(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, Daniel Shopptat at C70, usually with me, David Jones, IPOP editor, but David's still battling the health issues, hoped to be back with us next week, but until then, we've get, I believe, the man that fills in anytime, anywhere, any place, any podcast, it's Alex Christopheroli, you know him at Alex Card 79, Alex, always good to have you on. - Always good to be on with you, and that's a much better description than just being compared to Joan Rivers, as I think I got from the two bends, if you listened when I guessed on Cardinals Off Day. - Yeah, I mean, I didn't wanna necessarily go in that direction for you, but yeah, I mean, you are a legend, I mean, I don't, I think you and Kyle, the only people ever been on Cardinals Off Day, so I mean, your reach is legendary. - Oh, I don't know if I think they've had a few, you've been on Off Day, haven't you? Or maybe I'm thinking of when, maybe I'm thinking of when they've been on your show. - Yeah, yeah, they've been over mine a couple of times. And maybe they have it, I've missed it. I just know I can remember Kyle and you being there, and it's an exclusive fraternity of people. So, Alex, we're coming here tonight. After the Cardinals have won a series against the Brewers and won a series against the Yankees, and it still all kind of seems kind of meaningless, doesn't it? - Yes, meaningless in that I don't think this team is going to make the postseason, meaningless in that I don't think this team is still very good. I think they are the team that we watched starting in late March up until now. I think they've been the same team all year just with the normal peaks and valleys that we see during a baseball season. I will say, and I know some people don't feel strongly about this, and I totally get that people feel different about these things, especially when the Cardinals are not doing very well. I still want them to finish above 500, and if possible, finish out of the Cubs. Like, that still matters to me. And I know that, I know there's some people who want them to do the exact opposite. They want them to fall in their face and lose as much as possible and have attendance plummet even more than it already has, and I get that. I don't think I'll ever mentally be in that position, but I understand where those fans are coming from as well. Yeah, I mean, there is that idea of, you know, better draft picks, making, sending management, all that kind of stuff, but, except for the draft pick thing, I think the messages have been sent. And I'm not saying people have to show up the rest of the year, but I still, I'm like you, I want to see them win as many games as possible. You know, I noticed you said ahead of the Cubs, which is always a good thing. I would say, if it wasn't for last year, you would have said ahead of the Pirates, but that ship has sailed, unfortunately. So we'll start a new streak maybe this year. Yeah, it is, and it is interesting to see how they won this weekend to me, especially the games in New York felt like this was the team we expected to see all year long in the fact that they scored a lot of runs and gave up a lot of runs, but they were able to pull out wins, right? I mean, we thought going into this year, the offense would be there and the pitching staff would struggle. And that's kind of what we saw this week. - I'm going to take your word for it. I certainly saw that from the box score. I have a slight confession to make. I was in Columbia, South Carolina this past week for work and missed a lot of Cardinals baseball, especially because of weather in DC, everything turned into kind of a planes, trains and automobiles adventure, trying to give back home. But that's not my confession is that about 10 days ago, I canceled, I think, for the first time since 2012, I no longer have MLB TV. I have not been watching the games. That is for a few reasons, mostly because childcare in DC is really expensive after school, I don't know if you've heard. So that was part of the calculus, but a lot of how to do with it's a very busy time of year for me and I just found I wasn't watching games. And when I even had the opportunity to watch the games, I wasn't that excited to do so anyway, which seems to be kind of a prevailing thought with a lot of Cardinals fans, not just, you know, in the last couple of weeks, but going back to the last couple of years, it's a problem. It's a real thing. - Yeah, like a big fan, not having MLB TV. It's a very weird feeling. I tried to watch the game yesterday and had to be reminded, you no longer have this feature. - Well, yesterday, 'cause that game was actually on TV. - Right. - I think the Friday game is the one I'm thinking of. - I mean, you know, I haven't had, you know, access to the Cardinal games in two years. - How do you follow them? - Um, you keep, you know, the one thing is Twitter is helpful. - Yeah. - You know, and, you know, watching clips following in on game day, things like that just kind of, but I will admit, I mean, and I, it's not that I've been ever in any great shakes before and I think anybody's listening to the show in the last two years probably wouldn't not be surprised, but it does feel like you're less connected to what the team is doing. It feels like it's at a remove in that regard. And so that's why I continue to hope that the, you know, diamond sports dies a flagrant death and the Cardinals can do their own streaming service because I feel like that's gonna be, and maybe not, if you were doing MLB TV monthly, I don't know if that would be cheaper or not, but at least it would be an option that would be available here, unlike the blackouts that we have on the actual MLB TV. - Right, and until that happens, I'm going to just return to my roots and watch them when they're on a nationally broadcast game and I guess read about them as much as I possibly can. Which, by the way, you are still doing an excellent job, I want to say, with your sub stack. - Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. What I don't write is often mainly a part of that is. - But when you do, you pump out a lot of words and it's meaningful and helpful for someone who does not have MLB TV as I found out last week, so thank you. - Well, you're welcome. And nobody's ever been able to get me to shut up when it starts to start. So that is part of the deal too. But yeah, and I think that it's because sometimes when you're, you know, like for years, I wrote every day, recapping the game or, you know, almost every day. And you can't do that when you're not watching. There's not as much, you know, there's not as much to pick apart when you don't know, you didn't see why, you know, this error got made or Ollie made this change. So, so yeah, we're a couple of old men that were at remove doing this, but we'll do it anyway. - I went back and reread your piece a couple days before the deadline. And if you recall, that was a time when things felt a little different for the Cardinals in terms of their playoff odds and stuff like that. I mean, they still weren't sitting in great shape, but a little better than where they are now. And you wrote a piece basically saying, in defense of selling or correct me if I'm wrong, or at least not necessarily being aggressive and buying. And I think that age pretty well. Now, they did a really good job at the deadline. They'll get me wrong, but the problems you were talking about with the team, I think the last couple of weeks, you've kind of been proven right in that respect. - Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, that was the, I even titled it the case for selling. And, you know, the first, you know, we knew what they weren't going to. They couldn't. They were like a game or two out of the wild card. - Right. - But you saw the schedule that was coming. You saw the struggles that they were having with even weaker opponents. I don't know that anybody saw the August, just, I don't think we ever expected to come in here or to this point in time being, you know, 11 games out of the, out of the division in five and a half out of the wild card. I think it went a little bit sad. I'm definitely not expecting that two of the three pieces that you picked up at the trade deadline are no longer cardinals. But yeah, I mean, you could see that. It's just, and I think that gets to, you know, some of that front office stuff. It's a hard sell. I mean, I still remember, and you may as well, I think it was 1997, the White Sox and Giants made a trade. It was kind of termed the white flag trade. And if I remember, and I can't remember all the details, but one team was really in contention and made a trade. It's kind of like that Josh Hader tape from a couple of years ago. It turned out to be pretty good because the trade, what they get pieces they got back were solid, but it's still the white flag trade. And I think the cardinals are definitely going to avoid any kind of optic that looks like that, right? Anytime they look like they're not going for it, now again, we can argue about how they approach going for it, but they're still always going to at least try to be able to say they're putting out a competitive and a team that's challenging. And if they start waving the white flag, like they had to do last year as a trade deadline, that's just, I mean, they have to be in really dire straits to do that. - No, I don't disagree. And I wonder if there was any sort of internal discussion that, where they kind of knew like, look, we're not, if you look at kind of our peripheral stats, this team is not that great. We're probably, maybe we could scratch and claw our way into that last playoff spot, but probably not. But for the optics of that sort of trader, those sort of moves, that's what kept them from doing that. I wouldn't think so, but I would have to think some sort of conversation or something like that may have happened. And is this, I mean, obviously there's a lot that goes into building a winning baseball team or why a team is a winning. And the issues here, seem kind of obvious, which is that it's hard to envision a Cardinals team winning when Paul Goldschmidt, Noel Naranato, and Lars Newbar are average players, if that. And if Nolan Gorman is having a dreadful season as he's having. And Lars Newbar, you know, fan favorite, we all love Lars Newbar, so this is no criticism. I feel as though he's almost kind of reaching Tyler O'Neill territory in that, I don't know if he's ever had a season where he's qualified for a batting title in terms of getting the requisite plate appearances, maybe last year, and if so, just barely. But it seems like, you know, we're on year three or four of just a guy who is not going to get 500 plate appearances for whatever reason. And because of that, I just don't see the consistency coming from him that I would have liked to have seen at this point in his career. And that was kind of the player you were depending on, being able to step up when you start to see Paul Goldschmidt and Noel Naranato decline, as you would expect them to do at this time of at this point in their careers. And, you know, the teams from like, let's say 2016 through 2018 were not all that exciting, but they really could keep their head above water, even without that top end talent, because they seem so much deeper than the team is now. They had a lot of players who could punch above their weight a little bit, even though they didn't have a superstar. So, I mean, they still had yada or Molina, but he was no longer yada or Molina from 2012 or 2013. But they seemed to have, and they had that kind of like three-fourths of a season from Tommy Pham in 2017, where he just went kind of nuts. But for the most part, they just seem to have a bunch of okay players across the board. And when you have a bunch of okay players across the board, then that seemed to be enough to win 86 games or whatever they were winning during that stretch. Now, I just don't feel as though that depth is there, and the players obviously that we're counting on being good just have not been good or have not been good enough. Even Alec Burleson, we felt like, "Wow, we're really seeing a lot of pop from him." And he's certainly been a refreshing surprise, I would say. It's not like he's knocking the cover off the ball. I mean, the only person you could say that that would have applied to would probably be Wilson Contreras on this team. And... - When he's been helping. - We had an update on this. I mean, he's, I know they said something like they might still even try to bring him back this year. Did I read that correctly? But I would have to think he's probably finished. - Yeah, I haven't heard anything recently in them back when they were saying that. They were still trying to at least pretend like they were in a contention race. I mean, even at best case, I think you're looking at the last week and what's the point of that? - Right. And barring something miraculous in terms of... - Right. - Right. - Where they're going to be, but... And I think the other lesson here is when you sign... Kyle Gibson in his age 36 season in Lance Linn and his, I think, age 37 season to hopefully pitch 300 innings, you're going to get the expected production from a 36-year-old Kyle Gibson in a 37-year-old Lance Linn. And that's kind of what they've gotten. And that's not a knock on them. I think they've actually both kind of performed rather verbally. But it's funny to think about Lance Linn. And I'm guilty of this too. When we're all trying to see the bright side of that signing, basically we all fell back on, well, you can't possibly give up as many homerooms as he did last year. That obviously has to have some positive regression there because that was just so crazy last year. And of course that's true, but that didn't mean he was going to be good. (laughing) It just meant he wasn't going to give up 46 home runs or however many he gave up last year. So it's just kind of a sad state of affairs because I don't see anything, all that promising to backstop it. Like we used to be able to see whether it was like a really strong farm system or some of that depth we talked about. This might be, and it's kind of odd saying this about a team that is still one game over 500, but just in terms of the long-term outlook and certainly this stuff can change quickly. But still, in terms of the long-term outlook, I just feel less confident than I have in a long time and it has to do with where their superstars are now or their old superstars, I guess, has to do with the farm system and it has to do with the player development, which has clearly no zived. - Yeah, I don't think there's anything that the Cardinals can do from now until opening day, next year that will have them be the favorite in the division, which is weird to say because even in the down years, you always feel like the Cardinals could make a move or two. Even going into this year, right? We kind of said, well, they got these other pitchers and-- - Blasures of the weapon, yeah. - Blasures of the blip, Milwaukee's not that good. It's a weak division. They can be a contender, even if they weren't maybe the favorite, they could at least be a contender. But yeah, I mean, this month, I think, is huge for the Cardinals because they need to see, Jordan Walker had five hits today in New York, which is awesome, you know, home run five. They need to see if he can have that kind of production over the next month, not obviously not five hits a day, but consistent production and feel comfortable with him. They need to see if large new bargains stay healthy and produced. They need to see if Victor Scott is the, you know, if they can feel pretty confident about their young core going into next year, again, they're not favorites. But maybe with the right additions, they're at least challenging for that wild card team because I mean, a lot of things went wrong this year as well. And I don't want to say that they're all going to turn around. But I do like the way that Nolan Aronado has played over the last week or two, well, even longer than that, really. He's been, he's starting to come around. Paul Goldschmidt is not going to be the vocal point next year, even if he's back, you got to feel like it's a reduced role. I think offensively, you can feel okay about this team next year if we see some good results in the next month. - Yeah, and if I have one big regret about the MLB TV thing is I would really love to sit down for the next month and watch Jordan Walker play every day, which I hope he does, warts and all. This is a time where you, if they'd bring him up and I can't imagine they would do this and don't just give him regular playing time, then I may lose whatever remaining kind of faith I had in how they are developing these players. - Well, they said they will. No, I think they will. - Okay, okay. I assume they would, but you never know, especially if this team gets within a couple of games of that wild card spot, which could still mean two or three teams in front of them and a manager who, as we've seen before, is not necessarily on the same page as his front office. Like the way Matheny was reluctant to play some of the younger guys, which I think was overblown slightly it's had, but it was still a thing. If Ollie Marmal would get a little nervous and say, "Hey, I'm kind of managing for my job here, "so I'm going to put the team on the field "that I think is going to help us win." So at least at my exit interview or my end of season interview, I can say, "Hey, we were in contention the whole season "and finished the year only two games "out of like a playoff spot or something like that." I think that's what I'm talking about in terms of like if Jordan Walker doesn't get the bats that I would like to see him get. But I agree with you. If this next month Mason when continues to look promising, I mean, I think that's even not even the right word to use anymore and he's a player. He's not a superstar, but he's certainly a player. And Victor Scott, yeah, and if we can see good things from Jordan Walker, then that would give me something to look forward to next year. If they, yeah, September comes to an end and everything just feels like a giant mess, I don't say this lightly because I don't like to advocate for people to lose their jobs. And I think Ollie Marmal seems like a nice guy, but I feel like you kind of have to fire everyone. - Yeah. - You kind of have to clean the house with the coaching. Maybe even at like from top to bottom, I'm talking about in the whole organization and just start over and say, hey, we're kind of doing a reset here. - Yeah, it feels like there are gonna be some people that get caught up in this because that's what you need to do to get that change. Even if they're doing their job to the best of their abilities and maybe even a good job, I think there's something to be said for the look of what this looks like. So yeah, I do think, I know what you're saying, but if the Cardinals get within shouting distance of the wild card, it's probably because Jordan Walker has gotten them there, right? I mean, his play has been part of that. So it really feels like to me, what we've seen out of this, the organization in the last week, especially. Probably since the, since they started, the DFA Sean Armstrong is a real focus for next year. And if something happens, this you're great, but they've kind of mentally turned the page. And, you know, again, it's hard to blame them, right? I mean, that's what we really want to see them do by now. I think there was the, you know, Katie Wu had said on like Wednesday morning that the Cardinals still saw themselves as competitive and they weren't planning on releasing Tommy Pham. Now, you know, a few hours later that changed, but still it was to the point of, if this team feels like they are still in contention, then we need to have a real, you know, real conversation about, you know, how delusional are they? And I think that, you know, this front office is going to get a shake up this winner one way or another. And I think they about have to. - So you brought up Sean Armstrong. I'm having trouble speaking tonight. I don't know, I don't know what's wrong. Yeah, you brought up Sean Armstrong. - Travel hangover, I think. - I think he was DFA'd the day I left to go on that trip. And so I missed, I wasn't reading anything about the team. I, like I said, I wasn't watching anything. Was a specific reason given as to why they DFA'd him after three weeks? - It was, I mean, I don't, I don't know if it was officially given, but it was pretty much assumed it was so he could catch on with a contender. 'Cause he had not done anything. I mean, his numbers were fine in here in St. Louis. The idea that they're not going anywhere and let's give him much like what they did with Tommy Famm later in the week, just let's give him a chance to catch on with somebody that might have, you know, some sort of life in the off season. - Okay, okay. That's interesting. Go ahead, sorry. - Well, I'll just say it's this new, I mean, with no waiver trades and everything, we seem to be seeing that, you know, we saw it a lot last year with the Angels, which was crazy, but even this year, you know, the Cardinals had some, a couple other players around the league got, you know, the same type of treatment. It's a little bit weird to see it done like this, but I guess to some degree, it makes some sense. - Right. Good. You read the latest birdie work, Dane Perry's sub-stack, of course, where he kind of did a Q&A. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, I read that this morning. - Did you read the question about what's your outlook for the NL Central the next coming years? And he, in terms of like, team's most promising versus, you know, the least promising. And he had the Cubs on top and made a point to note that there is a sizable gap between the Cubs and the rest of the division. In terms of, not this year, but if you were to pick like, the team you would want to be heading in the future, he clearly thinks it's a Cubs. Now, he also gave the caveats that, hey, we've seen the Ricketts screw things up before and or not want to spend much money. So obviously, things can still go south. But gosh, that was not fun to read. I think we've all been feeling that way for a while. Or, you know, even when the Cubs were having that swoon, I want to say if that was in kind of like the end of May in June, like I might be misremembering. A lot of it was bad luck. And a lot of it is they're still just not that great of a team. They don't have they don't have quite superstar talent like you need to really, you know, they have some similar issues Cardinals have, at least in a vacuum looking at this year. But they have, according to basically anyone who knows about prospects, and I'm actually not one of them, as you know, but you talk to them and they talk about what a good core they have. And I think that's one of the things that worries me about the Cardinals going forward is, it's one thing to not be in position to maybe compete for the N.O. Central title every year. It's another thing to be staring up at the Cubs for several years to come. I'm just not quite mentally ready to be there. - Well, if you want hope, I will give you hope in the fact that I have had those feelings a number of times in my life when Curie Wood and Mark Pryor were both (laughing) when the Cubs in you know, 2015 and 2016, and then win the World Series with all that young talent that they have, they're still the Cubs. Does that mean that this takes a long time? You know, they do have maybe smarter people running it now, but you know, there is the still the ownership thing and well, they want to, and all it takes, honestly, I think we've seen this as well as Cardinals. All it takes is one bad year, one player to get hurt that takes a while to come back or a pitcher that has Tommy John. And all of a sudden the calculus changes even for the next two or three years, right? It just, it does, it's harder to come back from that. And another team takes a step. I mean, you know, the Reds might actually, you know, take some of their young talent and make that step. So I'm not, I'm not willing to, you know, give up the fight yet, but I agree that if we see the Cubs in first place for two or three years in this division and going deep into October and heaven forbid winning another World Series, that's going to be really, really hard. Not only for us as fans, but also knowing that at least unless something changes, the Cardinals are not a reactionary organization that are not necessarily going to say, oh, the Cubs are winning this division. We have to do more, we have to go over the top. We have to go get one soda or whoever the equivalent is in a couple of years. They're not that kind of organization, unfortunately, at times. Yeah, I sort of missed the days of like a good old-fashioned arms race between whether it was the Yankees and Red Sox or it doesn't quite feel like that happens as much anymore. And maybe it's just the way I perceive it, I don't know. But I have always had this fear that the Cubs, because of like, I guess the watches that they have, will someday turn into what the Dodgers are now in that just assume they're going to win the division and perpetuity and try to be the Padres and get a wild guard spot or something like that. But you do bring up an excellent point. And when I was talking about 2004, the 2004 season with the two Bens, I remember thinking, and I don't know this for sure, but I would have to think all the prognosticators going into that season had the Cubs pick to win the division. I don't know that for sure, I would have to go back and look, it could have been Houston as well. And the Cubs still were pretty decent that year, obviously, but the Cardinals won 105 games and ended up having one of the best seasons we can remember. So, and this was following the Cubs having, gosh, their best, most promising season of our lifetimes. So you bring up an excellent point. Yeah, we hold on to some universal truths of death taxes and the Cubs being the Cubs. So, well, we'll hold on to it until they're not there, but we will see. You know, again, I will say, I don't know enough about the Cubs in their mindset, like you said, you were even necessarily the players that they have currently. But I do think that the Cardinals have the possibility of a really good core, right? I mean, you know, maybe it's a little bit of, you know, bias on the fact it was what we see, but, you know, Walker win, Scott Burleson, you hope maybe a gorming gets straightened out a little bit, which that's maybe a little more iffy, you know, with old men are an auto lead in the charge. And then if you're looking at people, you know, Quinn Matthews has made such a run up the list this year that, you know, he's probably in the conversation from making a debut next year. Team Kansas maybe next year, hopefully probably later on. You put those two guys with what they could possibly be in a sunny gray and you go get, you know, if you go get a big picture of this offseason, you know, maybe, you know, you're looking at a team that can coalesce in maybe not 2025, but 26 and 27 and be a little bit more of that of that team that we've thought they were going to be over the last couple of years. - Did I read that Quinn Matthews is all is in Springfield? - He's, he's in Memphis now. - Memphis. Okay. Okay. Oh gosh. - He made a statement. - He made a statement. Okay. Well, that's cool. - That four levels of one year, that'll get you excited. - Yeah. Okay. I remember someone very recently saying this guy is skyrocketing through the system and I thought that was when he graduated to Springfield, but man, Memphis, that's something. Was he not in Springfield? Do you know, was he not in Springfield very long? And there was just like, let's just take this guy in Memphis. - He wasn't, I'd have to look it up for sure, but I would say he probably, I mean, just off the top of my head, I may be completely wrong, but I feel like he made four or five starts down there. I mean, like I said, he started the year in, in what Palm Beach. He hadn't been anywhere just terribly long, but what he has done has been, you know, pretty remarkable to the fact that, and it needs a college picture. So, I mean, you can understand maybe a little bit of a quick move. I figure he'll finish the year at Memphis. I don't, you know, I know some people talk about him, you know, even making that jump up to the majors this year. I don't see that for lots of reasons, but I think he's going into spring training with that dark horse, you know, who knows what could happen, maybe sneak in type of thing. - I want to ask you a question, even though this is your podcast, about the player development issue, I don't pretend to be an expert on player development other than basing my analysis on the results I see on the field. But I want to say in 2016, yes, it was definitely 2016 when the Cardinals brought up a ledmus Diaz, and he immediately started hitting the cover off the ball. His defense wasn't great, but he was hitting very well. I think Dave Cameron, who at the time was writing for fan graphs, said something to the effect that the Cardinals are just player development wizards, because Diaz was basically another guy in a long line of players who came up and were pretty successful, even though the Cardinals didn't have the luxury of drafting, you know, in the top five, you know, or top 10 or top 20 even. Now that is completely turned on his head, granted that was eight years ago, but that's not that long. Do you think the idea that the Cardinals were just ahead of the curve when it came to player development was overblown in the first place? Or do you think what we're seeing now in terms of people saying, like the Cardinals can't develop talent whatsoever is overblown? Or do you think both are true? I don't know. Or do you think they somehow used to be really good at developing players and now they're not? Or they're just still doing the same thing they're doing in 2016, and everyone else just caught up or lapped them? - I think it's closer to the latter of that. That was kind of what I was thinking addressed in that question. I do think that there have been some flaws in the development we've seen then. I think that they have maybe rushed players a little bit more than they should have and not given them the chance to develop like they should. But I think a lot of it is, you know, the Cardinals had to figure it out a way to, you know, get the most out of players. And that was the, you know, quote, quote, Cardinal Devil Magic and either, and I think there's a lot to be said for other teams maybe figuring that out and getting, maybe getting some of the players that the Cardinals would have gotten in the past before the Cardinals get a chance to get them up. But I don't, it's really hard to say that they were overvalued beforehand, but they're definitely something not working right now. And I think the best case scenario is that the league is caught up and they haven't changed their approach. The worst case scenario is, you know, they have changed their approach for the worse and trying to figure out where that is and what the problem is, is, I mean, it's a questionable, right? I mean, we've heard the stories this year about Ryan Ludwig fixing, you know, Victor Scott and Jordan Walker and maybe Nolan Gorman down in Memphis as he's, you know, that rotating instructor and which just begs the question, why did they need to be fixed? - Good point. I think I would agree with you too. But again, I'm conceding that I really don't, can't speak too confidently on how player development works and not necessarily how it works, but whether or not, you know, I'm in just a no position to say, like, these are the teams that are good at player development, these are the teams that are bad other than what we see on the field, but what we see on the field certainly matters in that analysis. - Yes, it does. And to some degree it does, you know, eventually those late drafts do start to pile up. And if you make a mistake in those drafts, especially when you're drafting high, it comes back to bite you, they lost a few picks, you know, signing Wilson Contreras, this year, signing Sunny Gray. I think there's a lot of different variables that go into that, but yeah, I think that, obviously something needs to change there. And I think with, you know, you know, at Blogger and Podcaster Day that Mode mentioned and I've heard it mentioned other places that Haim Bloom was kind of, you know, doing this, you know, looking at all aspects of the team and bringing reports to Mo and seeing what could be changed and all that kind of stuff. And I think if that's the case, and I'm pretty sure he's going to be looking at minor leagues and everything like that, you know, give the Cardinals credit for realizing that that they're a problem and looking for ways to solve it. - Yeah, for sure. - All right, well, we've gone a little bit longer than our normal half an hour, but that's fine. It's good conversation. But Alex and I are some of the experienced members of the fan base. And so when we get together, you know, you get a lot of, remember this, remember that. So I asked Alex who, if you remember the old church podcast with him and goat Tara Nichols, they, he always had a turf of the week. Well, I didn't ask him to bring a turf of the week this time. I asked him to bring us a guy that we could remember. We're going to remember this guy and Alex, who is our guy? - We are going to remember Milt Thompson. - Ah, Milt Thompson. - Certainly, Daniel, you remember Milt Thompson. He played on some unremarkable teams because he came to the Cardinals in 1989 and left in 1992. He never, he was never on a team or was never with the Cardinals where they finished within seven games of a playoff spot. Granted, only four teams made the playoffs back then, but a few of those teams with an exception of the '89 team were rather lousy. So, you know, he was not on great teams. Although really, it was only that 1990 team that finished in last, but that was really bad. Both the '92 team and '91 team and the '89 team all finished above 500, but certainly not great teams. Think the 2016 through 2018 or, yeah, think the 2016, 2017 Cardinals and those are the kind of teams we're talking about here. But Milt Thompson came over to the Cardinals from the Phillies for, and here are two more guys, I think we can both remember, Kurt Ford and Steve Lake in a trade. - Oh yeah. - And, you know, when I returned to Milt Thompson's baseball reference page, he was a lot better than I remembered, and I don't just mean his time with the Cardinals, but overall, he was basically a 20-win player for his career. He at least would have been, but his last couple seasons, he was not great, and his war actually dropped below 20, but he still finished like a 19-war as a player, which is not an easy thing to do in MLB. And he had a pretty nice career. He played, I think I read he last played in 1996 for the Rockies, maybe, if I have that right. He played with seven different teams throughout his career, all in the National League, which I thought was kind of cool. He never once played in the American League, even though he had pretty solid career. And I will tell you, one thing I used to love about the baseball references play index is if you had a player like Milt Thompson, who put in enough played appearances and played long enough, you could cherry pick those stats long enough until you got that guy in exclusive company. And for Milt Thompson, this is his exclusive company. He is one of only 31 players in the National League, ever, who has at least, and here's where you're gonna hear the cherry picking, who has at least 1,029 hits, 214 stolen bases and only 635 or fewer strikeouts. Did you get that? Yeah, Milt Thompson has one of only 31 players in the National League with at least 1,029 hits, 214 stolen bases and 635 or fewer strikeouts. Aussie Smith is also one. In fact, if you sort these guys by war, Aussie Smith is at the top of the list. Tony Gwen is in second. And other people you might know who are on this list include Tony Womack and Frankie Frisch. But that is Milt Thompson. Solid, solid career. I feel like we never talk about Milt Thompson. He had a very good season for the Cardinals, in fact, in 1991, when he slashed 307, 368, 442. So he was a very good player, or at least a solid player. Very good, might be a stretch. But he was a solid player. I remember him fondly, and he had some very, very good years for our Cardinals and the Phillies. And I believe he was on that 1993 Phillies team. We got him from the Phillies, and then he went back to the Phillies after he left the Cardinals, and it was on that Phillies team in '93 that went to the World Series. So there you go. I, today, am remembering Milt Thompson. - I pulled up his Wikipedia while you were talking. You were right, he got released in 1996 from the Rockies, ironically, not ironically, just coincidentally, on my 21st birthday. (laughs) - Oh yeah, it took him about a second of that year. And then he went into coaching, and it is interesting that you talked about him only playing in the National League. His first coaching job was with the Devil Rays as a minor league outfield running associate. And he also was the hitting coach. I thought I saw, oh, I'm scared of me, I don't see it now. I thought he was with the Royals for all. Oh yes, he was with the Royals for a bit. And according to this, he's been with the Reds organization since 2017. He had a little bit of time with the Phillies. In fact, he was the batting coach for the Phillies from 2004 to, looks like 2009, I think, so. - Is he still with the Reds, you said? - According to Wikipedia, it doesn't show a release on that. - I wonder if, you know how when someone really famous dies and you go to Wikipedia within minutes, and it's already on there. - Yeah. - Do you think like, let's say, Milt Thompson, let's say Milt Thompson left the Reds. I'm not saying die, I'm not going there. Let's say Milt Thompson was no longer a coach with the Reds. And for all intents and purposes, he might not be. How long do you think, well, what's the time lapse before that page is updated? Do we have some Milt Thompson people who are just chomping at the bit to be the first one to make that edit? - I always wonder. - I can guarantee you not, because pulling up another article, he was a Reds coach from 2017 to 2019. So. - Yeah, so there you go. Well, not a whole lot of people jumping on the Milt Thompson Wikipedia page. - If there's any, there are any Wikipedia editors out there, there's a job for you right there. You know, it's funny, there are millions upon millions of Wikipedia pages. I've never met anyone who writes, who edits these. Or at least no one who's talking about it publicly. I don't know if you have, but. - I have not. - Exactly. - But I will tell you an interesting project. This was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Back before, it was probably, man, of seven or eight. When I was working, you're not working, I was a moderator at the Cards Clubhouse forums. We started developing a side project that never got off the ground fully, but basically was a Cardinals Wikipedia, which was going to, you know, in, you know, ideally give not only chances to, you know, write out things about different seasons and different games in the Wikipedia format, but also have an option for people to add, you know, like memories at the bottom of it, of playing games or something. And we got some stuff written and, you know, it didn't get very far, but I always thought that was kind of an interesting idea to try to consolidate all of that in one place. I mean, you can look up baseball reference and you can look up other things, but I mean, I'm thinking about stuff like what Only Cards fans is doing with the 1964 series, you know, writing about every game and stuff like that. Just kind of filling in details that we know from watching, you know, that stuff that makes it as important to us for, you know, watching this year, but might not, you know, might not jump off the page when you look at it 10 years from now. - Yeah, that is interesting. And I finally did pull up Milt Thompson's baseball reference page. I hadn't pulled up earlier, but to give you people a peek behind the curtain, we had trouble with the recording and I had to shut down my computer when I brought it back up, I didn't have this page open, but I have it back open now. And I see here that he actually received down ballot MVP votes in 1987 with the Phillies and in '89 with the Cardinals. And '89 was, yeah, so that's super interesting. I never would have guessed that. But yeah, if you look at his career, he really did have a much better career than I remembered. I remember them being solid, but yeah, better than I remembered. And I will say, and I know we're running long, but to amass more than 40, excuse me, 4,000 played appearances and strike out only 635 times. Even in that era, that's pretty impressive. - Yeah, yeah, pretty good. There's an article here on MLB that I will try to put in the show notes, but it's a catching up with Milk Thompson. It's from July of 2023, so it's fairly new. And it's got some interesting things and some highlights and clips. And so if you're interested in knowing more about Milk Thompson, we'll try to put that with you in the notes. But Alex, it's been a lot of fun. I think we've had a good evening and I appreciate you feeling in. - I appreciate you having me. This was a lot of fun. - Yep, and like I said, David, hopefully we'll be back next week. If not, maybe we'll grab Alex again, but until then, for Alex, I'm Daniel. Good night. - This way and a long fly ball to left by Aussie. - He wouldn't, he'd be fine. (crowd cheering)
