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Pretty sure it was Charles Darwin that determined the natural order of baseball allowed that there are no goats associated with a W…
Goats can’t hide behind a W 1td. Call em like you see em.
I’ve noticed a few get away from Contreras back there. Even though Yadi wasn’t his old self last year, the memory is fresh. Its hard to get used to a normal human behind the plate.
Is it just my imagination or does Goldy seem to take an awful lot of called strikes with his bat on his shoulder?
Which I suppose is perfectly acceptable when you’re hitting .364.
Cards beat the odds and win! Flaherty kept us in it and gave us a chance. Some long ball and a couple of timely knocks. Junior keeps his streak going.
Good to see Gallegos dominant.
does Goldy seem to take an awful lot of called strikes with his bat on his shoulder
His bat is always on his shoulder as far as I can tell. It seems to work.
stl25 deserves a hat tip regarding Gorman. He has stated numerous times that Gorman always settles in during his second year at each level and puts up big numbers. It happened all through the minors and is happening again.
It’s hard to imagine him demolishing the league for months at a time like he’s done in the minors his second go arounds…yet I feel pretty confident he’s gonna hit 30+ dingers most years going forward. His all around game seems to be coming around a bit too. You’ve got to like what he brings to the table for the next bunch of years.
I didn’t get at all enough looks at him last season to get any sort of a read, but Burleson’s featuring a pretty nice performance almost every time he stands in thus far this season. I that continues, he and Gorman could provide a duo of young guys that’ll make everyone forget about the recent lack of power generating LH’ed bats for a long time. I like to watch big strong RH’ed hitters uncoil and send it a long way, but for one reason or another, when hitters who stand in from the left side rip the baseball, it seems to look a little bit more impressive.
stlcard25…I think there’s a decent chance he’ll collect 40 in a season before he’s done. It looks effortless and the baseball leaves the bat not unlike afterburn when he connects.
You’ve got to like what he brings to the table for the next bunch of years.
No matter how many homers he hits this year, I recommend holding off on a 6 year contract.
I would be amazed if Gorman would be first in line for a long term contract. He hasn’t been consistent long enough.
I saw that! They’re winning games by an average of a little more than 5 runs. They’re winning and not giving the opposition a chance.
Don’t know much at all about the Rays, Bling, but took a look at the team’s stats and you want to know what? They don’t have a solitary guy in the rotation with a loss…Haha! All jokes aside, 2 members of the 5 man have a 0.00 ERA. They’re both 2-0 in 2 GS. A 3rd guy’s at 1.59. He’s 3-0 in 3 GS. One of the 2-0 guy’s last name is Rasmussen. I looked him up and no relation to Eric, but he worked about 30 IP’ed for MIL prior to landing in TB. I kind of remember seeing a glimpse of him back then. They actually have 6 names that have a GS, so I don’t know how they’re constructing their rotation. At any rate, the entire team’s obviously running up at wide open and full throttle in all areas. Eventually they’ll lose a game and I’ll lose interest…Haha!
Donovan hasn’t produced the slash line we want, especially as leadoff guy, but I’m not going to be surprised when that changes. Given that his value is not as much about the slash line that most people instinctively evaluate first, I’m finding him to be a more and more remarkable player with each game. Not much seems to negatively phase this guy. Reminds me of the “coach’s son” type of guy who understands all aspects of the game. I don’t think his dad was a coach, but it appears his dad “coached him up” very well on how to handle a variety of challenges.
With Gorman last year, he started well, then went kerplunk when the league found a hole in his swing. So he fixes that by better pitch recognition and developing a swing that stays in the pitched ball’s plane longer in order to handle the high stuff. So now is there another hole, which pitcher’s will certainly find if it exists? These are the neat subplots to a season that are fun to watch, especially when one of your young guys takes a step forward with his game.
“Weren’t there a lot of posters wanting to trade Gorman? I’m sure glad we didn’t.”
If I could go back in time I’d still package Gorman in a deal for Sean Murphy. In a heartbeat. A hundred times out of a hundred.
Not because I don’t think Nolan Gorman is really good. But because Willson Contreras is terrible behind the plate, absolutely positively by far the worst Cardinal catcher back there that I can remember — and that goes back half a century. He cannot frame a pitch if it’s more than 3 inches from his target. Case in point the critical full count pitch from VerHagen today. The offering was half an inch low and one inch inside. That means it was a strike all day long for semi-blind ump Phil Cuzzi. (Incompetence was Cuzzi’s middle name today.)
But Contreras hadn’t set his target in that exact spot, and therefore when he reached to receive the pitch, he lunged with his usual clumsy exaggerated stabbing motion, making the borderline full-count strike appear nearly in the freaking dirt. It was an embarrassment to the catching profession. And he does this ALL THE TIME. I hated the signing with a passion, but I didn’t remotely realize how awful he would be at every single aspect of defense aside from throwing. And bear in mind when glancing at Willson’s poor career framing values, that instances like that VerHagen pitch probably do not count against him. Because it technically wasn’t a strike that he lost – but really, in the context of today’s game, it almost certainly was.
He’s conducted a clinic so far on how not to be a backstop. He’s already committed catcher’s interference, had a passed ball, and bungled a force out at the plate in two different ways on the same play. First by not keeping his foot on the plate, and second by not immediately telling his manager to ask for a replay — because of course he actually did make an excellent play by applying the tag on the runner. But of course that didn’t matter since he and Marmol were too stupid to immediately demand a review of the play.
Well at least there’s only 4.93 years to go on Contreras’ contract. Lucky us.
Meanwhile Ivan Herrera and Leonardo Bernal both homered today. Not that it matters.
Weren’t there a lot of posters wanting to trade Gorman? I’m sure glad we didn’t.
There have been an endless line of touted youngsters hitting the bigs in a blaze of glory. Gorman looks very much like them. He may have a long and illustrious career and he may not. Most don’t.
It plays out in any number of ways, and you never know which its going to be. Maybe he benefits from an impulse buy by ownership and spends a few years getting paid for nothing. We’ve seen that. Maybe he goes a few years doing just enough between IL stints to fetch the next Adam Wainwright in trade. We’ve seen that one too. Who knows.
As soon as we turn a page on a bit of history we like to forget that it ever happened, like it has no informative value as to the present or future, but it does. These scenarios and variations repeat over and over. If Gorman is still here as he works through his arb years, we’ll have a much better idea of what his career will look like. As of now we don’t know, but we can see the array of possibilities if we care to look.
They tried too hard at catcher this offseason. They told the world catcher was target #1, and overpaid w cash that should have gone toward pitching, since mlb saw them as desperate in trade talks.
I said I’d be fine w Zunino and Knizner back then, if the remaining funds would have gone towards pitching. More misappropriated funds.
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