Hello Cardinal Fans!

    Our Cardinals are in the midst of a tough schedule for their September run for a playoff spot.  They are playing much better, but it may be too little, too late.

     Now that our team is fun to watch again, we’re having another Birdwatching at Gators in Brownwood on Saturday, September 14 against the Blue Jays!  Game begins at 3:00.  Contact Cathy Edwards at cathye_58@hotmail.com to reserve your seat.  (Thank you Cathy.)

  

                                                                WORLD SERIES DINNER AT BIG CYPRESS

OCTOBER 11

    Yes, it’s a WORLD SERIES DINNER!  Well, that is always our hope in October at least.  But, we have a fantastic dinner fit for World Series Champions for only $18 per person!  Check this out menu:

 Entrees:  Salmon Piccata fillets in a lemon butter white wine sauce garnished with capers.

or Tuscan Garlic Chicken cutlets fraped in parmesan cream sauce that has been tossed with sweet pepper and spinach.

Along with: Salad, roasted root vegetable, roasted asparagus, roll and butter

Dessert:  Strawberry Short cake

SPEAKER:  Still to be determined.  Assistant General Manager Gary Larocque is working to find us the perfect speaker for our organization.

    Checks should be payable to Cardinals Nation, and sent to Barb Miller, 2077 Vickers Place, TV, 32163.  Doors will open at 5:45; meeting begins at 6:10.  Deadline to sign up is Friday, October 4.  MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE YOUR ENTRÉE CHOICE FOR EACH PERSON.

 

    INTERESTING ARTICLE FROM THE ATHLETIC:

 

Don't expect mass front-office changes

Fans in a number of major-league cities want change. Ownership changes in many cases, yes. But front-office changes, at the very least. And in many cases, those changes seem unlikely.  “I’m a huge believer in stability and continuity, and those are competitive advantages in professional sports, that reacting and change don’t necessarily mean improvement,” Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said last month when asked about the job status of his general manager, Ross Atkins.  No one should be surprised in the coming weeks to hear similar comments from other executives with disappointing clubs. Which raises the questions: Why are owners so complacent? Why aren’t more front offices on the hot seat?  Many fans of the Blue Jays are exasperated, if not downright angry. Ditto for fans of the Cardinals, Mariners, Giants, Reds and Pirates. Those teams intended to contend and didn’t. And yet, more trust-the-process blather likely is coming their fans’ way. (Insular, sadsack franchises — the White Sox, Athletics, Marlins and Rockies, to name four  — belong in a separate category. Those teams barely even bothered to try.)  For underachieving clubs, managers are always easy scapegoats. The Mariners already fired theirs. The Reds, Pirates and others might, too. But modern managers are glorified middle men, extensions of their front offices. A managerial change often is an act of deflection by the head of baseball operations, a bid to buy more time.  Shapiro had a point. Stability and continuity indeed should be valued. If teams, particularly in this age of social media, reacted to every fan eruption, they would be firing people every three days, if not every three minutes.  Still, the passivity in the sport is disturbing. Part of it might stem from the expansion of the postseason in 2022, and the illusion of contention provided by the addition of a third wild card in each league. Consider the Cubs. A good month of August thrust them into the fringes of the wild-card race, and now things don’t look so bad, if you’re willing to overlook how for four months they underachieved.  Another factor is the analytically based groupthink that pervades front offices. Fire your head of baseball operations, and who will you hire? Probably another executive whose decision-making is not all that dissimilar from the one you let go.  The biggest issue, though, is that many teams face minimal financial pressure, the kind of pressure that would motivate a business to act.

Q AND A FROM THE POST: 

 Q  I disagree with your teammate's (Gordo) premise that fans wouldn't tolerate a rebuild. There's a difference between letting young, potentially exciting, players play everyday and loading up the roster with bloated past Cardinals and pushing a narrative of deep playoff run expectations. This organization is failing because their messaging is terrible, it lacks transparency, and it often times a complete fabrication. The empty seats aren't because fans don't want to cheer for the players, the empty seats are because fans don't want to reward a complacent ownership group for kicking the can down the road year over year with a front office that is past it's prime. Fans love Cardinal baseball, they love the game day experience, but this relationship has become a one-way street where the only people investing in it are the fans.

 A  You have a point. I've heard others promote the idea that Cardinals fans would get behind youth movement and a new core of players that the organization will build around for the coming years. In theory, it gets the Cardinals out of what many view as a MLB middle ground -- not a bottom feeder and not a championship contender.

 However, I'm also not sure that a majority of fans would think that way. I'd think there would be fans that would see a youth movement, accompanied by a lower payroll (because young players' salaries are artificially lowered by the mlb salary system), as ownership still not spending on their team.

I could see some fans looking at a lower payroll and using that as a reason not to go to games. The sentiment then being, "If they're not going to spend to have a competitive team, then why should I spend my money? If they want to cut payroll and go into the season expecting not to contend, then why should I pay for that?

 Not to mention, a rebuild typically isn't a one-year blip on the radar. A full tear down and rebuild around young talent could be a three-year, four-year or five-year process. I certainly have doubts about how many people will pay to come to watch a team finish under .500 for an extended period of time. And when they do start to turn things around after a long period of losing, there's often a slow return by many fans.

  

Q  I think Luken Baker, International League  MVP for 2023, has been a pleasant surprise. What are the chances Mo lets Goldy walk and goes with a tandem at first next year?

 A  I wouldn't think it's impossible, but I think it's all a matter or what it would cost to bring Goldschmidt back, whether he'd want to come back, and how they see his role next season. I could see them bringing him back, but I could also see them making a choice to move on if they feel it's financially restrictive to bring him back.

 

Go Cardinals – I’m still believing!

Bruce