The bulk of this road trip has been a journey through teams who’ve had surprising season relative to the preseason predictions. Certainly, the San Francisco Giants were not expected to be a laughingstock in global professional sports, but their opponents — Pittsburgh, the Mets, and now the Cardinals — were expected to be the opposite of where they actually stand. The Pirates were maybe not expected to be a fringe Wild Card contender for most of the summer, the Mets were projected to be quite a bit
better than abject losers, and the St. Louis Cardinals were expected to be a losing team in a step back/reset season. Instead, they’re .500 and 4 games out of the 3rd Wild Card as the Giants host them to kickoff the week.
Now, maybe the reason for this quasi-competitiveness is that the playoff field has been expanded to participation trophy-levels of teams, lowering the bar for entry, but there are meaningful developments in the organization to show that they’re actually a solid team.
If you recall, their long-time front office leader John Mozeliak (who was in the Cards’ organization for thirty years) “retired” after last season and in the year prior to that, he was shadowed by former Boston President of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom who took over for him beginning this year. Bloom was tasked with doing, essentially, what Farhan Zaidi had to do when he took over from Bobby Evans: rebuild the organization from the ground up. One key difference was that the team had some good talent in the player development pipeline and an ownership group with no rules about who could be traded to assist with a rebuild.
So, Bloom was able to purge the major league roster of some big contracts for quality players and some arbitration-eligible players that most other teams might’ve held onto to be a part of their next good team (specifically, second baseman Brendan Donovan). The implementation of new systems and practices either explain or coincided with some nice steps forward with the young talent the Cardinals already had on hand. For most people who don’t believe in “analytics,” they’ll probably believe the latter explanation most; but, in any case, it’s undeniable that 23-year old JJ Wetherholt exploded onto the scene and was a contender for NL Rookie of the Year most of the season. 24-year old outfielder Jordan Walker had shown a lot of promise (he debuted at 21!) but this season has been his breakout (28 home runs, 100 RBI in 140 games & 601 PA).
What’s wacky, though, is that the Cardinals have not improved, statistically. Right now, they have a team wRC+ of 97. They ended last season at 96. They have a team ERA of 4.33 ERA right now (11.3 fWAR in value) and were at 4.30 and 12.8 last season. Through 144 games this season, they’re 72-72. Through 144 games last season, they were… 72-72 and 4-and-a-half games out of a Wild Card spot (reminder: the Giants were 72-71 exactly 1 year ago). So, are the Cardinals actually better or does it just feel like they are? Well, these next 18 games will decide. Last year, the Cards went 6-12 from this point. They might not make the postseason, but improving on that mark will certainly be a step in the right direction, considering how much they remade the roster without actually setting up it with the intention to be great.
It’s not a perfect roster, of course. Masyn Winn might just be a defensive guy rather than a total player (.641 OPS in 490 PA but +2.3 fWAR thanks to his defense). Nolan Gorman hasn’t quite panned out at third base. The pitching staff is very much a work in progress. But, despite not being totally good, it is, overall, encouraging.
The Giants can’t say quite the same thing. They pushed in all their chips once again and busted once again. Now, it’s worth considering that Farhan Zaidi and Chaim Bloom are contemporaries and for a time, their careers were paralleling each other. Bloom was able to go from the Rays to the Red Sox and land on a Cardinals team open to revitalization. Zaidi went from the A’s to the Dodgers to the Giants, a team that was open to revitalization at the time. Zaidi’s tenure didn’t work out and now the org has oversteered itself back to the 1980s. Will Bloom prove himself to be the better exec with a stronger revitalization of the Cardinals or is that generation of GM destined to flame out and cause owners across the sport to reconsider the Moneyball 2.0 generation? Certainly, dudes like Zaidi and Mike Elias in Baltimore are helping to make that case.
But while the Cardinals have enjoyed 5 months of young players proving themselves, the Giants are starting to enjoy a similar outcome in some areas of the 28-man roster. Since returning to the roster on August 14th, Jona Cox has hit .298/.355/.509 (.864 OPS) in 20 games (62 PA) with a trio of homers, a double, a triple, and 5 stolen bases in 6 attempts. Granted, he’s struck out 21 times against just 5 walks, but he’s a young 25 and not the typical old 27 the Giants have thrown at the wall at ends of failed seasons (with all due respect to Turner Hill). Bryce Eldridge has been nearly as good since August 1st: .288/.380/.450 (.830 OPS) with 4 homers, 6 doubles, and 32 strikeouts against 17 walks.
The Giants will probably be replacing their entire pitching staff over the next couple of seasons, as we have to assume that Logan Webb is closer to washed than not, but now that the Giants have completed five years without a winning season and have had just 1 in their last 10, I think we can dispense with the “next year will be the year!” thinking. This is a long-term project where most of the principles are still learning what they don’t know. Bloom’s year of shadowing is certainly one of the best ways to go about a rebuild and it’s too bad more organizations don’t do that. In the reporting of Posey’s takeover, there wasn’t a story that showed he was doing exactly that. It was more that he was hanging around and “getting the gist” of it before making his pitch to become POBO. But Bloom has been able to make it appear that the Cardinals aren’t stuck in a long-term rebuild. That might not actually be the case (depending on how this season shakes out, first and foremost), but vibes matter and the Cards’ vibes are considerably better today than they were expected to be a year ago.
The Giants cannot say the same.
This is another series where a Computer Team will take on the anti-Computer Squad of the San Francisco Giants. Usually, the Computer Teams rip the Giants in half like the mother alien did in Aliens, but this is the last leg of a long road trip for a weird west coast trip for the Cards that began at Dodger Stadium then went to Coors Field and now ends in Oracle Park. On the other hand, that trip to Coors Field involved one of the most racist outbursts on a major league field this century, when umpire Doug Eddings stopped the game to demand that rookie Cardinals pitcher Hancel Rincon adjust his crooked cap, then had the gall to say it was Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman who had made the request (he hadn’t). The next day, both the Cardinals and the Rockies united to tilt their caps in solidarity with Rincon and as an f-you to Eddings.
Maybe that flash of solidarity helps the Cardinals fight through the fatigue. The Giants are in such disarray that they might just crumble in even the tiniest show of unity.
Series Overview
Who: San Francisco Giants (59-84) vs. St. Louis Cardinals (72-72)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Monday at 5:10pm PT, Tuesday at 6:45pm PT, Wednesday at 12:45pm PT
National broadcasts: NBC/Peacock (Monday)
Projected starters
Monday: Logan Webb (RHP 8-8, 4.21 ERA) vs. Michael McGreevy (RHP 6-9, 3.97 ERA)
Tuesday: Landen Roupp (RHP 8-13, 4.17 ERA) vs. Quinn Mathews (LHP 1-2, 4.38 ERA)
Wednesday: Blade Tidwell (RHP 0-2, 4.43 ERA) vs. TBD
Prediction time
Carson Seymour has allowed 14 home runs in 32 MLB appearances (43.75%) and yesterday, to up for all the games he hadn’t allowed a homer in this season, he allowed two. If he gets in to a game in this series, I predict he will allow a home run. Because that’s what he does.
