Has there ever been a more hollow .292?

[Faceman]

Snayke got an unprecedented amount of flack and attacks for a stance that was legitimate and logical. A lot of people may not have liked how he went about it, but he was right and with all the arrows slung his way, he deserves to be able to bump this as vindication.

Snayke got an unprecedented amount of flack for complaining about this when Molina was the absolute least of the worries. And harping on it.

[New Pagodi]

Snayke got an unprecedented amount of flack for complaining about this when Molina was the absolute least of the worries. And harping on it.

Molina, or rather what Molina represents, is not the least of our worries. In recent years, TRL has been way to willing to use terrible players like Molina, Miles, and Taguchi while letting better players sit on the bench or waste away in the minors because of some supposed intangibles those terrible players bring with them.

[Popeye_Card]

Snayke got an unprecedented amount of flack for complaining about this when Molina was the absolute least of the worries. And harping on it.

Molina, or rather what Molina represents, is not the least of our worries. In recent years, TRL has been way to willing to use terrible players like Molina, Miles, and Taguchi while letting better players sit on the bench or waste away in the minors because of some supposed intangibles those terrible players bring with them.

Who was the better catcher we were going to bring up? By my recollection, we had to save Kelly Stinnett from retirement.

Molina is far from a terrible player. Bad hitter, sure. But even bad hitters have their time to shine. Without Molina, the Cards don't win the 2006 World Series.

EDIT: Furthermore, the Cardinals have had a great run of success since 2000 with Matheny and Molina as the catchers. They've also had guys like Miles and Taguchi around forever. I don't think they're preventing them from winning many games.

--P--

[Windy City Flyer]

I am waiting for Bryan Anderson.

[Cronos]

Molina is far from a terrible player. Bad hitter, sure. But even bad hitters have their time to shine. Without Molina, the Cards don't win the 2006 World Series.

EDIT: Furthermore, the Cardinals have had a great run of success since 2000 with Matheny and Molina as the catchers. They've also had guys like Miles and Taguchi around forever. I don't think they're preventing them from winning many games.

--P--

That's my stance. I think the prevailing opinion as to why the Cardinals have slid from a 105 win juggernaut to 70-80(whatever the current pace happens to be) is because of the team being filled with guys like Miles, Taguchi, Schumaker, etc, when I believe it's really moreso the decline from the established vets(Edmonds, Rolen) and reliance on young, injury prone, or just unreliable pitchers in the rotation.

Seriously, Mike Matheny was comparable defensively to Molina(better receiving, maybe better calling a game, but not nearly as good a cannon at throwing out baserunners), but had a career OPS of .637. Is that really all that much better than Molina's career .632(a smaller sample size, you may say, but he's still young and may yet develop a bit more)?

[New Pagodi]

Who was the better catcher we were going to bring up? By my recollection, we had to save Kelly Stinnett from retirement.

Bringing up Bryan Anderson for a month or so would have been a much better decision than bringing in Stinnett. In Molina's case there may not be a better option in house, but they will not even seek a better option by free agency/ trade because they think they already have an all star.

Molina is far from a terrible player. Bad hitter, sure. But even bad hitters have their time to shine. Without Molina, the Cards don't win the 2006 World Series.

Molina ranked 65th last year among catchers in OPS. 65th. That means every team had 2 catchers better than him and then there were a few left over. Here's his company:

Code: Select all

RK   PLAYER           AVG     OBP    SLG   OPS
65   Yadier Molina   .217   .276   .324   .599
66   Brad Ausmus     .229   .308   .284   .593
67   Doug Mirabelli  .188   .259   .318   .577
68   JD Closser      .194   .290   .280   .569
69   Kelly Stinnett  .211   .260   .278   .538
70   Jeff Mathis     .151   .233   .302   .535
71   Chad Moeller    .184   .231   .276   .506
72   Wiki Gonzalez   .235   .270   .235   .506
73   Chris Widger    .176   .265   .235   .501
74   Paul Bako       .213   .265   .233   .499
75   Danny Ardoin    .180   .254   .238   .491
76   Rene Rivera     .152   .184   .253   .437
77   Humberto Cota   .179   .240   .189   .430
78   Shawn Riggans   .143   .226   .179   .404
79   Raul Chavez     .185   .214   .185   .399
80   Mike DiFelice   .083   .241   .125   .366
 

If that's not terrible, I don't know what is.

[BW23]

Bringing up Anderson wouldn't have been the right thing to do, IMO. No reason to start the clock on him and add him to the 40-man roster just yet when the team isn't going anywhere.

If he's going to get called up, you make it sometime next year.

[Popeye_Card]

Bringing up Anderson wouldn't have been the right thing to do, IMO. No reason to start the clock on him and add him to the 40-man roster just yet when the team isn't going anywhere.

If he's going to get called up, you make it sometime next year.

You beat me to it.

And yes, Molina had a terrible season last year. So why should we be all Debbie Downer when he actually has a good start to 2007? No one expected him to be at .292 all year. No one expected that he's all of the sudden a valuable hitter. Some of us are tired of hearing about how every non-All Star on the Cardinals sucks and should be replaced ASAP.

Again, Molina is not the problem. Not replacing Edmonds and Rolen's '03-'04 production is the problem. Even Anderson when he arrives is not going to fix that.

--P--

[greenback44]

Bringing up Anderson wouldn't have been the right thing to do, IMO. No reason to start the clock on him and add him to the 40-man roster just yet when the team isn't going anywhere.

The advantage this year is that you could've stopped the clock after only a month. Super-2 status can be avoided without too much trouble.

[greenback44]

Again, Molina is not the problem. Not replacing Edmonds and Rolen's '03-'04 production is the problem. Even Anderson when he arrives is not going to fix that.

To a certain extent he will. Whenever I hear the phrase Player X's 6xx OPS "is not the problem", I keep hearing this voice in my head say that player isn't a solution either. For better (he did one of the biggest homers in Cardinal history, which is worth something, even if it doesn't project well) and for worse, the Cardinals will treat him like a solution though.