The other night, when me and Dan Buffa (whose main site, Dose Of Buffa, can be found here) did our monthly podcast, he brought up an issue that I have thought about in the past, but haven’t recently. As you can guess from the title, that issue is that the Cardinals have too many outfielders.
Currently we have Matt Holliday, Jon Jay, Peter Bourjos, Randal Grichuk and Jason Heyward o the roster, with Stephen Piscotty developing in the minors, among others.
So what do we do?
If Heyward leaves in FA, that frees a spot, but I’m hoping they re-sign him, or we’ll have rented a good player for one year in exchange for a good pitcher (Shelby Miller) who will give the Braves many good years. In short, the trade will be a disaster if we don’t re-sign him.
There’s of course Holliday, but he’s still productive as well as being under contract for next year (with a team option for 2017).
That leaves CF, which is where the battle between Grichuk, Jay and Bourjos is mainly being waged.
I like the idea of four OF’s, and even five doesn’t bother me, as long as the two extras bring something different to the table. Six, however, is too many (and as I said, there’s Piscotty too.)
So who do we keep? Grichuk is young, emereging player currently having success in the bigs. He has a .269 average with eight homers, five triples and 12 doubles, which help give him a .545 slugging percentage.
Then we have Bourjos, a speed/defense guy who might contend for a gold glove if he played CF regularly. His bat isn’t as good as the others, but his game complements Grichuk’s nicely, and he makes a great defensive substitute for CF and LF late in the game.
Finally there is Jay. He’s been a good hitter in the past, but is struggling this year with a .223 average and little power (which he never had much of anyway). In addition, he doesn’t have Bourjos’ speed or defense.
In the end it seems obvious, Jon Jay is the odd man out. The argument could be that he needs a change of scenery, as he’s done well in the past but having to fight two other players for a job on a daily basis this year could have affected him.
As to what to get for him, Dan mentioned 1B, and that does make sense, though it’d be a short term thing, and I’d hate for Jay to rebound elsewhere and all we got to show for it was a rental. With our depth though, it wouldn’t sting that bad.
That’s my two cents. As always, thanks for reading.
