St. Louis Cardinals: Cardinals power can often be fleeting

What’s up with the ups and downs of the St. Louis Cardinals power?

Larry:

Tina, let’s talk about the St. Louis Cardinals organization’s recent history with power hitters.

We all know about the strange deluge of home runs in 2016, but that’s been an aberration this decade. In the six years since Albert Pujols departed for the sunny climes of California, besides last year the team has only once cracked the top half of the National League in dingers.

And even with the recent bundle of homers from youngsters like Randal Grichuk and Paul DeJong, we seem on pace for mediocre results this year. What gives?

Tina:

Since Pujols left, the St. Louis Cardinals has been highly reliant on having multiple guys hit ten to twenty homers instead of having a big bopper who could hit thirty or forty.

The unexpected power of Jedd Gyorko, plus the partial resurgence of Brandon Moss (before he dropped off the table at the end of the season), helped boost the 2016 club.

I think 2017’s results begin with the departure of Moss and Matt Holliday. The club hoped some of that power production would be replaced by a full season of Grichuk, but he hasn’t been on near the pace they hoped for, though his recent streak of games with homers was good to see.

Yadier Molina‘s power has faded to where it’s nearly a non-factor. Stephen Piscotty got off to a bad start. Aledmys Diaz got sent down. Dexter Fowler has been on the disabled list. Kolten Wong isn’t really hitting for power much anymore.

Matt Carpenter and Gyorko are really the only guys who have hit homers at a more- or less-expected pace, and so far in the second half Carp’s doing better from an on-base and batting-average standpoint and is hitting doubles, but he’s not hitting homers.

When you need basically all your middling power guys to produce to be even an average home-run-hitting team, it’s no surprise that, when several of them are having a down year, the club has tumbled toward the bottom of the power heap.

Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a concerted plan to address power in the St. Louis Cardinals lineup.  Is it a distinct plan, or is it just the result of other matters taking priority?

Larry

So there seem to be three different ways to fix the St. Louis Cardinals, right? One is the draft and farm system, one is trade, and one is free agency. How do those relate to the power surges and outages?

Let’s take those up in reverse order. It’s been unusual at best for the St. Louis Cardinals to participate in major hitter free agency. This past off-season was the Fowler add, though as you say, he has been hurt part of the season. I must say he has shown surprising power given his history. Still, he isn’t the kind of fearsome bat that freaks out other teams who face us.

Then there’s trade. And when you look at the history of St. Louis Cardinals power over the last couple decades, so much of it has arrived via deals.

Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, Holliday, Gyorko, and Moss all are transplants who have been dealt here and sometimes encouraged to remain after being flipped to St. Louis. But most of those deals predated the current financial and collective bargaining environment.

Today, as opposed to in the Walt Jocketty era, it’s not nearly as easy to extricate big boppers from other teams without giving up something of consequence.

So that brings us back to the team’s player selection and development strategies and tactics. Is it fair to say that the St. Louis Cardinals perhaps haven’t made middle-of-the-order bats a specific goal when they’re planning for the annual amateur draft? Or even when they’re looking abroad at international talent?

Tina

I think that’s definitely fair, particularly considering the way the front office has described its philosophy when it comes to the draft.

I recall then-General Manager John Mozeliak saying a couple years back that the front office doesn’t tend to focus on specific needs (like say a replacement for Molina at catcher or for Pujols at cleanup) when they make their draft plans.

Instead, they aim to get whatever player they think has the most value, that they can reasonably hope to sign, that is left on the board.

Most years they seem to have shown a preference for college pitchers, which I think makes sense considering both their philosophy and their position in the draft. They haven’t had a chance to pick really high in the draft in a long time, so usually the hitters that seem like sure bets are long gone.

Teams always need pitching, so if the idea is to stockpile picks you can trade for whatever your needs are once those picks have matured enough to have trade value, then picking like they have seems the safe bet.

As far as the international market goes. I get the impression that they were a bit behind the curve when it comes to that, given comments by Mo that seemed to indicate they were somewhat playing catchup.

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They did get at least one really good hitting prospect in Oscar Taveras, but unfortunately we all know what happened there. That tragedy probably also affected their development plans, since I think they maybe got a bit complacent thinking they already had their next Pujols in the system.

I also think there’s room to question whether the club has been aggressive enough in moving those pitching prospects to get bats when needed.

It seems of late, they have opted to try and make low-cost internal candidates like Grichuk, Allen Craig, Carpenter, Piscotty, Matt Adams, and Wong work to mixed results instead of going out and getting a proven middle-of-the-order bat.

I don’t fault them that much in terms of what they’ve done in free agency. There were some power bats out there in the 2016-2017 off-season, but nobody else seemed that excited about them either and most of them were first-baseman bats of questionable defensive ability.

The club needed that slot on the field for Carp, since they didn’t really have another good place to put him.

I think what happens in this and the next off-season is going to determine whether the club has failed in terms of getting those middle-of-the-order bats.

There are more attractive free agents coming on the market and the club has a broader pool of prospects to perhaps deal on the trade market than in this past off-season’s thin free-agent market, when the Cardinal prospects were further away from the MLB level.

Larry

Those insights parallel many of my own, but let me add a few other observations.

Power hitters are a tricky lot. With many of even the best ones, you know you have to live with shortcomings, such as a high strikeout rate. Pujols spoiled us, as he was the rare egg who both blasted and, at least in his heyday, kept the K-rates low.

Holliday had his own weaknesses. Most unnerving to fans were his notorious famines. He could look like garbage for games and then return to a lengthy run of power and productivity.

So, for a lot of power hitters, you’re sacrificing something. Consistency. Contact. Strike- zone selectivity. What we really don’t know is whether the St. Louis Cardinals put more emphasis on those three attributes while players are developing than do other clubs.

And do the Cards give those characteristics more stroke in drafting players as well? I’m not sure.

I do think the Cards tend to draft best talent on the hitting side, and go deeper — that is, perhaps are willing to expand the set of potential attributes — on the pitching side.

In a way, this makes sense, as there are probably more examples of hitters whose bodies turn them into power hitters later, while it’s easier to “get” what kind of pitcher you’re drafting earlier on (at least until Tommy John surgery, anyway).

So it’s possible, and we’d need to do some more research on this, that the Redbirds don’t take as many chances on the guys who score high on the 20-80 scouting scale in just “hit for power.”

And actually, trading for a Grichuk wouldn’t invalidate this, since Randal had solid speed and a very strong right-field arm by scouts’ assessments.

One of the ways that the power issue can be addressed is with a change in organizational philosophy. Tina and Larry discuss whether they think is in process or whether the St. Louis Cardinals will stay with the tried and true.

Larry

Do you see any evidence to suggest the team may be going through any evolution on this front? Sure, they just traded for Tyler O’Neill, but he graded out fine across the board, and I always hate to extrapolate from one decision.

Does the Cards 2017 draft or any other actions — perhaps how they’re moving power prospects through the system, like DeJong, Patrick Wisdom or others — suggest to you that there are any conscious changes of direction?

Tina

I took a look at where the top five position players were drafted in the 2013-2017 drafts. They lost their first two picks in 2017, so their first pick happened in round three.

2017:
#3/94 Scott Hurst  OF
#4/124 Kramer Robertson 2B
#5/154 Zach Kirtley 2B
#6/184 Zach Jackson C
#7/214 Chase PInder CF

2016:
#1/23 Delvin Perez SS
#2/33 Dylan Carlson OF
#6/136 Jeremy Martinez C
#7/166 Walker Robbins OF
#8/196 Tommy Edman SS

2015:
#1/23 Nick Plummer OF
#3/66 Bryce Denton 3B
#4/100 Harrison Bader OF
#6/131 Paul DeJong 3B
#9/221 Jesse Jenner C

2014:
#7/165 Darren Seferina 2B
#8/165 Andrew Sohn SS
#9/225 Brian O’Keefe C
#10/255 Nick Thompson OF
#12/315 Danny Diekroeger 3B

2013:
#3/57 Oscar Mercado SS
#5/125 Mason Katz 2B
#8/215 Chris Rivera SS
#11/305 Malik Collymore SS
#13/365 Ricardo Bautista RF

Overall, I’d say they’ve been trending towards picking more position players, higher in the draft than in years past. Whether that’s a shift in philosophy under (Scouting Director) Randy Flores versus a product of the draft classes, it’s harder to say.

However, I’m not seeing much evidence that they are making an effort to draft guys who profile primarily as power hitters.

There has been a small handful of guys who profiled as above average power potential.  DeJong was one of those guys and he’s off to a good start with the big club this season.

The two guys in the minor league system who have produced the best power results are Harrison Bader and Patrick Wisdom. Wisdom has hit 21 HR in AAA. Bader has hit 19, and has been rewarded with his recent callup to the major-league team.

Judging by how the hitters I’ve looked at profiled, I’d say they’ve been drafting similar to what they claimed they were going to focus on in the off-season. A lot of those guys profile as athletic, some have speed, and many of them are considered “plus” defenders.

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A few of them also are considered to have moderate power potential, but most seem to be line-drive or gap-type hitters, as opposed to home run hitters.

There were two or three guys who profiled as having true power potential, but none of them have produced in the minors so far, and most also had value as plus defenders or at least were considered athletic enough to have potential on defense.

So, overall, I’d say they seem to be drafting for guys who can hit and play defense, with any power they can contribute being a plus, rather than the main draw.

Larry

I think I mostly agree, though I don’t want to overstate the case since I don’t sit in the draft room or the strategy sessions. Sometimes, as you suggest, the ebbs and flows derive from where the team picks in the draft, and that has often been low due to organizational success.

But I do believe that the Cardinals need to be ready for a Brave New Future. If this Year of the Homer is any indication of the future, juiced ball or not, then they’re going to have to compete with the big boys on the power front.

Whether they like it or not, the middle of our lineup will have to strike as much fear as does the next team’s. Their promotions of DeJong and Bader, coupled with their hopes for Grichuk, it seems like they recognize the reality to at least some extent.

So while we can safely say that the results on any change in direction by the Cards to move toward more power in the system are to date inconclusive, sounds like we can agree that it has to be at least a significant component of the draft and development strategy going forward.

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And with that, we’ll sign off. Thanks for your research and thoughts on this, Tina. This was fun!