Well it has certainly been an interesting off-season, right? Who would have picked the Cardinals to pay such a large proportion of Boston’s 2026 payroll and NOT have it involve Nolan Arenado? Anyway, I’m not much of a hot-take guy (it is a good thing others are). Instead, today I go off-topic again. During the off-season, I like to scan the neighboring galaxy and see what stars are coming and going. My closest look is at other NL Central competition – the Reds, Pirates, Cubs, Brewers. Even with a less
un-balanced schedule, these are the teams a competitive Cardinal team would measure themselves against. The NL Central Division title is the goal, after all.
We’ll take a look at some of the neighbors who might appear far, far way, but still exert a gravitational pull on the direction of the Cardinals season. The other NL Divisions. Maybe even a gander at the AL Divisions. They are the dark matter of the baseball universe.
Some explanation of team needs
Needs are described as they were at season’s end. Teams often show a need like replacing a key veteran who is becoming a free agent. Sometimes they meet their need by re-signing that player back.
Unmet needs are obvious when nothing has changed, so far. Needs that are considered “met” are somewhat nebulous. I use the yardstick that if a team believes its needs are met and they are pretty much done with any real activity, then I consider it met. Even if I look at the player and don’t really see a solution to their problem. For example, the Twins #1 off-season need is/was a first baseman. They signed Josh Bell. For them, the need is met. One can debate about how well they met it.
I compile team needs from as many resources as I can find. The beat writers, surprisingly to me, often miss what a team intends to do in the off-season, so I don’t just take their word for it. My favorite from last year was the A’s beat writer totally missing their aggressiveness to enter the FA market and sign starting pitching to avoid a union grievance. The again, who assigns the beat writer? Sacramento Bee? Oakland Tribune? Las Vegas Review-Journal?
Last, as I describe team needs, I omit bullpen (except closer) because everyone seeks new relievers, so just assume that is a need for everyone. Teams with playoff aspirations seem to move more aggressively in this market. Other teams wait and scavenge through the leftovers in spring.
The NL Central
I will pause here and bow. The Brewers are one of the few teams in baseball that can say they really don’t have any needs, in terms of player acquisition. Woodruff took the QO and avoided departing via Free Agency. So, the Brewers needs are 1) reduce payroll and 2) divest of one of their too-many starting pitchers to recharge their pipeline, in keeping with their churn strategy (Peralta, perhaps?).
The Cubs appear to need to re-tool a bit. They would like to bolster their starting pitching (other than the Brewers, who doesn’t?) and add a bat or two, needing to replace Kyle Tucker. Imanaga also took the QO route. I keep hearing they are not sold on their third baseman and would like to improve the offensive output there. A Tucker, or a Tucker replacement, would be essential.
The Reds are an emerging team with solid pitching and their needs begin to take the look of a team needing to take that step from “emerging” to legitimate contender. They need an impact bat and a closer. They re-signed Pagan to close for them.
The Pirates aren’t really an emergent team, although they are more interesting than normal, with that stellar starting pitching. They need a left-fielder and a third baseman (they traded their good one), and offense anywhere. They’ve added OHearn, Magnum and Lowe already. Are they waking up? A Pirate team with some offense could be quite dangerous.
The Cardinals needs coming into the off-season were starting pitching and outfield help. They also needed to reduce redundancy and rebalance their overall roster with a bit more power and athleticism. Mainstays Contreras and Gray are gone, replaced by a bevy of pitching prospects.
Depending how things shake out during the off-season in the final look, this division could have the most emergent teams in the NL. The Reds finish last year might have been an early sign. As referenced earlier, the Cardinals first and foremost measure themselves against these guys. I’d say their assessment is that multiple NL Central teams could make the playoffs next season, with perhaps the Cardinals themselves being the only team without a realistic chance (although it is the NL Central). A last place finish in 2026 is in store? It will be odd looking at the doormat Cardinals as the team other NL Central teams feel they have to beat up.
The NL West
A fascinating division.
The behemoth Dodgers have some needs, but not many. They are in full-on compete mode. They need a closer and a left-fielder, and perhaps a utility guy, but perhaps not. They re-signed Rojas for INF and Diaz to close. They look like a team in danger of getting old. Average age of their thirteen position players is 31. Their key guys are all above that.
The Padres are a puzzle. They have an expensive roster that is aging, too. They need to rebuild their starting pitching, which is a tall order for anyone. They need a DH/1B type who can hit and a little bench depth would help them. They have re-signed King, acquired Mckenzie and signed Song out of the KBO, so they be a utility guy away from mission accomplished.
The Rockies? Their primary need is they need a plan. They churn the least of anybody. Perhaps that is part of the problem.
The Diamondbacks need to buttress their starting staff and acquire a first baseman, preferably one with a bit of thump in his bat. They seem inclined to play around with trading Marte, but I’m not sure to what end, other than to save dollars and rid themselves of a diva.
Then we have the San Francisco Giants. They have some re-tooling to do, having finished right around .500 for a number of years, with the exception of the 2021 outlier season (107 wins). They see themselves needing additional starting pitching and would like to fill a gap at second base. They have picked up Houser already for the pitching staff.
The NL East
The Phillies are looking to extend their competitive window with an aging core. Their pitching is solid, so much so that Suarez departing via FA may not hurt that much. DH, Catcher and Outfielder are on their list of needs. One of the few teams that does not seem to need starting pitching. They re-signed Schwarber (DH) and signed Adolis Garcia out of FA to meet two of their needs.
The Braves need to re-tool after a disastrous 2025. They need a closer, shortstop and another starter. They are doubling down on their needs, signing both Iglesias and Suarez for dual closers, and Dubon and Kim for dual shortstop solutions. That is a front office that believes their core is good enough to win.
The Marlins emerged last year with a strong finish and it may not be a mirage. They do need more starting pitching and corner infielders, but they have some interesting young talent. They really haven’t done anything yet this winter, unlike many of their contemporaries.
The Nationals are in full-on rebuild/restart with a new management team. It would be over-kill to say they need everything, but they appeared to be going backwards from nowhere last year. They need starting pitching (multiple), a first baseman and a catcher. They have already acquired an MLB-ready prospect catcher (Ford) from Seattle.
Then we have the Mets. Is the Stearns/Cohen team a cohesive match? They say their needs were second base, first base and closer. In an interesting move, they traded Nimmo for Semien to solve their second base problem, but that seemed to create a new need. They acquired Williams to fill the closer role. Alonso, McNeil and Diaz have moved on to other teams. Whispers of clubhouse drama swirl around this team.
Overall
Is anyone interested in a run down of the AL, maybe next week? If I don’t get my draft analysis update done by then…
To-date (Dec 20), there have been almost as many needs met this year (already) as were met the entire 2024 off-season. I wonder if this suggests that teams see more opportunities than last year. An aging Dodger team doesn’t seem quite the juggernaut some perceived, an aging Phillies team may struggle to extend the window, and an aging Padres team may come to see those contracts as albatrosses. Perhaps the window opens for others?
The award for fastest finisher goes to the Orioles. They’ve acquired Baz, Helsley, Ward, Alonso and Kittredge to meet 4 of their top 3 core needs (who knew they needed an Alonso?). I bet they still want another starter, though.
Two of the three churn teams have been strangely quiet. The A’s and the Brewers appear to be mostly sitting out the off-season. The Rays continue to churn.
Speaking of the Rockies. On June 29th last year, the Cardinals were 9 games over .500 and had the same number of wins as the Brewers. Hope was beginning to creep in. Later that season, I got to watch the Cardinals get outplayed by a poor Rockies team at Coors Field and realized how much a Cardinal rebuild was going to be needed. And then the same Rockies team outplayed the Cardinals again a few weeks later at Busch. All hope had been exterminated. I harbor no illusions about what next season could be like (I survived the 70’s), but I still have hope for the future. We are never without hope, particular with the sports #1 rated MLB minor league system.
For what it is worth, I’m knee deep in writing R scripts generating lots of data. I’m updating my draft analysis. I still haven’t figured out how to separate drafting acumen from development acumen in a way I can query. Any ideas would be helpful. I am working on an idea to isolate drafted WAR down to the pre-FA years of a player’s career, and plot those season years along the league average career WAR arc and isolate the ones who are more than one standard deviation above or below that arc, and isolate out those who played for two or more teams to see if there is a pattern. My example is Vaughn coming from the White Sox to the Brewers and likely moves from below the arc to above it. One player doesn’t tell us anything, but if a particular club repeats this outcome, would it suggest an advantage in player development?
I am totally curious about why I am not yet seeing the Cardinals backslide in the draft rankings. I’ve been expecting that. I’m adding a layer of detail on discriminating performance of HS vs. college draftees.
I’m also trying to write some scripts for Solanus to collect his data … he does some incredible hand tabulating on various stats that are quite interesting when you look at them. Did you know that the Cardinals were 57-45 when Pedro Pages started at Catcher? Did you know that JoJo Romero led the team in ratio of Shutdown performances:Meltdown performances? He actually tied with Helsley at just over 3:1, but he had more of them.
I hope everyone’s holiday is going well.
