Cardinals Questions for 2014

It was a good run for the Cardinals in 2013.  No one likes to get to the World Series and lose, but there's no shame in just making it to the World Series.  Overall it was still a great year for the Cardinals.  They lead the National League in wins and had a team filled with rookies or second year players.  They should be competitive for years to come.

Needless to say, a team that can boast a World Series victory two years ago, a NLCS appearance a year ago, and a National League pennant this year, is in pretty good shape.  There's no need to make any rash decisions for re-shaping the team.  In fact, they could do absolutely nothing in the off-season and still field a pretty darn competitive team for next year.

However, here are the three roster questions I believe the Cardinals will be thinking a lot about this off-season.

1) Who plays right field next year?

Carlos Beltran was an incredible pickup in 2012.  In two seasons he produced a 6.2 WAR and two All-Star appearances.  I'm sure that higher ups in the Cardinals organization were hoping top prospect Oscar Taveras would be ready to join the Cardinals in 2014, but it appears he'll need some more time in AAA.

So what are the Cardinals options.

Option A) Re-sign Carlos Beltran

After two All-Star seasons, Beltran will probably get a lot of offers.  If the Cardinals could finagle a one year deal for Beltran for a good price, they should do it.  However, it appears he's performed well enough to deserve (and get) a two or three year deal from another team.

Option B) Sign a stop-gap right fielder for one year

There's plenty of outfielders that could be signed for one year at a cheap price until Oscar Taveras is ready.  Chris Young is an outfielder that comes to mind.  After a pretty awful 2013, he could have a rebound year.

Option C) Move Allen Craig to Right, put Matt Adams at first

Craig can play the outfield and Matt Adams has shown himself a capable starter.  In limited playing time, Adams produced a .839 OPS in 2013.  As a starter in September (after Allen Craig got hurt), he was incredible, posting a .952 OPS with 8 home runs.

What should the Cardinals do?

I think the Cardinals should take option C.  Oscar Taveras seems to need a little more time at AAA.  He very well could be available by mid-season so signing Carlos Beltran to a multi-year deal doesn't seem like the best option.

If Matt Adams is used for trade bait, I think the Cardinals should sign a cheap one-year stop gap solution.

For those wondering what happens when Oscar Taveras is called up, he will likely compete w/ Jon Jay for the centerfield starting position.

2) How do you handle David Freese, Matt Carpenter, and prospect Kolten Wong?

2011 World Series hero David Freese was an All-Star in 2012 posting a respectable 3.8 WAR.  However, he was pretty bad in 2013.  He posted a WAR of -0.3 and is entering his second year of arbitration.  I'm not sure what Freese can command in 2014, but it'll probably be a small bump up to 4M.

Normally, a team wouldn't think twice of trading a player only one year removed from an All-Star season.  However, the Cardinals are in the lucky (or unlucky?) situation that they have multiple infielders available to play third base and second base.  This gives the Cardinals two options.

Option A) Trade David Freese, move Matt Carpenter to third, put Kolten Wong at second base

Option B) Keep David Freese at third, Matt Carpenter at second, and use Kolten Wong as bencher/trade bait

What should the Cardinals do?

It seems almost blasphemous to entertain the thought of trading a local St. Louisian World Series hero, but I think it's the best move long term for the Cardinals.

Freese is already 30 years old and has never been a strong defender at third base.  2012 All-Star Matt Carpenter is a few years younger at 27 and his natural position is third base.  Prospect Kolten Wong appears to be ready to play second base.

While the Cardinals aren't going to get a grade-A prospect for Freese, they should be able to get atleast some low to mid-tier prospects in return.  Freese still has two arbitration years left, and as I said, he's only 1 year removed from an All Star appearance.  In addition, the third base free-agent market is very weak for 2014.

As an aside, according to Baseball America, these were the top ten prospects in the Cardinals organization going into 2013.

1. Oscar Taveras
2. Shelby Miller
3. Carlos Martinez
4. Trevor Rosenthal
5. Kolten Wong
6. Michael Wacha
7. Matt Adams
8. Tyrell Jenkins
9. Carson Kelly
10. Stephen Piscotty

Players #2 through #7 are now on the big league club.  That's 6 players they brought up, w/ #1 Oscar Taveras not too far behind.  In the previous 5 years the Cardinals brought up no more than 2-3 from each of their top ten.

The Cardinals farm system is far from weak, but it does take away some of the depth in the farm system.  Some trades for prospects might be good to help re-fill the coffers.

3) Can the Cardinals upgrade shortstop?

Pete Kozma's overall WAR in 2013 was -0.2.  While he did a good job defensively (1.3 WAR), his offense was quite bad (-0.9) and amongst the worst in the league.  Casual searching shows he had the worst OPS (.548) amongst shortstops with atleast 400 at bats.

What are the Cardinal's options?

Option A) Play Daniel Descalso at shorstop

Daniel Descalso got some playing time at short towards the end of the year, presumably because Kozma was hitting so poorly.

Descalso is a little bit better as a hitter (.656 OPS) but a bit worse on defense.  It's about a wash.

Option B)  Sign a free agent

Johnny Peralta and Stephen Drew will headline the shortstop free agents out there.  There will be decent demand for them, but either could be had for a non-ridiculous amount of money.  Maybe several years for ~10-12M a year.  Peralta normally would get more per year, but his PED suspension might lower the overall market for his services.

If they are priced out of the market, there are cheaper options, most notably Rafael Furcal.  After being out all of 2013 with an injury, the Cardinals could sign him and give him another chance.  He's another year older, but still performed admirably in 2012 when he was healthy.

One free agent that catches my eye is former Cardinal Brendan Ryan.  He's a similar no-hit shortstop like Kozma, but is a better defender.

Option C) Trade for a shortstop

With so many major league ready players, a trade is certainly an option.  If the Cardinals keep David Freese and sign a stop-gap right fielder, Matt Adams and Kolten Wong could be available for trade.  One of the young pitchers, such as Carlos Martinez, could also be made available.  Not-yet MLB ready prospect Stephen Piscotty's name has also been thrown around as trade bait.  Some have even suggested Shelby Miller is tradeable, although I doubt it.

Troy Tulowitzki's name has been brought up at times and the Cardinals are one of the few organizations with the trade chips the Rockies would want.  However, Tulowitzki is owed 130M over the next 7 years, which is probably outside of the Cardinal's comfort zone given Tulowitzki's injury history.

Jose Reyes' name was also brought up during the season as the Blue Jays began to fade.  He has a more reasonable 80M due to him over the next 4 years.

Asdrubal Cabrera's name was also brought up during the regular season.  He seems like a more likely target as the Indians won't command an arm and leg for him.  However, he only has one year left on his contract, therefore he may not be a long term option at shortstop.

Not so long ago a rumor began that the Cardinals and Rangers were talking about swapping their top prospects, Oscar Taveras and Jurickson Profar, for no reason other than organizational needs at certain positions.  It doesn't appear such a trade will occur.

What should they do?

I'm hoping the Cardinals will sign Stephen Drew or Jhonny Peralta.  With Chris Carpenter, Jake Westbrook, and Rafael Furcal's contracts off the books, there is more than enough money to sign one of them.  Throwing a few million stretch dollars in there won't hurt the Cardinal's budget much.  Even more money will be available assuming Carlos Beltran isn't resigned.  This also allows the Cardinals to keep their prospects w/o trading them away.

I'm not hopeful a trade for Jose Reyes or Troy Tulowitzki will happen.  The asking price from those teams will simply be too high.  I'd rather keep the young top prospects.

A trade for Asdrubal Cabrera is certainly possible and the price may be reasonable given he's likely a 1 year rental.


Overall

With so much success in the last three years, the Cardinals don't have to make any rash moves.  I think keeping and playing their young players is a smart move and will still keep the team competitive.  They may even be able to lower their team salary a bit to prepare for free agents in 2015 (Asdrubal Cabrera is on my radar) or sign their younger players to contracts through their arbitration years.

I'd love to see this lineup in 2014:

3B Matt Carpenter
2B Kolten Wong
LF Matt Holliday
RF Allen Craig
1B Matt Adams
C Yadier Molina
CF Jon Jay
SS Stephen Drew (hopefully, but perhaps Furcal, else it's Kozma)

with a rotation with

Adam Wainwright
Shelby Miller
Michael Wacha
Joe Kelly
Jaime Garcia (yes, he's due back)

and a bullpen with

Lance Lynn (back to the pen + sixth starter)
Seth Maness
Kevin Siegrist
Carlos Martinez (setup man + occasional starts)
Trevor Rosenthal (closer)
Randy Choate

John Axford (arbitration eligible)
Jason Motte (back from surgery - due 7.5M)

and a bench with
Shane Robinson
Tony Cruz
Daniel Descalso
One additional bench player

Of course I'm hoping at some point Oscar Taveras is brought up, and he will replace Jon Jay in centerfield.

Crazy Grad. School Stories

Not so long ago, I had a chance to meet and listen to a talk from Jorge Cham, the created of PhdComics.  He gave a hilarious talk about his comic strip, suffering through graduate school, and about how to deal with grad. school.

At the talk, I asked him what the craziest grad. student story of suffering or pain was that he had heard during his touring and talks.  He said that amongst the worst he ever heard were about students that went into their final thesis defense without a presentation or slides.

So I began to think of the best "grad. school" story I've heard.  Here's the one I could think of.  It's not about research or grad. school suffering, but it's still a funny story none the less.

My friend was TAing the CS class for business students.  It's the class where you teach Excel, Powerpoint, and some introductory programming in Visual Basic.  Since the class is all business students, and the majority of them do not intend to ever look at code in their life, the programming assignments are not liked.


So he tells me there is a website called hireacoder.com, where you can find programming contract work.  While the website is mostly for small contract work (i.e. design this aspect of a website for me) a fair amount of the contract work posted is apparently homework assignments from students.  While most of the people posting contracts are smart enough to anonymize the assignment, one was not and listed the class name and school in the contract (apparently cut & pasting it from the assignment).

A good samaritan found the class online and e-mailed the Professor and TAs about the cheater.  At first, the Professor said she was irate, but eventually got over it, realizing there was nothing she could do to catch the culprit.  After all, how were you going to catch the cheater out of a class for several hundred students.

Weeks later while grading the assignments, one of the TAs found a very special submission where "Written by Joe Smith @ Hire A Coder" was at the top of the comments.  Clearly, the student didn't even bother to look through the code they had bought and blindly turned it in.

When questioning the student, the Professor and TAs asked how much they paid for the assignment to be done.  The student said about $50 (late 1990s money).  Which the Professor replied, "There are senior CS students that would have done that for a slice of pizza.  So not only did you fail my class, you've also failed finance."

"The Internship" - Nerdy Stereotypes and Hollywood Silliness

I saw "The Internship" last night.  I wasn't too excited to see the movie, but wanted to see it to see how Hollywood might portray Silicon Valley, engineers, and the tech industry as a whole.

SPOILERS BELOW
SPOILERS BELOW
SPOILERS BELOW

First off, the movie didn't portray software engineers as complete losers, which is pretty good.  Atleast two characters, Neha and Stuart, are portrayed relatively well.  They are smart kids with good social skills.  The only negatives about them are normal "growing up" issues (i.e. communicating better).

However several characters are portrayed with the normal nerdy stereotypes.  Yo-yo, which they could have given a far more normal name, was home schooled his entire life, is a mama's boy, and punishes himself by pulling an eyebrow hair whenever he performs poorly.  "Headphones" (that's the name given on IMDB) is the stereotyped overweight computer genius that has no social skills.  He in fact states that he is uncomfortable around people.

Overall, it's pretty balanced.  There are some nerds and some normal kids, far better than the stereotyped portrayal of engineers.

While the portrayal of the characters was hit and miss, I couldn't help but laugh at the portrayal of many of the aspects of the actual job/work.  Here's the ones I could remember.

• In the movie groups of five interns are created and the teams are put into a battle royale of sorts against each other.  I don't know of any company in the tech industry that does such a battle.  In reality, interns are put to task on actual work.
• The team that wins the battle royale is guaranteed full time jobs at Google and everyone else isn't.  I find it humorous that the movie portrays Google as only having 5 full-time job openings.
• In one scene Yo-yo, Stuart, and Neha are having a heart to heart discussion about how they really need to win this contest because they really need the job at Google.  In reality, if you're smart enough to get an engineering internship at Google, you shouldn't have a problem finding a job in the tech industry.
• Despite skill levels and backgrounds being so different, apparently all interns are thrown into the same projects.  In reality, interns of different skill levels (or at a minimum, different backgrounds) would have different projects to work on.
• During one scene the intern team is required to "make a sale", however instead of trying to sell ads, they appear to be trying to sell real estate.

Junior High Career Options

Not so long ago, I somehow recalled my "What you should do for a career" test I took when I was in junior high.  These were the career options the test gave me.

Career Option #1: Puppeteer

Maybe I could have been the next Kevin Clash (puppeteer for Elmo) or Caroll Spinney (puppeteer for Big Bird/Oscar the Grouch), but fate would make me a programmer instead.  I assume my then interest in drawing comic books (i.e. liking art) and my parents forcing me to play piano (i.e. music) lead to the test giving me this result.

Career Option #2: Ferry Boat Captain

This isn't a joke, it literally said "Ferry Boat Captain".  I have no idea why this was given to me.  My best guess is b/c I like to fish.

Career Option #3: Computer Person

I can't remember if the test gave me Computer Engineer or Software Engineer or Computer Tech or Information Technology or some other random random tech position, but option #3 was at least pretty close.

Duck Tales on the NES

Recently I learned that the classic NES game Duck Tales was getting an HD remake for modern systems.  Here's the trailer:




It's considered one of the best games on the NES, placing at #10 on IGN's top 100 NES games of all time.  The game had incredible non-linear level design, secrets to discover all over the place, and (what many consider) some of the best music on the NES.

I was so fond of this game, I reached the point that I knew all of it's secrets.  I knew the game well enough I even got my high score printed in Nintendo Power!  (This is sometime in 1990, when I was 10-11).

However, it's funny looking back on the game as an adult.

(Spoiler Alert - telling game plots if you care)

The plot of the game is that you control Uncle Scrooge as he wanders the world looking for treasure to help him keep his hold as the world's richest Duck.

I think in today's post-financial crisis and post-occupy movements, having the protagonist of a children's game look like a greedy CEO is something that most video game/cartoon creators would likely pass over in today's social climate.

In addition, Uncle Scrooge isn't really going around the world looking for long lost treasure.  He goes around the world STEALING treasure.  There is one level in particular where he steals the great treasure from a ground of underground "mole" people.

I can't help but laugh thinking of a really modern review of the game, "Help Uncle Scrooge wander the world attacking indigenous people to steal their cultural treasures."

Les Misérables - Too Much Singing!

So I recently saw Les Misérables.  It was the first time I ever saw it in movie form or otherwise.  My immediate reaction after watching it was, "All they did was sing, there was no talking."  I'm used to musicals where it's half acting and half singing, and things just seemed out of whack in Les Misérables.

I wasn't sure if I was just imagining this, so I looked up the number of musical numbers in the following musicals. The musicals I selected are pretty much at random, whatever came to mind. I didn't bother to differentiate between orchestra only or singing numbers, b/c I haven't seen all of these.  I just counted the number of different items listed on Wikipedia.

Musical	Number of Musical Numbers
Les Misérables	50
Wicked	21
The Sound of Music	26
Phantom of the Opera	39
My Fair Lady	24
Cats	27
Chicago	21
The Book of Mormon	22
Grease	21
West Side Story	27
American Idiot	30

So I guess I wasn't imagining things, there are just way more musical numbers than the average musical.

Apple TV vs Xbox/Playstation

I saw this article, The Fall TV Lineup May Include Apple Dominating Gaming,  and wanted to comment, because I couldn't help but disagree.

The author makes the argument that an Apple TV would completely crush Xbox, PS3, Wii, etc.

Here are some of the arguments in the article:

Apple is going to dominate where their rivals cannot simply because of the support of small, third-party app developers.

That the Apple TV is already nearly powerful enough to run [games like Call of Duty]. Perhaps not the highest of the high end, but give it a year or two. That’s the thing: Apple will likely push yearly hardware (and software) updates for anything they do. Microsoft has not updated the Xbox in over 7 years. Huge mistake.

the audience for non-hardcore games when Apple opens up an Apple TV SDK will be much larger than the audience for the hardcore games.

Apple will not win this space by playing the game that Microsoft, Sony, and to some extent, Nintendo, are playing. They will win by changing the rules of the game. And that game is all about developers, developers, developers, developers.

I disagree with these based on one major theory:

The TV is not a casual entertainment device, it is a serious one.

People spend a lot of money on better sound, better definition TVs, etc. because they want a much higher quality experience when they sit down.

They pay a premium on cable, on video streaming, and movie disks (i.e. blue ray vs. DVD) simply for the privilege of experiencing this higher quality content.

On phones, people can play Angry Birds or Words With Friends in 5 minute increments, but I don't believe people do that on a TV.

This isn't to say there isn't a casual market for this.  After all, the Wii sold 100 million units.  There is a market for the casual, but is it one that can destroy the Xbox or Playstation?  I'm skeptical.  This is not a world where a Zynga can thrive, it is one where an Activision can thrive, where investing $50 million in the development of a game results in huge sales and profit.

Now, this isn't to say there won't be people that develop the $50 million dollar game for the Apple TV, I'm sure they will.  But will they develop it only for Apple TV or also for Xbox & Playstation?  If you're willing to put $50 million into the development of a game, I can't imagine it being for only one platform.