Before the recent stall, our 1-4 in the lineup was amongst the most productive in MLB. Our rotation has 3-5 solidified with McGreevy, Pallante, and Leahy. We have a closer near the top in saves and a great setup man in Soriano and another promising in in Graceffo. Gastelum has been taking his lumps but did earn his promotion. Baez is on his way along with Cintje and Liam Doyle. We have two young stars in JJ and Walker.mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑02 Aug 2026 10:04 amYes, they will have to spend significantly, at some point, to add a few, select, key FAs.CorneliusWolfe wrote: ↑02 Aug 2026 09:57 amThe idea that a front office can formulaically draft its way to “42 fWAR” and hit on enough prospects, all within the same window, is not realistic. If winning baseball were purely linear, every team with a top-ranked farm system would win a WS.mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑02 Aug 2026 09:21 am There is no viable option other than to have a strong farm system that develops a lot of talented prospects.
For example, if you want just a 90 win team, you need about 42 fWAR in talent.
The typical values on the FA market for fWAR are $8-$10 million per fWAR.
So if you had to buy all of your 42 fWAR from FAs, your payroll would be in the range of $336-$420 million.
Since the Cardinals have typically had payrolls in the $170, $180 million range - obviously they need a lot of less-than-full-market-value players, who come from the farm system to have 90 win, 92 win, 95 win, etc. rosters.
Wins Above Replacement measures volume, not high-leverage execution or postseason resilience. Top prospects fail at alarming rates due to injuries and mechanical exposure. Young rosters lack leadership, especially with weak coaching.
Baseball is a game of human variance, not a deterministic simulation where inputs guarantee outputs.
Top prospects bust or stall frequently.
Buying established, predictable MLB production eliminates the guessing game. And I don’t mean as occasional mid-tier filler. Cardinals are going to have to spend - significantly - to win. They aren’t going to get 90% there with prospects.
But that spending comes AFTER you have developed the core of young players that you need to build around. Only AFTER you have developed that core do you know what are the priority holes you have to fill. And you have to keep at acquiring and developing prospects until you get to that core of young players on your ML roster.
It's not just spending - it's timely, informed, and smart spending that will be necessary.
Is that not enough young talent to work with? If we keep waiting, the young talent we current have is going to be deep in arbitration and reaching free agency and will be lost. The time to shift to a winning mentality is this offseason. The stars will NEVER perfectly align. Keep waiting and making cherry picked metric based excuses and this team will continue to bottom feed.
Worst to first isn’t happening. Incremental success is more sensible. To think we’re just going to jump straight from non-playoff bottom feeder to WS winner is ridiculous.