Former Cardinals Watch

[Hungary Jack]

For all his upside, Ramus has a career 101 OPS+ in 1690 PAs as a major leaguer. Granted, that's pretty valuable for a CF of his apparent defensive caliber, but I am starting to think he's not going to realize the prodigious talent many think he possesses. He very well could be Oddibe McDowell.

EDIT: And if Rasmus was as enticing as many GM comments suggest, why didn't they jump in with a better offer to land this blue chip talent? It's one think to talk about what you would do in a trade. It's another thing to actually do it.

[Vidor]

I don't trust WAR, but provided for information--Jay has a 1.1 at Fangraphs for this year to date and Rasmus has 0.4. Assuming I'm reading that correctly.

I'm not quite sure what this post means.

Since you don't trust WAR, are you saying that it is wrong and Rasmus has been better than Jay?

Or are you saying that you don't trust WAR, but it is nevertheless accurate and proves Jay is better than Rasmus thus far this year?

I think most everyone here will agree that Jay has been better than Rasmus this year and the numbers reflect that.

I meant that I personally have expressed skepticism about the use of WAR as the end-all statistic for comparing baseball players, but a lot of people like it now, including most on this forum, so I was providing that number for information.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

My point is, and always is if you pay attention, that Mo is constantly criticized for making dumb moves. (Side note here--a lot of GM's are criticized for making dumb moves, but when we think they might like Colby Rasmus I guess they are now smart.) Meanwhile he's built one of the best MLB teams and organizations in the league, but it keeps getting chalked up to a blind squirrel finding dozens of acorns.

No. He is getting criticized for making a couple dumb moves and given credit for signing guys like Beltran and trading for Furcal and whatever else you want to give him credit for. He's done a lot of things right. He deserves credit for that. No one is giving Jocketty praise for signing Beltran or obtaining Holliday or blah blah blah.

It's just that if heaven forbid it is brought up that he made a mistake, then people start doing voodoo dances and chants and pointing at a big shiny trophy and screaming lalalallalalallalalal while putting their fingers in their ears and claiming mo is infallible when the point very clearly remains he is not infallible. Holy [expletive] [expletive] he is a human. He has made bad decisions. Those decisions have not crippled the team, the point was never that they crippled the team. The point was and still remains that he made mistakes. He makes dumb moves.

When he makes one; however, people would rather eat their own [expletive] than admit that it was a mistake. jeebus, it's like we won the WS and mo became the Almighty's second son or something at the same instant.

There have been bad moves, some worse than others. There have been good moves.

[Popeye_Card]

I'm a little bit shocked to read that folks are still calling that trade "indefensible". The big shiny trophy that we got as a result of that trade is a pretty good defense.

The Cardinals could in theory have had the same September and October if they had included Shelby Miller and Oscar Taveras in the trade. I'm pretty sure John Mozeliak would agree with the consensus that that would've been enormously stupid. Which is to say, at some point the price for Jackson/Dotel/Rzepczynski would've been too high, shiny trophy or not.

I fully agree. How the season played out and led to the trophy was fairly independent of the Rasmus trade. What is left to discuss is what value was given up, and what value was received. My belief is that Rasmus' value at the time of the trade was perceived to be lower among the guys potentially trading for him than the consensus on this board, and we are perhaps now learning that his value now is even lower than GM's at the time thought it would be. Meanwhile the value received has been recently compared to a bag of used batting practice balls. I might suggest that a decent starting pitching rental when you need one has value. Plus a good lefty cost-controlled-longer-than-Rasmus reliever (possibly starter), plus a good bullpen arm rental when you need one, plus potential draft picks for departing free agents--individually these seem like poor returns. The sum can match the value of one guy when you think he may not pan out, and is soon going to possibly cost more than he produces.

I can fully understand the thought that maybe he could have gotten more for Rasmus. Especially had he traded him sooner (which I personally think was the biggest mistake). But we have no idea what those other returns are. Rasmus+ for Jimenez? That would have been a disaster. Was any other team offering a *better* package to patch our multiple holes? We don't know. We have a few random quotes from execs thinking the Cardinals should have gotten more. But their teams clearly didn't offer more, so maybe we did the best we could.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I don't trust WAR, but provided for information--Jay has a 1.1 at Fangraphs for this year to date and Rasmus has 0.4. Assuming I'm reading that correctly.

I'm not quite sure what this post means.

Since you don't trust WAR, are you saying that it is wrong and Rasmus has been better than Jay?

Or are you saying that you don't trust WAR, but it is nevertheless accurate and proves Jay is better than Rasmus thus far this year?

I think most everyone here will agree that Jay has been better than Rasmus this year and the numbers reflect that.

I meant that I personally have expressed skepticism about the use of WAR as the end-all statistic for comparing baseball players, but a lot of people like it now, including most on this forum, so I was providing that number for information.

So do you trust it?

[Vidor]

I don't trust WAR, but provided for information--Jay has a 1.1 at Fangraphs for this year to date and Rasmus has 0.4. Assuming I'm reading that correctly.

I'm not quite sure what this post means.

Since you don't trust WAR, are you saying that it is wrong and Rasmus has been better than Jay?

Or are you saying that you don't trust WAR, but it is nevertheless accurate and proves Jay is better than Rasmus thus far this year?

I think most everyone here will agree that Jay has been better than Rasmus this year and the numbers reflect that.

I meant that I personally have expressed skepticism about the use of WAR as the end-all statistic for comparing baseball players, but a lot of people like it now, including most on this forum, so I was providing that number for information.

So do you trust it?

Not really, at least not when it spits out weird results like the recent thread that had Michael Bourn being more valuable than Matt Kemp. But a lot of people do, so I thought I'd pass that along. Should I not have?

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I don't trust WAR, but provided for information--Jay has a 1.1 at Fangraphs for this year to date and Rasmus has 0.4. Assuming I'm reading that correctly.

I'm not quite sure what this post means.

Since you don't trust WAR, are you saying that it is wrong and Rasmus has been better than Jay?

Or are you saying that you don't trust WAR, but it is nevertheless accurate and proves Jay is better than Rasmus thus far this year?

I think most everyone here will agree that Jay has been better than Rasmus this year and the numbers reflect that.

I meant that I personally have expressed skepticism about the use of WAR as the end-all statistic for comparing baseball players, but a lot of people like it now, including most on this forum, so I was providing that number for information.

So do you trust it?

Not really, at least not when it spits out weird results like the recent thread that had Michael Bourn being more valuable than Matt Kemp. But a lot of people do, so I thought I'd pass that along. Should I not have?

So, you don't trust something because of an outlier, but when you go to look at it to compare two random people and it shows pretty much exactly what you'd expect, you'll use the statistic but yet despite the perceived and apparent accuracy still dismiss it because of 1 outlier?

[Vidor]

I don't trust WAR, but provided for information--Jay has a 1.1 at Fangraphs for this year to date and Rasmus has 0.4. Assuming I'm reading that correctly.

I'm not quite sure what this post means.

Since you don't trust WAR, are you saying that it is wrong and Rasmus has been better than Jay?

Or are you saying that you don't trust WAR, but it is nevertheless accurate and proves Jay is better than Rasmus thus far this year?

I think most everyone here will agree that Jay has been better than Rasmus this year and the numbers reflect that.

I meant that I personally have expressed skepticism about the use of WAR as the end-all statistic for comparing baseball players, but a lot of people like it now, including most on this forum, so I was providing that number for information.

So do you trust it?

Not really, at least not when it spits out weird results like the recent thread that had Michael Bourn being more valuable than Matt Kemp. But a lot of people do, so I thought I'd pass that along. Should I not have?

So, you don't trust something because of an outlier, but when you go to look at it to compare two random people and it shows pretty much exactly what you'd expect, you'll use the statistic but yet despite the perceived and apparent accuracy still dismiss it because of 1 outlier?

OK, so I guess your answer is that I should not have. I will not mention WAR in the future. Actually the other reason that I don't really trust it is that people can't agree on how to calculate it--BBRef came up with 1.5 for Jay and 0.5 for Rasmus.

[Popeye_Card]

My point is, and always is if you pay attention, that Mo is constantly criticized for making dumb moves. (Side note here--a lot of GM's are criticized for making dumb moves, but when we think they might like Colby Rasmus I guess they are now smart.) Meanwhile he's built one of the best MLB teams and organizations in the league, but it keeps getting chalked up to a blind squirrel finding dozens of acorns.

No. He is getting criticized for making a couple dumb moves and given credit for signing guys like Beltran and trading for Furcal and whatever else you want to give him credit for. He's done a lot of things right. He deserves credit for that. No one is giving Jocketty praise for signing Beltran or obtaining Holliday or blah blah blah.

It's just that if heaven forbid it is brought up that he made a mistake, then people start doing voodoo dances and chants and pointing at a big shiny trophy and screaming lalalallalalallalalal while putting their fingers in their ears and claiming mo is infallible when the point very clearly remains he is not infallible. Holy [expletive] [expletive] he is a human. He has made bad decisions. Those decisions have not crippled the team, the point was never that they crippled the team. The point was and still remains that he made mistakes. He makes dumb moves.

When he makes one; however, people would rather eat their own [expletive] than admit that it was a mistake. jeebus, it's like we won the WS and mo became the Almighty's second son or something at the same instant.

There have been bad moves, some worse than others. There have been good moves.

Slow down there. I'm not pointing at any trophy and saying that cures all. I'm saying that maybe what we think are dumb moves may not be dumb moves. Nearly every guy that Mo has shipped off for what we perceived to be lesser return has not done much, outside of maybe Brendan Ryan, whose entire perceived value is wrapped up in defensive numbers which I think everyone can admit may not paint the most accurate picture of a guy's worth.

I'm suggesting that the people who keep thinking that Mo is making these constant dumb moves may be the ones who need to admit that they're human, and maybe they're making the mistake.

If shipping off Colby Rasmus, Brendan Ryan, and Ryan Ludwick while spending ~$65MM on 6 seasons worth of production from Kyle Lohse and Jake Westbrook are the dumbest things along the way to building one of the best current MLB teams to pair with a vastly improved MiLB system, then I think Mo is doing just fine in the dumb moves category.

[Popeye_Card]

And since I have a clear bias in this conversation (I actually would have been fine with a trade of Colby Rasmus for a bag of used batting practice balls), I'm going to bow out of it now.