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Well, first impressions don’t a season make, but our Cards weren’t looking great today.
Starting pitching: bad
Offense: needs work
Defense: average
Bullpen: not bad
Hustle: goodLet’s hope Thompson can put this train back on the tracks tomorrow.
Betts is really good, but I’ll take Freddie as the best hitter the Dodgers have. He hits from the 3 slot.
Positives:
Mikolas actually looked very good the first few innings but just got beat by some exceptional hitters at the top of the Dodgers order and a bit of batted ball luck. He was hitting his spots on the corners a lot. He carved up the hitters who are just good and not great.
Aside from O’Brien starting out really wild, the bullpen looked fantastic. Lots of swing and miss. Some real nasty stuff.
Goldy. No need to say more.
Victor Scott is fun. He really needs some more hitting work in AAA. But he brings a lot of energy and we need it.
Negatives:
Marmol. I did not like that he had the defense play in early that allowed an extra run to score against Mikolas on an easy ground ball. I also didn’t like the bullpen useage. We used up 3 guys that all could be really good out of the pen this year and didn’t use our worst pitcher in Fernandez. In the meantime, the Dodgers got 3 innings from their worst bullpen pitcher and now are setup great the remainder of the series. I understand Pallante. But it should have been Fernandez the rest of the way.
Offense. Ugh. Gorman got a hit taken away. Otherwise lots of pop-ups and lazy fly balls.
Other than the hit in the ninth by Goldy, we got shut down for 3 innings by Yarbrough, their mop up man, who literally hasn’t been good for about 4 or 5 years. Listening on the radio I don’t know what kind of ABs we were taking.
I understand Pallante. But it should have been Fernandez the rest of the way.
Why not Liberatore coming on for the 6th and going the distance. He worked up as a starter. I agree that churning through a bunch of guys made no sense.
I think Marmol’s thinking may have been we aren’t going to get much off Glasnow, so worth the risk to play in early and try to keep the run off the board. It didn’t work, but I do not object to playing it that way facing that kind of pitcher.
Yarbrough demonstrated that it’s not too difficult to work with a 6 run lead as long as you don’t walk anyone.
Yep, I mentioned earlier how I liked the way Roberts used one guy out of the ‘pen and rode with him for three innings. But we do the usual dumb thing and burn through three guys.
The suggestion of bringing in Libby and letting him stretch out was a good one. Do that and keep the others ready as you have three more games coming up.
Glasnow shut down the lefties and got rocked by a righty. I just goes to show you. Roll up the spreadsheet and let Rat use it to light up his stogie.
I thought Glasnow looked very hittable. His team staked him to an early lead and although I saw some nice rips by Cardinal hitters, I thought a bit more patience would have been in order in an attempt to somehow reach base.
Yes 1TD
Cards were swinging early in the count vs Glasgow. (Minus PG)
Hitting from behind constantly, plus the early lead, put him in control.
Tough to watch 8/9ths of the lineup put up nada.
I’m on vacation with the fam and missed the game.
I don’t expect us to be competitive with the Dodgers. They’re actually trying to win.
I love how everyone freaked out, myself included, with Goldy’s poor spring only to see him morph into the future Hall of Famer he is once the games actually counted.
Rarely if ever will I fault a hitter for being on the attack but when trailing by 5 runs he has to find a way to create some traffic on the basepaths.
Well that sure seemed like a replay from 2023. Down by 5 after 3. Lineup gets no-hit if not for Goldy. Hat-tip big boy.
Jnevel:
Did you watch the same game I did? Mikolas gave up 5 runs in 4.1 innings. He flat out sucked. The bullpen gave up two runs. That is hardly fantastic. It was a bad game all around.
I thought the problem with Mikolas was that he couldn’t get his breaking balls low enough in the zone. He should be able to correct that.
I didn’t think Glasnow was particularly great today. The Cardinal batters, except for Godlschmidt, were mostly flailing at the ball, IMO. They all looked nervous, like they were trying too hard. I can’t help but think that the manager bears some responsibility for that.
Pallante might have been overly excited. He hung a breaking ball. But other than that he got outs, including RH batters.
Liberatore looked like he has found his calling as a late inning reliever.
O’Brien had the opening night jitters, for sure. I hope that accounts for the wildness. His pitches that hit the zone were crazy. Looking forward to seeing what he can do when he settles down.
Couldn’t get my MLB-TV working last night so I was unable to watch opening day. But from reading your posts this morning I was spared an excess of stomach acid.
Both Oli and Mo stressed the importance of this seasons D being a focal point, in their interviews. Then Walker goes too RF. This management team is collection of used car salesmen.
One game is just one game but yesterday did seem to prove that we might need to pump the brakes regarding the apocalyptic panic over Goldy.
As for Walker’s defense he is still obviously a work in progress but he is young, athletic, and seems to have a good work ethic. Let’s give him a chance to improve. I remember when Pujols came up no one knew where to play him. He tried 3B, then OF was discussed, before he finally landed at 1B. That worked out ok.
I don’t have an apocalyptic (btw great use of the word) panic regarding Goldy. I just don’t want him back after this year. Personal preference.
Here’s the deal about all the “Walker can improve” PR.
The only reason Walker wasn’t the worst mlb outfielder for the 2023, is because Schwarber played LF. Schwarber plays 1B now, so I’ve read.
Walker is zero percentile, to start the season. How many seasons of negative defensive runs will it take to get him to 50th percentile? Can he get to mlb avg?
There are days I would endorse trading the STL budget for the TBR budget, if the guarantee was both front offices, owners and managers were a 100% swap.
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