Rockies VS Cardinals & NL Central Analysis

by lizardlad01 on Sep 22, 2009 11:39 PM MDT

Well, I’m back from my first Astros game, they played the Cardinals and ‘shock’ lost. I ran into two Russians girls there surprisingly and they wanted me to explain baseball to them in 5 minutes or less. Let’s, just say they quickly lost interest in the game and left after the 3rd inning and then I turned to the baseball fan of choice for me, a mathematician who worked at MD Anderson. (for some odd reason it seems like the number crunching people are attracted to baseball like none other sport). He and I quickly dissected the Cardinals and the NL Central…in rather very rough terms. Basically we broke up the six teams in the division by management/ownership and their history involving building team recently.
1. Cardinals-Cardinals have a very impressive management and ownership group, they are perhaps the model of well run mid market team. Except for that minor feud with Walt Jocketty.
2. Cubs-Dear God, how the heck did this management team screw up so badly? They need a little stability.
3. Reds-New ownership group hired Walt Jocketty, their native, their smart and they stole Walt (aka Branch Rickey). I expect the Reds to once again rise as the Big Red Machine.
4. Brewers-Mark Attansio knows what he is doing, have you heard of this group doing anything dumb lately? I haven’t.
5. Pirates-Looking at how lacking their success is, it’s obvious there is failure in management…so don’t expect them to be in contention within a decade till management/ ownership changes philosophy.
6. Astros-This club is FUBAR till somebody comes up with a decent plan. Dayton McLane, God bless him, but randomly signing big bats without good starting and bullpen pitching is waste of money.

Anyway, that’s my long term analysis of the NL Central division and I pretty much expect only the Cardinals and the Brewers to be the only contending teams in the division for at least 3 year till at least the other teams figure something out. Short term analysis- the Cardinals better pray that they don’t get the Rockies because the Rockies are coming from perhaps the 2nd toughest division in the league to the weakest division in all of baseball. The Cardinals stats are simply inflated because their competition is that bad, Rockies in four.

Poll

What will be the Rockies record against the Cardinals in these next upcoming games?

Sweep....need to get a new broom

4 votes

Rockies just get manhandle by a bunch of birds and lose in the playoffs

7 votes

Or...perhaps we have a very competitve series with them and the best team wins.

29 votes

40 votes | Poll has closed

Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).

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Comments

I don't agree on Jocketty

He lucked his way into Carpenter, Rolen, Edmonds, Isringhausen. Nobody expected any of them to resurrect their performance to any kind of productive levels, especially not where they were with that Murderer’s Row back in 04/05.

The Pirates have Neil Huntington as the new GM now, and he’s making it clear that they’re starting over….again. I think there’s hope for them, it’ll just take them 5 years to make it anywhere.

I think Mozeliak is a decent GM, but we’ll have to give it a few years to see.

Jim Hendry should not have a job. Who gives Milton Bradley 3 years/$30M in the NATIONAL LEAGUE?

Ed Wade may very well be the worst GM in baseball.

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by Andrew Martin on Sep 23, 2009 12:27 AM MDT reply actions

You know your teams....

Personally giving a guy that has an anger problem any long term deal for any serious amount of money is a bad idea. I don’t care how talented the individual is…it will wreck teams quick.

by lizardlad01 on Sep 23, 2009 12:31 AM MDT up reply actions

Bradley did really well in Texas, and stayed under the radar

I’m just baffled at Hendry. I could run that team better than he is.

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by Andrew Martin on Sep 23, 2009 12:58 AM MDT up reply actions

Jocketty

Wow that’s a lot of luck for one guy to stumble into. It seems Occam’s Razor might lead us to a different conclusion.

by Roberbola on Sep 23, 2009 4:31 PM MDT up reply actions

sure it might

Carpenter was league min and coming off of surgery – it’s the equivalent to signing Mark Prior for league min. If it works out, you’re a genius. If it falls apart, oh well it was league min. You don’t hear anyone lauding Kevin Towers as being the newest genius on the market.

Rolen looks like it was a salary dump, so good work Ownership in giving Jocketty the ability to make the no brainer move there.

Edmonds was a good pickup, but I don’t think ANYONE predicted he was going to catch fire the way he did. Kudos to Jocketty on that one.

I don’t know what to say about Isringhausen. I don’t know why he signed so inexpensively with St. Louis, I really don’t.

Jocketty is a good scrap heap buyer. Wladimir Balentien and Jonny Gomes have turned out to be pretty adequate players for the Reds.

He has some good things going for him, but he has gotten lucky. He needs to not have Dusty Baker running his club.

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by Andrew Martin on Sep 23, 2009 6:06 PM MDT up reply actions

Doesn't Jocketty get any credit for

Wainwright, Molina, Rasmus or Ludwick?

I’m not saying he is this great mastermind, but the club he assembled and presided over went to the playoffs a lot while he was there, and is headed there this year on the backs of primarily his guys.

He hasn’t really had much time to make his mark with the Reds. I agree that hiring Dusty Baker is not a badge of honor any way you look at it, and the Taveras signing is just horrible. Arthur Rhodes at $2M per year looks good.

by Roberbola on Sep 23, 2009 10:37 PM MDT up reply actions

Molina yes

Ludwick no, that’s a Billy Beane player right there. Another scrap-heap guy, so kudos for that look. Wainwright came over in the Jason Marquis trade from Atlanta.

I’m not so much trying to say he’s a lousy GM, he’s lucky. He has a good eye for the scrap heap, and so far it’s turned up well for him.

Jocketty also traded Haren for Mark Mulder. That went well ;-)

We’ll see how/what the reds do over the next few years. He’s put together some very impressive teams in StL, I won’t lie. I’d like to see what he does with a different ownership group.

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by Andrew Martin on Sep 23, 2009 11:11 PM MDT up reply actions

Agreed

Clearly Jocketty is no savior, but with his history of luck/savvy I’d have to rate him in the top 50% of GMs.

by Roberbola on Sep 24, 2009 10:30 AM MDT up reply actions

I can get on board that sentiment

it’s like Jocketty is everything Ed Wade wishes he could be.

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Seth Smith Status: How do you like me now?!
Chris Iannetta Status: Yeah...see you in the Spring, big guy...

by Andrew Martin on Sep 24, 2009 10:40 AM MDT up reply actions

Jocketty spent 14 years in the Oakland front office.

He was also the GM who traded Blake Stein, Eric (not Ryan) Ludwick and TJ Mathews for Mark McGwire.

Say what you want about Walt, but that trade alone makes him a winner in my book. Now about the Haren/Mulder deal…………

Blues. Cardinals. Broncos. Rockies (when not playing St. Louis!).
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by HockeyHippie on Sep 30, 2009 2:18 AM MDT up reply actions

How would you rank the baseball division by toughnest?

For me it this way.
1. AL East
2. NL West
2b.. NL East
4. AL West
5. AL Central
6. NL Central

I think I would need crunch these numbers to prove the point but I don’t wanna. Do you know where a downloadable excel spreadsheet of the standings are?

by lizardlad01 on Sep 23, 2009 12:47 AM MDT reply actions

I think you can get them on B-R

Toughest Division really depends on a lot of factors. The Central should be the toughest simply because you have 6 teams, and the ALW the least because of only 4. I’ll answer this more tomorrow.

Mike McCoy Status: FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Seth Smith Status: How do you like me now?!
Chris Iannetta Status: Yeah...see you in the Spring, big guy...

by Andrew Martin on Sep 23, 2009 12:59 AM MDT up reply actions

Could you post a link to B-R?

by lizardlad01 on Sep 23, 2009 1:18 AM MDT up reply actions

http://www.baseball-reference.com

now if you’ll excuse me, I have some oppression of the truth about lousy pitchers to do

Mike McCoy Status: FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Seth Smith Status: How do you like me now?!
Chris Iannetta Status: Yeah...see you in the Spring, big guy...

by Andrew Martin on Sep 23, 2009 1:20 AM MDT up reply actions

the Cardinals better pray that they don’t get the Rockies because the Rockies are coming from perhaps the 2nd toughest division in the league to the weakest division in all of baseball.

Well, the Cardinals are either getting the Dodgers or the Rockies, and the Dodgers are the team w/ the better record within the better division, so shouldn’t they actually prefer playing the Rockies, per this analysis?

by nugg on Sep 23, 2009 6:42 PM MDT reply actions

We are 4-0 against the Cardinals

at least till this next series. The Dodgers are 1-5 against the Cardinals.

However this is the playoffs and those that don’t learn from history are doom to repeat it.. So maybe we should hope that the Cardinals get the Dodgers and we get Philli, beat philly and than get the Cardinals, who we than beat. You know where we are at now than? The World Series against the Yankees(I hope).

by lizardlad01 on Sep 23, 2009 11:36 PM MDT up reply actions