2021 Cardinals MLB Game 77 thread – Saturday, June 26 vs. Pirates

Milwaukee won yesterday in the home re-opener at Miller Park. Sorry I referred to it as County Stadium yesterday. 5-4 in 11 innings over Colorado.

The Cubs lost at Dodger Stadium. It was 2-2 heading to the last of the 8th and Pollock and Muncy hit two run homers in the last of the 8th for Los Angeles. 6-2 Dodgers the final.

We better get our act together – and fast. If we dont we will be double-digits behind before you know it.

Din-din today will be my first attempt at making a chopped sirloin, hamburger steak, whatever you call it. Some mashed potatoes/gravy, a bowl of homemade ice cream, and a glass of water. Then me and Whitey Herdog will be on the couch for first pitch at 2:15 our time. Along with a cigar or two.

r/Esteemed Rat

“I’ve been through way worse stretches than this,” Nolan Arenado said with a wry smile. Said the #stlcards are frustrated, up and down, with the lack of results.

— Jeff Jones (@jmjones) June 26, 2021

Not sure there are any answers right now. The club looks to be victimized by bigger picture things, most notably a recent plague of poor talent evaluation that sent what was a successful upper farm system to other organizations. Somehow they did not think the success of the late teens Memphis teams was talent generated. I think they looked at Stubby getting a lot from what he had as the driver of that success.

Which leads me to speculate that if we are in the doldrums at the All-Star break, perhaps Stubby will be given the reigns to the big league club and Shildt will be moved into a “special consultant” role or something like that.

It would be a tough one to take for Shildt, as he has a pitching staff decimated by injuries, most of the veterans are playing below expectations, and as mentioned, guys who could be brought in see what they could do are mostly with other organizations.

The lineup change is far too watered down. First, DeJong should not be in there at all right now. You need to give Sosa the shortstop job for the next month or more and see what he can do. At least he gets a hit now and then. Second, be bold – re-arrange the order in a big way. Again, here is my setup with what we have:

Nootbaar
Sosa
Arenado
O’Neill
Carlson
Goldschmidt
Molina
Edman

If facing a lefty I go this way:

Sosa
Carlson
Arenado
O’Neill
Goldschmidt
Molina
Nootbaar
Edman

Once Tommy starts to get on base again, he will move up to one or two.

The idea is get the guys who are doing something clumped together and up where they get as many PAs as possible.

Rat, yeah, nobody who is stinking it up should be yucking it up. But the tell is that there is no effective clubhouse leadership to give him talking to.

BikeMike – When you bring up the idea of ‘poor talent evaluation’ are you simply dismissing the possibility that some of the players that we let go of, and then became budding superstars for other teams, may be taking PEDS (i.e. steroids)? There was a comment made by a reporter in The Athletic recently that said nobody watches players ‘pee in a cup’ when being tested for PED’s thereby questioning the whole process of testing for steroids, and thereby questioning the claim that MLB is steroids free. When you say ‘poor talent evaluation’, you are essentially saying that the Cardinals’ talent evaluators are incompetent, and they might not be.

Mudville, I have no idea whether or not guys are still using steroids. If the guys we sent away are juicing and the guys we kept are not, then that would obviously factor in to the assessment of our talent evaluators.

Back in the day the ‘roid guys were easy to pick out, as they looked different than they used to. If some of those guys, most notably Patrick Wisdom who has been on a power surge, looked like Lars Nootbaar when coming through the system and look like Tyler O’Neill today, then ‘roid use would certainly be called into question.

There was a comment made by a reporter in The Athletic recently that said nobody watches players ‘pee in a cup’ when being tested for PED’s thereby questioning the whole process of testing for steroids, and thereby questioning the claim that MLB is steroids free.

Nobody watches you pee in a cup when you get drug tested for a job, either. They wait right outside the bathroom.

Hooray for the good guys. Pitching came through. Edman 0fer again. Where’s Albert that rascal.

We are turning into the kings of the solo home run.

Luke Voit and Adolis Garcia have put up some gaudy numbers
since leaving the Cardinals organization, also. Are the Cardinals’ talent evaluators to blame?

Peeing in a cup at work for us is much different than an athlete peeing in a cup when there’s megamillions at stake.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/05/how-to-beat-a-drug-test/303901/

If they could win 9 of 10 that might cut the deficit to 3-4 games. Back to ‘arms length’.

I doubt the 1927 Yankees lineup could score enough runs to win 9 of 10 with our staff. Nor could the 1998 Braves staff win 9 of 10 with our lineup.