cardinals 3rd base vacancy

[duckplucker]

in one of the stupidest front office moves ever, walt jocketty allowed our third baseman to go to the phillies.
the cards should have made signing abraham nunez the number one priority.

to worsen matters, they also allowed his back up, john mabry to escape to the cubs unsigned.

now, who will play 3rd base next season?

[bubz_bluez]

thats all i have to say fuck um because hes always hurt come on Walt do soem leg work get us another allstar or at least a guy thats got a glove.........cardinals are in shambles if we lose julian tavarez i swear to god im gonna be so pist off!!!!!!!!!!!
JT is my favorite player if he goes im fuckin losin it !!!!!
:rant: :rant: :rant:

bubz

[andikay]

I wish I knew why the FUCK we didn't sign Nunez. I didn't know we also lost Mabry, though.

I guess we are just fucked next year.

We still have Eckstein and Grudzielanek, right?

[bubz_bluez]

i think Gru is a free agent andi

bubz

if i told you to leave then you dont that doesnt mean you can stay

[007]

Unfortunately, I think you missed out on the Marlins starting 3rd baseman, since they have unloaded 5 of 9 starting players.
Looks like the Cards also got outbid on Burnett! Oh well.

[poofdogg]

so we lost that kid that had a good little break out season. i say more power to him. hope he got a good contract, but i don't think he was worth the money that the phils gave him. he is alot like many other flash in the pan wonders that have made their way into and out of the major league level. anyone remember fernando tatis. i loved the guy for the little bit of time he was good for us. then he got a decent contract elsewhere (i was upset when he left) and then he proceeded to suck. not that these situations are identical, but similar.

in the end, someone will come up thru our system or will be acquired to help out at 3rd. i feel like we will get a solid season from rolen again one of these years soon when he stops running into other players on the basepaths. he is not the jd drew of our past.

anyways...its baseball and we are the cards. all will work out.

[False Alarm]

poof's right. you could pull a guy off the street to do what mabry did for you last year. like, any street. and i don't watch the cards, but based on nunez's stats, he has zero power for a 3B. and that's bad.

is rolen hurt that badly? cuz we can trade you joe crede for him if you're dissatisfied...

[JVO]

I also agree that losing Nunez is not that big of a deal. There are a bunch of dudes out there who are going to be able to do the same things he was doing. I also predict that his numbers will drastically decrease this year. Also hard to justify paying him so much money, when basically (hopefully!!!!) we would only be a back up the entire year.

I am bummed about losing Mabry though.

Grudzielonak is all but gone. He is due for a big time contract and the Cards are not going to give it to him.

I bet we are going to keep Eckstein.

Not giving Burnett the 5 year $55 million contract was a great move! Giving a pitcher a 5 year contract is suicide.

I wonder if Matt Morris will take less money to stay with the Cards. I think nationally Morris is probably overrated so he will get a lot more money from somebody else.

Has Larry Walker officially retired yet?

We seriously need to get young in a hurry. I love Reggie and Jimmy is one of my favorite players of all time, but their numbers are just going to get worse and worse, especially late in the season and in the playoffs.

I really wish we had gotten Jean Pierre. He would have been a great match. Instead he gets to waste away in Chicago.

Just got off the phone with a friend of mine who lives in St. Louis, and he said today they will be completely finished tearing down the old Busch. I guess you can hardly tell it ever existed. They just took all the rumble and buried it back into the ground.

[bubz_bluez]

false alarm not watchin the cards completly clouds your judgement you dont know how good mabry was he got hits when no one else would .....im gonna miss him.......i can member the slama lama that he put down to save our ass from a game we shoulda lost

bubz

[duckplucker]

false alarm: if i were the cards gm i would trade you scott rolen for joe crede. joe crede plays. rolen sits in the dugout year after year and collects more $$$ than i'll ever see in my life. what is this the third year in a row he's missed significant time?

et al: nunez could also have been our 2nd baseman. i think gru is gonna walk.

i also think morris is gone.

walker has officially retired

king has been traded for nobodies.

[False Alarm]

false alarm: if i were the cards gm i would trade you scott rolen for joe crede. joe crede plays. rolen sits in the dugout year after year and collects more $$$ than i'll ever see in my life. what is this the third year in a row he's missed significant time?

deal. joe crede's agent is scott boras and he'll start collecting big $ next year with a degenerative back condition.

rolen, on the other hand, might be the best 3B of his generation and probably still has a couple good years left in him. since the cards would eat part of his contract, i'd be drooling. btw, before 2005, he averaged about 150 games per year the previous four years and had at least 500 at-bats every year: http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/rolensc01.shtml. that's durability.

bubz et al re: mabry--cool, he's one of those guys like timo perez has been for the chisox. i'm down with guys like that. like hawk says, don't tell me what you hit, tell me when you hit it. but clutch statistics don't tend to hold up over time, so i think y'alls're best cutting ties with him, cherishing his memory as a fan favorite, and looking for someone who'll be more consistently valuable. that's what i wish we'd do with timo, anyway.

[JVO]

Yeah DP has some sort of unexplained hatred for Scott Rolen that I have never understood. I think he would rather have Placido Palanco still playing for the Cardinals, despite the fact that once Polanco left he fell off the face of the planet. In 2004 Rolen led the league in RBI's and was an MVP candidate. Every single expert says that he is the greatest fielding 3B in the history of Baseball. I have never seen anybody with a stronger arm. Certainly his injury this year really hurt the team, but the only reason he got hurt is because he was hustling. There is no evidence that Rolen is injury prone (great stat FA). Honestly the Cardinals only have 2 players that have any shot of being a hall of famer and Rolen is one of them.

Alright the Cardinals website is a bunch of crap. They say that Larry Walker is retired, but according to MLB.com he is still active and the Cards did not offer salary arbitration so he is on the market. He may retire (I am sure he will), but if he can get a sweet deal to play another year, he might go for it. I wouldn't be surprised if he went back to Colorado. I know he still lives there and his bar downtown is the hottest sports bar in town.

I think we should have let Matt Morris go. I guess I have an unexplained hatred for Morris. I just think that he is a major choker. Also if his curve ball doesn't work he is shot. For some reason he can't battle his way through. Either he is lights out, or he is completely worthless. Also I think his contract is going to be gigantic. I think reading "Three Nights in August" totally made me hate Morris. Oh well, I guess he is the elderstatesman of the team so maybe it will be good that we keep him.

[duckplucker]

placidooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

[JVO]

Awards won by Scott Rolen:

All Star: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
NL Rookie of the Year: 1997
Gold Gloves: 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
Silver Slugger: 2002

Awards won by Placido Polanco:

NONE

[duckplucker]

polanco also never spent significant time on the dl, that i can rmember. he cost a fraction of the $$$ that rolen does, he always hit .300, played a solid third, laid down a good bunt, stole some bases, played short and 2nd for us in a pinch.

if we hadn't spent that $$$ on mr.hurt-every-year we could have spent it on a pitcher. who would you rather have, a 3rd baseman who's always hurt or josh beckett, bartolo colon, freddy garcia, tim hudson, etc. pitching is what we needed.

rolen is a bench warmer. it doesn't matter how much potential a player has. if he isn't on the field he's useless. we really could have used some hits against the astros. rolen was in the dugout. he's fragile. what's it gonna be next year? a hang nail.

[False Alarm]

polanco also never spent significant time on the dl, that i can rmember. he cost a fraction of the $$$ that rolen does, he always hit .300, played a solid third, laid down a good bunt, stole some bases, played short and 2nd for us in a pinch.

if we hadn't spent that $$$ on mr.hurt-every-year we could have spent it on a pitcher. who would you rather have, a 3rd baseman who's always hurt or josh beckett, bartolo colon, freddy garcia, tim hudson, etc. pitching is what we needed.

rolen is a bench warmer. it doesn't matter how much potential a player has. if he isn't on the field he's useless. we really could have used some hits against the astros. rolen was in the dugout. he's fragile. what's it gonna be next year? a hang nail.
polanco also has 59 career home runs, which is about two average seasons for rolen. presumably, he's also primarily a 2B for a reason: he's got below-average arm strength. his range factor at 3B rates below league average for his career as well. finally, mr. hurt-every-year has never played less than 142 games for the cards before 2005 and was perfectly durable and productive in philly. i never thought i'd have to explain to a cardinals fan why rolen is a valuable player.

although i agree that y'alls need more pitching.

[JVO]

I totally agree with False Alarm. I can't beleive that DP needs convincing that Rolen is one of the greatest 3rd baseman in the history of the league. In 2003-2004 Rolen had 228 RBI. You would have to add up the last 6.5 years for Polanco to get that many.

Here is a list of players who have similiar numbers to Polanco at this point in his career:

Similar Batters through Age 29
Compare Stats
Todd Walker (932)
Gil McDougald (925)
Adam Kennedy (923)
Fred Dunlap (919)
Jimmie Dykes (915)
Johnny Ray (914)
Odell Hale (911)
Hubie Brooks (907)
Julio Franco (905)
Tony Bernazard (903)


I haven't even heard of most of the people. Who the fuck is Gil McDougald?

Now lets look at the players with similiar numbers to Rolen:

Similar Batters through Age 30
Compare Stats
Gary Sheffield (925)
Shawn Green (916)
Chipper Jones (910)
Rudy York (907)
Dale Murphy (889)
Greg Luzinski (886)
Mike Schmidt (883) *
Reggie Jackson (880) *
Billy Williams (878) *
Dick Allen (873)

Just for the record Schmidt, Murphy, and Jackson ARE IN THE HALL OF FAME!!!!!!!!! and Sheffield and Chumper Jones may very well end up there.

Plus Rolen has won 6 GOLD GLOVES!!!!!! Is it really fair to write off "Mr Hurt" because he missed a large part of 1 SEASON!!!! What about the other 8 SEASONS in which he racked up home runs and RBI's and won Gold Gloves? Why do you choose to ignore those years? Chris Carpenter has missed 3 of his first 4 seasons, do you think we should ditch him? Why do you have such a short memory?!?!?!

Granted Rolen does have a huge paycheck, but so does every other potential hall of famer in the league. Do you think we should ditch Albert because he makes too much money (I am sure he makes more the Rolen). Think of the pitching we could get for him.

Plus, I am sure Rolen could play Second base if you wanted him too (and bunt for that matter), but why on Earth would you want to take THE GREATEST DEFENSIVE 3rd BASEMAN IN THE GAME and move him to another position. The reason why Polanco play both 2nd and 3rd is because he is not great at either position and when you move him you are not really losing anything.

Don't get me wrong I think Polanco is a nice little player, but to say that we would be better off with him than Rolen is one of the most inflamatory, crazy, insane, uncomprehensable things I could imagine.

[duckplucker]

placidooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!