coyoteshockeyfan said:
How many complete players are there in the entire game?
Spend like this? Their payroll is 16th in the league. They have shed something like $10M off of last year's payroll alone. It stands at $63M this year, and that doesnt include a cent of the $19M the team picked up in the off-season, and more notably, management has stated that they are "under budget." Plus, there is another $8M ready to come off the books at the end of the season, and even more if Gonzalez is traded.
I am not certain which Cardinals team you are suggesting here, but I am guessing its the Arizona Cardinals as the St. Louis Cardinals do not have much young, homegrown talent on their roster. Exactly what have the Arizona Cards done to deserve such a tag as being a "brilliant example?" They havent won anything yet, and its anybodys guess as to how they will do this year. Has their drafting improved the last two years? Sure. Have they proven capable of doing anything yet? Nope, they have done absolutely nothing.
I am speaking specifically to our huge contracts for Glaus, Green, Gonzo and Ortiz. These players simply don't justify the money they are getting. More specifically we added quite a bit of payroll in the offseason for Glaus Green and Ortiz, and we've seen how that worked out. We don't have the abilities of a team like the Yankees or Boston or Chicago to overpay anyone. Every contract should be a well thought out one, and I fail to see that with many of our signings. There are teams with much smaller payrolls that are far more successful. Perhaps we should try and learn from them.
The problem here is an issue of perception. We were a terrible team last year, and management somehow came up with a grand scheme to add veterans with the idea that they could contend. Let's not fool ourselves, this team is terrible. They have every opportunity to jump on the worst division in years, yet we are still losing series after series.
I believe that if you compare both the Cardinals and the D-Backs, there are a lot of similarities. Rosters filled with mediocre players and no sense of direction. The Cardinals purged the rosters, decided to build through the draft and they have completely changed the perception (and hopefully the results) of the team. This is in stark contrast to the Dbacks, who last season decided to invest way too much into a bunch of players that have made minor differences, but will in no way lead this team to the playoffs. At least with the Cardinals you can make a realistic argument that those in charge are making the right moves and "have a plan". That's the most frustrating aspect of what the Dbacks are doing, there appears to be no plan, just delusions of grandeur.
I don't want to seem like a wet blanket, because we've gone through this argument before, but I love the D-Backs as well, but ever since we've won the championship, I've seen a complete lack of direction and it frustrates me to no end. If we didnt have some unbelievable drafting, things would be looking extremely glum.
