Yankees again, the 2019 Giants. They're a pretty good one because they had say Buster Posey, Evan Longoria, Brandon Belt, Derek Holland,

Gerardo Parra, Scooter Jeanette, Brandon Crawford. All those guys were better in 2013 versus 2019. Although Madison Bumpgarner was still good in the latter year. Five years, it's mostly the same mix. Although the 1989 Tigers show up, the 2023 Rockies show up also. You also have to be careful about like strike shortened years and other shortened seasons in here.

But yeah, six years, you know, it's mostly the same 1943 giant sneak in there. And then seven years. Yeah, it's mostly the same mix, but I will put the full list online here for anyone who wants to peruse it and reminisce about teams that had seen better days or at least their players had. And I'll just, I got a dog bark. Windows don't help with that, do they? No, dogs can't sound dampen the dog. The barks are coming from inside the house. Oh, Grumpkin.

Yeah, we love her anyway. Good old Grumpkin. And I'll also shout out Patreon supporter Michael Mountain, who took it upon himself to address this question in a different way in the StatBlast channel, in the Discord group and entirely different methods, just going back to integration era. And he did it without any controls for playing time or anything.

So it was just like, if you were on the roster, and also he didn't flash back to a specific season, but just looked at the peak season for anyone who was on that roster. So it could be different peak seasons for each player, but just, you know, take the players on the roster, look up when they had their best year. I think he was maybe using baseball reference for, and maybe Ryan was using fan graphs were anyway, different approach to the problem But I'll put that spreadsheet online and if you look at the percentage

Increase it tends to be a bunch of terrible teams. You have like the 54 A's you have the 2003 Tigers the lowly 2003 Tigers the 74 Padres the 2024 White Sox Hey, they show up here. The 77 Braves, the 96 Tigers, 62 and 65 Mets, 2013 Astros. So lots of terrible teams in terms of percentage boosts, how much better their players were in in better days. But then if you look at like the raw increase in war,

then it's it's a little bit different, but you still get the 2014 Yankees and the 2005 Yankees and the 2013 Yankees and the 1979 Yankees and the 2004 Yankees and the 1982 Yankees and the 2007 Meta and the 2000 Yankees and the 2024 Dodgers, interestingly. As good as those Dodgers were, they won a World Series

famously. A lot of their players had actually been better, had had their peak seasons in previous years. And so we're talking like triple digit war increases here, because again, we're not caring about playing time here. So 2012 Red Sox show up some overlap in these lists. So those are the past their prime teams. And I'll link to the spreadsheet. Speaking of past their prime teams, potentially, we have a couple of previews to get to today. Wow, I was blindsided by that transition, I won't lie. A little harsh, but not entirely untrue.

So we are previewing the Houston Astros today with the Athletics Chandler Rome and the St. Louis Cardinals with the Athletics, Katie Wu. And yeah, you know, some commonalities here. We talked about Bregman last time. We'll be talking more about Bregman this time. And I guess the theme is third base, the theme of these previews,

because we have a bunch about Bregman and the Astros moving on from him. And we also have the Cardinals not moving on from Nolan Arnado despite their best efforts. And of course they tried to move on from Arnado by trading him to the Astros. And then he said, nope, not so fast. So we will take a quick break now

and we'll be back to talk about third baseman and plenty of players at other positions First with Chandler on the Astros, but the man who broke Boston's Bregman has departed the Houston Astros, but the man who broke Boston's Bregman signing is still on the Astros' beat, and he is with us now, Chandler Roem, who covers the Astros, and also departing Astros who are signing with the Red Sox for the Athletic. He also podcasts about the Astros at Crush City Territory. Hello Chandler. Hi Ben, hi Meg, how are we all? Doing okay.

Congrats on the scoop. You got ahead of the national guys and also the Boston media. But the bad news for Astros fans is that it means that Alex Bregman is no longer on the team, which is not really a surprise given the rest of their off season. The surprise to us at least was that they still seem

to have legitimate interest in Bregman Even after seemingly moving on and arranging their roster in a Bregman free format So why did they decide to seemingly move on from Bregman with some of their earlier moves this offseason? But then still continue to court him. What a weird offseason like I Asked myself many times what their direction is. I thought I had it after the winter meetings when Kyle Tucker got traded and you knew that they were shopping Ryan Presley. You kind of knew where they were going.

To be frank, I think the only reason that they were in on Bregman toward the end was and Dana Brown said this out loud, was that they were just surprised he was still there. And at that point, we're kind of just like, well, we have to try. And I think this was a little bit driven by ownership too. If you listen to Dana Brown's comments toward the end of the Alex Bregman sweepstakes, I don't think Teppid does it justice.

He sounded just outright unenthusiastic about the proposition of bringing Bregman back. Just given what they had done with their roster already, given, you know, they had already had Esauk Paratus in the Tucker trade. They signed Christian Walker. I'm sure we'll talk about Jose Altuve's possible journey to left field at some point. That I think was going to be looked at no matter what happened. But to answer the overall question, they really at the beginning of the off season, this really transpired just about how every other one of their departed free

agency sweepstakes has transpired. They gave Alex Bregman, or they offered a six years, $156 million at the beginning of the off season. And normally, um, their tendencies have been to present what they call their best offer, which was that. And basically it'd be like, you know, here it is, take it or leave it. If you don't find what you're looking for on the market, you come back. We'd love to have you, but, uh,

this is what we're comfortable doing. And if you don't want it, then good luck where you go. That was basically how I understand it played out that that was their offer and they really weren't going to budge. And once it became clear that that offer wasn't going to get it done, they were on the one yard line to trade for Nolan Aronado before he invoked his no trade clause. They acquired Esau Paratus, they signed Christian Walker, and they executed a full pivot. The only reason I think they got back into it

was because it was coming up to spring training, he was still unsigned, and honestly, the reporting at the time was that he didn't have the offers that he wanted, and you started to look at 6-4-156, and you started to think to yourself, does he have a better offer out there? And it turns out he did. He had two better offers. Uh,

if you look at AV from the Boston offer and then the, the tiger's offer of six years, 171 and a half million. I mean, that, that's more total money. So the end of the day, the Astros finished where they usually do. They had the third best offer out to a face of their franchise. AMT – I find myself perplexed by this team. It sounds like at times you do too. And I wonder if we could try to characterize them. For long stretches, they were ruthlessly efficient, analytical perhaps to a fault, right? And then you had this odd interregnum between the Lu-Nau era and where we are now.

And now it feels like ownership is very involved. And I wouldn't say that they're making necessarily bad decisions. We'll talk about him, but like I like Christian Walker. I think Paradees is a great fit for their ballpark. It's not that every move is necessarily bad or throwback, but I don't know that they're quite as easily characterized as they once were. So when you are trying to sum up this franchise, how do you describe them now?

I think they're trying to stave off a full rebuild. I think they are trying to stave off having to tear it all down to the studs and start over again. You know, owner Jim Crane is famous for saying that the window will never close as long as he owns the team. As they entered this off season, they had a farm system that is barren. They, they just, they don't have anything coming. They've got a couple of nice pieces. They've got some guys that can be complimentary players,

some guys that can be bench bats, utility guys, maybe back into the rotation guys, but they don't have the sort of transformational franchise changing prospects coming up to make that next core. They don't have a Kyle Tucker in the farm. They don't have a Bregman in the farm. They don't have that sort of talent. If you don't have that, you've got to be active in free agency. And this is a team that under Jim Crane has been averse to getting into bidding wars

and free agency. They are very comfortable doing the Christian Walker type of deals, the Jose Abreu type deals, you know, the three years, 60 million, three years, 58, like this is still a franchise that under Jim Crane has never given a $100 million free agent deal. They've never gone longer than five years on any free agent deal. And I think they're at that crossroads now of they look at the farm and they say, we don't have much coming there. They don't want to be extravagant.

They don't wanna be reliant on throwing a bunch of money at free agency. So now they're just kind of in the middle. They're kind of in the middle and they don't know, they want to dip their toes into both. Trading Kyle Tucker was out of character. I mean, this is a franchise that let Bregman play through his platform year, that let Correa and Cole

and Springer and Verlander the first time. And guys that they could have traded for prospects, they didn't. Guys that they knew they were never going to retain, they held on to. So it was a departure from that. I think honestly, this is a franchise that is trying to balance winning now, trying to be as competitive as they can to keep putting a competitive product on the field while also realizing that there are cracks in the foundation forming.

And I think they're trying to avoid having to do what Jeff Luno did, which is come in here, tear it down to the studs and start over again. Yeah. So if you don't want to rebuild and you don't have another Kyle Tucker coming, then one thing you could do is keep Kyle Tucker the original. And they clearly just conceded that they weren't going to be willing or able to do that. So what accounts for the departure there? Is it just that Kyle Tucker is so good and fairly young by free agent standards that they knew that they

were just not going to play in the deep end of the pool for him? And if that's the rationale, well, given the decision to deal him, how do you think they did? From what I understand and talking to people involved, the Juan Soto deal really, I think sobered them up a little bit when they saw what Juan Soto got. And I'm not sitting here trying to say Kyle Tucker is Juan Soto, but the numbers are pretty comparable. Like if anything, Tucker has maybe more tools than Soto. He's a better base runner. He's a better defender.

He's can be a 30, 30 guy, a true five tool player. When they saw that Juan Soto got, it kind of dawned on them that man, Kyle Tucker is going to get something that starts with a four or five maybe in free agency. And look, this team can barely play in the 200 million dollar free agent pool They certainly aren't playing in the 400 million 500 million dollar free agency pool. So I think just the sheer magnitude of what he is going to get I think just

completely outshot anything that they were ever going to have a feasible chance of Having a chance to do so they made the decision You know coming into the offseason I had heard that you know They were they were okay entertaining deals for either Kyle Tucker or from her Valdez my my Fascination was going to be which one of them did they determine that they could quote-unquote live without? And that was and that was Tucker. And you know, the trade, I think as Meg said, you know, Esauk Paratus profiles very well

for Minute Maid Park. It's probably one of the most scrutinized spray charts you'll ever see if you just go look at what he does. I mean, he is perfect for, and I'm sorry, the Astros Overlords are gonna get mad at me. It's Dyken Park now, not Minute Maid Park, Dyken Park. Esauk get mad at me. It's Dyken Park now not Minute Maid Park Dyken Park Esauk Parade is he profiles perfectly for Dyken Park It's a downgrade defensively from Bregman, but everyone's gonna be a downgrade defensively from the reigning gold glove winner

Hayden was Neske's gonna open the season and as the fifth starter in their rotation If they get some of their injured starters back Then he kind of perfectly profiles as the swing guy long relief Can make a spot start can be their sixth starter if and when they need to go to a six-man rotation And then I think the headliner is cam smith cam smith You know when I just talked about that the Astros don't have that top-end talent in the farm system They don't have that guy coming. He is now that guy. He is on, he entered this farm system and was unquestionably has unquestionably ascended to be their top

position player prospect. I don't have the fan graphs rankings in front of me, but if you look at other outside publications, you know, cam Smith was about fifth, sixth or seventh within the cubs farm system. He comes to the Astros farm system and is unquestionably their best prospect. He's in big league camp now. So how Cam Smith does is going to determine how well the Astros won this trade. And it should be noted that they only traded away

one year of Kyle Tucker. This could be a one year thing for the Cubs, but Cam Smith's long term projection and how Cam Smith fares will, I think, determine the outcome of this trade. Yeah, he was a 45 plus for Eric after their trade. Maybe we can talk about some of the guys who they pivoted to.

I have gotten to see a lot of Christian Walker play for space in the last couple years living in Arizona. I really like Christian Walker. I liked Christian Walker better than Pete Alonso. What are the Astros like about Christian Walker? Well, first of all, it can't go worse than the last mid-30s first baseman that they gave a three-year free agent deal to.

I don't need to explain the bat. The bat's really, really good. And I think the bat is going to help. But I think they were attracted, honestly, more to his defense because this was a defensive infield last year that despite Alex Bregman winning the gold glove, this was not a good defensive infield last year. Part of it was Jose Altuve's rapidly declining metrics at second base.

And part of it was that they had a, they DFA'd Jose Abreu in May and had to cycle John Singleton in there, Mauricio Dubon, Victor Caratini, Yiner Diaz. Like the carousel of first baseman last year, none of them were good defensively. So shoring that up, just getting a reliable three time, three straight gold gloves, that appealed to them

honestly more than anything, that they needed to get some more certainty on the right side of their infield, especially with a rotation that has Fromber Valdez, who we all know is the ground ball machine in the big leagues, and also Hunter Brown, who last year, after he started throwing that sinker in May, was generating ground balls at a 50, 52% clip.

So you have two of the sport's best ground ball pitchers as your one, two in your rotation, and you've got to have a good defensive infield behind them. They needed the bat. Christian Walker's gonna hit in the top half of their lineup, obviously, but his defense and the way he can shore up kind of maybe their shortcomings

at second base and just kind of control the right side of the infield, I think very much appealed to them. Yeah, one way to make sure that Paredes plays a little more true is to have the guy catching balls from him at third be very, very good. So you mentioned Altuve's defensive struggles, and at first it seemed like putting him in left field would just be a way to try to shoehorn Bregman in there. But even though they're not getting Bregman, they're still entertaining this idea of Al Thufay in the pasture. So tell us how serious this is, and what the motivation is, and how you think it will go. It would have been almost guaranteed, honestly, if Bregman would have come back. But now that

he's not coming back, it's gonna be something to take a look at in spring training. He's going to take fly balls. He's already been taking fly balls at Dyken Park for the last, in January, because he lives in Houston, so in January, during his off-season work, he was in left field at Dyken Park, working around the Crawford boxes,

working around the nooks and crannies and things, and taking fly balls. So he's already been working there. Neither Joe Espada nor Dana Brown wants to commit to anything right now. They're basically kind of adopting the we're gonna see how it looks and kind of make a decision as we go forward. Jose Altuve is not going to end his career playing second base. The defensive metrics do not support that. As we talked about this pitching staff

and how much ground ball contact they generate, it's almost untenable to play him there 146 games like they did last year. He was never going to end his career at second base. I don't think many people thought the move to left field would have happened this quick, but left field is probably their most unsettled position right now too. Like if Altuve doesn't play there, I kind of don't know who's going to. They have a prospect named Zach Dezenso.

They've got Ben Gamble. They've got Taylor Tramiel. They've got Mauricio Dubon can go out there. They don't really have a settled left field right now. So putting him out there, maybe to let Dubon play second where he's an elite defender or to let another kind of sure-handed defender play second base or to open a spot maybe for Bryce Matthews or one of their infield prospects, you know, that could help them in the longterm. So they're going to see how it looks.

I imagine he's going to split time in spring at both positions The odd thing is we haven't talked to altuva since bregman signed now Before bregman signed altuva was on board with playing left field But he only said he was doing that because he wanted bregman back So now that bregman is gone now that that is out of the equation, it'll be interesting to see what Al Thuve says about his preference, where he would like to play, kind of where he feels the most comfortable.

But I think that's gonna be one of the more, maybe the only interesting subplot of this Astros camp is gonna be how comfortable does he look in left field? And is that something that they are ready to permanently say this is where he's going? Yeah. Do you think that this is something that Al Tuve will resent this direction that the team is taking as he is seeing these other excellent players leaving and he's almost the last man standing from some excellent Astros teams?

Not that it's exactly a Nolan Arnado in Colorado situation, Nolan Arnado, another player who is not going to be playing third base in Houston, although that was a possibility at one point. But is this a case of, hey, you signed me, I committed to you, and now suddenly this roster is changing around me in kind of disconcerting ways? I don't know if you saw, you know, in September, Altuve became as adamant and as vocal about retaining Bregman as he's been about anything since I've covered him. I've covered him for seven years now. He doesn't usually do that.

He is not a guy that really puts his opinions out there. He doesn't demand much. He doesn't and certainly doesn't go on record demanding a lot. And with how vociferous he was about demanding that they do everything they can to retain Bregman. Obviously, you know, there's a couple things. You know, he's also a Scott Boris client.

Maybe there was some of that, you know, one helping the other. He likes, obviously he likes Bregman, they're friends and they were teammates forever But I also do wonder how much of it was he was looking around and he's like man Everyone's gone like I need someone to be I need someone to kind of be with me and the kind of if they kept Bregman maybe in altuva's mind. They thought okay, like everything's gonna be okay, and I wonder if that had some sort of impact into his words and kind of how he everything's gonna be okay. And I wonder if that had some sort of impact

into his words and kind of how he addressed that. Again, we have not spoken to him since Bregman signed or agreed with the Red Sox. The last time Jose Altuve spoke to us was in January when news about the Asher's re-engaging with Bregman had really just broken. He was again, all in on do anything they can to get Bregman back, like we need to do anything we can, he needs to be back here.

So that's kind of been his tone. I'll be very fascinated to hear when he does report to camp in the next few days whether he feels A, that the Astros actually put forth a good enough effort to retain Bregman and B, like what does that mean for the direction of this franchise because and I thought Lance McCullers who is now the only other member of the 2017 Astros still on the team alongside Altoove you know I thought Lance McCullers who talked to us today I thought he gave a pretty interesting encapsulation of where they are you know he said this season maybe coming out of the shoot we or a little more step by step, Hey,

let's make it out, get hot. Let's put ourselves in this situation to win the West and then move to the playoffs versus showing up to camp and saying it's world series or bust. So maybe they're in a different level of expectation now. Maybe, maybe everyone kind of understands that this is no longer the super team that you saw in 2019 or 2021. This is a team that's going to have to work for it. This is a team that is, you know, it's aging.

It's a team that has a lot of dead money on the books that prohibited them from doing a lot of stuff. So it's one of these things that, you know, Altube is kind of the last remaining cornerstone and it'll be interesting to see how he reacts to it and more importantly, where he plays next year. Well, one of the ways that they could potentially outperform their expectations is to get more out of the, maybe not young, but youngish guys on their roster.

And so I'm curious if you think the paint is dry on Jeremy Pena because he was a highly regarded prospect He's not a bad player His rookie season he was tremendous in the field league average bat and now he's settled into being you know At times error prone but good enough defender and an exactly league average bat Is there another gear here for Pena? You know Meg? I've always said and this may sound very odd, but the best and worst thing to ever happen to Jeremy Pena

was that he won the World Series MVP as a rookie. It's really hard to live up to that. Really, really hard. And if you look at Pena's regular season in 2022, like the slugging percentage notwithstanding, it's not all that dissimilar to what he's done the last two years. He kind of always has been this player

and had an unbelievable torrid run for three weeks and one ALCS MVP and one World Series MVP. And now, you know, after that, you kind of look at this guy and say, oh man, is this the next face of the franchise? Is this the next superstar? And like you said, he's been a very adequate player, very sure-handed defender. Had about a three-week stretch last year where his defense just took a nosedive, but other than that has been a really sure-handed defender.

I think the at bats have actually gotten better. Like he's not chasing as much, he's not flailing at as many sliders down and away. The batting average is up. You see the contact is better. But the lack of slug and the lack of being able to elevate the ball is a little odd for me, just especially given when you look at Jeremy Pena and how absolutely shredded he is,

you kind of wonder why can't this guy hit more home runs? I mean, he had 22 home runs as a rookie, and he's at 25 total in the past two seasons. So it's an interesting dynamic with him. I think they would like him to hit for more power. I think they'd like him to find ways to elevate the ball more. Last spring, he came in with an overhauled stance. He used to wag the bat and move the bat a ton.

Last spring he showed up and he had quieted his stance down a ton in hopes of being easier to the ball, kind of more efficient toward the ball. And the slugging percentage did go up about 15 points from 2023 to 2024, but the on base went down. So it's one of these things that I do think there's another level for him. I do think he can hit for more power, but is he ever going to bottle up those three or four weeks

he had in October of 2022 and make that his career? I don't think so. But he showed he was capable of it on the biggest stage, so he may. But I think there's more there. But I certainly don't think it's one of these things where he's going to morph into this can't miss superstar that we kind of thought he was going to be after 2022. Well, one guy who has no trouble driving the ball and who arrived before Jeremy Pena, but is essentially the same age, is Jordan Alvarez.

And he obviously has played some left field for the Astros, so if Altúvay is out there, then Jordán would not be out there, and maybe that would be for the best, given all his knee issues. And he's had something not long ago about how it seemed like he might have to have knee surgery and then he was relieved that he didn't, that his knees responded, which was worrisome, I would say, and all the more reason to maybe consign him to DH for good. So is that his future? I mean, it's always been his future,

but is it his immediate full-time future? It is. Joe Espada has made no bones about it. He has been as clear as can be that they are cutting down Jordan Alvarez's time in left field this year. I think he started there 53 times last year. And I think Joe Espada, if he had his druthers would, would cut that in half and maybe even

more than half. That's also part of why they're looking at Jose Altuve out there because they want to keep Jordan Alvarez from having to run out there and play a bunch in the outfield. Now the thing they have to contend with is that Jordan Alvarez wants to play out there. He's been vocal that he wants to play the outfield, that he doesn't want to be pigeonholed as a DH, as a DH only this young in his career. And, you know, this is probably the case

for a lot of guys like him, but if you go look at his splits between when he's playing left field and when he's just DH-ing, the sample size is obviously, there's a big discrepancy, but his numbers when he is playing left field and when he's just DHing. The sample size is obviously, there's a big discrepancy, but his numbers when he is in left field are astronomically better than when he is the DH. And he has said before that that helps him

stay engaged in games. It helps him kind of keep his focus and he likes it. He likes playing out there. He's not a particularly good outfielder. He has a nice throwing arm that a lot of third base coaches have tried to test and he has thrown a couple of guys out. So the arm is not bad, but he's not, he's not a guy you want to clamor to have out there,

especially when he's got the history of knee stuff. Last year, it's kind of odd. Everyone wants to point to his history of knee injuries and what happened last year that he was hurt during the wild card series. He got hurt last year, like trying to stretch a single into a double. He didn't get hurt playing defense. So I think he can play out there and they will play him out there if they have to like

in an absolute pinch, but he's probably fifth or sixth on their, on their left field depth chart of who they want to put out there. So yeah, his long-term future is obviously a DHA and you'll see that this year that they are going to do everything in their power to not play him out there. I'm going to let that astronomically that you just dropped there go by. Cause I assume that was unintentional, but I was going to cite those splits if you didn't because yeah, it's about a hundred points of OPS. He's been better when he's in left.

Although there has been some research that shows that when you really are a full-time DH, then often you do adjust to that role and that DH penalty doesn't really persist. So maybe if he can adapt the mindset of yes, I'm a DH now and really get into that routine, you'll see those splits get smaller. Go tell him, Chandler. Go tell him. Yeah. Tell him Ben Lindh said it'll be fine. I did want to ask about Yiner Diaz, who is an astronomical offensive upgrade over his predecessor at the position,

but perhaps a defensive downgrade compared to Martin Maldonado. How has he improved working with pitchers? Is he working on his framing? I mean, having that kind of bat from your catcher, that's a plus whatever you're getting with the glove, but what strides has he made back there and does he hope to continue to make?

Judging from what Joe Espada has said the first couple of days in camp, they're more focused on him like honing in on maybe the nuances of the game. And this is where camp, they're more focused on him, like honing in on maybe the nuances of the game. And this is where I think they're also going to miss Alex Bregman a ton. One of the things that Joe mentioned earlier in camp was that they want to get him more accustomed to being the guy that initiates the mound visit that goes out there that can

sense when a pitcher needs a breather, can sense when maybe a team's on something or needs to go out there and kind of calm the tides a little bit. That used to be Bregman's job. Bregman from third base last year was a master at that. You'd see him sometimes run in and kind of start the mound visits like an Yiner would just come kind of join in. And obviously it's been widely talked about the influence of Bregman had on their pitching staff last year. He He wasn't game planning, but he certainly helped, you know pitch sequencing picking out, you know looking at

Opponents splits looking at kind of what they hit well what they didn't hit well and I'm not saying Yiner Diaz didn't do any that He was still very involved in game planning. It was calling the games It was not as if Bregman was overtaking him, but Bregman was a big help. And so I'm gonna be fascinated to see now without him kind of how this becomes Yiner Diaz's kind of role. And obviously you look at it, the framing numbers were not great. And I think that is something

that they want him to improve on, but with the looming implementation of ABS, you kind of wonder, will he even need to improve his framing that much within the next couple of years? So obviously the bat is everything with him. He's a he's a bat first catcher and he did some good things defensively. Certainly got better as the year went on. I was actually impressed to see how well he held up

considering how much he caught in his first full year in the big leagues. Like he had some ruts offensively where he kind of, you could tell he was fatigued a little bit, but it didn't show in the overall counting stats, like that he fatigued a ton. And I think that's something that they can certainly take solace in, but they certainly need him to be good defensively.

They certainly need some strides made, but it's about the bat with him. And as long as that keeps coming, I think that can outweigh some of the little stuff that he needs to work on defensively Maybe we can switch to talking about some of the guys he'll be catching because obviously they'll have Valdez returning They have Hunter Brown. They have a bunch of guys behind that duo who are Relatively new in their big league careers. Obviously Blanco's a little bit older than Arrigatty and Wozneski, but how are they thinking about how this rotation is going to stack at the beginning of the year and then are there guys who they

might be able to fold in as they're coming back from injury that could shake things up? They'll have Fromm or Valdez and Hunter Brown at the top and then you know, Ronel Blanco, Spencer Arrigatty, and Hayden Wazneski, that should round out the opening day slash week rotation, barring any injuries in camp. They claim they're not worried about it, but both Blanco and Arigatty, last year, shattered their career high in workloads and innings pitched. Be interesting to see how they bounce back, whether the stuff is down, whether they're going to have to be mindful of their their workloads given what they came off of. Wazneski, they really like his versatility and his ability to be a long man, go to the bullpen, be a swingman, but

they're gonna give him every opportunity to start. He's gonna be the fifth starter to open the year. And then kind of the wild cards in their season are Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers. McCullers is, as we speak now, ahead of Garcia in terms of rehab. Neither's going to be ready for opening day. But McCullers is throwing off of a mound. He's throwing, I believe, eight bullpens in spring training. He hopes to get in spring training games

toward the end of spring, and then he's gonna go to AAA Sugarland on a rehab assignment. He doesn't wanna put a timeline or a timeframe as to when this could be. I think if he's back by the beginning of May, I think they would consider that a win. Obviously he hasn't pitched in two years. The last time you saw him on a major league mound was game three of the 2022 world series in Philadelphia.

He's really good when he's healthy. Like I mean, this is a, this is a really good above average starting pitcher, but he, I mean, he's been gone for two years. He hasn't pitched in two years. He's had total flexor tendon replacement surgery. He's had a couple of setbacks mixed in. Like you really don't know what you're going to get there. It's not much better for Luis Garcia who has had a couple of setbacks who is currently not throwing off of the mound. And again,, hasn't pitched in almost a year and a half.

And certainly those are guys that within them are capable of raising the floor of this rotation, but I don't know what their workload's gonna look like. I don't know what their stuff's gonna look like after such a long layoff. Given the struggles that the Astros have had getting their pitchers back healthy, you wonder if how long those guys are going to stay healthy.

This is a team and a medical staff that last season had, I believe four pitchers that they were trying to return from injury, either suffer season ending setbacks or just not return at all. They also rushed JP France back. They outright acknowledged that they rushed JP France back from a shoulder injury in spring training. He had to undergo surgery on a torn capsule in a labor room and he's out until

the all star break. Christian Javier, another one of those guys that was trying to rehab last year suffered a set back and had to have Tommy John surgery. They keep forecasting that he'll be back after the all star break. But again, given their track record I don't know how you can legitimately count on any of those guys to give you meaningful innings So if they don't They've got some guys on the back end of their 40-man roster Colton Gordon Ryan Gusto

They have a prospect named AJ blue ball that they really like Those could be kind of the next line of defense if they if they get down there But I think a lot hinges on those injured pitchers and whether they can come back and whether they can be effective. And that was sort of the story last season too. And as you just said, a lot of those injured guys didn't come back and weren't effective or some guys got injured, and yet the rotation was not bad. Somehow they made it work. They were 10th in FanCraft's War from their starting pitchers. That was down to Hunter Brown and his turnaround after a rough start and Framber figuring out how his stuff worked with kind of a different arsenal and René Blanco stepping up sometimes and Spencer Arrghetti, et cetera. Was that sort of a surprise that they managed to piece things together and have that cobbled together rotation be as productive as it was? And can they expect the same out of some of those guys given health? It was certainly a surprise to me. I mean, Hunter Brown gave up like 10 runs in an inning to the Royals in April, and they were going to option a triple A like the next week.

And Ronel Blanco was not even scheduled to make the opening day roster last year. Jose Rikiti and Justin Verlander get hurt and then he throws a no hitter in his first start of the season. Like everything that happened with their rotation last year was as unforeseen as anything I can remember. And you have to give a ton of credit to their pitching development, their player development and their pitching coaches and Josh Miller and Bill Murphy. And they're, and they're to a point now, like the Ashford's pitching infrastructure and pitching staff and coaches are to

a point now where I kind of just blindly trust them that they're going to find a way to figure it out. Because I've had these exact same concerns. Like I hammered them last year for not signing, starting pitching depth in the offseason And then when it dwindled to the point where it did they still managed to pull it out They still managed to find a way to cobble together an elite rotation I know it's kind of a cop-out answer But I'm just gonna trust them at this point like they've found a way to do it with guys

You know whether it's their usage whether it's their sequencing whether it's Just what they've been able to do with guys, whether it's their usage, whether it's their sequencing, whether it's just what they've been able to do with guys. And then they get Yusei Kikuchi last year and turn him into a really dominant starter for two months. I'm just gonna kind of blindly put my faith in Josh Miller and Bill Murphy and presume that they're gonna turn whatever they have available and healthy to them into a competent rotation.

And they might have to extend some of that magic to the bullpen because there are guys here who everyone knows, Josh Hader returns, there are a lot of familiar faces to Astros fans, but obviously they'll be without Ryan Presley. So what of this group made them feel comfortable making that trade and then how do you imagine them piecing together the innings before they bridge to Hader?

I'm not sure they felt comfortable doing it. I think they were told get under the CBT and they looked at who was making a lot of money and they dumped the most of his salary. So I think that was the onus behind the Ryan Presley trade. It was a salary dump coupled with his relationship with Dana Brown had deteriorated after they signed Josh Hader last year. It's kind of funny how everyone wanted to publicly portray how everything was great and grand and everyone was in lockstep and everyone agreed and was happy and merry and

that was completely not the case the entire season. Do you guys want to guess the reliever in Astros Spring training that has the most Major League service time? Oh, I shouldn't because I have their roster resource page up in front of me, so I might be able to discern that answer. So do I. It's essential companion to these preview pods, but yeah, I could tell you the answer, I guess,

but well, is it, well, maybe this is wrong. Is this, is it Rafael Montero? It is the 11 and a half million dollar man, Rafael Montero, who is not on the 40 man roster. He has the most major league service time of any reliever in Astros camp. I can't believe I'm saying this, but they need to find a way to get him right.

Cause he is the one guy that you look at, aside from a Breyou and Hader, like he's the one guy you look at that has been in every kind of situation you can think of. He has pitched leverage innings for playoff teams. He has been in big games. He has succeeded in big games. He has more experience than anyone in that clubhouse. And they've got 11 and a half million dollars invested in

him no matter if he's on the roster or not. So it's sunk costs that they've got to find a way to extract some value out of him. Team officials were encouraged with what he did in winter ball. They DFAed him and sent him a AAA last year. They told him to throw his slider more. They told him he was becoming way too predictable when he fell behind in counts. So they were trying to get his sequencing better and they think he, they he's done some stuff to help that if he can turn the corner and just

be half of what he was in 2022, 2022, as we now know was a complete outlier in his career. But if he can like even approach that, that would really, really help this bullpen, which is otherwise a collection of guys that have good stuff. You know, you look at Caleb Orte, you know, he ranks high and stuff. Plus, you know, Taylor Scott had a unbelievable season last year, kind of broke out of nowhere, but both of those guys have career FIPS of over five and the big leagues, albeit in limited samples, but they do. They've got force Whitley

down there who used to be the best pitching prospect in baseball but now has no minor league options left and has to make the team or get on waivers. And you know, they keep saying he looks good, he looks healthy, he's throwing 99, finally made it to the big leagues for a little bit last year, but never has there been a clearer path for him to have a spot cemented on a big league roster. They've got a couple lefties that they like. Brian King is a minor league rule five guy that came up last year and really, really impressed them. Bennett Souza is now fully healthy and they like what he can do.

So there are certainly names out there and there are guys that you can start to piece together where they would pitch, but not a ton of experience, not a ton of established depth behind Hayter and Abreu, who we all know are not gonna be available to pitch every day. So they're gonna need some guys to step up, they're gonna need some depth to be built, because as of now, maybe outside of the outfield,

you look at the bullpen and that's probably the place where this thing can get off the rails pretty quickly. We were talking about how Altuve and McCullers are the last links to some earlier Astros teams. We should also maybe mention someone who wasn't on the 2017 or 2016 teams, but was on the 2014 and 2015 Astros teams, and that's John Singleton, who made it back,

had this comeback in 2023 with a couple different teams, and then actually stuck it out in the big leagues last year. He had a career high, games played, played appearances, offensive stats, etc. He was still replacement level on the whole going by Fangraph's War, but it was quite a comeback at age 32 for him to even accrue that much playing time after that extremely long absence from the big leagues and all the minor league suspensions and all the rest. So what was it like for him and also for the team? For him to belatedly not exactly fulfill his potential or completely make good, but at least become a staple of a

big league roster and still to be on it going into this year. I mean obviously it was a cool story of just personal perseverance to for Singleton for kind of everything he had battled obviously he's been open about some of his addiction problems and to come back from that this he was playing in Mexico he's playing independent ball for a while to to come back from that, this he was playing in Mexico, he's playing independent ball for a while, to come back from that and to be a contributor on a team that won a division, got in the big playoff games.

I mean, it's certainly a testament to him, to his perseverance and to what he's been able to do and to kind of get his life and his career kind of back on track. But as far as what he projects to do on this team, obviously signing Christian Walker is going to cut into any playing time that John Singleton would have had, any regular playing time.

And if Jordan Alvarez is not going to play left field a ton, as we've discussed, and he's going to be the DH, there's really no spot for John Singleton to really make a regular impact. This is a very right-handed team Jordan Alvarez is really their only Everyday hitter that is a true left-handed hitter So John Singleton does it left-handed and they do like what he can bring off the bench just in terms of in a late late in games He's he and this has been the case his whole career. He's always swung at strikes, not swung at balls.

He's always had great plate discipline, always make good swing decisions. Obviously if he gets a hold of a ball, it goes a very, very long way, but there's not obviously doesn't bring much defensive value. Doesn't bring much base running value on this particular roster, barring an injury to Christian Walker. He does kind of profile as a guy that's going to make the team on the bench, but kind of a lefty pinch hit guy for Joe was spot a latent games. You know, you talked about how the, the sort of tone and a tonner of the players comments

about where they are has maybe changed a little bit. I'm, I'm curious how the team sees itself in what we at least project to be a very flat AL West. I think that, you know, I haven't looked at our playoff odds today, but the Astros, Mariners, and Rangers were separated by like fractions of a win when our playoff odds first went live. Do you imagine that this is a team that even though they aren't as dominant as they've been in years past would still be aggressive come the trade deadline if they're contenders leading the division or do you think that they might sort of stand pat just because, well, it's not like the Mariners

and the Rangers have really done all that much this off season either, so. Oh, if they are within striking distance, they're going to be aggressive at the trade deadline. That's always been Jim Crane's kind of MO. He has gone in just about every trade deadline you can remember. I mean, look at last year.

I mean, they had to go get, you say, Kikuchi. They've done this every year. When they have been legitimate in striking distance to make the playoffs and to perhaps wanna pin it, they have been aggressive at the deadline. And that's part of, I believe, why they, I don't have the payroll numbers in front of me right now. I believe they're about five or six million

under the first luxury tax threshold. I think they're saving that spot to see if, they're saving it for the deadline, to see if they can splurge then and find something and get there. I would be stunned if they get to mid in July and are within striking distance of the division or leading the division and they just completely stand pat.

That has not been Jim Crane's MO, that has not been Dana Brown's MO from his first two years as a general manager. That's just not been this franchise's MO at all across this era that they've had this championship window. So yes, I would be pretty surprised. Again, barring like, who knows? Maybe they're playing so well at the deadline,

they don't need anything. They just need to go get like a backup catcher or something. But like, if they get to the deadline and they have clear needs and they have a legitimate chance to contend, I would be stunned if they stand, Pat. And just one big picture question about this team's identity, which as you noted earlier, it's tough to pin down these days on one level. Of course it's Jose Altuve's team as long as he's there, but front office wise and management wise,

this team had a very clear identity for years. And it wasn't necessarily a positive identity in a lot of respects, but it was at least something that we could say, oh, this is what the Astros are like, here's how they operate. And obviously, cheating aside, it was quite successful for them for some time. And now you have Dana Brown, who's from a different background than his predecessors in that job. And you also have Dana Brown, who's from a different background than his predecessors in that job. And you also have Jeff Bagwell being around and you have Crane maybe meddling a bit more than he used to. So how would you even characterize this team? I know that the stats versus scouts debate is long since settled, but if there is sort of a spectrum of how teams evaluate players or

structure their front offices. Where are the Astros on it? I ask myself that a lot and I can't come up with like the perfect way to describe it. What I don't think is, you know, there's a lot of unrest sometimes from fans. Oh, they're abandoning analytics. They're gone, like they don't use them anymore

because Dana Brown is a former scout and because Jeff Bagwell has railed on analytics on numerous occasions, like, no, like they still use analytics. They have a very analytically heavy coaching staff, a very modern progressive coaching staff that uses that information and finds ways to best disseminate it to players. This is not a team that is abandoning, you know, analytics and what got them here. Are they relying on it less? Maybe. I can't say that for a definitive fact, but yeah, I think there's been a little more just gut feel and a little more kind of on the ground experience that has infiltrated their front office. And that's something that Dana Brown's been, been pretty forthright about that. He wanted to get more scouts and ballparks that, you know,

there's just stuff that he sees as, as, as, as a, as a scout, a guy with that background that, that he values maybe more than his two predecessors, neither of whom ever played the game at a, at a high level. So at least what I've observed, what Dana has been good at is he's let, he's let the specific departments do their jobs. He's not, he's not meddling. He's not going to their R and D department and saying like, you can't do this.

He's not going to the coaching staff and right now at the lineup, like he, he very much lets people be autonomous, like have, do what they do and do what they do well. I know Everyone talks about Jim Crane's involvement and everyone talks about whether he medals whether he doesn't The vibe I get is that he's honestly becoming less and less involved Because let's face it. I don't think trading Kyle Tucker is a Jim Crane move Like Jim Crane would would probably rather, Crane would probably rather keep his team good.

He would rather keep the best player on the team. I think, obviously, the Presley salary dump, if you're getting direction from above to stay under the luxury tax, and obviously that's inherently something that ownership advises you to do, but last year, like the Yusei Kikuchi trade, that's not a Jim Crane style move. The Jim Crane style move is like,

go find the best available player and go get him. Like that's what he wanted to do a couple of years ago when they tried to acquire both Blake Snell and Josh Hader at the deadline from the Padres. Like that would have been a Jim Crane trade, getting those guys. Like if they would have brought Justin Verlander back this off season For the 15 million dollars that the Giants gave him like that's a Jim Crane move

Like the moves that they have made to me don't scream like this is an owner That's that's saying what needs to be done. That's that's you know, not letting his baseball people work I don't think that's the case. And one thing I'll say about Jim Crane, because he does seem to get a lot of flack from a lot of people just for his involvement and stuff, this is a guy that, like Dana Brown, has played baseball at a high level.

He was at the University of Central Missouri, was a really good college pitcher. And if you talk to people around him, like he understands the game. This is not a guy that is, you know, out of touch with how the game works and how the sport works. He knows what he's looking at. So maybe that has something to do with it as well. But, but all in all, like, as far as if you asked me to describe like what their identity is, like I think they're still searching for it. I think they're still searching for maybe their new identity post super team, because as we talked about to start this,

like this is no longer the super team. This is no longer the team that can roll the bats and balls out there and just beat you on sheer one to nine talent, one to 26 talent. They're not like that anymore. So I think they're still searching for their identity a little bit in that post era of having to understand kind of where they stand in terms of the American league, where they stand in terms of the league as a whole.

I think they're still looking for that. Well, maybe that's more or less the answer to our traditional closing question here, which is what would constitute a success for this team this season. And we talked about how they figure in the division and we talked about trying to figure out how they operate. And of course, there's just the desire to wedge this window open as long as possible. So how should fans gauge whether this season is a success? Making the playoffs. Obviously. I think we are. And as Lance McCullers, I think articulated

today, I think we are past the report to spring training and it's world series or bust sort of talk, because this is to me, when you look at this team, this is a team that on paper certainly is a, it looks like a playoff team to me. It looks like a team that can get into the playoffs, but this is not a team that you report to spring training with and you say if we don't win the World Series, it's a massive failure. This is not the Los Angeles Dodgers. That is going to be tough for a fan base that for the past nine years that has been their condition. It's they almost threw a fit last year because they didn't have a buy in the playoffs and it's like guys that that's that's how the that's how the rest of the world lives, that's how the rest of the world lives.

That's how the rest of the sport lives. And so I think it's gonna take a while for them to embrace that. But some more granular stuff, like obviously I think Cam Smith's progression this year, you know, if he can at least be on the doorstep of being able to contribute at the big league level, I think that would be a success.

I don't think he cracks the big leagues this year just because he's only been in pro ball for one year, but they've got to see next steps from Bryce Matthews who got to AAA last year, but really struggled against upper level pitching, went to winter ball and struck out way too much. They see him as a second baseman and they have a second basement. They're trying to move to left field, So they need him to take a step forward They need Jacob Melton their their best outfield prospect who was their best position player prospect before Cam Smith got here

They need him to take a step forward because he's knocking on the door being 25 years old and didn't have a great year in AAA Last year like they need some of these position player prospects to take a step forward so you can start to look at that next core because after this season, they've got Jose Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Framber Valdez all coming off the books. That's about $50 million coming off of the books and they'll have our braises to other guys and they'll have some, some other lesser paid guys coming off of the books and they'll have our braises to other guys and they'll have some, some other lesser paid guys coming off the roster.

So you can see a situation where they go into the next off season and they've actually got money to spend. And as we talked about, this is not a team that's going to go be in the two or $300 million bidding war for free agents, but they need a direction for next year as to when they go into the winter, they're like, here are the positions we need to target, and here are the ones that we feel comfortable coming from within, coming from our farm system, which needs to show steps forward this year.

All right. Last thing, maybe now that you're not covering him regularly, you can answer this question. If we get more accurately listed heights this year, roughly how much shorter might Alex Bregman be than his current six feet? Oh man. At least an inch, at least an inch, maybe two. Maybe two, okay. That sounds conservative.

Yeah. All right, you heard it here. Well two, okay. That sounds conservative. Maybe two. Yeah. Yeah, all right. You heard it here. Well, not first. We've been talking about this a lot, but you heard it here again. A lot. Yep. Thanks to Chandler Roem.

You can read him at The Athletic. You can listen to him on the Crush City Territory Pod. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Chandler. Thanks, guys. All righty, we will take one more quick break now and we'll be back in just a moment with Katie Wu to discuss the Cardinals. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Chandler. Thanks guys. Alrighty, we will take one more quick break now and we'll be back in just a moment

with Katie Wu to discuss the Cardinals. ["The Cardinals"] Sometimes I still feel like that little girl hearing grandma's handheld readings collecting baseball cards before I could read They say I waste my time Tracking all these stat lines But it's here I've found my kind

We're all effectively wild Well, Cardinals fans may not have noticed that the offseason started, but in fact, it is almost over. And that means it is time to preview the 2025 St. Louis Cardinals, which we have the pleasure of doing with Katie Wu, who covers the Cardinals and MLB for the athletic and also hosts the Cardinal Territory podcast. Katie, welcome back. Oh, thank you guys for having me. It's strange, I think, that baseball season is here.

It's hard to imagine an offseason ending when it never really started in the first place for St. Louis. But here we are and I've been in Jupiter, Florida for about three days now and it is starting to feel a little bit more like baseball season each day. So that's good. Well, we like talking to you. I wish the Cardinals had given us more to talk to you about,

though I suspect we'll come up with questions. And at a certain point, inactivity becomes interesting in itself. So we can talk about the lack of activity, starting maybe with someone else who will be in Jupiter, Nolan Arnado. If I have counted correctly, you have authored or co-authored 11 separate stories about Nolan Arnado potentially being traded in the past less than three months, and he has not been traded, as I'm

sure you've noticed. And in fact, you were among the people to report on Thursday, John Mozelak essentially conceded defeat more or less on the Nolan Aronado trade efforts. The mindset right now is that Aronado is likely going to be a part of our club at this point. So I don't know who's more disappointed by this Mozelak or the Cardinals beat writers who have provided a constant stream of non-update updates about Arnado for the past few months. But why don't you take us through why the Cardinals were so intent on trying to trade Arnado and why they have not succeeded so far?

No update updates, the perfect way to describe the whole four-month saga. Well, you know, after he denied the trade to the Houston Astros, because since then, you know, through January and into the first week of February, the most common question I got was, well, what's going on with Nour Arnado? And I was like, so you can actually read the story from January 14th? I know it's, you know, February 9th right now, per se. It's the exact same situation. So it was definitely strange, definitely different off season for John Mazalaka's final year, the Cardinals president of baseball operations. And the reason the Cardinals

wanted to move Aronado, they actually wanted to see who was going to stay as they move and transition towards this reset period. So the Cardinals want 2025 to be full of opportunity and runway, the two most common words they've used for their young players. And they are willing to concede being competitive or at least spending to ensure they are competitive for a couple of years to make sure the development of their young players and their up and coming core takes place at the major league level. So they went all to the four veterans that have full and no trade clauses, Sonny Gray,reras, Miles Michaels, and Nolan Arnado and said, hey guys, this is the tradition we're going. This is not the tradition that we said we were when we signed you as free

agents or encouraged you to not use your opt out in Nolan Arnado's case. Would you be agreeable to a trade? And Sunny Gray and Wilson Contreras expressed a preference to stay. And Nolan said, you know, actually, I think we could explore that. And the problem was, is Nolan was never going to leave St. Louis just for the sake of leaving. And the St. Louis Cardinals were never going to trade Nolan just for the sake of trading him. So the Cardinals wanted to create some open opportunity at third base. They also really wanted to cut down some of their payroll. This is important. Nolan Arnotto is owed $74 million over the next three years. Getting rid of that obviously alleviates a lot of the payroll burden, if you will. But

since the Cardinals, again, are trying to cut down payroll, they were never going to take a large portion of that salary. Since Nolan was never going to take a trade just to take a trade, as we saw with the Houston debacle, there was a limited amount of teams that John Mazzella could work with. There were five, one of them being the Boston Red Sox. So now they're really down to four that he would agree to. So it was just kind of this perfect storm and this Venn diagram, if you will, where the center was so slim on places where, you know, Nolan would go that would also take the money that also needed a third basement. It really came down to the Astros and the Red Sox as being the two logical suitors. Nolan didn't want to go to Houston. Boston

wanted Alex Bregman. Now here we are. This is perhaps a good opportunity to talk about the sort of odd front office situation that the Cardinals find themselves in. You mentioned that this is the last year for Mosaic. Heim Blum waits in the wings. How are they sort of divvying up responsibilities to the extent that they are? Because we know that this will be Blum's team in fairly short order. It puts Mosaic in this position where he's sort of a lame duck. How are they attempting this, at least in 2025? It is strange and I can't really recall this taking place in any other professional sports organization, but they have been transparent with their plan.

Whether or not it makes sense on the outside, I don't really think they are too concerned about. But John Mozeilak will be in charge of all of the baseball operations just like he has been for the last 18 years, if you will, status quo. He's in charge of the roster decisions, the baseball decisions, pretty much the trades, everything. It's his baby, if you will, for one more season. While Heim Blum takes over the minor league system, the Cardinals were very far behind player development and their minor league system for years. And that's part of the reason why they're timing this transition.

And it's a little peculiar, right? Because for the longest time, especially 10 years ago, the Cardinals were pioneering player development and modernizing it. So Haim Blue, who obviously has a very distinguished resume in player development, look what he did with the Tampa Bay Rays, the Boston Red Sox have one of the best farm systems in baseball currently. And they saw him as the guy to start fixing

their player development system, to overhaul it, if you will, and then take over in 2026 over the entire baseball operations. So the idea of this is that Moe can have one year to kind of clear the books, if you will, minus Nolan Arnotto, Wilson Contreras, and Sonny Gray. Every other major player making a ton of money that is not yet in arbitration or going through arbitration does not have a guaranteed contract after this year.

So Myles Mypalas, Steven Matz, Eric Fetty, Ryan Housley, they will all have expiring contracts. The Cardinals want to see what they have in players like Jordan Walker, Nolan Gorman, Lars Neupar, Mason Wynn, Brandon Donovan, and see if those guys can be the next core of Cardinals. So ideally, the organization took a look at this and said, Mo is stepping down, Heim is taking over next year, he's reevaluating the minor league system

and he's going to know exactly what we have coming up. It's Mo's job to make sure that when Heim takes over in 2026, he has a clean slate, but as much of a foundation as possible so that this reset doesn't turn into a rebuild. Well, they really have taken the clean slate part seriously. Yes, they have. Committed to the bit because they are the lone remaining team that has not signed a major league free agent this winter. And I know the Fangrass contract tracker, John Becker, is very excited just waiting

with suspense to see if they get on the board. Even the Marlins have signed someone at this point. So we've still got some weeks until opening day. Do you think they might? Did they even attempt to? Is there a we tried in here somewhere? Did they go after someone and come up short or did they really just sit on their hands all winter?

You can keep waiting, John. I don't think you're going to have anything to update anytime soon. Yeah, this was again, I think John Mozalak has been pretty honest about how awkward this has been, how unusual it's been. I mean, his opening sentiment to us this week from his first comments from Spring Training were, you know, usually we sit back and we rehash all the accomplishments of the off season. So this will be very brief. And yeah, there's not really much to say. They were not active at all in the free agent

market. They had very preliminary conversations about maybe adding a veteran reliever or potentially looking at a right-handed bench bat, but no serious traction. They never really got exchanged names or put out a serious pursuit to any free agent for the last four months. Zalok has tried and tried to trade Aronado. That did not come through. You can say he did not have to focus all his efforts on trading. You can spend and try to trade a player at the same time. But again, this goes back to payroll. The Cardinals are trying to escape payroll back. They have a lot of uncertainty about their television deal with revenue streaming. They are preparing for a dramatic reduction in attendance after a pretty dramatic one already in 2024.

So as we talked to him yesterday, to Moe, he said from media day, when we asked him if now that you have clarity for Aronado's sake, will you maybe try to find someone in the next couple of weeks for free agency? And he said, you know, I'm still trying to balance out payroll. So it doesn't seem very likely that the Cardinals will add, it looks like, whatever holes that they have, especially in the bullpen, are going to be filled internally. Yeah, it might be easier for Cardinals fans to stomach if it were obvious that some of the names that you mentioned, the Jordan Walkers, the Nolan Gormans,

were going to be obvious, for sure, contributors to the next good Cardinals core. But this group saw regression last year or failed to take a step forward, depending on who you're looking at. So maybe we can talk about some of the young guys who they hope will be contributors, starting with Walker because Walker came up, he hit well for a minute. It was obvious that a new defensive position was a challenge for him, but if he was going

to hit really well, that was okay. And then last season, that didn't happen either. So what has the directive been for Walker this off season to try to put himself in a better position to succeed in 2025? Yeah, I think you're spot on with what you said about the offense. Look, the Cardinals knew that Jordan Walker was going to be a below league average defender in right field, such as what happens when you give a top prospect two months to learn the position in the minor leagues without having an outfield coordinator and then expect him to succeed in the major leagues. So the defense.

Hey, Jackson Merrill's like two months. Wow. What a luxury. Very true. Very true. But Jordan was always kind of that exciting power right-handed bat with a lot of athleticism. And that just really has not come to fruition over the first two seasons. Part of that is because when both seasons, when he came up 2023 and 2024, 2023 to a much heavier extent, the Cardinals did not get off to a good start. And when you're a rookie and you're playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, that team that is desperately trying to win and continue winning, and you flounder to start the year, you're going to get sent down.

And that's what happened to Jordan in 23. That's what happened to Jordan in 2024. And what the Cardinals are really trying to avoid is having that happen in 2025. They are going to give Jordan Walker runway where if he starts the season slow and he's struggling, he has the ability to take a deep breath, relax and know, hey, I still have some time to figure it out. They're not going to send me down because I got off to a bad start. I have the luxury this year of being able to figure out whatever issues I have going on offensively at the major league level. For Jordan, the things that are going to make him a successful hitter is if he can get the ball in

the air more consistently. We've talked about it throughout his entire major league career. He hits the ball hard, but he hits the ball on the ground. The Cardinals really want that launch angle to be much higher than it is. If he can hit the ball in the gap consistently, he's so athletic that he can take the extra 90. He has the power. He can hit to all fields. He just needs to put the ball in the air. So that's the key to watch for Jordan Walker. The defense, again, the Cardinals will concede that a little bit if it means that they get the bat that they thought they were getting in 2023 when he first debuted. But certainly, he's so young, just 22, 23 years old, doesn't seem that way because he's had such an up and down career so far in the majors. But this is still a kid with a lot of, in my

opinion, a lot of potential and a very high ceiling. So hopefully he'll have the ability to showcase some of that without the mounting pressure of being sent down if he does not get off to a good start. So Tyler O'Neill is gone and Dylan Carlson is gone and there used to be a big logjam in the outfield and not quite so much anymore. But there's also Lars Knutpar, favorite player of Fangrass, Ben Clemens, who has continued to have some injury issues and not quite have the full breakout that has been forecasted for him. And then there's Victor Scott II, of course, who had a failure to launch last year.

So can we cover the rest of the outfield? Sure. I mean, we know Jordan Walker is going to play every day. And the interesting part about Aronado coming back to no fault of his own, might I mean, we know Jordan Walker is going to play every day. And the interesting part about Aronado coming back to no fault of his own, might I add, is that this creates somewhat of a logjam. We talked about the players the Cardinals want to see. That includes Lars Newpar. They would like to see him play every day. It includes Nolan Gorman. So there is a way for those three players to play every day with Nolan Aronado in the lineup. Gorman

can become your second baseman, but that would mean Brendan Donovan becomes your left fielder with Jordan Walker in right field. That means Lars Newpar is your center fielder. And not only does Newpar profile strongly in the corners, he also is injury prone, like we talked about. And I'm not sure if it's the best idea to put someone who has struggled to stay on the field. I don't think Lars has played more than 120 games in any season at

the major leagues. Are you really comfortable putting someone who is prone to injury and needs to stay healthy in center field? I don't think the Cardinals are. So the other alternate scenario here is putting Brendan Donovan at second base and putting Lars Newbar in left field. And then you're looking at a wide open competition in centerfield between Mike Ciani and Victor Scott II. And for as enticing and exciting as a prospect like Victor Scott is, currently right now, Michael Ciani is the favorite to be the centerfielder because he is more developed in terms of

they both have elite speed, but Mike Ciani's, his jump, his route efficiency, all of the things that I think really makes someone an elite center fielder, they're higher than what Victor Scott's are right now. This is no knock on Victor. He's a prospect. He will have plenty of time to develop, but if the Cardinals are valuing defense out of center field, because neither Mike Ciani or Victor Scott, the second, are power hitters, I think the knob would go to Ciani and you're looking at Victor maybe coming off the bench or starting in AAA to get more development and fine-tune some of those areas I just mentioned.

So the outfield is a little bit of a mix and match, but I do think the centerfield competition will be very strong. One name that we haven't really talked about yet is Mason Wynn. And I think that quietly amongst this group, he had probably the most successful season, certainly by war, his defense put him close to being a four-war player by our estimation. The bat was about league average. He had a 103 WRC plus. What are his developmental goals for this year? Because clearly the defense is going to play, but what might he do at the plate to have

just a little more oomph in that bat? I think the big thing for Mason is just building off of last year. play, but what might he do at the plate to have just a little more oomph in that bat? I think the big thing for Mason is just building off of last year. The Cardinals are pretty confident that Mason Wendin, Brendan Donovan will be two of the players that they're building around for years to come. I think Mason's first full season was pretty much right up there in terms of a success story. The defense had, like you said, he was a gold glove finalist and the offense

certainly has room for more thought. But what I would really like to see Mason do is steal more bases. He's so fast. He's so athletic. He gets on base and he has the ability to take an extra 90 because of his speed. And I think the Cardinals have really kind of gotten away from stealing bases. They used to run very well. Their offense struggled last year, which I think made the coaching staff on Olly Marble a little wary that they don't want to give up an out by stealing a base when it's so hard to get on base in the first place. But if Mason, who doesn't need to be a power hitter by any means, can find just a little bit more thump and then find more ways to get on base and steal and run, then I think you're looking at a truly like exciting all around type of player.

They know that he's gonna be their shortstop for the future. The defense again is excellent. Now it's just a matter of using that as a foundation here and fine tuning the other things around. So we should talk about the position change for Wilson Contreras, which I guess resolves the long simmering saga of his catcher defense. Is he just going to take to this position well and why did they decide to commit to

him as a first baseman and not a catcher long before the season started and what do they expect out of their catching core to follow him? Well, that went back to the conversations about whether or not he and Sonny and Nolan were going to stay. Wilson Contreras won healthy last year, was by far the Cardinals' most productive bat, and the offense was not good. They were either last or second to last in the National League in almost every major offensive category.

When you're rivaling with the Miami Marlins for worst production, not a good sign that your offense has been a good place. Wilson also had a tough time staying on the fields because of two separate injuries. And when it came time for the Cardinals to look at how they could potentially fill the gap with Paul Goldschmidt leaving, because they let Paul Goldschmidt know in September that he was not going to be brought back. And they had two young catchers with Ivan Herrera and Pedro Pahez. It just made sense to move Contreras to first base. And if he didn't want to go, they had an Al Burleson ready to take over that position.

Bill Burleson is much more of that first player. Wilson was on board with it. He wants to stay on the field. He wants to stay healthy. He wants to preserve the longevity of his career. He understands where the Cardinals are going and he supports it. If he didn't understand it or didn't think that this was going to be more than a couple of years of a reset, I don't think he would have stayed, but he wanted to. And if that had been moving to first base, he said he was going to be happy to do it. So I do wonder how that defense is going to look

on the right side. We talked about Jordan Walker in right field and I know Contreras has played first base before, but for all the gripes about Paul Goldschmidt's offense last year, what Paul Goldschmidt did at first base for six years for the St. Louis Cardinals is perhaps understated because he really was such a calming and assured presence. We got some wild arms over there. Mason Wintrow is hard, but isn't always so accurate. I know he made Nolan Arnotto look great from third base. So that's what I'm a little worried about from the first base side and the right field side just to see what that defense looks like. But in terms of creating a position for the catcher, both Herrera and Pahez are very, very different, both with great qualities. Herrera has, you know, he could hit.

He had 300 last year that we missed some time with injuries, but he really had trouble controlling the run game. Pedro Pahez is probably one of the best up and coming game planners. Pitcher's really like working with him, but he doesn't hit as well as Herrera. So could the Cardinals go into camp looking to have a starting catcher and a backup and make it a true competition between the two? Yes. Do they also have the roster flexibility as currently constructed to platoon the position

and use Herrera as a DH some days if they need a right-handed bat there? Also yes. So there's no true definitive answer for behind the plate, but I don't think there needs to be one. And I think it's totally fine if the Cardinals go into opening day with the position time being split between Herrera and Páez. You mentioned some other guys who might find bench rolls, but I'm curious, even with the Cardinals' farm system being diminished compared to past years, are there guys in the high

minors who strike you as likely to see big league time in the event of injury or under performance? There are. And one name that I'm watching that a lot of Cardinals fans should be watching is Quinn Matthews. He was promoted four times throughout the minor leagues last year. He finished the year in AAA, was Baseball America's pitching prospect of the year, the Cardinals pitching prospect of the year.

He is your typical lefty starting pitcher. What excites the Cardinals is that he came from Stanford. So he has the, you know, it's not like he was an amateur player. He has the collegiate experience. Those usually tend to develop a little quicker. And because he was promoted multiple times throughout the 2024 season and finished the year at AAA, it really accelerated his timeline. So the Cardinals to start the season have a very stateless Cardinals rotation. Five veteran guys, you know, Sonny Gray, I do think is an ace in this league. But other than that, you have Eric Fetty, Miles Maipolis, Steven Matz, and then a younger guy, Andre Pallante,

who had a great season last year. But nonetheless, that rotation is not one that jumps off the page and screams competitive or scares the other team. Yet the Cardinals will allow a rotation similar to that every year and it's pretty effective. Obviously no camp that's going to break with all five starters healthy. Mike McGreevey, the Cardinals 2021 first round pick, who made a couple of starts at the end of the 2024 season and really did a nice job. He'd be the next man up. And I would like to see the Cardinals give McGreevey an opportunity. It's been the theme of their camp,

right? The theme of the off season. We want to create opportunity for our young players. Well, this is the perfect time to see what Mike McGreevey can do as a starter. And if you get into the season and, you know, some guys are hurt or things change, what does Quinn Matthews look like? So those are the two pitching prospects that I'm watching. There's also some depth in someone like Zach Thompson, a first round pick in 2019, who hasn't really seen his career take off. There are people to watch. It's just a matter of are they going to have the opportunity with this veteran rotation. Yeah. How did the Cardinals feel like that plan went last year? The innings eaters, mid thirties guys, the Gibsons and Lins, et cetera. Were they happy with how that worked out?

And I guess they're expecting some of the same, even though a couple of those guys are gone. I think they were very pleased with their rotation. And I remember when they first went out and they signed Lance Lin and Kyle Gibson on back to back days. And those were the first two signings of the off season in 2024.

Everyone was kind of like, oh, this is so, so very Cardinals. But Kyle Gibson made over 30 starts. He was durable. If you're making $11 million and you make 30 starts in the middle of the rotation with just above a four ERA, you're making exactly what you're paid to do. Lance Lynn was hurt for a little bit, but he still made 23 starts and he had an ERA under four. That's what they paid him to do. So I think that plan worked. The offense, I don't think the Cardinals envisioned having one of the worst offenses in baseball. So I understand why they didn't trade Eric Fetty and why they're keeping Miles Michaelis, even though he's off two years of a sharp decline. They understand the importance of logging innings, especially

early because if you're turning to a bunch of these guys that we just listed, you know, the McGreebies, the Quinn Matthewsons of the world, they've yet to play a full season at the major leagues. They're going to hit some fatigue. You need to have some sort of durability or some sort of proven veteran in there to take the ball every fifth day, just to alleviate some of the burden on your younger guys. Yeah. if you thought Gibson and Lynn was unexciting last off season, well, this off season. Surprise. Yeah, that would have really juiced things up if they'd brought either of those guys back, would have been a major league free agent signing.

They could have gotten on the board. What is the plan in the bullpen, specifically as it pertains to Ryan Helsley and whether he is or will be on the market, why they decided to hold onto him? Do they think that the market for him will be better at mid-season than it would have been over the winter? Or are they still harboring some hopes that they could contend this year? And so they're waiting to see how they fare before deciding what to do with him. They are indeed harboring some hopes that

they will contend this year. And when you look at the overall state of the National League Central and you squint your eyes just a little bit, you can almost see it. I do believe that the Cardinals think that they have enough talent where they did not need to do a full roster tear down to the studs. And clearly, they believe they can compete in this division because if they didn't, they would have traded Helsley. They would have traded Eric Fetty and Steven Matz, etc. But they told Helsley very early on in November, we're not speaking in absolutes, but we'd really prefer not to trade you. We want you to be our closer in 2025, the final year of Helsley's tenure before he is a free agent. And to me, when you have Helsley, who had such a standout year last year, in my opinion, baseball's best closer, and you keep him, it does send the message that you think you can compete. Now, it didn't exactly send the message to

the fans that are full, you know, that the youth movement would be taking place. But I would actually disagree with that. Minus Ryan Helsley and JoJo Romero and potentially Ryan Fernandez, there's a lot of open spots in this bullpen for an internal competition. In my opinion, it's the biggest competition in camp right now. You have a Matthew Liberator who could start or could be in relief again. He did a nice job as a reliever last year. And then you have four spots after that where it's kind of anyone's game. So they wanted to keep Housley because they thought he could help them win games. If they get off to a start where it's clear that they will not be contending, I would imagine they trade him at before the trade deadline. But there's also the decision of if they're competing all the way through 2025, then what?

Do you extend him? Do you let him walk? That's the decision that Heim Blum will have to make if it gets that far. Last year was a bounce back relative to 2023, a bounce back to being pretty boring, but that's better than 71 wins. But another way in which they were boring is that there wasn't that much drama, at least publicly, in terms of clubhouse discord, the way that there had been the previous season. If you had told me that the Cardinals would miss the playoffs again last year, I might have said

that with Yachty Molina waiting in the wings wings that who knew if Ali Marmal would even make it through that season? And he did, and there wasn't seemingly as much bad blood as there had been the previous year with the spats with Tyler O'Neill and the whole situation surrounding Contreras. It seemed like things kind of quieted down. So did Marmal improve in terms of his people skills or was it just a different group of guys or did they just do a better job of keeping things in the clubhouse or why did that aspect of the team improve? I think it was a combination of all of the above. I will say of all the clubhouses that I've been in, this is my fifth year on the Cardinals beat, time flies when you're having

fun. Last year's clubhouse 2024 was, in my opinion, the clubhouse that got along the most. And a lot of that came down to bringing back that veteran leadership, which was such a buzzword for the Cardinals at this time last year. But they didn't see it on the box score, but Matt Carpenter was a huge presence in that clubhouse. And Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn, we talked about the value they had on the field. Well, they really helped kind of mold the rotation and the young guys and the relievers and stick everyone together. It was a very mature clubhouse.

Again, people got along. It all saw that they were winning a lot more games than they were in 2023. And even in September, when things started to slip away and it was clear that they weren't going to make the playoffs, I think guys just kind of stuck together. And maybe Oli Marmel had some growth there in terms of what he let out and how he communicated with his players. But I really think the big thing was that everyone was just, for the most part, you get along. You have your spats over the course of spending seven straight months together in one big room, but it was a much more tempered and relaxed

clubhouse, even when things weren't going right. I mean, everyone was still willing to talk and willing to communicate. And it was almost a complete reversal of what the 2023 clubhouse was like. You mentioned Quinn Matthews. I'm curious about some of the other, not only arms, but just prospects they have down in AAA, or guys who are further away. It's not completely barren down there, right? They have Tinkens, they have their first round pick from last year, JJ Weatherholt. I imagine we're not likely to see any of those guys this year, but if they find themselves completely out of it, do you think that they will take an approach

of maybe giving some of their young guys who aren't quite big league ready, big league run to see how they do and if they might be competing for a roster spot in 2026? I do think so. I think if the Cardinals by the trade deadline are clearly out of it, you'll see more of the pivot to the youth movement that I think a lot of fans expected that they would see on opening day. Now again, some of these guys like Sunny Gray, Contreras, they wanted to stay and they have full no trade clauses, so you couldn't really move them anyway. But there are some fringe players that are going to be affected by this. Alec Berlison is one, Thomas the JC is another.

These are guys that I think the Cardinals were hoping to get better looks at this year beyond just your regular bench roll. And with the way that the opening day roster currently projects, I don't see a lot of opportunity for them. Same with a guy like Lukan Baker. Macapernia is an outfielder on the 40 man roster where, you know, it doesn't seem like there's a clear landing spot for them. Burleson to an extent should have a spot on the active roster.

It just won't be as an everyday position player. It will probably be more of a DH or a bench bat. I don't want to say it's frustrating because at the end of the day, I think the Cardinals are going to feel the roster that, you know, I'm not going to go out here and proclaim 20, 25 World Series champions, but I think it's going to win more games than people might think right now. But from a fan perspective, I think they really wanted to see what they have in their system so they can get back to, you know, we want to see the kids play.

How is this going to work? How is this reset going to work? Are there players that we can really buy into and also feel a part of this transition, if you will? And I asked Jean-Moselle Lacpoux in years prior has been a stickler about if you're going to call up a top prospect, there has to be clear playing time for them every single day. I asked him if that philosophy would change, given what they're trying to do this year.

And he said candidly that it probably wouldn't, that he still believes there is no point in having a top prospect in the major leagues riding the bench. And I do agree with that to an extent, but I wonder what that means for someone like Victor Scott again. he still believes there is no point in having a top prospect in the major leagues riding the bench. And I do agree with that to an extent, but I wonder what that means for someone like Victor Scott again. What does that mean for Thomas Adjase? Are they going to start the year in AAA? Are they going to be bench guys?

If there's not a lot of opportunity to play every day, those comments would lead me to think that maybe they're going to start the season in the minors. We'll see. It's a long camp. Trust me, spring training is like four years long. And these things get decided a lot by themselves. Injuries are an unfortunate part of this. So we'll see.

But those are the names that I'm watching that are kind of on the cusp of making the roster right now. And certainly if the Cardinals go into the trade deadline and are very much out of contention, the guys that we'll see maybe have a more consistent time every day. Is it too soon to see what Bloom is doing exactly if they've committed to essentially

not spending at the Major League level and in fact spending less and part of the rationale is that they're going to improve their player development pipeline and they're going to modernize their process. How is that manifesting? Are they hiring more player development folks? Are they investing in more technology? I know spring training just started, so maybe it's too soon to have a handle on that. No, I'm glad you asked this question because now we can finally talk about something the

Cardinals have actually done, and that is they've started really revamping their minor league and their minor league systems and player development. It started in early October when they made an announcement that they were going to be investing a lot more in player development and modernizing the technology and really adding staff. The Cardinals had one of, if not the smallest, support staffs in player development in baseball. They've had less than 10 full-time coordinators across the minor league system. So what Heim Blum did immediately is hired an assistant general manager, Rob Sifoglio, who came from the Cleveland Guardians to oversee player development and performance.

And then the two, Heim and Rob, hired three new player development directors, director pitching and Matt Pierpont from the Seattle Mariners, a new farm director, Larry Day from Cleveland, and a director of strength and performance, Carl Cotin from the Dodgers. Now, what do those three organizations have in common? They are really, really above the mark in player development. I mean, Seattle pitching, we talk about it every season on how good that team would be if they ever got offense because of their pitching. So clearly Seattle knows how to develop.

So what does Heim do? He goes and gets someone from Seattle. The Guardians really had a nice five years really where they've had a very robust farm system. So now you have two people from that organization. The Dodgers are the Dodgers. Anytime you can get someone from them, it's a good hire. So they've already solidified what the leading names of the player development program will look like. Longtime farm director Gary LaRocque stepped down at the end of the 2024 season. So it really is a clean slate in that regard. They also hired a ton of new coordinators, new

pitching coordinator, new hitting coordinator. Jose LaHare, the former AA manager, is now the base running coordinator. And they hired a catching coordinator for the first time since the Yachty or Molina era. And while I do understand that when Yachty or Molina is your catcher, you probably don't need a catching coordinator. He's no longer here. So a hiring that was well overdue for that organization. Now, as the season goes on, the Cardinals are going to continue investing in modernizing their technology. As soon as they leave camp in Jupiter, Roger Dean Complex, their spring training home, is going over a major renovation as well. So we'll see some changes there. And then after the end of the 2025 season,

after a year of having all of these new staff and hires and technology in place, Heim Blum will go back, kind of re-audit the situation and see what needs to be added elsewhere. You alluded to the attendance decline and attendance was up across the league in general, but the Cardinals did suffer the biggest drop-off from 23 to 24 in terms of fans per game average. They lost about 4,500 per game. I don't want to overstate things, they were still seventh in the majors in attendance, but that's a pretty real thing and given that they've done absolutely nothing to get people excited about the 2025 season,

one would probably forecast an additional decline to come. So how frustrated are Cardinals fans? Is there any sense of a grace period? Hey this team has been good and in contention for a really long time and even when the Cardinals bottom out it's not like when most other teams bottom out, they're not that terrible with the slight exception of 2023. So is there some tolerance of that or fans are notoriously not patient and understanding about teams not contending. So have they already worn out whatever goodwill

they've accrued over a couple decades of always being in it? They seem to be a frustrated fan base because they're being communicated from the organization of, hey, this is a youth movement, all about opportunities, a transition. Yet if you ask me, the roster right now certainly looks very similar to last year's roster. And there's a lot of legitimate question on if they have the runway available that they promised some of these players. There's also the sort of general, you know, fan frustration of two back-to-back

seasons that were under standards set, you know, by this fan base, which has rightfully high expectations given what they're used to in St. Louis. So yeah, it's what the 2024 season was dramatically better than 2023. They were a winning team, but 500 baseball or slightly over 500 is not the standard that the St. Louis Cardinals have set for their fan base and their fans know it. So they stopped showing up and that to me was a glaring protest. It was a glaring message to the organization that they are not happy. St. Louis is a baseball city. There's not much else to do in the summertime there except go to a Cardinals game. So it's a frustrating time to be a fan because you just kind of like stuck a neutral, right? I think that's

what the how the fans feel. They still have one more year with Moe calling the shots. This youth movement that they promised is like kind of half able to come to fruition. They could contend again or they could not. And while I do believe the Cardinals are doing the right thing, are committing towards, you know, being a draft and development club again and trending towards the right direction and fix reverting course, it's going to take some time. And this is not the time to be asking fans to be patient.

Now, I will say this about St. Louis Cardinals fans. The Cardinals start winning baseball games, they're going to show up again and there will be no love lost. But if they start losing games, I would expect the concerns, the rightful concerns about the drop in attendance, the drop in viewership in games and how that's connected to revenue streaming and sharing all of that to continue to grow. This fan base to me feels on thin ice to start the season.

It won't take much to win them back, just some wins. But if things go sideways, I would expect the same kind of apathy and frustration to continue. And you talked about the Clubhouse Harmony last year, relatively speaking. Is there kind of a designated leader now with Goldschmidt gone? Can someone like Arnado be that guy given that he was halfway out the door all offseason?

It's an unusual situation where you're very publicly trying to trade one of your most prominent and accomplished and still probably best players and then end up keeping him because you couldn't get rid of him essentially. And then Contreras was maybe brought in to be that kind of guy, but he's been jerked around a little bit. And so is there someone homegrown? I mean, Lynn is gone now. Is there one of the other veterans or even one of the younger homegrown guys who's kind of taken on that mantle? It's strange. You know. I actually went into the clubhouse today, it's starting to fill up as permission players come in.

And I turned to Lars Neupar, we're around the same age. And I said, hey, have you looked around the clubhouse? And he's like, yeah. And I goes, has it occurred to you that we're the old people now? Because it is so young. And he goes, I can't believe this. This came so fast. We really are.

We are old. And that is something that Sonny Gray communicated during the Cardinals Fan Fest in January. He said, hey, this is the young guys clubhouse now. They're going to be the ones that are going to be the future of the Cardinals. And Sonny, who has admitted, he's like, I like being the mentor to the young guys. I like helping them out. I think that's something that a lot of these veterans are on board with and want to help. You know, Contreras stayed because he wanted to.

And I think he is more than happy to help mentor young guys and talk and communicate. And you know, whether if Nolan wants to do that or whether Nolan just wants to play baseball, that's his decision to make. But there are plenty of guys across the board. This would be a great opportunity for Mason to come in and solidify himself as a voice. Same with New Bark. New Bark can stay healthy. He joked, he goes, I'm the young old guy.

Yeah, that does leave some sort of leadership room there. So Brennan Donovan as well, he's a guy that plays every day and I know his teammates respect that about him. So there's no clear cut veteran leader after two decades of Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina and then Albert Pujols coming back. And then you still had Paul Goldschmidt after that. This really is a different feel. It's very young, but it is an opportunity for these young guys to make their own identity.

And I do think they have the veteran support and the veteran understanding to allow them to do that. And that's really important. And speaking of Yadi, you mentioned him not being around. He has been around in other capacities post-retirement. He was in this special assistant role. He clearly has managerial aspirations. He's been managing in Puerto Rico. His brother Benji said in December that Yadi would still like to manage the Cardinals. Haven't heard from Jose, the best of the Molinas in my mind. I'm kind of in the minority when it

comes to that, but soft spot for him. But is it inevitable that he will be back? Is he the heir apparent someday? Is a reunion going to happen down the road? Well, technically it did. He was a special advisor, but he didn't show up at all in 2024. And it's unclear, unlikely that he will show up for spring training at least in 2025. What is going to be interesting is Olly Marlowe is under contract through 2026. And of course, you know, it's a little awkward, a little weird again with this transition year, because even though he has two years left on his contract with a new front office coming in, because it's not just John Mazzaloc whose contract is up. It's all of the assistant GMs. It's Mike Gersh, it's Moises Rodriguez, it's Brandi Flores, the director of scouting. The entire front office contracts

are up. So it's Heinz's decision, again, with that clean slate on who he brings in. And that also applies to the manager. So it's kind of like lame duck year part one for Olly Marble, who I think has really been cast off unfairly after the 2023 season. I think he's the perfect person and he has the ideal coaching staff behind him to lead this reset. If you want a coaching staff to help players develop at the major league level, which for the longest time the Cardinals believed the minor leagues were for development and the major leagues were for playing, this year they're going to change that approach. Olly Marble's background in player development is, you know, he came up through the Cardinals system as one of their youngest coaches in the minor leagues, one of the youngest managers

in AA and ascended that ladder. So he has a very prominent background in player development. So do his first and third base coaches, Stubby Clap and Pop Warner, exact same situation, worked their way up through the minor leagues coaching ranks. You have guys like Daniel Descousso and John Jay, former Cardinals, who were part of that 2011 World Series Championship team, who understand and still, you know, are examples of how young guys can form a core and win a championship from a draft and development club. So you have all this staff in place right here that understands how to

develop players and understands how to turn that development into wins. So I'm perhaps in the minority, but I think that this is the ideal coaching staff for what the Cardinals are trying to do. And I don't think that there's really any kind of inclination or rush to make a managerial change. Certainly, you know, results will speak for themselves and the win-loss record absolutely does play into this decision. But right now, I think the Cardinals are very happy from John Modalock to Heim Blum to Bill DeWitt Jr. on who they have as manager and who he has as a staff. All right. Well, our last question kind of touches on things that we've already discussed, but essentially what would constitute success for this team this season? Is it about what happens at the major league level at all?

Do they need to contend to satisfy fans or is it more about breaking in prospects, progress on the farm, establishing the new core? How should Cardinals fans and the organization itself judge this team on what it accomplishes in 2025? It's a matter of doing both at the same time. And that's a hard ask, right? You want to develop your next core players, but you also surely don't want to finish fourth in the National League Central, right? I mean, John Mozaik has said it. He understands that he, you know, the Cardinals need to take a step back,

that what they've been doing in terms of spending and developing and drafting has not been working out. The Cardinals have won exactly one playoff game since 2020 and they've missed the postseason entirely the last two seasons. That does not fly in St. Louis. But he also understands neither does tanking. I don't believe that St. Louis Cardinals will ever tank, nor should they. He still believes that this can, again, that this team can compete in the NL Central. So the trick for the Cardinals and what I think will really establish their success, not just with their own organization, but with their city and their fan base, is finding out a way to ensure that their young players turn into winning players that help win games so that they are at least competitive past the trade deadline. If they flame out in September, but they've shown that a lot of players have taken a step up in their careers or have gotten to that

next level of production, I think fans will maybe start coming on board. But if they certainly find a way to hang in this thing and are part of the postseason picture countdown in September, I think that's what fans want to see. And I think the organization will have answered a lot of questions about who they're trying to build around for 2026 as well. Well, look, we found plenty to talk about. I knew we would. Look at us. All right. You can read Katie's coverage of the Cardinals, hopefully not as Nolan Arnado centric for her sake.

I have one more story in me guys, and then I'm calling it quits. I can't do this anymore. We'll look forward to that. And also to your discussions of the Cardinals with Trevor Rosenthal at Cardinal Territory. Thank you as always, Katie. You got it guys. Thanks so much for having me. All right, well congrats to Cole Regans

of the Kansas City Royals who signed an extension after we recorded the intro, a three-year deal that covers this year and his first two years of arbitration eligibility. Clearly a reward for the breakout he has had already, not for a breakout to come. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. We'll take a short break from preview pods next time and then we'll be back with a couple

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