Today's show was a little different because the team had the day off ahead of tomorrow's season opening exhibition game.
Randal Grichuk and Sam Freeman both checked in on their way in for extra work. Freeman was previously scheduled to throw a bullpen. He's out of options and in the mix for one of the final relief spots.
John Mozeliak: The General Manager joined the show before he attended the team's scout school. The typical scout has a baseball background and likely played the game at a high level, but the scouts in camp today all have unique backgrounds. These scouts are being groomed as potential front office personnel and all have one year contracts. The club developed this program last year because it wants to be more self sufficient in replenishing its front office as talent departs to go to other teams. The team is often overwhelmed when it utilizes external sources to fill positions, so having an internal pipeline improves efficiency. One external hire that has worked out is Assistant GM Michael Girsch who formerly worked in finance. He sent Mo a sample of his evaluations and took a massive pay cut to join the team. Mo and his team have identified some market inefficiencies recently but the burden is on them to continually work to identify and take advantage of these.
The baseball industry has changed dramatically since Mo began his career. When he first started as a BP pitcher for the Rockies in 1993, he described the entire industry as, "roughly $900 million", whereas now it's, "maybe $9 billion". Since the industry has exploded it's a big business now and it is imperative to bring business techniques to the table. It's also imperative to develop proprietary solutions to problems whereas all teams contracted with the same vendors in the past.
Mo talked a little about the farm system and feels it's unfair to characterize the system as thin. The system graduated a number of top talents, so it would be impossible to match the strength offered in previous years. He acknowledges one glaring weakness is that there's no impact player at the top levels like that has been in previous years but thinks that could change with the emergence of Alex Reyes and/or Rob Kaminsky. He's pleased with the depth at the higher levels and there are a number of players who can help the MLB team this year.
One player that has impressed Mo early in camp is Jaime Garcia. Mo is interested to see how his health could impact the team and his impression of Jaime's potential contribution is much more favorable now than it was two weeks ago. The situation with Jaime will work itself out and it's important to for him and his staff to think about the best long-term plan. Specifically, he wants to be smart about how many innings each of the starting pitchers are throwing. Neither Michael Wacha nor Carlos Martinez have thrown more than 120 MLB innings in a season. The AAA rotation projects to have Tim Cooney, Tyler Lyons, and Marco Gonzales who could provide serviceable innings in the majors at some point this year. Beyond the rotation, he's not overly concerned with the composition of the bench or bullpen because spring games haven't started yet. There's little to be gained from the workouts. The Opening Day roster is not his primary concern. He's concerned about providing the organization with the best chance to win over the course of the season so player flexibility will be valued when making the decisions. This suggests out-of-options players like Pete Kozma and Sam Freeman could break camp with the team and get a chance to stick in April.
The team did its homework this offseason and explored all available options, but ultimately decided it was not worth signing a big money free agent pitcher. Had they signed a pitcher, they would have felt compelled to trade one of their current starters and Mo did not feel like he could get the value needed to make the team better by doing that. There was talk about restructuring John Lackey's contract but since paying him the league minimum was a major component of the trade last year, ultimately they decided to leave it. Mo would think about extending him but wants to let things play out for now. Lackey could also want to test free agency.
On the whole, Mo doesn't spend a lot of time reflecting on the team's success. He is constantly thinking about the future and how he can best position the team going forward. Even after winning the 2011 World Series, his attention had shifted to the impending Albert Pujols negotiations and Tony La Russa's retirement.
Marco Gonzales: Marco feels very comfortable in camp after joining the team in the postseason last year. It's nice to not be the new guy despite being a rookie. Marco talked about the great leadership on the team and said that everyone on the team would agree that Wainwright is the leader. One aspect of the 'Cardinal Way' is that the best players on the team are also the best leaders and the best people off the field.
Even though he's competing for the fifth starter spot, he doesn't know what the season will hold for him. He knows whoever is on the mound will do a good job. He loved pitching out of the bullpen, coming into high-leverage situations, and unleashing for an inning. He's been a starter all his life, but would be very comfortable and enjoy coming out of the bullpen if that's how he can best help the team. He wouldn't go as far to call himself the best hitting pitcher on the team and said that he has a leg up on the rest of the group since he was most recently a full time hitter. He'd still take himself in a competition, but Wainwright has a good amount of pop and would challenge him.
Mike Matheny: The guys covered Matheny's post-workout media availability. Most of the discussion surrounded Matheny catching Marco Gonzales and Sam Tuivailala's bullpens. Matheny likes to get a first hand look at each of the pitchers and he frequently catches them during the season. He even did it during a game in Cincinnati in 2012. Matheny said Tuivailala's breaking ball and changeup are now big league caliber. He sounded more impressed with the changeup which Tuivailala is able to throw from the same arm slot and speed as his fastball.
Question of the Day: Despite the Today's question was 'What super power could you have?'
Player
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Answer
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Sam Freeman
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Be invisible
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Randal Grichuk
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Fly
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John Gast
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Invisibility
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