Cardinals have an easy top 5 lineup, elite defense, and a very strong back of their pen. They also have ridiculous depth in their lineup, with guys like Yepez, Carlson, Gorman, and Burleson all potentially off the bench any given night. Their rotation is definitely the weak spot. They have a very solid regular season rotation, but no one on this rotation would even be a 2 on any other WS contender. I don't even think any of them have number 2 ceiling (maybe Flaherty if he could figure it all out again and Mikolas is definitely underrated). But you put their top 2 (which is very hard to define because they are all pretty even 3/4 caliber starters so how do you rank them) against Verlander/Scherzer, Fried/Strider, Nola/Wheeler, Burnes/Woodruff, Urias/Kershaw, Darvish/Snell, Cole/Rodon, McClanahan/Glasnow, Gaussman/Manoah, Bieber/McKenzie, Cease/Lynn, Valdez/Javier, or Castillo/Ray or Gilbert. They are worse off than any of those playoff teams. And plenty of them are as strong in the other aspects of the roster too. They need at least one ace level pitcher and in today's playoff environment, you really need 2. The top contenders have that but the Cardinals most definitely do not.
The key to keeping Walker up is not that he is starting, as that was a confidence builder and P.R. Move. It is that he is one of 4 outfielders who will likely (if Walker succeeds, as expected) will have almost equal numbers of games as a daily starter. On days off, which Ollie sees as critical to resting players and keeping bench players ready, some will D.H. (Since your DH is a left-handed batter) against lefties; some will play left, right, or center, while Jordan Walker will likely play only left and DH or pinch hit. KEY: In so doing, WALKER WILL, if successful, PLAY AS MANY OR MORE GAMES THAN AT TRIPLE A! He will learn MORE at the big league level, around big leaguers than at triple A.
No! Believe it or not, center is apparently the Canadian experiment. She is absolutely correct, Lars &I any outfielder not named Jordan Walker can play any other position, including center!
@@edwardpresutti2941 he'll get more chances against lefties playing everyday in the majors. Besides they all but admitted he wasn't going to get better hitting against the pitcher's in AAA, he needs reps against the best to get better.
@@audio5552 if you look at it miles mikolas only have one really good year since you've been with the Cardinals he was below 500 last year yes he didn't have much run support last year but he's not a number one or number two he is a number three starter just check is stats
