Out of Cardinals first basemen since 1975, Paul Goldschmidt was pretty dang good
Today I have more best music of 2024 to present, album finds from many different year end lists, from several different user ratings systems, and a system that averaged together all years end reviews. So I guess I would consider these releases as a best of best of 2024.
But first and foremost, I’m here to talk about baseball, through the lens of a longtime St Louis Cardinals baseball fan. Been a fan since 1982! And St Louis has had several really fantastic first basemen in my lifetime. Keith Hernandez, Jack Clark, Pedro Guerrero, Mark McGwire, ALBERT PUJOLS, and last but not least, Paul Goldschmidt.
Goldy as we have affectionately called him for the last 6 years is a 7 time all-star, 4 time Gold Glove winner (you would think they would just give him one every season, heh), received his only MVP as a Cardinal in 2022, and has hit 362 home runs during his career while amassing a total of 1,187 runs batted in. I will next break down each season he had as a Cardinal.
- In 2019, Paul played in 161 games with only 1 day off, at the age of 31. He hit 34 home runs which is only bested by his MVP season and two of his seasons in Arizona before age 30. He struck out too much in 2019 to make him a very valuable player, but still the home runs and durability made this season perfectly acceptable.
- Now it is time to examine the curious year of 2020, with a COVID-19 shortened season (did they really even need to play this?) that had cardboard cutout people in the seats (one of the most absurdly dystopian things I have ever experienced outside of fiction): Goldschmidt would have possibly had his best season as a Cardinal that year because his OBP was even better than his MVP season putting him into elite territory there… and if you extrapolate his fWAR it would be similar to his 2022 campaign. This is likely not the case though because of small sample size theater, but the trend was there in the 58 games he played that year. This surely effects his numbers as a Cardinal quite a bit.
- 2021 was the first year Cardinals fans got to see what Paul Goldschmidt was all about since he had a hell of a season! He saw the ball really well that year and didn’t strike out so much. His ISO matched that of his 31 year old season, but he had better discipline. This was his second or third best season as a Cardinal, depending on how you want to view the COVID shortened season.
- The MVP 2022 season was his best season in St Louis. No question. Paul Goldschmidt hit one of his career high home run totals (35 home runs almost matched his career high years of 36 HR in his 20s as a Diamondback) in 2022. By wRC+ his MVP season was his best year at 175! Ironically enough this appears to have been his worst year on defense in his entire career, but he was still worth 6.8 fWAR which is his peak year by that metric.
- 2023: At his ptototypical mid 30s season, age 35, Goldschmidt was still a good player. He only missed 8 games all season which were probably scheduled rest days, and hit 25 home runs. His K rate trended upward but was not one of his worst years. He was able to get on base at nearly his career average rate, and had a pretty good year on defense. His 122 wRC+ showed that he still had plenty of promise, far from the average player.
- In 2024 at age 36 he appears to have lost his hitting abilities. He is still what we could call an average hitter, because he hit 22 home runs… but his K rate was the worst of his career outside of his brief rookie season. He seemed incapable of knocking runners in for whatever reason, and it will go down as one of the most bizarre cases of unclutchness anyone will ever witness. He never seemed to be able to go on much of a tear and his home runs always came at the worst possible time. Being that he still hit over 20 home runs it will always be one of the most confounding season imaginable for a well liked player.
Goldschmidt was always the strong silent type but you know he would always be ready for the game and would be totally reliable. He played over 150 games every year outside of 2020, and averaged over 3.5 fWAR as a Cardinal. If you take out 2020 that number becomes an average of 3.8 fWAR in St Louis. And that includes his 1.1 fWAR 2024. So I am proud to say I enjoyed his stay in Cardinal red! But how does he compare to those other Cardinal first basemen I mentioned earlier?
Since we like our first basemen to hit a lot of home runs, I’ll mention that Goldy average 30 home runs a season for the Cardinals. And I am taking the 2020 season out of the equation.
- Keith Hernandez: 4.6 average fWAR (I included ‘76 to ‘82) he was not a home run hitter but he was as pure of a hitter as you’re going to find so he was better than Goldy who strikes out too much
- Jack Clark came to the Cardinals around the same age as Goldschmidt so this might be the closest thing we have to Goldy in my list. He was not a Cardinal for very long though. They both peaked at 35 home runs in their Cardinals tenure. He would be 4.3 fWAR average if you take out 1986, but including the injury shortened year he averages out at 3.4 fWAR.
- Pedro Guerrero I probably don’t need to mention but I remember him being fun to watch back in 1989 I guess, I don’t know. He isn’t as good as I remembered him being. Not even in the conversation other than yes he was a Cardinal first baseman. He peaked at 3.1 fWAR though so not a bad player, he just can’t compete with this list of players.
- Mark freakin’ McGwire: he was around 5 fWAR average as a Cardinal. It would be a higher total but in the years 2000 and 2001 he played in less than 100 games each season. If his peak years 1998 and 1999 sound more normal to you it’s because he played in almost a full season those years and hit 70 home runs and then 65. At age 34 and 35! Steroids did wonders for aging when it comes to playing baseball. In those two peak seasons he was valued at 8.5 fWAR and 6 fWAR, then under 5 in 2000 and 2001. Still, his tenure as a Cardinal is one of the best because of 1998 and 1999.
- Albert Pujols is just on another level. He wasn’t just a first baseman. He was a baseball deity. But yeah, also played other positions! Albert Pujols AVERAGED 7.38 fWAR as a Cardinal. Seven seasons in St Louis were BETTER than that average! He was as good as two Paul Goldschmidts, basically. And that’s pretty freaking good! Albert Pujols was better than Mark McGwire’s 70 home run season TWICE! And, he had a year where he was about the same value in 2009. This is of course because Pujols was a pretty good defender. Pujols closest year at the plate to McGwire’s 1998 season was in 2003 going by wRC+ now. He just had a better eye at the plate but didn’t have the steroid boosted power numbers.
- Paul Goldschmidt as we mentioned is more like a Jack Clark type but I would say that is selling him a bit short. If we take out 2024 (and of course 2020), Goldschmidt’s average fWAR as a Cardinal was 4.5. We have to leave it in of course, so it’s 3.5 fWAR on average. Ultimately this is pretty much where we have to rank Goldy, talentwise on a rate basis. He is not a first ballot hall of famer like Albert Pujols, he doesn’t have a couple of record breaking ridiculous seasons like Mark McGwire, and he lacks the batting average, plate discipline and overall athleticism of Keith Hernandez. But Goldy was still way above average.
It was good to have you on the team, Paul Goldschmidt. You had some stupendously ridiculous shoes to fill, considering what great first basemen the Cardinals have had in the last 50 years or so. He actually was better than Jack Clark of course, because he played more years in St Louis and was more durable. He cannot compete with Albert Pujols because practically no one can even come close. Goldy was worth more than McGwire because he played many more games in Cardinal red and he was the gold standard when it comes to being a ballplayer. Honestly I might think more highly of only Pujols and Keith Hernandez as far as Cardinal first basemen that have been on the team in my lifetime. And that’s pretty amazing!
Goldschmidt is being projected to have a bit of a bounceback season next year, to hit at 114 wRC+ and crank out over 20 more home runs. And I don’t think it will be much of a problem for him as a Yankee (going from the second most winningest team in history to the most! good for Goldy). At the very least, I think Goldschmidt will finish as a 400+ home run player if he chooses to play another two or three years. Historically, only 58 MLB players have accomplished such a feat! Currently, Paul Goldschmidt sits one ahead of Joe Dimaggio at 86th all time, and will more than likely surpass Lance Berkman and possibly Ralph Kiner and Todd Helton during the first month or two next season.
Which brings us to our next Cardinal first baseman: Willson Contreras a catcher to first baseman transplant. He averages roughly 2.5 fWAR per season throughout his whole career (leaving out the 2020 season). However, last season his batting eye improved into the next level and therefore his on-base percentage was more elite. And it was an injury shortened season so if you extrapolate that out to a full season you would have a 5+ fWAR player. I think last season was definitely his peak season which is a shame considering he got injured for more than a few days twice last year. He actually only got to play in 84 games, so those were two serious injuries.
It was a wise move to move him away from catcher after those two big hurts. Especially with a glut of younger catchers coming soon, and with Ivan Herrera needing a chance to play more. Will the move to first base counteract his aging curve? Maybe for 2025, since he will be turning 33. Some players still have some left in the tank at that age. Just look at Paul Goldschmidt whom he is replacing. Age 34 was a magical number for Goldy. Maybe 33 will be Contreras’ big year at the plate. If not, he will still be there in 2026 (probably).
Best Music of 2024 part 3
Just in case you missed the all important part 1 (because it’s also my final Cardinals baseball 2024 review), part 1 can be read here (it was near year’s day so I bet a lot of people missed it). Check it out if you missed it!
Part 2 has some of the key albums I missed in 2024 but found at the end of the year.
Now on to some of the albums that I had to go into deep dive mode to find (and one or two I forgot to mention along the way that I’ve been into hearing for months now). Relatively speaking. We are after all dealing with readily accessible internet best of lists.
Last week I talked about an album or two that had the genre tag “sophisti-pop”, and now I have another example of this relatively new genre (at least I hadn’t heard of it before last week). That example is Clairo – ‘Charm’. If you think pop music could do a lot more than it usually does, this album might be for you. Clairo is one sophisticated lady, and this is some serious ear candy!
Another prime example of the budding genre of sophisti-pop is this concept album by Magdalena Bay titled ‘Imaginal Disc’, a ridiculous(ly fun) concept album: “It is a concept album centered on the fictional character True. After a compact disc-shaped object, homonymous with the album, is implanted into her forehead in order to create her ideal self, her body rejects it and she relearns the meaning of being human. Recurring lyrical themes include self-exploration and consciousness.” So yeah, this is a weird pop album about that. And somehow it works!
Oruã – ‘Passe’ this album is just a super fun psyche rock album from start to finish with some wonderful guitar work. If you want to know the joy of music this album is oozing with it in vivid atmospheres and guitar playing that both gives a nod to the past and roots itself quite nicely into the present and beyond.
Whirr – ‘Raw Blue’: the link goes to the song “Collect Sadness”, but the whole album is pretty good. It may not be my favorite of theirs, however if you want to skip some of it the key tracks are “Swing Me”, “Days I Wanna Fade Away”, “Worries Bloom”, and “Enjoy Everything” are likely to breathe a breath of new musical air into your ears. Released just weeks ago on Christmas, ‘Raw Blue’ is one of Whirr’s tightest performances and clearest productions to date. A few of these songs go to places I haven’t really heard before, which marks growth for a band that has largely mined nostalgia during its entire career. Gone are the Deftones overtones of recent albums, and the painfully loud shoegaze of their early releases. This is Whirr in its most distilled form, in full detail.
Trauma Ray – ‘Chameleon’ This is more 90’s mining nostalgia but he brings a lot of different sort of vintage sounds together and makes it all his won. This album is stacked with memorable rockers that sound a bit grunge but also shoegaze and even contemporary.
Punchlove – ‘Channels’ This is a shoegaze album that comes at you from every direction and pulls off a lot of different sounds in such a way that makes it seem like they have always known what they are doing. If you like a band that can blend the noisy aspects of shoegaze and the more ethereal aspects of dreampop, this is a one stop shop.
Mo Dotti – ‘Opaque’ Speaking of dreampop, this is the dreampop album of the year in my opinion nothing even comes close. If you need a shoegaze meets dreampop band to pick up where Lush left off, this is your best bet.
New Money – ‘Dinero Nuevo’ noise rock at its finest and most concise. And it’s heavy as fuck. 17 minutes of in your face rock n roll fury. For fans of post-hardcore and heady heavy metal as well as noise rock and mathcore that boogies down.
Trigger Object – ‘Ghost Bros OST’ This is either the weirdest more experimental electronic music you have ever heard, or it is the most structured noise. I guess it just depends on how weird the electronic music in your collection is. But I think it won’t really sound like anything you’ve heard prior, so that’s cool.
You want more jazz? You got it! Bandcamp link to a 5 disc set of free jazz from a quartet who deconstruct and rearrange the music of composer, bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993) in real time at a jazz festival in Stockholm. The CD set is of course streamable on bandcamp, you don’t have to buy one. They’re sold out anyway.
This is the last album I forgot to write about in part 1, that I had listened to ever since it’s (highly anticipated) release: Oranssi Pazuzu – ‘Muuntautuja’. This is a very weird Finnish heavy metal band that I have been listening to for years now. I got to see them live and they pull everything off in concert so well I cannot even explain it. Their music has grown increasingly more hypnotic over the years, and not quite so psychedelic. But still, very psychedelic in its own way. I’ve heard them compared to Pink Floyd meets black metal, which is a pretty good description…. but there’s more to it than that. They have straddled several genres since the beginning, including sludge, classic heavy metal, black metal, and even other genres including punk and industrial… all with a very heavy curtain of strange psychedelic, even mindbending sounds. The singer sounds as disturbing as one could imagine, one of the most offputting voices I have ever heard, and I like this kind of stuff. He sounds like he is absolutely stripping his throat apart through singing. So that will drive a lot of people away. That said, their music is oddly catchy and captivating. They have honed their sound into a soundtrack feel, extremely focused and hypnotic at times, and have added more and more industrial music elements along the way, moving away from their more heavily trippy prog rock, and somewhat abstract, early years. If you like heavy music that cannot easily be categorized or even explained, be sure to check them out. The album title means Transformer in English.
Another extremely heavy, angsty sludge punk and black metal-esque album came from Louisiana, from an all time cult favorite band Thou. Thou is more straightforward Black Sabbath meets punk rock with an early Melvins haze to it, extremely prolific and making their living through this undeniably effective underground rock operation. They’ve been at it a while now and their 2024 release ‘Umbilical’ does not disappoint, even though it strives into a little bit of new territory for the band: more laser focused, aggressive, and just as heavy as ever, but a little faster and intense at times. I do not think this will go down as their defining album, but it will surely win over some new fans while more than pleasing the old school ones. There are truly some bangers to be found in its dark depths of anguish.
Replicant ‘Infinite Mortality’ is an insanely catchy but dissonant and dense musically explorative brutal prog metal opus. It is no mean feat to make such heady music feel so addictive and even groovin. I don’t know much more about this band’s album other than I couldn’t stop listening to it from track to track, and with many albums that are new to me I usually turn them off two to three songs in. Attention. Deficit. Dis-
Dissimulator – ‘Lower Form Resistance’ is another cool and catchy but weird heavy metal album. I guess this is kind of my thing when it comes to heavy music. After being a mega fan of the genre for years, I only truly get impressed by bands that do something that confounds, intrigues, confuses, or baffles me. But still pulls me in. That can be from juxtaposing genres, unique singing, unusual production, or some other mystery. Dissimulator is just this odd combination that I was looking for. But I am thinking of it as more of an honorable mention.
OK, one more ultra heavy metal album but this one is more thrash sounding death metal and a little less heady and a lot more fun: Noxis – ‘Violence Inherent in the System’ is an instant classic. Super catchy while constantly punching your brain in the face, employing hook after hook of pure heavy metal delight with some of the punchiest production you’re ever going to hear. I think this is one of my favorite heavy metal albums of all time, despite only hearing it a few times. Just absolutely insane. It’s rare that I am this impressed by a new band but their sound is actually something I would try to do if I were in a similar band.
Next time, I will probably go back to the baseball names unless we get some juicy tidbits of baseball news. Last names ending in D & E. And I will provide you with some youtube playlists of all the music I have been talking about since the season ended. As always, thanks for reading!
