Ok.
But at what point were we discussing how good deals were "at the time they were made"? It's pretty obvious that we can look back at that deal as one of the best ever, no? And thus, Jocketty should be getting some serious credit for. In fact, he should be getting even more credit for the fact that he was ahead of the curve, and was able to get Pujols for such a bargain.
By no means am I saying Jocketty was somehow lucky putting together this team. He is still one of the best GM's in the game. The Pujols contract will probably go down as arguably the best contract in the history of the game. As Puffy said though, at the time, it was risky. Walt did a very good job of having foresight on Pujols.
Well my post was referring to your comment as to how much credit to give Jocketty for the 2011 team regarding Pujols.... which, even if you want to somehow call him lucky for drafting Pujols, you can't call that contract luck. That was a crafty, crafty move, and it no doubt helped the Cardinals win the title in 2011.
Or could it be that the division is getting better? If you look at their run differential last year, that was the run differential of a 90+ win team. They ran into some bad luck during the season. Thankfully for me, they found it again during the playoffs.
As far as the "magic running out", I don't see it esp. with the amount of talent they have in the minors. In fact, I would blame part of the reason on averaging 88 wins on the fact that the minor league talent was depleted for a time. They've built that back up and you're going to see young players like Oscar Taveras, Kolten Wong, Shelby Miller, Carlos Martinez, Trevor Rosenthal, etc take the field. The Cardinals are becoming a younger team (especially around 2014). They also are getting a lot of money off the books in the next couple of years plus will be signing a TV deal in 2017ish that will probably be worth 4-5 times as much as they're getting now. What they will not be able to cover with young talent in the system they can make up for it in free agent signings. It's the formula that they've used to success in the past and will continue to use success. The bottom line is that the Cardinals aren't going away anytime soon.
Yep, that's a grey area for sure.
Should any GM get credit for drafting anyone? I would say yes, because he put the decision makers in place. Likewise if the farm stinks, the GM shouldn't be able to blame the farm director or whoever is running the draft.
A Reds' scout saw Brandon Phillips in a spring training game and called Wayne Kriv (Red's GM at the time), very enthusiastic about Brandon's swing.. this compelled Wayne to trade for BP. I would still give Wayne Kriv credit for that, although if one reallly wanted to split hairs, the lion share of the credit goes to the scout.
I guess I subscribe to the model that the GM is ultimately responsible for everything. I bet you could drop Walt or the current Cardinals GM into any team and that team would be better in 3 years (barring an impossible ownership).
Honestly, I kind of chuckle when people claim that Walt really isn't that responsible for the two playoff appearances we've had, just because Bruce/Ceuto/Votto/etc weren't signed/drafted under his watch.
It would've been REALLY easy to screw up and trade the wrong guys. (Plenty of calls to trade Cueto, Phillips and Votto "while we can still get value for them" on this forum) He also gets credit for finding a way to keep them all under contract. Even withthe second wildcard, it's tough to make the playoffs. Any GM that can get his team to the playoffs did a great job, regardless of what he inherited.
[Phil ] Castellini celebrated the team's farm system and noted the team had promising prospects who would one day be great Reds -- and then joke then they'd be ex-Reds, saying "of course we're going to lose them". #SellTheTeamBob
Nov. 13, 2007: One of the greatest days in Reds history: John Allen gets the boot!
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