As a Hawkeye who's strayed very far from old school Big10 fandom, it's really weird to see Oregon even in the conference, as well as the Hoosiers somehow being relevant on the field. Also, after last night's thriller, tonight's beatdown is lame.
Oh, the absurdity of conference realignment is a whole other topic, and it's so so bad. But Indiana of all schools steamrolling to victory is just surreal.
Oregon QB draws his arm back to throw the ball, accidentally hits his RB and the ball gets knocked out, Indiana gets the ball at the OU 3. I don't think I've ever seen that before.
Robert Murray @ByRobertMurray Free-agent reliever Ryne Stanek and the St. Louis Cardinals are in agreement on a contract, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Just to let a mod know, the content that's been posted in the sub lately from roundtable(dot)io is probably more AI/hack crap.
The poster is suddenly posting sports articles like crazy in recent days after a 4-year break from being a dnd commenter.
Seems like every year we get spammed by a fresh new low effort media outlet. Gotta be careful. Slop is one thing, but potential phishing sites are another.
This is an unpopular opinion around here but certainly one I agree with. The PPI pick is after the first round and is that gamble even worth the year of service time for a rebuilding team? My answer is no.
I think that’s 100% correct. If JJ is as good as he is being presented then he’ll definitely be in the upper 22% of new players which would put him in that Super 2 category at the end of his 2nd anniversary. Physical years, not rookie year.
We can always buy out more time and pay the dude at the end of his third season.
RE: Herrera, to me he’s not a catcher until he shows he can handle it full-time. He’s topped 50 games caught in a season once at the MLB level (56 in ‘24). Every other season he hasn’t caught more than 15 games.
Noot is supposedly on track to make the OD roster, and JJ will get every chance to win his spot in spring training, plus the potential PPI pick
He's not the championship team catcher until he proves it. 2026 is a chance to prove it. I also suspect wetherholt starts the season in Memphis. Crooks should also stay in Memphis until he improves his bat Pozo is the guy if we need a 3rd.
I think getting rid of Fedde, Mikolas, and Pallante will be a huge benefit. I don't think Fitts/Dobbins/Leahy/May will be great, but they almost literally cannot be worse than those 3.
On the flip side, the bullpen could be iffy. Leahy threw 88 innings out of the bullpen (only 1 start) so if he's a starter that's a lot of innings. Matz and Maton were also effective while here.
I'm reasonably certain the win total will be <70 games, which will be literally the worst Cardinals team in 100 years. 69 wins (not nice!) would mean the worst team since 1924. 68 wins or less gets you to the 1919 team that went 54-83. I'm thinking mid-high 60s win total.
Yeah that's where I'm at. I'm personally expecting .500 in the absolute best case, more likely in the 75-78 win range. But, there are some doomers who are expecting 2024 White Sox levels of suck.
I mean, we've traded Gray and Contreras, which is certainly significant, but we also dropped Fedde and Mikolas. Fedde and Mikolas combined for about 390 innings and 0.1 fWAR or 0.5 bWAR. I don't think it's super crazy to think we're going to be in the 75-78 win range and around .500 if everything goes right (eg, May has a fully healthy year, Walker and Gorman turning things around, overall health).
It's absolutely crazy to think they trade away as many players as they have and maintain the same amount of wins as last season. Keep in mind last season was a bit of an overperformance in terms of wins vs expected. This team is going to be way worse than the 2024 or 2025 team.
Not sure about record, but maybe more enjoyable than previous seasons. Younger guys will be hungrier than what has felt like a very stale in game approach in the past few years.
Totally my hope, there was a stretch early last season when the boys were playing hard and were fun to watch. Don’t know what happened but it was like the lights went out and everything went blah.
78 wins last season 83 wins in 2024. No Contreras Helsley Gray or Donovan, and Arenado will be another year older. I don't see this roster getting to 70 wins.
I'm not sure they aren't rockies tier without a ton of guys stepping up and having better seasons than the last 2. A much better roster got 78 wins last season.
I do. Even if we trade Donovan and JoJo, I do not think we’re going to have some atrociously horrible season. I think we will be at 75-78 wins.
A few rookies are going to come up and be surprises. Some combination of young guys like Winn/Burly/Walker/Gorman/Lib/Dobbins/Fitts/Scott are going to prove themselves to be quality longterm pieces. Some combo of Mathews, JJ, Crooks, Tink, Church, and even a surprise name like Prieto or Mautz are going to come up and make an impact.
We have talent. Lots of young talent. No, we don’t have sluggers and don’t have a true star, but we have way better depth than the truly shitty teams of recent years. The horrible teams of the last 5 years like Pirates, Rox, Marlins, White Sox, Nationals, etc… we are far above what they were when they were losing. Our floor and our ceiling is higher than what those level of teams were.
Baseball is not linear. Teams swing wildly from year to year without making any moves. Sometimes you sell and the players replacing them from within end up doing good. Sometimes existing players improve. It’s like people forget that young players with prospect pedigree are usually expected to improve with time in the league…will they? Maybe not, but it’s certainly feasible and wouldn’t be a surprise at all.
So yeah. I think there’s a damn good chance we have the same number of wins or even possibly better. We won’t have Mikolas and Fedde weighing us down all year. Sonny had great rate stats, but his actual production can 100% be replicated from within. Willy and Donovan (if we even trade him) will be hard to replace, but if Gorman and/or Walker find 2023 again, boom, replaced. Nado’s replacement should be an upgrade over 86 OPS+.
The bullpen is deep. The rotation has more upside than it did last year, still not a ton, but more.
This shit is not black and white, cut and dry. It’s baseball. So yeah, I think there’s a real damn chance that it happens if you consider the reality with a little nuance.
Mikolas was a perfectly acceptable sp5. Yall act like had an era of 8 and left every game within 2 innings. It's unlikely our worst starter this year is going to be better than Mikolas.
This is really AAAA roster we're trotting out, which is fine in a rebuild year, but this team ain't going to flirt with 500 without dramatic leaps in development by mutiple guys.
Dude, I was a Mikolas defender this entire season. Literally one of like the 10% of fans in this sub that thought he was serviceable for his role. You’re talking to the wrong guy on that front.
But do I think our number 5 starter this year has a good chance to have a better than a 4.83 ERA? Yeah, I do. Do I think Pallante will post a -1.2 WAR and a 5.31 ERA? No, I don’t.
We will undoubtedly be at or above 75 wins. I don’t have a single doubt in my mind about that. Only way that changes is if we have a ton of injuries.
Also, I wouldn’t call 75-78 wins “flirting” with .500. Baseball is a game of inches though, and just a few lucky breaks can swing a season by several games. Idk why fans act like that shit is crazy. It happens every year where there are surprise teams
You don't subtract Contreras Gray Helsley Donovan Matz and Maton (yeah counting the deadline moves here) and wind up with only 3 less wins. If Pallante finishes with a better era than that he probably won't be the 5th worst starter; keep in mind that's also almost exactly the same era as May. We'll also likely sell pitching at the deadline.
Edit: 75-78 wins is absolutely flirting with 500, that's a 3-6 out of 162 game difference. If that's not flirting with 500 I don't know what is.
The thing about baseball is you might be right and yet you also might completely be wrong. Because, I cannot stress this enough, that is baseball.
And we aren’t running out a bunch of hopeless vets or no name prospects with no potential or upside here. We’re running out a team full of prospect pedigree and top draft picks. There is real talent on this team. Are you expecting every player to either regress or remain completely stagnant? Before 2022 you had no idea who Nootbaar or Donovan were, and if you did, you never thought they’d be what they are. Before 2021 you didn’t know what Helsley would be. You had no idea Ivan Herrera would have a statcast as red as the devils dick until he came to the bigs and did that shit.
You can just hand wave everything with “that’s baseball!” lol.
Yes, a lot of our guys could make jumps and improve, significantly even! However this organization hasn’t shown that ability in years and several of our guys (like Walker and Gorman) don’t have a track record that inspires confidence over the last few years.
We have very few proven players on this roster which is why it’s crazy to me to think we can improve off of last years win total. Yes, youth is part of that and implies there’s some upside, but you can’t base every assessment off of that.
We’re a 4th place team that has been actively shedding our top talent for the last 6 months. There are hopefully brighter days ahead but not many will happen in 2026.
This organization has also seen a serious overhaul of pretty much every aspect of the development team throughout the org. It’s not the same and we’ve already seen dividends paying off all throughout the minors.
People thought Burleson would be a 105-110 OPS+ hitter, then wins a silver slugger last year. People thought Donovan and Edman would be good bench players, both turned into all-star level guys. Nootbaar was said to have 4th OF ceiling by most people in this sub and even some publications, yet he proved to usually be a quality starter when healthy (with a lot of statcast encouragement still in the tank). Ivan Herrera is a beast in the making that nobody saw coming. Adolis Garcia was nothing and on the brink of career washout with a sub .300 OBP in AAA, became an all-star after getting DFA’d and passed over several times. People thought Lib was destined for the bullpen last year, then turned in a league average year as a starter while shouldering by far his heaviest load of his career.
It happens every year. I “hand wave” shit because that is the sport. There are no name breakouts and surprise teams every year. There are surefire great teams and prospects that are garbage, every year. Why exactly can’t that be us? Because the vibes aren’t right? Because you’re jaded? It’s not some crazy ask to have 75-78 wins. That’s still a poor season. I’m not projecting the damn playoffs lmao. It’s fucking semantics being contested here.
Gorman and Walker, they both had obvious problems with their futures and their swings even as prospects. They might fix them, they might not. But players make offseason tweaks and become different players LITERALLY all the damn time. Every single season, dozens of players, EVERY year. It’s just understanding the human element of baseball, dude.
I, for one, will appreciate going back to the old Ron Reagan-style of broadcast: creating the radio-onky play-by-play based on telegraph reports from the ballpark.
I’ve been so out of the loop with Cardinals baseball that TIL that Willson Contreras is no longer a Cardinal
Every pitcher we collected this offseason has a funny name
Anyone have any news on Liam Doyle? Any chance the Cards join the current trend of fast tracking college pitchers to the majors?
Henderson and Mautz both spent the whole year at AA, despite both of them probably deserving to be promoted to AAA.
Though with that said, I think they might have felt that Springfield was a better place for young players, because they had more coaches there.
Doubtful.
Bloom has a history of slow rolling pitching. Doyle also need quite a bit of refinement of his two secondaries.
If he looks like a total stud, maybe the 2nd half. But probably not.
Yes. To look like a "total stud," he'd have to make significant progress on the secondaries.
Am not really prepared for goddamned Indiana to beat the shit out the rest of college football.
As a Hawkeye who's strayed very far from old school Big10 fandom, it's really weird to see Oregon even in the conference, as well as the Hoosiers somehow being relevant on the field. Also, after last night's thriller, tonight's beatdown is lame.
Oh, the absurdity of conference realignment is a whole other topic, and it's so so bad. But Indiana of all schools steamrolling to victory is just surreal.
I’m still waiting patiently by my phone for the Cardinals to ask me to be their Sarcasm Coach. I’m sure they’ll call.
(Patiently was the sarcasm part of this post).
cardinals get a washed up reliever hell yeah
Oregon QB draws his arm back to throw the ball, accidentally hits his RB and the ball gets knocked out, Indiana gets the ball at the OU 3. I don't think I've ever seen that before.
It's kind of weird that the Rose Bowl was a college football quarterfinal and the goddamned Peach Bowl is a semi.
they rotate which bowls get CFP every year
Ryne Stanek signed for bullpen depth
Hopefully he has a good first half and we can trade him at the deadline, although unlikely
Robert Murray @ByRobertMurray Free-agent reliever Ryne Stanek and the St. Louis Cardinals are in agreement on a contract, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Like that other guy we just got, he's terrible
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/stanery01.shtml
Just to let a mod know, the content that's been posted in the sub lately from roundtable(dot)io is probably more AI/hack crap.
The poster is suddenly posting sports articles like crazy in recent days after a 4-year break from being a dnd commenter.
Seems like every year we get spammed by a fresh new low effort media outlet. Gotta be careful. Slop is one thing, but potential phishing sites are another.
Had just looked at that profile and the sketchy site and won't be clicking again. But respect to the guy for quickly posting news over here, I guess.
Looks like tomorrow is an off day, too.
(I can keep this joke going).
Happy No Pants Subway Ride Day!
Yes, the Metrolink counts!
Who is the evil, evil person who downvoted this?
Someone who works for Big Pants and their diabolical leg-smothering agenda.
Alas, I'd hoped that Zak Kent would slip through waivers.
You know, it won’t be long and we will be talking baseball…🤔😏
So making a few assumptions on the roster, here’s what Opening Day could/should look like:
3B Wetherholt
SS Winn
2B Gorman
1B Burleson
LF Nootbaar
CF Scott
RF Walker
C Pages/Crooks
DH Herrera
SP Fitts
SP Liberatore
SP McGreevy
SP May
SP Leahy
…it’s a welcome departure from the last 2-3 years but man it’s gonna be rough. 90+ losses absolutely should be the expectation
Better than 50% chance Arenado is still on the team.
I’d be shocked to see JJ on the 40-man before April.
This is an unpopular opinion around here but certainly one I agree with. The PPI pick is after the first round and is that gamble even worth the year of service time for a rebuilding team? My answer is no.
I think that’s 100% correct. If JJ is as good as he is being presented then he’ll definitely be in the upper 22% of new players which would put him in that Super 2 category at the end of his 2nd anniversary. Physical years, not rookie year.
We can always buy out more time and pay the dude at the end of his third season.
Maybe with the power of friendship, they can win more than they will lose
That lineup can win anywhere between 50 and 100 games
Herrera is the catcher, will Noot be back from double ankle surgery by then and will Wetherholt make the OD roster?
I've got yes, no, and yes on those at this point. I've also got Arenado at 3B (assuming he won't be moved) with Gorman at DH and Wetherholt at 2B.
Opening Day LF is wideass open (since I'd assume Nootbaar won't be ready even if his rehab and recovery continues to go well).
Like I said, making a few assumptions.
RE: Herrera, to me he’s not a catcher until he shows he can handle it full-time. He’s topped 50 games caught in a season once at the MLB level (56 in ‘24). Every other season he hasn’t caught more than 15 games.
Noot is supposedly on track to make the OD roster, and JJ will get every chance to win his spot in spring training, plus the potential PPI pick
He's not the championship team catcher until he proves it. 2026 is a chance to prove it. I also suspect wetherholt starts the season in Memphis. Crooks should also stay in Memphis until he improves his bat Pozo is the guy if we need a 3rd.
I'm just axin
All good lol, we’re all here to talk ball
Marte not being traded. At least now that market is clearly just Donavan
glad the dbacks didn't needlessly trade their best hitter
On a great contract too
31 days til spring training!
I knew something good was going to happen in 2026
Who suspects that we’ll do better than expected this upcoming season?
I think getting rid of Fedde, Mikolas, and Pallante will be a huge benefit. I don't think Fitts/Dobbins/Leahy/May will be great, but they almost literally cannot be worse than those 3.
On the flip side, the bullpen could be iffy. Leahy threw 88 innings out of the bullpen (only 1 start) so if he's a starter that's a lot of innings. Matz and Maton were also effective while here.
Yesterday the Cardinals signed Pallante to a one year $4 M contract.
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/cardinals-andre-pallante-settles-with-cardinals/#
I'm reasonably certain the win total will be <70 games, which will be literally the worst Cardinals team in 100 years. 69 wins (not nice!) would mean the worst team since 1924. 68 wins or less gets you to the 1919 team that went 54-83. I'm thinking mid-high 60s win total.
Guess that depends on the expectations. I don’t think they’ll lose 100 games, but that’s about as optimistic as I’ll get
Yeah that's where I'm at. I'm personally expecting .500 in the absolute best case, more likely in the 75-78 win range. But, there are some doomers who are expecting 2024 White Sox levels of suck.
500 was optimistic for last season. Now they've gutted the team lol
I mean, we've traded Gray and Contreras, which is certainly significant, but we also dropped Fedde and Mikolas. Fedde and Mikolas combined for about 390 innings and 0.1 fWAR or 0.5 bWAR. I don't think it's super crazy to think we're going to be in the 75-78 win range and around .500 if everything goes right (eg, May has a fully healthy year, Walker and Gorman turning things around, overall health).
It's absolutely crazy to think they trade away as many players as they have and maintain the same amount of wins as last season. Keep in mind last season was a bit of an overperformance in terms of wins vs expected. This team is going to be way worse than the 2024 or 2025 team.
I think you'll be surprised
Not sure about record, but maybe more enjoyable than previous seasons. Younger guys will be hungrier than what has felt like a very stale in game approach in the past few years.
Totally my hope, there was a stretch early last season when the boys were playing hard and were fun to watch. Don’t know what happened but it was like the lights went out and everything went blah.
I expect them to win 60 games. So yeah we can do better. Maybe even 62!
78 wins last season 83 wins in 2024. No Contreras Helsley Gray or Donovan, and Arenado will be another year older. I don't see this roster getting to 70 wins.
It depends on the expectation. I think I saw a line on them at 72.5 wins the other day. I'd take the over on that.
Only 5-6 wins less than 2025 seems extremely optimistic.
Eh ... I don't know. Optimistic, probably. Extremely optimistic, I don't think so.
Baseball's a complex organism. A few young guys will come at least relatively good. We'll see what happens. They ain't Rockies bad.
I'm not sure they aren't rockies tier without a ton of guys stepping up and having better seasons than the last 2. A much better roster got 78 wins last season.
We have a fundamental difference in perception. It's okay.
We'll see what happens.
73 wins here we come!
Idk…
Liberatore is our ace and Burly/Herrera/??? are our 3/4/5 hitters…90 losses shouldn’t be that surprising
If we're going to be bad it's better to be *really* bad. Let's get that #1 overall pick dog
Starting pitching has some pretty wide bars but last year's set a low bar.
Bullpen has a lot of young guys who looked decent end of last season.
Offense is the big stumbling block. Lost Contreras, probably losing Donovan. Upside swing is potentially JJW along with some OF help graduating.
I do. Even if we trade Donovan and JoJo, I do not think we’re going to have some atrociously horrible season. I think we will be at 75-78 wins.
A few rookies are going to come up and be surprises. Some combination of young guys like Winn/Burly/Walker/Gorman/Lib/Dobbins/Fitts/Scott are going to prove themselves to be quality longterm pieces. Some combo of Mathews, JJ, Crooks, Tink, Church, and even a surprise name like Prieto or Mautz are going to come up and make an impact.
We have talent. Lots of young talent. No, we don’t have sluggers and don’t have a true star, but we have way better depth than the truly shitty teams of recent years. The horrible teams of the last 5 years like Pirates, Rox, Marlins, White Sox, Nationals, etc… we are far above what they were when they were losing. Our floor and our ceiling is higher than what those level of teams were.
We're trading every player worth anything from last year's team and you're expecting the same number of wins?
Baseball is not linear. Teams swing wildly from year to year without making any moves. Sometimes you sell and the players replacing them from within end up doing good. Sometimes existing players improve. It’s like people forget that young players with prospect pedigree are usually expected to improve with time in the league…will they? Maybe not, but it’s certainly feasible and wouldn’t be a surprise at all.
So yeah. I think there’s a damn good chance we have the same number of wins or even possibly better. We won’t have Mikolas and Fedde weighing us down all year. Sonny had great rate stats, but his actual production can 100% be replicated from within. Willy and Donovan (if we even trade him) will be hard to replace, but if Gorman and/or Walker find 2023 again, boom, replaced. Nado’s replacement should be an upgrade over 86 OPS+.
The bullpen is deep. The rotation has more upside than it did last year, still not a ton, but more.
This shit is not black and white, cut and dry. It’s baseball. So yeah, I think there’s a real damn chance that it happens if you consider the reality with a little nuance.
Mikolas was a perfectly acceptable sp5. Yall act like had an era of 8 and left every game within 2 innings. It's unlikely our worst starter this year is going to be better than Mikolas.
This is really AAAA roster we're trotting out, which is fine in a rebuild year, but this team ain't going to flirt with 500 without dramatic leaps in development by mutiple guys.
Dude, I was a Mikolas defender this entire season. Literally one of like the 10% of fans in this sub that thought he was serviceable for his role. You’re talking to the wrong guy on that front.
But do I think our number 5 starter this year has a good chance to have a better than a 4.83 ERA? Yeah, I do. Do I think Pallante will post a -1.2 WAR and a 5.31 ERA? No, I don’t.
We will undoubtedly be at or above 75 wins. I don’t have a single doubt in my mind about that. Only way that changes is if we have a ton of injuries.
Also, I wouldn’t call 75-78 wins “flirting” with .500. Baseball is a game of inches though, and just a few lucky breaks can swing a season by several games. Idk why fans act like that shit is crazy. It happens every year where there are surprise teams
You don't subtract Contreras Gray Helsley Donovan Matz and Maton (yeah counting the deadline moves here) and wind up with only 3 less wins. If Pallante finishes with a better era than that he probably won't be the 5th worst starter; keep in mind that's also almost exactly the same era as May. We'll also likely sell pitching at the deadline.
Edit: 75-78 wins is absolutely flirting with 500, that's a 3-6 out of 162 game difference. If that's not flirting with 500 I don't know what is.
The thing about baseball is you might be right and yet you also might completely be wrong. Because, I cannot stress this enough, that is baseball.
And we aren’t running out a bunch of hopeless vets or no name prospects with no potential or upside here. We’re running out a team full of prospect pedigree and top draft picks. There is real talent on this team. Are you expecting every player to either regress or remain completely stagnant? Before 2022 you had no idea who Nootbaar or Donovan were, and if you did, you never thought they’d be what they are. Before 2021 you didn’t know what Helsley would be. You had no idea Ivan Herrera would have a statcast as red as the devils dick until he came to the bigs and did that shit.
"[R]ed as the devil['s] dick"
I dig it.
You can just hand wave everything with “that’s baseball!” lol.
Yes, a lot of our guys could make jumps and improve, significantly even! However this organization hasn’t shown that ability in years and several of our guys (like Walker and Gorman) don’t have a track record that inspires confidence over the last few years.
We have very few proven players on this roster which is why it’s crazy to me to think we can improve off of last years win total. Yes, youth is part of that and implies there’s some upside, but you can’t base every assessment off of that.
We’re a 4th place team that has been actively shedding our top talent for the last 6 months. There are hopefully brighter days ahead but not many will happen in 2026.
This organization has also seen a serious overhaul of pretty much every aspect of the development team throughout the org. It’s not the same and we’ve already seen dividends paying off all throughout the minors.
People thought Burleson would be a 105-110 OPS+ hitter, then wins a silver slugger last year. People thought Donovan and Edman would be good bench players, both turned into all-star level guys. Nootbaar was said to have 4th OF ceiling by most people in this sub and even some publications, yet he proved to usually be a quality starter when healthy (with a lot of statcast encouragement still in the tank). Ivan Herrera is a beast in the making that nobody saw coming. Adolis Garcia was nothing and on the brink of career washout with a sub .300 OBP in AAA, became an all-star after getting DFA’d and passed over several times. People thought Lib was destined for the bullpen last year, then turned in a league average year as a starter while shouldering by far his heaviest load of his career.
It happens every year. I “hand wave” shit because that is the sport. There are no name breakouts and surprise teams every year. There are surefire great teams and prospects that are garbage, every year. Why exactly can’t that be us? Because the vibes aren’t right? Because you’re jaded? It’s not some crazy ask to have 75-78 wins. That’s still a poor season. I’m not projecting the damn playoffs lmao. It’s fucking semantics being contested here.
Gorman and Walker, they both had obvious problems with their futures and their swings even as prospects. They might fix them, they might not. But players make offseason tweaks and become different players LITERALLY all the damn time. Every single season, dozens of players, EVERY year. It’s just understanding the human element of baseball, dude.
I’m taking the over at 78. Not for any rational reason but it’s what my heart says
A lot needs to go right, but I think we have enough interesting pieces to at least shut down the claims that this team is hopeless.
People estimating 90-100 loses might be surprised.
GO CARDINALS!!!
I, for one, will appreciate going back to the old Ron Reagan-style of broadcast: creating the radio-onky play-by-play based on telegraph reports from the ballpark.
Chip with an iPad on the roof of Ballpark Village
He stays at 1 Cardinal Way during the season, he'll be chillin at the pool level with a glass of Chsrdonnay (and the ipad)
Until he drops it in the pool after the 7th inning chardonnay stretch.