Time for some alternate history
Let’s play a fun game. It is also not a fun game. It’s fun because imagining alternative realities is fun. In my opinion anyway. The many different forms of media featuring alternative realities suggests I am not alone. I am on season 3 of For All Mankind, and while that show blows through time way too fast, it’s also interesting to me. The Plot Against America, highly recommend, good miniseries from a few years ago.
It’s also kind of not fun. That’s because in probably the majority of cases, if we tweak one or two or ten decisions by the Cardinals in the past two years, we get better baseball as fans. Like hard to see how things could have gone worse. I don’t think, as far as expectations versus reality go, I’m going to see a season quite like 2023 ever again.
Here’s the game. Change one thing the Cardinals did and how is reality affected? We’ll start in the offseason of 2022-2023.
Trade for Sean Murphy
Alternate trade: Brendan Donovan and Tink Hence for Murphy
Okay so the reported rumor is that the Athletics asked for Donovan and Nootbaar, which is just silly and would never happen. The Cardinals put a self-imposed deadline on when they needed to get a catcher, which was stupid, and eventually, they would be talked down from that, but I’m unwilling to entertain a scenario where the price isn’t still “too high.”
Why did I choose Donovan over Nootbaar as the one to stay? Nolan Gorman of course. Gorman haters may find that silly, but most people were not down on Gorman then. And Donovan hadn’t really developed as a playable outfielder either at that point. It makes sense.
Murphy is a 2 win upgrade over Contreras in 2023. Donovan was only worth 1.5 fWAR last year and I don’t know that his loss affects the win total much because it wouldn’t be hard to replace that. Also, I’m one of those people who think the pitchers’ struggles in April are a little tied to Contreras. So I expect a better April from the team, and I think the poor April is half the reason the team sucked after that. The other half being the team literally sold at the deadline.
Last year, the Cardinals went 10-19 in March and April. By pythag, they should have went 13-16. They went 1-5 in one-run games. So the Contreras and Murphy swap is quite a big difference in April specifically if things go exactly the same for Murphy as a Cardinals, which of course they wouldn’t but how else are we going to do this?
So in April specifically, Murphy was worth 1.4 fWAR with a 160 wRC+ and phenomenal defense. Conteras was worth 0.4 fWAR with a 111 wRC+ and below average defense. I actually, he was probably worse defensively in April specifically than the numbers say – game planning and whatnot, things not measured than this suggests. Let’s knock off a couple more runs. So this would be a 12 run swing. Six runs defensively and 6 runs offensively. By pythag at least, they’re basically a .500 team. Let’s say they still underperform pythag and go 12-17 instead.
May is even more in Sean Murphy’s favor. Contreras was worth -0.4 fWAR and Murphy was worth 1.3 fWAR. This is a 17 run difference. 5 runs defensively and 12 runs offensively. The Cardinals went 15-13 and “should” have went 16-12. This was a good month. With Murphy, they should have went 18-10. Again, I’ll assume the same luck. Cardinals go 17-11 instead. Now they are 29-28.
Murphy doesn’t play as much in June, maybe minor injury stuff, but outperforms Contreras again. 0.8 fWAR in 15 games compared to 0.2 fWAR in 20 games for Contreras. 3 run difference defensively and 3 runs offensively. They actually played pretty poorly in June. Let’s just say they pick up an extra one-run game win, and go 9-14 instead. New record is 38-42. Real life record is 33-47.
Murphy’s bat cools down and Contreras’ heats up in July. We’d be worse off with Murphy for this month. It’s a half win difference. The Cardinals manage to go 1-5 this month in one-run games and 2-3 in 2-run games, so I don’t really think a half win is gonna affect the record. So the Cardinals head into the deadline with a 52-55 record. They would be 4.5 games out of first.
They probably buy right? But they also don’t get the influx of talent in the system, but we won’t know the long-term effects that for a little while. So through today at least, buying wouldn’t affect anything. I think.
After that, I’m not sure. You guys can fill in the blanks. If you play the odds, maybe they make the playoffs, maybe they don’t. But if they do, they probably don’t win the World Series.
The Murphy-Contreras swap for 2025 does not help the Cards one bit. Murphy has not been great this year and has also been injured for a good portion. The Cardinals very likely do not sign Murphy to an extension and he’s a free agent after next year. That would seem to be more convenient for the Cardinals than Contreras’ five year deal with the catching system.
So in one way, worse set up for the future (no Thomas Saggesse, Tekoah Roby, Zack Showalter, Cesar Prieto, Sem Robberse, or Adam Kloffenstein), but the catcher situation kind of would be.
So eh? This is probably the biggest change you could make and would have made 2023 more fun to watch and would not helped 2024, but might be better in August of 2024 that this didn’t happen given the deadline moves last year?
Keeping Jordan Walker in AAA
Not going to go near into detail on this one because it’s a lot more unknowable. To me, this is a hypothetical that can only be answered by Dylan Carlson. If Carlson really does flame out or is nothing more than a bench bat, I don’t think this is quite as huge as I once did. If he emerges as a capable starter, well that changes things.
And no, if Carlson is in fact not a good player going forward, I’m not sure we can play the hypothetical that if we gave him a chance, he’d be good. Which is why Carlson’s future determines this hypothetical.
But two things likely happen. The first is that Walker would be in the MLB right now if he started in AAA last year. He would have been allowed to hit down there, and since he has a 119 wRC+ in the majors last year, he pretty likely would have hit there. So I suppose this year is the disappointing adjustment year? Or maybe he’s already made the adjustments? Again tough to say.
But in reality, Lars Nootbaar got hurt on Opening Day, and he’d be in the majors on Game 2.
And the second thing likely to happen is the Cardinals probably manage to trade Carlson for more than one month of a journeyman reliever.
What if the Cardinals didn’t sign Lance Lynn?
This one… wouldn’t really affect the outlook of the 2024 Cardinals. Not in a positive way anyway. Because Zack Thompson bombed out this year. Andre Pallante still emerges in this reality, probably the same way in real life, because he was not on anyone’s radar to start in Spring Training.
Generally speaking, I don’t think seeing more of the AAA guys in April or May would have done better than Lynn. They’d get MLB reps and maybe that would help with the future. But you’re not going to convince me Gordon Graceffo is outperforming Lynn. Michael McGreevy made a midseason adjustment and only now would I consider him someone who I’d rather pitch than Lynn. April McGreevy is getting rocked. Similarly I think Liberatore needs relief reps, because he wasn’t getting anywhere as a starter. He’s learning out to get guys out in short bursts. Maybe he can expand that to long bursts. He has at moments shown in, but he’s mostly been not great starting this year.
So I don’t think 2024 is better, but maybe it would be good for the future. Maybe. I think July is maybe the first month of the year where not having vet pitchers would be convenient. I don’t think any viable candidates really was going to be good back in April, and I don’t think sucking in the MLB automatically helps development. Most of these guys had things to learn in AAA (and still do possibly!)
What if Victor Scott II stays in AAA to begin the year?
This is legitimately a one-win swing if the keys are handed to Mike Siani. Scott was worth -0.7 fWAR in his first try at the majors. We can’t know how Siani would perform if given the keys immediately, but based on his actual performance, this is at least a 10 run difference. In his first 67 PAs (about the same as Scott had in his first 20 games), Siani was worth 0.3 fWAR. That’s a 7 run improvement offensively, and 3 win improvement defensively.
Can’t really do the math on this one because the Cardinals way overperformed their pythag in real life, so I can’t pretend they would overperform as much. Their pythag would look better. But I couldn’t tell you how much the win total changes.
That’s a few I thought of. I stayed away from the “What if they signed Jordan Yamamoto?” because then we’re imagining the Cardinals as a different organization. Feel free too. I do recommend staying in the Cards’ budget range for realism purposes.