Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - Five Starting Pitchers The Cardinals Could Target In Free Agency

Starting point is 00:00:00 If the Cardinals want to improve their starting rotation for next season, there won't be a shortage of big names to choose from. We'll take a look at the top five on today's episode of Locked on Cardinals. You are Locked on Cardinals, your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey, there, Cardinals fans. I'm Jady Haffron and I'm a national radio sports anchor. Born and raised in St. Louis and a lifetime Cardinals fan. And I'm your host for Locktown Cardinals, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. We're covering your team every day. You can follow me on TwitterX at JD Sports Radio and the podcast at L.O.

Starting point is 00:00:41 underscore Cardinals. I do want to thank those of you who make Locktown Cardinals your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube. Be sure to stop by, like, subscribe, comment. Hit that notification button so you know when the new episodes are posted. This is a show serving Cardle Nation and giving the best fans in baseball all of the info about the birds on the bat.

Starting point is 00:01:01 This episode of Lockton Cardinals is brought to you by Pies Picks, the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Go to prize picks.com slash locked on MLB and use the code all lowercase, locked on MLB for a first deposit match up to $100. So if you're watching on YouTube, check out the shirt today, boys and girls. I am summoning, I'm trying to get up higher enough. Here we go. There you go.

Starting point is 00:01:26 I'm summoning the powers of Creed. That's right. The band that was huge. Then it wasn't anymore. And it's now been, I don't know, what's a word to use here? A resurgence, if you will, for the band Creed recently went to their show. It was a lot of fun. Got this shirt.

Starting point is 00:01:48 And we need their help. It worked for the Rangers last year. It's worked for other teams in other sports before them. And the boys need some help. So I'm getting desperate here. I'm wearing Creed band shirts to try to turn things around for the Cardinals. who lost in Cincinnati on Monday by a score of 6 to 1. Then they lose again on Tuesday, 4 to 1.

Starting point is 00:02:10 And when you score two runs in two games at the band box, known as Great American Ballpark, you don't immediately think pitching is the problem. Clearly, offense is an issue. But when you look at the grand scope of things from the season, I've seen a lot of complaints. We just did an episode about Sunny Gray and how his struggles recently have brought up more people complaining about him. not being a number one. He's not a number one. He's just a number two. You need somebody better.

Starting point is 00:02:39 And it's hard to disagree with that. Like, yeah, I always want better players. So if you can get somebody that is better than Sunny Gray to slide in ahead of him, then that's a good thing. And I mentioned a little bit about that in the episode. I believe that was on Tuesday's episode. I mentioned that and was like, you know, but we'll talk about that at some other time. Well, let's just do it now. What are we worried about because there's not a whole lot of positives going on right now with the Cardinals. You would love to have somebody that if and when you get to a playoff series, doesn't look like that's going to happen this year at the moment. But if you were to get to one, it'd be nice to have somebody that is a true staff.

Starting point is 00:03:22 A, someone, you can go into a series and go toe to toe against the best pitchers in the National League. You know, the guys like Zach Wheeler and Shohei Otani, who I assume we'll pitch it at some point again for the Dodgers. The Dylan ceases and Spencer Striders when he's healthy. You know, the big names, the best of the best. And I think we could all agree that if you put Sunny Gray against some of those guys, odds are that you're going to expect the other team to win. The athletic just released a list of who they consider the top 50 free agents for 2025.

Starting point is 00:03:56 And there are a lot of big names on this list. So I figured we'd do something a little more fun today than talk about how the team is not doing so well and they can't hit. They're not scoring. The pitching hasn't been great. Instead of going into all that, how about we do a little virtual shopping first? All right. Shopping always cheers everybody. Yep.

Starting point is 00:04:15 So let's go shopping for some pitching together. We can look at the offense a little bit later in this episode. But, you know, because I still see names like Aranao and I know. And I know Goldie's going to be a free agent next year. But, you know, there's probably a good chance they try to bring him back. But you got like a win and a Gorman and a Burlison, Contreras, Donovan, Walker, Newt, Farsiani, Scott. I see all of these names and I'm like, okay, will they get better? I think they will at some point.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Maybe it's not going to happen this year, but I'd rather focus on the pitching at this point. Okay. So you either have a number one or you don't, right? And your rotation right now for next year has Sunny Gray, who's a very good pitcher, is going through a bad time right now since June 1st. but when he's on, he's on and he's outstanding. Then you've got Eric Fetty, who hasn't shown us much so far in a Cardle's uniform. You got Miles Michaelis and you got Stephen Matt.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Those are the guys under contract. They've got options on Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. We all love Lance Lynn, the person. We think he's great. But if you're going to choose between either Lynn or Gibson as far as what they're producing on the field, you're probably going to roll with Gibson, right? These guys are not going to eat the remaining $17.6 million owed to Michaelis. They're not going to likely eat the $11 million that is owed to match next year.

Starting point is 00:05:36 He can't stay healthy anyway, so I trust him with a spot in the rotation. So I'm just not going to talk about. And as I have said before, if you can improve, you do it. You do that. You don't just settle. You do it. And you figure the rest out later. So here are the top names on the free agent pitching list, according to the athletic, for next year.

Starting point is 00:05:56 The number one pitcher that is set to become a free agent is Corbyn Burns from the Baltimore Orioles. We've seen him plenty from his time with the Brewers. He won the NL-Sai Young Award in 2021. He's in the running for the A-L-Sai Young Award this year. The dude's awesome, 12 and 4, 2.71 ERA. He's 29 years old. He's going to get a monster deal. Would the Cardinals finally buck up for somebody like a Corbin Burns?

Starting point is 00:06:22 That's the real question. It's not really a question of whether or not he's good or not. It's the fact, well, you pay for somebody like Corvin Burns. Number two on the list. We're going overseas for this one. Roki Sasaki, Japanese League. Roki Sasaki. Now, nobody knows if he's going to get posted or not.

Starting point is 00:06:41 He may not even be available. We don't know yet. But he's 22. He is coming off two seasons in a row where he had an ERA at or below two and at least 12 strikeouts per nine. Now we saw what happened with the Yoshidobu Yamamoto contract. You saw what he got. That is probably on par for what Sasaki is going to get, if not more, because of the age difference.

Starting point is 00:07:11 And Yamamoto, it's not like he's some old guy, but Sasaki only being 22 years old, would the Cardinals ever pay a price like that? Sadly, I doubt it. but he's on the list because he's part of the top five if he becomes available. Blake Snell, San Francisco Giants, won two Sight Young Awards already in his career, one in the AL, one in the NL, had a late start this year due to the contract stuff. Nobody gave him the long-term one that he was looking for. Was not very good early on with the Giants after he signed.

Starting point is 00:07:44 Like he was having a rough go. In fact, in a lot of my fantasy leagues, people were dropping him because he wasn't very good. Goes on the I.L. And ever since then, I don't know what it's been, but he has come back humming just through a no hitter the other day, has games of 15, 11, 8 and 11 strikeouts. He is under a contract right now, but he has the ability to opt out of the current deal with the Giants. And why wouldn't he? Like if he keeps this up, like somebody's going to fork it over, right? He's not going to go through this again next year where he doesn't get the long-term deal.

Starting point is 00:08:16 He could be somebody that gets something, you know, more of like a five-year deal, which, might be something the Cardinals are more interested in than something long term like a, you know, like a seven, which is what he was probably looking for. He's probably looking for that Aaron Nola deal. So that's the name to keep an eye on. How about Max Fried from the Atlanta Braves? 30 years old, two-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove Award winner. The Athletic says will be one of the most sought after starters on the market.

Starting point is 00:08:42 3.10 ERA over eight years and more than 19 postseason appearances in his career. Definitely when you look at him, he feels like a Cardinal. type of target, doesn't he? Has dealt with some nerve issues and his forearms, so that's not always great to hear about. Would Atlanta let him go? Would Atlanta just be like, you're good, go for it? I mean, they got Chris Sale this year, who's having a Cy Young Award winning type of season, which it just blows my mind that the Braves are just able to do this kind of stuff, man.

Starting point is 00:09:14 I would love to see the cartels be able to pull something like that off. We talked about trading for sale in the off season, but it didn't come to fruition. Braves get him, and now he's like old school, top of the line, Chris Sale again like he was with the White Sox. So that is, that's another name. So maybe the Braves are like, we'll figure it out with some other guys and they let Max Fried walk. Well, it's a possibility. How about Shane Bieber from the Cleveland Guardians? Underwent Tommy John surgery in April is not expected to be back on the mound until next summer. Athletics says he could wait to sign until he is healthy, but it's more likely that some team gives him a two-year deal at a redone. reduced rate and takes a chance on his rehabilitation since he's at front of the rotation starter,

Starting point is 00:09:56 win right. That says John Mosei lock all over it, doesn't it? What's that? Shorter deal? Reduced rate? That is John Moseilock to a T when he goes shopping in free agency. So obviously, Bieber is somebody that Cardinal fans have wanted them to trade for for years now, and they could get their hands on them. After those five, you get in the area of a couple of former Cardinals, Jack Flaherty, Jordan Montgomery if he decides to opt out. Nathan Ebaldy, another guy that people thought the Cardinals might trade for. The Rangers decided not to make any deals at the deadline as far as getting rid of any of their top of the line guys. And it has not worked out for them.

Starting point is 00:10:37 So they might be regretting that decision. Michael Walker, if he opts out of Kansas City, Yusay Kukuchi, Robbie Ray, if he decides to opt out, a former site young winner. And it's not that those guys aren't good, but they're not, none of those guys are like the top of the line. ace guy you're talking about. Most of these guys are probably number two's. Kikuchi probably down here to number three a little bit. But then it starts to fade a little bit in how good these guys are. So I know we want the Cardinals to go out and look for an ace. But doesn't it feel more like John Moseilac would be doing the shopping among that back into people like Beaver and down than he would at the other guys? If they decide to

Starting point is 00:11:21 somebody at all, you know, to that big of a contract. So, you know, in magical happyland that we like to visit from time to time in our minds as Cardinals fans, would they actually open up the wallet and pay for an ace if they were? Which one would you want? Out of those top five, which ones would you want him to target? Just pick one, though. Don't give me like this guy that don't give me an order. Just which one do you want? It feels like free to Bieber are the ones that the Cardinals in real life would target because of the injury risk, because the price might be cheaper, years might be shorter, especially on Bieber. But Corbyn's man, 29 years old, would you give him seven years? Would you? I would certainly think about giving him the Tyler Glassnow deal,

Starting point is 00:12:12 which was five years 137. I would go six. I'd give him Carlos Rodan deal. Six years 162. I love me some Corbyn Burns. I think he's awesome. He's just so consistent. He's so consistent. So he doesn't scare me off. Like Max Fried with nerve damage in his arm scares me. Or Shane Bieber coming off, Tommy John's surgery frightens me a little bit. So if you're going to go all in, you know, getting the running for Corbyn Burns, would he come here? That's another, that's another story all together. But I don't know. Let me know your thoughts down below. Twitter X. And obviously, the comment section on YouTube. So why was it Jordan Walker in the lineup on Tuesday night? People are asking that question. It's the big debate right now. We'll talk about it next on

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Starting point is 00:15:55 a free 24-7 sports streaming channel program for you every day to bring you the biggest stories without all of the screaming. It's streaming 24-7 on YouTube and on the free Amazon Fire TV channels app, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. So the Cardinals got dominated by a superior pitcher on Tuesday. Hunter Green, the Reds, number one, is great. There is no shame in losing to Hunter Green. He's been doing it to people all year, just down there. dominating them is likely in the NL-Site Young conversation, despite his team not having a great year. He's got to be in the top three. I think it's, you know, Chris Sale, Dylan Sees

Starting point is 00:16:35 is going to be a part of that conversation. And Hunter Green. There's a couple of other guys like Glass Now and stuff who could have, you know, could bump it up a little bit later on. But he's been incredible. He's been incredible. He's got the third lowest ERA in the National League. He's tied with Sunny Gray for fourth in strikeouts. Fifth, best whip. Opponents are hitting just 185 against them, which is tops in the National League. The dude's really good. He's very, very good. It is finally fulfilling his promise as the second overall pick back in 2017. Now, fans bark at me all the time saying, you know, why can't we develop guys like this? And I always say, well, the Cardinals haven't had the number

Starting point is 00:17:14 two overall pick because they're normally, normally winning a lot of baseball games during the regular season. It's true that they have not developed a top of the line pitcher in quite a while. I mean, Jack Flaherty was solid, but injuries held him back, but you see him prospering now. The last one that was really destined for greatness, and it didn't work out was Alex Reyes. And that was a real bummer because he was one of the top right-handed pitchers in all of minor league baseball. People loved and raved over him. He was at one point the number one rated right-handed pitching prospect in baseball, and then injuries just destroyed his career. Real shame. Team Kens and Quinn Matthews seemed to be on a good pass, so that's good.

Starting point is 00:17:55 good news. But when you talk about developing one of these top of the line pitchers, it's not that easy. And it's taken a while for Hunter Green to get there. I mean, think about it. 2017, we're in 2024 now. And he's just now starting to kind of hit his stride. So it takes a little patience, too. I know we hate that word. But the point being is that Hunter Green is great. All right. And the offense already being in a bad place doesn't help when you go up against green. So going into the series, it's why, you know, I felt that this game, that the game on Tuesday night was going to be the toughest one to win because of who you were facing and why getting a win against Andrew Abbott on Monday was so important to winning

Starting point is 00:18:40 the series. And the Cardinals have already lost it. They've dropped two in a row. They've lost the series and are on the verge of getting swept. Reds are going to do a bullpen game on Wednesday. So we'll see what happens. Cardinals don't usually fare very well in bullpen. games either. They don't do well against a lot of stuff these days. But the part that I wanted to talk about with Tuesday's game was the, you know, the team called up Jordan Walker on Monday, right? Started him against Abbott. Then he goes right back onto the bench on Tuesday against Green. We went over what the plan is for Jordan Walker's usage yesterday. The idea is to platoon him in right field where he would start against lefties and then be that right-handed bench off the bat.

Starting point is 00:19:24 as well. Green is a right-handed pitcher. So, according to the plan, Jordan Walker wouldn't be in the lineup. That makes sense, according to the plan. But then you go and look at the stats and you're like, well, Jordan Walker is four for seven against Hunter Green in his career. This is a team starving for offense. What gives? Why wouldn't you put the one guy who's had some success against him in your lineup? Now, when I asked about it before the game, Holly had this to say about it. The lefties are here to hit righties, and there are certain righties here to hit lefties.

Starting point is 00:20:01 But what if that righty hits another righty really good? Are we still benching him? We're not going to make any exceptions. Shouldn't that mean something that he's had success against him? Bernie McCliss wrote about this at Scoops with Danny Mac.com, saying Walker had success against Green and the Miners going four for seven. That's a tiny speck of a sample. But Marmel didn't hesitate to go with the sliver-sized sample

Starting point is 00:20:26 to justify starting Crawford in a recent game because the veteran infielder had good career numbers against the other team starting pitchers. But because Crawford's numbers were so old and outdated, it made them absolutely irrelevant. Different standards for different players. Crawford is a one-year backup on the far downside of his career who doesn't do much of anything.

Starting point is 00:20:46 Walker was St. Louis's number one prospect not too long ago. and again, he hit very well as a big league rookie in 2023, but that doesn't count for much. Ouch. He also points out how Walker has been more effective against Ritey, saying that over the last two seasons, and the majors and the minors combined, Walker has a higher batting average on base percentage

Starting point is 00:21:07 and slugging rate when facing right-handed pitchers. His stats for selecties are nothing special, which is something that we've talked about. We're like, well, I know you want to bring them up because you want better hitters against, left-handed pitchers, but his splits aren't great. It's not like he just destroys left-handed pitching or something. So that whole plan isn't always the right one.

Starting point is 00:21:34 You've got to kind of make adjustments. And the other side of this, too, is who they decided to play instead of Jordan Walker. They gave Nolan Gorman a start on Tuesday, who was one for 11 with eight strikeouts against Green coming into the game. In the fifth inning, Lars Nupar, and you knew this was going to happen, too, that Gorman was going to come up in some big scenarios, and you're hoping he comes through, but he's in such a funk that it's not working out.

Starting point is 00:22:00 Fifth inning, Lars Nupar reaches, and then he's over at third base after two wild pitches, go back to the backstop. Gorman strikes out to end the inning in the seven, just fastball, up in the zone, right past him. Seventh inning, Newpar again, singles to bring Gorman to the play with two outs and a three-run deficit, flies out to center. field doesn't get the job done he's now one for 14 against green with 10 strikeouts that's not good and i realize that they want to get nolan gorman at bats he's not going to be able to turn things

Starting point is 00:22:30 around riding the bench i completely understand that at a three hit day his last start against kansas city but i'm not sure if starting him against hunter green was the right thing to do to get him going again. Hasn't had a lot of success against him. Hunter Green's really, really good. Why not let Jordan Walker take his hacks? Why not? Why not? But they didn't like it. That wasn't the plan. So it didn't happen. And the offense struggles once again. And things are really, really, really, really bad. And I don't really have to tell you. But it's kind of fun going through some of the stats and stuff of how bad things really have gotten for the Cardinals right now. Like we're in a really bad spot. Their season just appears to be slipping away unceremoniously. Some more eye-opening

Starting point is 00:23:21 stats. Bernie did a whole bunch of research, and I'm going to share a few of them with you. I'm going to link his article in the description down below as well, but I'm going to highlight a few of them for you, and you're just going to be like, whoa, because that's a, that was my reaction when I saw how gross some of the stuff is. So we'll get into those next on lockdown cardinals. Summer is winding down here in the month of August, but you still got plenty of time to stock up on all your grilling favorites and earn cash back. on every purchase when you use iBata. So you don't have to choose between hot dogs or burgers.

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Starting point is 00:26:27 Hopefully the Cardinals are a part of that. Who has it all covered with every single day on Lockdown MLB? It's available on YouTube. It's available wherever you get your podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. So it's been really tough watching the Cardinals over the last three games. It's been a tough season altogether. You know, only the psychotic fans like us have stuck around for these games.

Starting point is 00:26:50 And I mean that in a good way. I don't mean that in a derogative way towards you. I'm saying, I don't blame you if you turn some of these games off when they're as bad as they are, when they're scoring one run a game and they can't get anybody home with runners in scoring position. I don't blame you. I don't blame you for flipping the switch and going and doing something else that'll make you happier. I get it. It's been rough.

Starting point is 00:27:12 Bernie Michael has dropped a bunch of little stats. He's really good of research. And he did that in his column. Again, I'll link it in the description. just kind of showing how ugly things really have been recently. Starting with Nolan Gorman. Since June 5th, Gorman is batting 172 with an anemic 299 slugging percentage and has struck out in 40.4% of his plate appearances.

Starting point is 00:27:35 40.4. Since June 5th, Gorman has a ratio of 15.2 strikeouts for every home run that he's hit. That is awful. I don't know what he's doing on the roster anymore. when it's this back. Just being honest. People have been hitting me up about this for weeks now. It's time to reset him and let him get his confidence back,

Starting point is 00:28:01 and he's not going to get it by not playing every day at the major league level. Clearly, major league pitching has got him screwed up. He can't figure it out. Get him back down to AAA and let him try to get right. I don't understand what the point of having him up is if this is what he's going to be doing. over his last 19 games, Alec Burleson is batting 192 with a 241 on base percentage and a weak 281 slugging.

Starting point is 00:28:25 The Cardinals need the big fella to get going again. My question, has the league figured something out? You know, when they don't have tape on you, right? And you kind of catch the league off guard. Then they start to figure out your tendencies and whatnot and things go down. Has the league figured out something about Alec Berluson? or is it just one of those slums, which happens to every Major League Baseball player?

Starting point is 00:28:51 We're not sure yet. We're not sure yet because this is the first year. You know, it's only Burleson's second year. We've never seen him succeed at the level he was. Now, remember on that one stretch and he was just on fire. We expected it to come down from there, but we were hoping for a happy medium, not, you know, all the way up or all the way down. And he's all the way down at the moment, a big strikeout in Tuesday night's game

Starting point is 00:29:12 in a big spot when you had Victor Scott on third base with just, one out after win and moved him over. And, you know, he's the guy that you wanted up in those situations because he's the one guy on this roster that doesn't strike out all that much. And Hunter Green got him anyway. So that was a bummer. The Cardals have lost three in a row, scoring five total runs across 27 innings. The Royals and Reds outscored St. Louis 18 to five in these three straight defeats. And in those games, the Cardinals batted 194 and have struck out 30 times, have walked only six, and have walked only six. have left 28 men on base.

Starting point is 00:29:48 So when you go, man, it just really looks bad out there. It is bad out there. They look terrible. Not being able to even draw walks anymore is mind-numbing. Like how it gets that way where it is just nothing, just nothing has happened. Cardinals are 12 and 18 since July 10th. They're four in eight in August. Only the pirates are worse in the National League with that one-and-10 record.

Starting point is 00:30:14 Eric Fetty took the loss on Tuesday. He's got a 5.63 ERA and three starts for St. Louis. He's allowed four home runs and a 500 slugging percentage. And it's two road starts. He's been smashed for nine earned runs and four home runs and 11 innings for a 7.36 ERA and an opponent's slugging percentage of 605. As I said earlier in this episode, Eric Fetty has not lived up to what they thought they were getting. And we were all kind of nervous about that, weren't we? Like when they first started talking about trade deadline moves,

Starting point is 00:30:44 And I was like, I know that they're going to go after this guy. He's a Cardinal target. He just screams Cardinal, but he makes me nervous because he's only seen this kind of success for a little while in this one season. Had the great year over in Korea, not taking that away from him. But Major League Baseball is different. And I was nervous that maybe he doesn't live up to the expectations. I think he's a serviceable starting pitcher, but he's been much worse than what the Cardinals thought they were going to get from him so far.

Starting point is 00:31:21 So far. Bernie's got a ton more of these little nuggets and stuff in this particular article, but those are the ones that kind of stood out to me the most, the ones I wanted to highlight. So I do want to end on a good note because it's not all negativity with Bernie and certainly not here at Lockdown Cardinals. So Nolan Aronado delivered the Cardinals only run with the solo smash on Tuesday, 12th home run of the season.

Starting point is 00:31:43 Bernie writes in his last 19 games, Arnado batting 300 with a 471 slugging percentage, 827 OPS. He's got two doubles, two homers, and 12 RBIs over that time is batting 340 since July 29th. So that's a positive. That's a positive. We like to see that. But overall, the team just in a really bad spot. I was going to try to avoid the sweep tonight.

Starting point is 00:32:07 Kyle Gibson gets the start on the mound, looking for his eighth win of the season. The Reds are going to go with a bullpen game, as I mentioned. Emilio Pagan will get the start for them. Cardinals don't normally fare well in these situations because they set up a lineup to face a starter who's right-handed, and then the other team goes and throws all lefties the rest of the game and they're screwed. So I'm curious to see what the lineup will be tonight. If it's going to be more of a left, right, left-right, left-right type of situation, will Jordan Walker be in the lineup tonight against Emilio Paghan?

Starting point is 00:32:40 Who knows? Who knows? We'll find out soon enough. But hopefully they don't get swept. And again, I got to live with my wife, who's a Reds fan, and it's painful, guys. So if anything, if you're not going to do it for yourselves, Cardinals, do it for me. And now you've got the power of creed behind you as well. Sending you good vibes.

Starting point is 00:33:00 All right. Let's wrap it up. Thanks for making a lockdown Cardinals your first list in every day. If you haven't already, give us a follow on Twitter X at L.O. underscore Cardinals into JD Sports Radio, like, subscribe on YouTube to help our channel and love for the Cardinals grow. Tomorrow we will have a crossover episode with the guys from Locked on Reds talking about this series.

Starting point is 00:33:18 Again, I hope it ends on a good note for the Cardinals. I do not need them rubbing it into my face either. And then on Friday, I believe we're going to have Jeff Jones joining us to talk some Cardinal baseball. So all of this coming your way this week, you guys are the best fans in baseball for a reason. Let's get a dub tonight. I'll see you next time on Locked on Cardinals. Thank you.

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