(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Good evening, welcome into another edition of Gateway to Baseball Heaven. I'm your host, Dean shop.atc70 with me as always. David Jones, Adipop Editor, and not exactly 100% today. And we will see if you can tell the difference between normal David and slightly vertigo David. I should be an interesting thought experiment as we go through this, but David, I'd say how you been, but I think I kind of know. - The seasons are grind. This podcast season is grueling sometimes. And you know, right now it's not so much vertigo, David, as it is drug dubbed David from the medicine. So, you know, that's fun. The doctor told me to avoid, you know, things that would stress me out and stuff like that. I made the mistake of watching Friday night's game because I thought that game was in hand. And so I pretty much tried to ignore the team as much as I could. I will say when I turned on the game today, it was Cianni getting that hit slash error that tied it and I hung on until the Goldschmidt home run. So maybe my luck's turning around just a little bit. - Maybe, I mean, you could have watched Saturday's game with no problem because there was no stress involved with that one, unfortunately. - Yeah, I was in bed before that thing was over with. - Yeah, well, before the game was done, it was over a long way before the bottom of the night. And I think that's maybe that's where we start here is the Cardinals, it's since we recorded last, played two series, one, two games. It took kind of a miraculous, a late inning heroics both times, I guess. You know, they beat Paul Skeens in Pittsburgh in the ninth inning. And then they walk it off today with a Goldschmidt homer. Other than that, they had a close game on the Friday game. They had a, that went into extra innings. I think they went into extra innings in the first game of the Pittsburgh series. And then they had two games that were just kind of clunkers. And it's not, it's not ideal for a team to go into the week before the trade deadline against two teams that, you know, Pittsburgh's improving, but both teams are worse than the Cardinals, at least record wise, and to face them and go two and four and in the case of the national series, just, I mean, that was just, I don't know that there's words for what Friday's Saturday were like for this series. Does it change your perspective about what the Cardinals need to do in the next, what are we, less than 48 hours now? At the trade deadline, does it, did it change how you would approach it? Or is this the kind of a thing that you just, it just accentuates what they really need to do? - I don't want to be a prisoner of the moment and just look at this week and go, well, this team's terrible. This team's not going to make the playoffs. They just need to sell. But the trend we're seeing with this team is very concerning. And yeah, you mentioned they lost some extra inning games. You kind of look at this week and think, best case scenario, they may have won three of the games. Worst case scenario, they were very close to losing all of them. And that's what's scary. The Pittsburgh series, easily they could have been swept. Well, I think they scored three runs in three games against Pittsburgh. Now, you can put that on skiing somewhat, but they actually scored two runs in that game. It was just a pathetic effort from them. And I had a tweet ready to go because I had mentioned something, I had tweeted a few days ago that I didn't see them falling on their faces enough to become sellers, but I could see them falling enough on their faces where they just sit Pat at the deadline, especially if they got swept by Washington and maybe lost the first one to Texas. Well, today, when they were down three, two, and the, I guess it was the eighth inning or seventh inning, whatever it was, I had a tweet ready to go, basically, basically said, okay, I've changed my mind. It's time to sell. Because it just looked like the team did not have the effort that we expected. Jeff Jones kind of called out and hole in our notto for lack of effort and running out of double play today. This team just looks off and coming, the first half of the season, I think they had about the fourth easiest schedule. Now it's like 24th easiest. And so it's gonna be a grind going the rest of the way. It has changed my mind to the point where I'm saying, don't sell off any assets. Get what you can, but I would not be completely opposed to this team selling at this point 'cause I just don't see them making the playoffs at this point. - Yeah, I mean, I kind of wrote about it at Substack today about whether they should pivot to selling. I know they're not going to. Katie always made a point of reiterating what Mo has said and the fact that the last six days don't really change their point of view. And that's not surprising, right? This is not a front office, it turns on a dime. This is a front office that started planning for the trade deadline probably in beginning of May and then won't do anything until the last two hours before the deadline comes long. So that's not gonna change it. They're gonna buy and they're what? After winning today, they're a game out of the Wild Card spot. So okay, it makes some sense. But when we were talking last week, in the last couple of weeks, Cardinals have been right smack in the middle of the Wild Card, right? They've been the second Wild Card, they've been trying to chase down Atlanta for the first Wild Card. And then all of a sudden, one bad week, coupled with some good weeks for everybody else. And they're on the outside looking in and a win today makes them, I think I saw 11 and 11 for July. And that feels like what this team is, right? It's a 500 team that could go one or two games on either side of that mark. But you're right, it doesn't feel, and especially with Sunny Gray, doing whatever Sunny Gray's been doing last month. It does not feel like this is a team that has much of an October run in them. And when you start to see what relievers are going for, it feels like there's an opportunity there if they wanna be bold. But being bold would probably mean giving up on the season and they're just not gonna do that. - Yeah, I'm with you. And it's really concerning seeing what's happening with the pitching staff because Sunny Gray has been really rough in four out of his last five starts. That's not a small sample size anymore. Miles Mikelas, we talked about it every week. You don't know which guy you're gonna get. And that's kinda how it is for the rest of the rotation too. Kyle Gibson's had to grind through some starts lately where he has not had his best stuff. We're just not seeing anybody come in and just shut down another team, give the bullpen some rest or if the pitching is pretty good, then the hitting's not there. They can't seem to click at the same time. And their schedule gets a little bit easier in the next 15 days or so. Part of that is because I think they might be facing teams who are selling to some extent. But when you look at the second half of August, they've got the Dodgers, they've got the Brewers, the Twins, the Padres and the Yankees. That's how they close August. I can't see this team competing with those teams at that point. They've already shown they can't play with Milwaukee. I just think it looks really, really bad and they may kinda tread water, be around that wild card spot, you know, come August 15th. But from August 16th on, they've got such a terrible schedule. I don't know if they have any hope 'cause even after the Yankees, once you hit September, you've got the Brewers again and you've got the Mariners. I mean, this is a really, really tough schedule they're gonna have to face. I think this team has the record that we expected them to have at this point. But that's not gonna hold up the rest of the way. And I think they're going to be on the verge of falling below 500 by the time end of August comes around. - Well, and I mean, you know, you're talking about, yeah, you're talking about how the schedule picks up after the 16th, even before that. I mean, you start August before games in Wrigley Field and you just don't know what that's gonna be like. We've seen the Cubs be more aggressive over this last few days and I think anybody expected, right? They're bringing in some talent and not necessarily shipping it out. They've got the make-up game with the Mets, which is just gonna be a weird thing but the Mets are a strong team. And then yeah, the Rays have kind of given up already but then you've got two games in Kansas City and then you've got three games in Cincinnati, which, you know, they've struggled at times in Cincinnati. So there's no stretch where you think, okay, they're gonna win six of eight or anything like that. You know, who knows if it's baseball, right? But when you look at it, it's not like what we've seen over in June where we started, you know, beginning, you know, a second half of May, beginning of June all the way through June, really, where we saw the schedule and we said, this is where they need to make up ground because this is where the schedule is softer. We weren't 100% sure they were doing it. They did, they took care of that. They took advantage of that. But I think that gave us maybe a little bit of extra, you know, overconfidence and to some degree of like, oh, they've had the best record since Mother's Day. Well, yeah, but they were, you know, not necessarily playing a whole lot of people. They put, you know, Atlanta or in a couple other teams but for the most part, they were taking care of business against weaker teams and they're not gonna have that option anymore. - And you wrote about this a couple of weeks ago where kind of looking at the numbers, trying to figure out how they've done this and it wasn't really like the offense was incredibly better and it wasn't like the pitching was incredibly better. It just may have been that the other teams were just not playing good at the time. It wasn't like the Cardinals were just awesome. And so that's kind of scary. You know, something else I look at too, their most recent off day was July 25th, not that long ago, but you know, that was Thursday. Their next off day is August 11th. That's a lot of games this team has to play in a row and their, you know, home road, home road back and forth. That creates issues with fatigue, that creates issues with pitching, that creates issues with the bullpen and you know with the way the season's gone, there's probably gonna be two rain outs in there. They're gonna be made up as double headers the next day and that's just gonna mess things up even more. And so they've got a tall task ahead of them. Now, as far as are you a buyer or seller, you know, I think it looks pretty bad if a team would be just, you know, a game or two out of a playoff position and say, "Ah, we're giving up at this point. "We're gonna go ahead and sell." Like, you just don't do that with fans. Nobody wants to see that. And you know, maybe if the Cardinals make the right moves, I don't think they're gonna make big moves, but maybe if they make the right moves, it'll push them over the top and they can get back in this wild card race and take it by storm. But maybe it's the medicine talking right now. I don't know 'cause I've been more blunt on this medicine than I usually am the last few days, but I just am not optimistic whatsoever with what I'm seeing and what I see coming. - Yeah, I think, you know, 'cause it's fair to say, now they are in the mix and you're right. If you're a game out of the playoff spot, any team, you expect them to be getting, you know, not giving up. You don't want to see a wave in the white flag at that point in time. But that said, you've got the three wild card teams ahead of you. You've also got the Diamondbacks that are half a game ahead of you. And then you've got Pittsburgh, you know, one game behind, where I lost tomorrow with the, you know, in Pittsburgh's wins, although they're playing Houston's, that might be asking a lot. You know, you're already, you're tied with them right there. And things can change pretty quickly. So who knows, again, you're right, they have to go out and do something, but it seems very unlikely it's going to be a huge thing. Now, we did see activity today in the fact that they designated Giovanni Gallegos for assignments. He pitched last night, pitched pretty well in that. I mean, and he has pitched somewhat better. He has those games were blow up, but for the most part, since he came back from, from the intervals, he has pitched somewhat better. It's just not a situation where the Cardinals obviously trust him with any kind of, any kind of high leverage innings. But they let him go in part because that means that they can bring up colleague without, you know, without incident and kind of shore up the bullpen after this weekend, after the, you know, two games at the Nationals, scored double digit runs on them. But also, apparently, trying to, they want to trade Giovanni Gallegos so they can save money, so they can make him move. And I still haven't quite wrapped my head around that, because then, and maybe like I said, they should know the market. They, we have seen what relievers are going for. Gallegos might have some trade possibilities, but it feels to me like if you have actual people talking to you about Giovanni Gallegos, you just make the deal, right? Instead of making a DFA. And once you've DFA, it's, you know, most of these players, most of these teams are just going to wait it out so that you're going to be on the hook for everything, but the league minimum, which is going to be what? You know, $300,000 for the rest of the year or something like that. It's not going to save you the money that you're thinking about. So this was, the move wasn't too surprising, but the rationale didn't quite fit for me. - Yeah, this felt like a NFL move in a lot of ways. Releasing a guy who doesn't have guaranteed money so that you can save, yes, $5, $6 million next year or something like that. That makes sense in the NFL. It doesn't make sense in MLB. I'm still scratching my head on this. Is it, yeah, I'm, and I'm trying to even figure out how to piece it together 'cause if it's a performance issue, then I get it. If you just think the guy is not as good as someone else you could replace him with, especially at Memphis, then yes, I can understand making that move, especially if there didn't seem to be a trade there yet. If it's simply a salary dump, so the Cardinals can possibly bring in somebody else, I don't think they're going to bring in a high dollar person through a trade. I mean, John Denton's kind of already confirmed that's not going to happen. So like, how bad are you all financially if you're having to dump Gallegos and his five and a half million salary for the rest of the year for somebody who's coming in via trade? Like, I can't make sense of that. I mean, they're not even that close up against the luxury tax threshold. I mean, is that coming from ownership? Are they saying that we're in such bad shape financially that we have to just get rid of a reliever? And hopefully that somebody takes him. I mean, the Cardinals may release him and still be on the hook for his payment. That's the thing that's crazy to me too when how this is going. I just cannot make sense of this. I'm hoping that maybe the reporting is off a little bit, yet quite a few people have reported this the same way. Maybe somebody misspoke somewhere, but it does not make sense to me why they're doing this from a money standpoint. I could understand performance on the field, but the money thing just seems very odd because nothing is guaranteed. When I say guaranteed, nothing is guaranteed that another team is going to actually trade for him at this point. So the Cardinals may be without him, but still paying him and I don't get it. And maybe that's my medicine talking, but it doesn't make sense to me. Now, I'm looking at, looking at photographs with a roster resource and they've got an estimated lecture tax payroll of $216 million for the Cardinals. The first threshold is $237 million. Now, I feel like I'm not really sure exactly how this gets measured. You know, I don't know if it's whoever's got the contract. It's like hot potato, whoever's got the contract at the end of the year gets tested. Deal with it on their luxury tax. And so you trade for a $20 million picture. You may not be paying them $20 million, but it may go toward your luxury tax. I'm not 100% sure about that. But, you know, if it is just by, you know, time served, you know, there's only 40% left of the year. So that's like being able to bring in $60 million for the salary to say, I'm not just doing, I'm not actually doing the math if anybody's trying to do that. But, you know, bringing in quite a bit of salary and, you know, because you're not paying them the whole amount. And they're not going to make that kind of move, right? I mean, I can't imagine that they're going to get to a spot like you're saying where, because I mean, even if somebody trades for Giovanni Gagos, right, they're not going to take on the whole mouth that's left. I just don't think that's going to happen. And so you're saving what, you know, maybe a couple of million dollars, maybe. And if that's the difference between make or break, make it, I don't know, because, you know, even if you hit that threshold, the penalty is not huge. Especially if you're only hitting it by just a little bit. And you're going to go right back under it next year because you've got, you know, goldsmith leaving and you'll have to decide what you're going to do. But you can easily drop back down under it. So it's not like you're going to have the continuing penalties that they have. I don't know. And I think this is really, you know, maybe this is the, the ballet sports situation. Maybe they really are going to hold planning on a transition. Because the article that, that, um, Denton wrote says that they're not positioned to take on a significant additional salary in coming years via the trade. Not just, not just this year, or maybe technically not even this year at all. They could then theory bring it on for this year. But it's for future years and that has to be, has to be, because they don't know what their income is going to be from the TV revenue. Denton, I think so. We talked about this a little earlier off, Mike. And I guess there's two ways of reading that. And one is that, yes, there's so, so much uncertainty over spending that spending may remain level or possibly even take a step back in the years to come. Or it may just gradually kind of increase, you know, kind of like cost of living type increase each year, but we're not going to see a jump. So that, that's one possibility. The other possibility, if you really read into it and look at that word, that phrase like via trade, maybe there's a chance they have their eye on a big free agent at the end of this season. Maybe they have their eye on a Corbin burns or somebody like that. And so they're not willing to take on huge salary right now via trade, because they want to go after a big free agent next year. Now, if you're a Cardinals fan, you're a longtime fan, you follow the team. You're probably rolling your eyes at when I say that, because the chances that are very slim. I don't see that the Cardinals are going to be grabbing a Juan Soto or a Corbin burns at the end of this season, but that's one of the things that crossed my mind. And you know, this is kind of connected to my whole might as well go head and cell thing, because if that's their mentality, this team is basically just existing until probably 2026. And I hate to say that, I hate to say that this year's a lost year, next year's a lost year, but they don't have pitchers ready to come up into the rotation at the end of this season going into next season. I think you actually wrote about it that said the rotation may look pretty similar next year, just with some more mileage on it. And I think you're exactly right. I think we may be waiting till 2026, and then we may be seeing Tinkets and Quinn Matthews, and maybe we see JJ Weatherholt by then, and some of the younger guys hopefully, Jordan Walker is a star by that point. But yeah, if you read it the first way about what they're saying, don't plan for much this year, don't plan for much in the off season before next year, and don't plan for much during next season. And then maybe two years from now, something will happen, but yeah, it's a little concerning unless you want to hold out to that hope that yes, that means they're going to make a big splash for free agent, but I wouldn't plan on it. I think the whole Bally's uncertainty TV streaming thing has them in a mess right now. Yeah, I think that's the case. I mean, it's got a lot of baseball kind of tied up, but I think I think we're really seeing it here. And it may, and you know, in some degrees, I hope that's part of what this is. I hope this is an idea that they're going to be able to do their own streaming thing next year. And I think that the Cardinals, and we've talked about this before, and I know what other people have as well, the Cardinals are better positioned for that than any other team in Major League Baseball probably because they've got eight to 10 states pretty much that a lot of the people in those states are going to be subscribing to Cardinals TV if they have it. And so when you start taking that, it's not going to be RS in money because you just can't get that, but they may be able to hold their own to some degree. But, you know, this is a very conservative organization and a very conservative don't spend our money until it's in the bank and has already started earning interest type of thing. And, you know, I mean, I think that feels like where they're at. You know, now granted additional salary is what it says. So that may just mean they're not going to go over the, you know, where they're at this year. You know, they're going to basically keep payroll static. And that really doesn't allow for much because if Sunny Gray, you know, Sunny Gray goes up 15 million next year, which kind of it doesn't completely, you know, Goldsmith's gone, but that, you know, they don't offset it completely, but there's a good chunk of that savings of Goldsmith is going to Sunny Gray. If you do pick up options on Lin and on Gibson, you know, then there's that money. There's a lot of different things. So, I don't know, it's a frustrating thing to have come out and it's a little bit weird because the Cardinals have obviously never gone out and spent just a ton of money in these kind of situations, but they've never been open about money being the biggest thing, right? I mean, they went after Juan Soto a couple of years ago and that didn't happen, but I don't think it wasn't necessarily because of the money, right? I mean, they just couldn't come to terms. They didn't have the talent that Sunny Ego did, but they were interested in that money and I don't I don't know what's changed except for the TV situation. Yeah, I'm right there with you, and I know some people have talked about, well, maybe they will make a big splash because there's a lot of money coming off the books, but as you mentioned, it's actually not as much as people think. Yeah, Goldsmith's contract has gone, but there are other contracts that will be increasing and so I did the numbers the other day and I don't have the total with me right now, but it's not like you're going to have $40 to $50 million available. If my numbers were correct, they will actually have less money going into next year than they did going into this year. Now going into this year, they basically needed three starting pitchers, but yeah, I don't think that I would not expect to see a big splash. I take a look at this team and yeah, I think this roster looks pretty similar to how it will look next year, just a little bit older for some guys. That's a good thing for some guys. That's a bad thing. Unless trades happen and yeah, maybe a Tommy Edmonds on the move and we see something happen with that. Maybe Dylan Carlson as well, but we also know the Cardinals don't exactly have a lot of depth to deal from right now and so they're not, you know, I don't think they're doing all this to bring in Max Scherzer in the next two days. I think any move they make is going to be maybe for this year and maybe next year as well, but it's not going to blow the doors off anybody. I think we're all going to go, "Oh, okay." And I think that's about all you can expect at this point. I'm going to lay down a marker and say that Max Scherzer is in St. Louis before the trade deadline. I will agree with that. Yes, very much so, but the jersey he's wearing, however. I'm not going to go that far. Yeah, I'm kind of looking. We're talking about the next year's payroll a bit. I'm looking, you know, Ryan Helsley is getting $3.8 million this year and goes to his last arbitration hearing. I imagine that that at least doubles, right? I mean, given the season that he's had, you're looking at $7 million to $8 million for him, most likely at arbitration. That eats up a lot of things too. And then you've got the guys that are eligible for arbitration for the first time, Lars Newbar, Brendan Donovan, Nolan Gorman. They're getting into their arbiers. And that's going to get, you know, even if they're getting to $3 million, that's, you know, about triple or more than what they're making now. So, I don't know, it's a mess of a thing. And we'll see how they add that wrinkle into things. Now, we still haven't heard just a ton of cardinal rumors. Maybe they're not necessarily, I mean, John Grepman of the day, Locke says they're going to be aggressive. But I'm sorry, it's aggressive has passed, right? I mean, at least in timing, we've seen trades started, what? Wednesday or Thursday, probably the trades started dropping and some significant trades too. Stack-up one has already gone. And yet here we are 42 hours or whatever the case may be till the trade deadline. And the Cardinals not only haven't made a trade, but the only thing that they're even really tied to is the fact that there's some people looking at Tommy Edmond. The Yankees and the Dodgers are both looking at Edmond, even though he still has yet to play a game in the field in his rehab assignment. What are your thoughts on Edmond being at least a possibility of being moved? Yeah, I guess it comes down to how bad teams want him. I can't see his value being very high right now, because since he hasn't played and since he started back and then got hurt with a different injury and he's at all these setbacks this year, you can't have high confidence. He's actually going to play this year. You know, I'm having weird flashbacks to when the Cardinals traded with the Yankees and traded away Bader, and they had to put some clauses in the deal because they didn't know if Bader would even play that season. Just kind of weird things. And it seems like that's very similar to what's going on. I don't think Edmond's value is nearly as high as Bader's was at that point. And so you know, I think Tommy Edmond's a great guy. He's a perfect Cardinal in a lot of ways. The bat, I think Cardinal fans overrate him for because of the way he plays the game, which is a great thing. But I don't know if he has much that he could actually add to this team going forward. We talked about how it's going to be tough to deal with the roster. I know that Nestor Cortez, his name has kind of been brought up a little bit in that, which it's funny. We talked about him as a trade candidate before the season started. We thought that made a whole lot of sense for a whole lot of reasons and it never happened. And I actually think we even maybe talked about him at the trade deadline last year, along with Clayton Bader a little bit. So that's kind of been one of those names that we've tossed around. Other people have tossed around for a while. And so something like that does make sense. But yeah, guys like Edmond Carlson, I just can't imagine them having a lot of value right now unless it's just so light on majorly ready bats right now in the trade market that people are willing to pay a little bit more than normal. But I think you're probably looking at a package deal with any of these guys because you just can't expect much. Yeah, I would think so. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. The only thing maybe that brings up Tommy Evans values if the Dodgers and the Yankees are both at least somewhat interested. Maybe you get a little bit of a bidding where you're not going to get much, but you might get a little bit more than if there's only one team involved. But yeah, I agree. I mean, you talk about trading off Dylan Carlson, but even if a team thinks that he can regain some of the form that he's had, they're not going to pay like that, right? I mean, they're going to pay what the guy that's that's there now or something similar. And they know the Cardinals are kind of stuck, right? I mean, we're not seeing a lot of Dylan Carlson, but we have seen Eladil Carlson lately has not been pleasant. I think everybody is still cringing over the end of Friday night's game. You know, and there's, I'm sure there's blame to go around, obviously. But it does feel like it's difficult to see how he gets a fresh start in St. Louis. It feels like he needs to go somewhere else. And he's up for arbitration this year. I mean, he feels like if they don't trade him now, he's a non-tender, right? And so he might as well see if you can get something for him or throw him in some sort of package. You know, Gallegos was the same way until they did the DFA, but still kind of similar situation. Edmund, like you said, the only thing with Edmund is if people do think he's going to get back to some sort of value, if the Cardinals can say, and I haven't looked at his rehab hitting, but I think he was doing okay. So they're like, hey, he can still hit. He'll be able to feel at some point in time, you'll be okay. And maybe people go for that. But other than that, I don't. And I mean, I just don't know what else the Cardinals have to try to deal. I wrote about that some today in the sub stack. You know, all those pictures that they brought in last year that maybe they could turn around and flip are on the injured list. You're not going to see them. I don't think move a Quinn Matthews or anything like that. You're not moving a Tink Hints, which even if they wanted to, Tink Hints is barely pitched in the last two months. Jordan Walker's value is at its nittier as well. So I mean, what do you trade if you're the Cardinals? Yeah, there's really not much there. Like the one thing they can offer is they can offer a majorly gritty talent, probably. And that's like Carlson, Edmund, which not great, but maybe Herrera could possibly be a trade piece too. The Cardinals have a lot of catching. And we've talked about that in past episodes, but you've got two guys at the major league level right now. You've got Herrera at AAA. You've got Crookes, who's hitting the ball really well at Springfield. You've got Bernal, who's still on his way up. You've even got guys down at like some of the really low levels who are looking really good. So maybe that is a position of depth that you could trade away. But yeah, you know, Tink Hints is probably not going anywhere. Quinn Matthews not going anywhere. And then you really fall off after that. We're not seeing a lot of top 100 prospects being traded. So maybe, maybe the Cardinals do have some guys that are kind of buried a little bit that other teams would be interested in. But it's kind of bitten the Cardinals in the past with guys like Zach Galen. But maybe they maybe the Cardinals do have some of those players. But the tough thing is right now looking at it, like I just don't see who other teams would be interested in. But I'm not sure who the Cardinals would even be interested in that's going to help their team. I don't know who's out there right now who you just say, yes, that person helps a whole lot and makes this team a whole lot better. Because it feels like this team has a lot of holes right now. And it feels like they need a lot of moves to get better now. Maybe they pull off a move like the Cubs did today that's not really a buying or selling deal, but just a trade to make the team better in the long term. That's a possibility. But yeah, right now, I just can't foresee something that's going to just make us drop our jaw and say, okay, this team is a whole lot better today than it was yesterday. Yeah, yeah, I don't think that's in like you said, it's not that they can go get a starting pitcher and that takes them over the edge, right? I mean, it's not like, oh, they're so good. If they just had a pitcher that was better than Lancelyn, they would be on their way. And so you could go out and get a quartess or something like that. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, there we go, solve the problem. No, the holes are too big and too many. And it's hard to imagine what you do that actually does more than put a patch on one of the parts of the dam that's leaking and hope that you can get the boat to shore before the rest of the water comes through. Exactly. I mean, the Cardinals trade for Cortez, he might instantly become their second best pitcher, which in some ways, that's a good thing. But that's also a really bad thing too, because Cortez probably is a three at best. And so for him to become the Cardinals, number two says that the Cardinals pitching staff is really struggling. As we all know, that's no shock to anybody, but that's not a playoff rotation. Yeah. Let's shift off to trade. I know we've run a little bit long, but I do, I do want to circle back a little bit to the the Sunny Grace situation. We saw, you know, again, he was staked to what I think a 6 to 2 lead against the Nationals and completely blew it. A ERA over his last five starts of 6.67, I think. It's been very, very ugly. And after the game on Friday night, he has this interview where he's like, I know what I need to do. I just need to go do it. I just need to, you know, just need to start tomorrow doing it. But he never really gave any kind of anything but that nebulous, I know what I need to do. He didn't give any specifics. I mean, what is that? Is that a training thing? Is it a mental thing? Is it, because this isn't something that we've necessarily, and I haven't, you know, dug all the way into the Grace background, but it doesn't, isn't like he, you know, always slumps the beginning of July or something like that. Like the season wears on him and he has to, you know, go into the clubhouse, take off all his clothes and get readjusted. I don't know what he's thinking there, do you? I feel like we've heard him say that quite a few times. And sometimes it's after the game is like, I know what I need to do now or time. So say, I realized in the middle of the game what I needed to fix and I worked on it. Yeah, I don't know how to respond to that. And I'm not smart enough to watch him pitch and know exactly what's wrong. I guess I'd rather have that confidence over someone just saying, I don't know what's wrong. I can't figure it out. I feel like I'm lost out there. That would really give me concern. But you know, it comes down to the point of can you pitch or can you not? And he has not pitched well lately. And I hope he does know what's wrong. I hope he can figure it out. Maybe, maybe it has to do with the heat. There was some talk before he was signed that he had trouble pitching in months like July. I don't think it's been exceptionally hot in the last couple of his starts. But I don't know. I'm going to trust that he has figured it out and knows what to do. But he's got to figure it out because this team has no shot whatsoever to play offs if he cannot pitch like the guy they signed him to be. I didn't realize that Nashville was this ideally summer place that had no heat or humidity. I just was not aware of this because apparently he didn't grow up being adjusted to that. I mean, you're right. I mean, it could be. I mean, he has pitched in places like Oakland and New York and Minnesota and things that are different. Although since then, I would have thought I would have had a similar summers. I could be that, but it's also not. It's also not like he's pitched bad at home and great on the road, right? I mean, it feels like there's some sort of mental adjustments. Now, I agree when you were saying that it's something about a picture with confidence and going out there saying he knows what he needs to do. I had flashbacks to Adam Wainwright who always seemed to know what the problem was, but the results didn't necessarily show it for a while. And I hope that's not the case. I think that he'll be fine. And obviously, you hope so, because he's got at least two more years with him. But it's disconcerting. I mean, especially with a guy that has been at times pitching well enough to be in the Siam conversation, to have this kind of stretch when the Cardinals really need him to step up and be the picture they paid for, it's hard. Again, I'm not saying that you write off Suni Gray, but it's difficult to watch. And you really, you want to see that turn around pretty quickly. Yeah, I think that most fans probably have no confidence in any picture right now when they go out there. And so it's going to take multiple starts on his behalf to prove to fans that he's got it back. Hopefully he will. But yeah, we need to see it because it's rough out there. When the team goes out there and scores that many runs for the guy that's supposed to be the number one for the team, you should win probably 90, 95% of the time. And it's just not happening right now. And so it's got to get figured out. You know, you give that guy five runs, that should be an automatic win. And we're not seeing it. And so something has to be figured out, or else the season is going to be a loss cause. Yeah, yeah. So we shall see, I know he's got the or at least right now is scheduled to pitch on Wednesday. The last game of the Rainier series, the game after the trade deadline. So we'll see how that how that pans out for it. I mean, Texas is a good team. So we'll see if if that matters or if he's made whatever adjustments he needs to make and is back to back to normal. And hopefully you will be back to normal next week. Although I will say I don't think, you know, the medicine was too bad on you today. Well, you know, all I can hope for is that the St. Louis Blues of ours finished the playoff strong and have a good 2022 season. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I don't think there's anything to add to that for sure. So anyway, we will, we'll do it again next week. We'll talk about whatever trades that they make. But until then, for David, I'm Daniel. Good night. Is there any point where that? Well, I think right now I can tell you that we're going to trade people. I just don't know if it's going to be like household names or more of guys that just aren't likely going to be here
