Cardinals caught in a winning/development paradox

Best Podcast in Baseball

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Sports, Baseball

4.8 • 673 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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The Cardinals' recent road swing through New York and Atlanta revealed a team playing compelling baseball but vulnerable to late-game ruptures in the bullpen that led to a 1-6 record. That prompts the question to launches a brand new episode of the Best Podcast in Baseball: If the Cardinals are focused on development in 2025 and aim to develop winners for beyond 2025, should they have outfited the most volatile area of the roster -- the bullpen -- with more certainty to avoid losses like on the road trip?

KMOX/1120 AM's Kevin Wheeler rejoins the podcast to discuss that concept and what role the results of games actually play in the development of young players.

Along with Post-Dispatch baseball writer and BPIB host Derrick Goold, there are some hearty debates about the importance of fundamentals and style of play as a force multiplier not a counterpunch for superstar talent and about how fissures in a bullpen can crack other facets of a baseball team, especially one that already needs a lot to go right to win. Goold and Wheeler arrive at the crux of the Cardinals' season -- how much time is enough for young players to work through their improvements and how much time is too much time to wait for improvements that aren't happening as talent stagnates. It's that last part that the Cardinals don't want to face at the end of 2025.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a weekly production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The best podcast in baseball is brought to you by Closets by Design.
0:05.6	Update your closet, garage, office, pantry, and more.
0:09.0	Imagine your home totally organized with closets by design.
0:12.6	Call 1-800 by design.
0:14.4	That's 1-800 by design.
0:16.9	The Cardinals come home to face the Brewers, and they are limping after a one and six road trip.
0:22.5	We'll have plenty of time in the podcast to run forensics on that road trip.
0:26.8	But I just want to get to your thoughts on this.
0:29.6	If the Cardinals focus is on developing and they talk about developing winners,
0:34.3	what is the price then of not having a bullpen that can avoid the volatility
0:40.8	of losing? Is there an argument, Kevin, that a team that wants to focus on youth actually
0:46.9	needs to not do so in the bullpen? Well, I mean, there's a case for that because what happens
0:52.5	there trickles down to everywhere else, right?
1:05.5	Three, two, one.
1:09.6	Oh, come on, Marvel.
1:15.2	Seriously?
1:19.3	Dogs are awesome.
1:24.1	Marvel.
1:27.6	Ladies and gentlemen, Marvel the dog.
1:31.1	Hello, everybody, and welcome to the best podcast in baseball, brought to you by closet by design of St. Louis.
1:35.1	I'm St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derek Gould, and I'm joined this week by someone who will stop me from talking this fast, and that is, of course.
1:43.3	By talking even faster than you?
	...

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