BleedBlue14
UrGeNcY
It's never a good sign when players you bring in don't get any better, and players you trade away 90% of the time reach the hopes that you had had for them that they couldn't in your organization.
I listen to quite a few analytics podcasts etc for baseball, alot have former players within.
In my opinion, once the Luhnow to Astros thing happened and the Cardinals had to forefeit the pick for going into Luhnow's system etc. they put a hold on all analytics development. Which really seems to hold true with alot of things. The Cardinals are years behind in terms of getting with the new times of baseball - internal analytics, ways of digesting all of the information that trackman etc can give and creating their own model, as well as internal development with pitching labs etc.
I'm not sure if it's an ego thing on Mozeliaks end or a stupid blindness that our way has worked for so long that this is how it's done, but regardless there has been an extreme neglect to get with the times that started with pitcher development in the 2016 time frame. If you notice throughout the leagues teams have things they look towards for pitchers . A few examples:
Rays find guys with different arm angles
Yankees developed a bunch of sweeper sinker guys
Red Sox are moving off of 4 seams
A lot around the league added in splitters.
Pitching has evolved at such a high rate since I graduated college and was on the other side of the scale in terms of player vs. observer/fan and it's fascinating to watch. However, our hometown team continually tries to grind with the old instead of getting with the times. There was alot of mention of this over the last 2 years or so so i'm hoping it's a change in the right direction. But in general those systems - per people in that industry - take 4-5 years to get into place a lot of times. It's crazy to me that in Sonny's first few pressers after signing he was talking about a lot of the things the Cardinals didn't have and Mo was "Interested in adding them". In professional sports you can't be almost a decade behind and then only get the ideas and build off of them from a players viewpoint from other organizations. We direly need fresh blood throughout. It's not surprising Jeff Albert didn't last long here. He was a pretty big analytics guy, and he was brought into a prehistoric environment. In general I lean towards supporting the old fashioned line of thinking and can at least somewhat understand the lack of movement - sports isn't all analytics. But whenever you don't have an internal way to digest things and put things into motion to get ahead of the curve, you are never going to be at the curve.
I don't know what to think about the hitters as that's not where my general interest is. But the Cardinals have a fascinatingly great skill of creating the non influential players on the offensive side of the ball - Nootbaar, Burleson, Donovan, Edman etc. the list goes on and on and that's a great thing to have. However, it's troubling that they cannot allow for guys to eclipse that level of mediocrity and honestly struggle making guys better once they get to the major league levels - especially with extreme talents - Gorman, Walker etc. It's not surprising that guys like Arenado and Goldschmidt went out to Driveline a few years ago, but it's also something the franchise needs to support. Unfortunately we are more concerned with growing BPV (which is great) and less concerned about player development and analytics when the game has been going that direction for so long.
Sorry to add on to your rant, just thought I could share some of the things i've picked up as i'm a bit nerdy on that front and love listening to podcasts with guys that have been in front offices analytics and ex players who can explain what these pitching labs and analytics departments bring to franchises.
I listen to quite a few analytics podcasts etc for baseball, alot have former players within.
In my opinion, once the Luhnow to Astros thing happened and the Cardinals had to forefeit the pick for going into Luhnow's system etc. they put a hold on all analytics development. Which really seems to hold true with alot of things. The Cardinals are years behind in terms of getting with the new times of baseball - internal analytics, ways of digesting all of the information that trackman etc can give and creating their own model, as well as internal development with pitching labs etc.
I'm not sure if it's an ego thing on Mozeliaks end or a stupid blindness that our way has worked for so long that this is how it's done, but regardless there has been an extreme neglect to get with the times that started with pitcher development in the 2016 time frame. If you notice throughout the leagues teams have things they look towards for pitchers . A few examples:
Rays find guys with different arm angles
Yankees developed a bunch of sweeper sinker guys
Red Sox are moving off of 4 seams
A lot around the league added in splitters.
Pitching has evolved at such a high rate since I graduated college and was on the other side of the scale in terms of player vs. observer/fan and it's fascinating to watch. However, our hometown team continually tries to grind with the old instead of getting with the times. There was alot of mention of this over the last 2 years or so so i'm hoping it's a change in the right direction. But in general those systems - per people in that industry - take 4-5 years to get into place a lot of times. It's crazy to me that in Sonny's first few pressers after signing he was talking about a lot of the things the Cardinals didn't have and Mo was "Interested in adding them". In professional sports you can't be almost a decade behind and then only get the ideas and build off of them from a players viewpoint from other organizations. We direly need fresh blood throughout. It's not surprising Jeff Albert didn't last long here. He was a pretty big analytics guy, and he was brought into a prehistoric environment. In general I lean towards supporting the old fashioned line of thinking and can at least somewhat understand the lack of movement - sports isn't all analytics. But whenever you don't have an internal way to digest things and put things into motion to get ahead of the curve, you are never going to be at the curve.
I don't know what to think about the hitters as that's not where my general interest is. But the Cardinals have a fascinatingly great skill of creating the non influential players on the offensive side of the ball - Nootbaar, Burleson, Donovan, Edman etc. the list goes on and on and that's a great thing to have. However, it's troubling that they cannot allow for guys to eclipse that level of mediocrity and honestly struggle making guys better once they get to the major league levels - especially with extreme talents - Gorman, Walker etc. It's not surprising that guys like Arenado and Goldschmidt went out to Driveline a few years ago, but it's also something the franchise needs to support. Unfortunately we are more concerned with growing BPV (which is great) and less concerned about player development and analytics when the game has been going that direction for so long.
Sorry to add on to your rant, just thought I could share some of the things i've picked up as i'm a bit nerdy on that front and love listening to podcasts with guys that have been in front offices analytics and ex players who can explain what these pitching labs and analytics departments bring to franchises.
