The Cardinals have claimed righty reliever Ryan Meisinger off waivers from the Orioles, the Baltimore club announced.
Meisinger, 24, cracked the bigs last year for the first time and surrendered six long balls in 21 innings. Still, he has turned in some intriguing numbers at times in the minors. Last year, for instance, he worked to a 3.13 ERA in 46 innings in the upper minors, with 10.8 K/9 and 2.9 BB/9.
jimbo504 2
World Series, here we come.
mack423
Can you contextualize a move like this in any other way, or is that joke just always going to win out?
jimbo504 2
Depth. Mop up guy. clearly a joke. lighten up.
mack423
The joke is made on literally every post.
3rdStrikeLooking
Agreed. With every depth move announced by every team on a routine basis, inevitably, the first 1 or 2 comments is an idiotic statement as the first comment on this article.
[Yawn]
EndinStealth
The joke was funny once or twice. It is now in its millionth rendition. Its lame now.
E munchy
What’s worse that line or when ten different people say “first”?!
batty
I’d rank both of those even at the top, along with “hater”.
socraticgadfly
Well, he’s gone again now. Optioned to free 40-man roster slot for Andrew Miller.
PickleRiccck
Cardinals claimed him from Orioles. Therefore Orioles are better than Cardinals.
makaio6
Now that’s kinda funny.
Cards fan speaking btw.
Michael Dyer
I can see another trade with Seattle. We can send Kolten Wong a reliever and prospect (what ever is fair) for Kyle seager. Allows Matt to move back to 2nd so he doesn’t have to throw to first. And we’ll have a pretty good left bar with a good glove playing 3rd
rocknwell
Biggest signing of the off-season
mack423
Pretty impressive, considering it’s a waiver claim
Payne Train
Wooooo – I love that “always save” brand of baseball we keep spitting out. . Hashtag getting pumped for an average season 🙂
EndinStealth
It’s a 40 man roster move. Dont over react. Why dont people understand this?
We’re_Pham-ily
This dude already forgot about Goldy…♂️
Jo Daddy
Weird way of spelling “Fowler traded”.
OhQq
Trade him for what? A bucket of used batting practice balls? He has zero trade value.
Jo Daddy
Are they Harper’s balls? lol
He has the value of potential, but in all seriousness, if he were to be traded, the Cards would have to eat almost all of his contract. Still might be worth it.
RJY707499
Would pay Fowler to play bad baseball for another team.
jbigz12
Meisinger looked like a mop up man to me. Not surprised to see a guy with options claimed but I don’t think he’s a good one. Fast ball sits at 91 MPH and only other pitch is a slider. Didn’t work at all in OPACY.
batty
Hard for most pitchers to have success there. Especially youngsters just getting their feet wet.
jbigz12
It’s more of a stuff thing. He’s a right hander with a 91 MPh fastball and a slider. That’s it. That’s very run of the mill stuff. In a good organization he wouldn’t have been on the 40 man yet because he was a 15 draftee but our pitching depth was so scarce prior to the deadline he was needed. We added Phillips,Ortiz, Tate, Rogers, and Carroll to the team after we selected his contract. Entirely possible this is a stash and grab move by the cards and they’ll send him through the DFA train in a couple days.
Polymath
His four years of minor league pitching were quite decent. Highest ERA was 3.13; his HR/9 was 0.5. In the majors his HR/9 was 2.6. A small sample size indeed, but if he could get that down to below 1.0, he could be a contributor. Add a few ticks to his velocity and add a pitch and … well, we’ll see.
stan lee the manly
This was basically what was said about Matt Bowman as well before the Cards claimed him and he was really good for them until Matheny overused him and ruined his arm. Time will tell if the Cardinals will have their pitching voodoo magic work again.
jbigz12
Matt Bowman always got the ball on the ground. With mediocre stuff you really have to do that. There’s no bad waiver claim but I don’t think this one is going to hurt Baltimore.
mack423
Seems like he shouldn’t have been on a 40-man yet, even. At 6’4, 235, he’s very much a Cardinals-type pitcher. Peripherals look very good. Keeps the walks down, too.
Probably slides in as a depth option right next to Mike Mayers in the BP.
Payne Train
Just hoping that we won’t waste a roster spot on this come season — depth or not, we can afford to have quality depth.
trace
:Lookout, non play-off clubs are making moves!
stan lee the manly
The Cards have always had a knack of seeing talent in pitchers that other teams don’t always pick up on. Hopefully Meisinger turns out to be one of those guys.
jbigz12
Definitely don’t think meisinger is a future quality reliever but there’s another guy that has been DFA’d over Mike Wright. This guy has been given so many chances to succeed. With an actual analytics team in place maybe we think we can get through to Wright but he has to be on thin ice. You can’t keep this guy forever.
jdgoat
Agreed. That’s a problem that should’ve been fixed in like 2016.
batty
The best thing about these types of claim is, they can easily be dumped when some better option comes along.
Triteon
Is Meisinger the Jack Haley to Britton’s Dennis Rodman? If so…
CardsNation5
The Cardinals are always turning nothing into something. Jealousy causes fans from other teams to hate on the Cardinals. Say what you want about Mozeliak, but he always knows what he’s doing and always have the Cardinals either in the playoffs or right there till the end. I’ve been a Cardinals fan all 39 years of my life and I know that as a fan, you have to be patient. The Cardinals never make reaction moves.
baseballpun
Except for Greg Holland. Which is why you don’t make reaction moves.
stan lee the manly
Lol good point. I just have a picture of Matheny on his knees begging Mo for that “established closer” while Mo is looking up pretending not to see or hear him. That’s pretty much how that offseason went until Mo caved.
snakebyte32
Also traded Shelby Miller for Heyward after the death of Taveras. That was more of an understandable reactionary move however.
batty
The Cardinals have made plenty of Reaction moves. A short list includes Leake, Fowler and Holland.
That said, i tend to like how the Cardinals generally go about business. Building from within is slower, especially when you draft lower and have less of an International pool, but when the successes do arrive, it’s much sweeter than simply buying a team. That’s not to say that the Cardinals, like all teams, don’t need to supplement via FA and trades as well.
jdgoat
You could also probably even include the Stanton trade he vetoed and the Price/Heyward contract offers reaction moves too.
Triteon
Ty Wigginton, Mark Reynolds, Mark Ellis, Ronny Cedeno, Mike Leake, Brett Cecil, and Dexter Fowler played like they disagree with that “always” statement about Mo. And Dexter was *purely* a reaction move to appease the BFIB. I’d like to see evidence that Girsch can make movers without Mo interfering, then we might legitimately compete again.
jlmini10
Wigginton, Reynolds, and Ellis were signed purely for depth and Cecil was evaluated to be an upgrade (wrongly) and Mo jumped ahead of the market to sign him. Those were not what would be called reactionary. I’ll give you Leake and Fowler though. And unless you haven’t been watching, the cardinals have been competing for or getting playoff spots for the last 12 years.
Triteon
The first part of my comment was in response to “he always knows what he’s doing”. The only reactionary signing I see in the Mozeliak era is Fowler. And I’ve been paying close attention to the Cards for decades, and this is as bad as I’ve seen them since the early Jocketty days. If Girsch can channel Walt’s vision we might pull out of this the way we did in the early ’00s.
jlmini10
By winning 88 games with a young team and then adding a top 10 player? Tell me how that is bad. It hasn’t been good enough lately, but the notion that the team is bad or that it is Mo’s fault and Girsch needs to “pull us out of this” is a bit extreme in my opinion
STLBaseballFanSince2020
I agree. There is absolutely no reason for the fans to be upset over 2018.
After moving past a manager that couldn’t learn from his mistakes and a bullpen full of bums, we steamrolled the second half of the season.
So far this offseason we’ve gone from worst 1B defender to best, and replaced his big bat with an even bigger bat. A hammer for a lineup full of nails.
I maintain the position that we could sign Harper AND Machado, and people would still complain that Bader isn’t going to ever amount to anything offensively and we should just trade for Trout.
daved
“Steam rolled the 2nd half of the season?” Really? I didn’t know a 12-15 month of September was what I call “steam rolling?”
jdgoat
He’s had a lot of success in the minors and averaged over a strikeout per inning. Weird that a team like Baltimore is just throwing him away for nothing.
STLBaseballFanSince2020
Orioles now have two open spots on the 40 man for the upcoming rule 5 draft. As they have the top pick, they must be confident they can pull a better option than Meisinger.
I will say he looks like a good potential trade piece to pair with an established player, but 1:1 he doesn’t carry any value.
jbigz12
Minor league numbers are only worth so much. You have to dig deeper and objectively look at how his skills would translate to the big leagues. A guy throwing 91 with nothing but a decent slider in his repertoire is probably not getting big leaguers out. It could’ve been Araujo or Wright but it was inevitable one of those 3 had to go. They made their choice.
619bird
Depth move for the pen in minors. They did dump a couple guys in the rule 5. Reload Memphis for a b2b CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!
Maybe he gets a shot at some point if someone gets hurt.
Nathan W.
Trade for Puig. As much as I like Harper, FO simply won’t make it happen per usual. Puig will give us good fielding and potential for another solid bat with good power, Has mentioned his respect for the Cardinals organization before as well
birdsonbat
No harper, give the job to O’Neill
Michael Dyer
I can see another trade with Seattle. We can send Kolten Wong a reliever and prospect (what ever is fair) for Kyle seager. Allows Matt to move back to 2nd so he doesn’t have to throw to first. And we’ll have a pretty good left bar with a good glove playing 3rd
STLBaseballFanSince2020
I think you’re confusing Kyle with his brother Corey. Wonger is miles ahead as far as value is concerned.
STLBaseballFanSince2020
He should respect us. We’ve given him more spankings than Mattingly.
Puig is overrated defensively. He does flashy very well, like Baez. Other than that, he’s overwhelmingly average.