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1:15 p.m. RHP Miles Mikolas (4-2, 4.02) vs. RHP Jordan Lyles (2-1, 2.20 ERA) Fox Sports Midwest // KMOX // WIJR
We have Mikolas on the mound! 💪
⚾️ https://t.co/wCCRvWPNGX pic.twitter.com/TbWrP26pDg
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) May 11, 2019
I don’t think we can accept a series split at home against a team like the Pirates and expect to keep up with the Cubs and Brewers. We need to take 3 out of 4.
Whats the weather like in St. Louis? Is the game started on time? I checked the Doppler Radar about an hour ago and it looked really bad.
r/Esteemed Rat
We have a start time! 🙌
Weather permitting, we will begin today's game at 3:35 pm CT. pic.twitter.com/v6w3oW7ANj
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) May 11, 2019
Cards bats not getting it done again today with just one hit heading into the 7th inning stretch. They trail 2-1 and are 0-2 this game with RISP. Mikolas has been good, allowing 2 runs in 7.
Again this team has the looks of the sad sack Matheny club till he was fired. One hit today and a Carpenter needs to be set on the bench. Never seen him look as bad as he looks.
Team is almost unwatchable.Wong walked to lead off the 8th. Munoz botched a bunt and popped out. Carp turned a 3-1 count into another strikeout. Goldie followed that with a 2-out single. DeJong walked to load the bases, but Ozuna stranded them all with a weak grounder to 1B. Munoz’ failure to sacrifice likely costs them a run.
Beardless Miller looked good in the 9th. Wonder if that gives Carp any pause for thought. He’d probably need to shave every hair on his body.
Vazquez in to try to slam the door in the 9th. Maybe the Cards have a surprise left up their sleeves.
That’s it. Bucs’ pitchers scatter two hits to hold the Cards to one run and pin another 2-1 loss on the redbirds.
Starting to look like our teams from the last few years. Lost opportunities and poor execution. Any professional batter, even a pitcher, should be able to lay down a bunt, period. It’s a required skill. And leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth when you’re behind by a run is completely unacceptable. Schildt should be reading them the riot act right about now.
You asked so I’ll answer. Sorry for length.
This franchise and this team has a very bad culture and atmosphere to it. And has had this bad culture for multiple years. A true lack of leadership is very evident as the top players (or any players for that matter) rarely perform when it is needed in the time of the game when they are up against it. There never seems to be a sense of urgency or an attitude that they are going to attack and compete.
Championship teams and programs have a culture that errors and mistakes are not acceptable and are a big deal so teams avoid those mistakes because of a culture.
This franchise doesn’t have that because Moz has put together a bunch of soft players that have no sense of urgency and zero mental toughness. (See Sunday cubs game)
Goldschmidt shows up and is setting personal records in the negative way because this culture has consumed him. Heyward alluded to this atmosphere and culture problem when he left. It is very real. Show me a time this line up was hot for an extended period of time. There are plenty of examples of them being cold for weeks at a time. The lack of hitting had been evident for many years and hasn’t been addressed. At some point you have to put the computer stats down and battle. This team doesn’t battle. The cubs and brewers attack a series against us. Their demeanor is so much different than the cardinals. My opinion is that we have baseball guys that don’t know how to compete and shy away when the big boys attack and that makes them gutless.well I don’t know if they are gutless, but their offense has been shut down way too often. if you look at their total numbers they don’t look bad, but when you look closer and realize a lot of that has been done in a few games where as they have a lot of games where they just totally lay down and basically do nothing. as the saying goes, its still early but the cubs and brewers are playing well, don’t want to fall too far behind.
I won’t completely agree or disagree with the assessment of stpcard. I’ll say that since 2015 it seems there’s been a shortened gap of talent between us and our divisional rivals. That and some leadership issues I feel after that season have lead to our slight demise from the perch. Still this team has been within a hair of a wild card 2 of the last 3 seasons but I feel if that’s what the Dewitt’s playing for and wishing to get lucky within the payroll then it’s not enough. I feel this is the best lineup we’ve had but it’s full of feast or famine hitters. The Bullpen other than a couple of guys we can do without has been solid. The Rotation due to some of it’s youth is suspect.
They need to address the rotation and lefties in the pen for sure. If they do that (SF cough cough) then they can win this division. Start it with Gyorko( eat most of the salary), O’Neill and Gomber/Hudson and see what else they ask for.
“Lost opportunities and poor execution. Any professional batter, even a pitcher, should be able to lay down a bunt, period. It’s a required skill.”
“Schildt (sic) should be reading them the riot act right about now.”I cannot disagree more strongly, on all counts.
Each and every player has certain skills and certain limitations. Munoz or Musial, it doesn’t matter. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses.It is the job — the primary job — of the major league manager to know what his hitters and pitchers can and cannot do. And then, if he has any competence whatsoever, he will put his players in a position to succeed as much as is reasonably possible.
Yairo Munoz had never executed a sac bunt in the major leagues. He has only two of them over the past four years as a professional ballplayer. It was therefore un-reasonable to have him bunt.
But that’s not the punchline. Here’s the punchline. Since arriving in the majors, Yairo Munoz has been maybe the best hitter in all of baseball when he has a man on first base and fewer than two outs. In 63 trips to the plate he has batted .446, slugged .679, and struck out just 6 times. He has hit into just 4 double plays.
As a major leaguer, Yairo Munoz has killed the ball with men on base, and he’s killed it most in so-called “bunting situations.” Just like the day before, Shildt managed his team straight into a defeat. And yet, obviously some people still want to blame the players.
Munoz was the right man at the right time…but with the wrong manager, deploying him in the absolutely wrong way.
(Also, thanks CC for clarifying my Hicks remarks last night. I thought I was articulate enough, but I guess not. Of course I only meant that Hicks had been ridden too hard Friday to be safely used in Saturday’s game if needed.)
And with that, so long.
And with that, so long.
I know Bobby well enough that when he closes with a line like that, he’s bidding us farewell for ever and ever. Thank God Bobby wasn’t with us here in 2006 when our world champion Cardinals put we fans through not one, but two 8 game losing streaks. Bobby may very well have committed harakari (not to be confused with Harry Caray) long before our Birds broke open the champagne! Walking off into the sunset while our team is suffering through a tough stretch, under ANY circumstances, is not the Bobby Reed we here at The Cardinal Nation have come to know and cherish. The Bobby Reed we know is just the kind of guy that you would want at your side if you were entrenched in a Vietnam foxhole with Charlie ( not to be confused with Charlie Hustle ) bearing down on you at full speed. I think I speak for all here in requesting that Bobby sit back here today and not listen or watch one moment of today’s Cards – Pirates game. Just kick back, Bobby, with a 12 pack of your favorite beverage and reflect on all of the good times you have had with both your beloved St. Louis Cardinals and your friends here at The Cardinal Nation. Then come Monday, hop back up into that saddle and join us here with a renewed sense of extreme hope and enthusiasm.
And a quick note to our esteemed friend, StpCard…… though “gutless” may appear to be too strong a word, I feel your pain, as I have called them much stronger and angrier names over this pitiful lame last week of baseball….if baseball was actually what our boys were playing. Hang in there StpCard!
This place ain’t pretty after a loss is it? But, for a newcomer like me, it does help serve as an identifier to the personalities of the posters. Lots of couch coaches – not something unusual on baseball boards – and even more fair weather fans.
I do have my complaints too but most of them require decisions above my pay grade. I try to remember when Waino last hit into a double play (or even had the opportunity). Maybe some of the stat lovers can fill me in. The man has a reputation for making big hits, not bunting. Unless it is a no out and gotta move a guy into scoring position I let Waino swing the bat.
I see Munoz fans and they can be right but his defense is still second rate so he is a bench player. Jed Gyorko has even lost his first up position off the bench for pinch hitting.
Off topic complaint: I truly hope the Blues do well (well I really don’t care) but I don’t have to hear all about them during a baseball game from two guys just prattling about nothing. I sure wish that FSM would make Edmonds the permanent color man. Pitchers may have a bit to offer but motormouth pitchers become boring. They never have heard of: “Silence is Golden” even if it is only for 4 seconds.
And those are my whines for today. GO CARDS (pretty please with sugar on it – I am never sure when Hudson takes the hill)
I was responding to bikemike, who had asserted on another thread that Shildt was misusing Hicks and has become “overly reliant” on him. It doesn’t seem that way to me and I used real data to support my assessment.
As it turned out, Hicks wasn’t needed Saturday so his use Friday became a moot point.
As an aside, I think most MLB teams would be delighted to have a guy throwing 105 to be their closer and would probably utilize his unique talents in that manner. Is Hicks a finished product? No.
On the bigger picture, I get that those who are unhappy with the team want to vent. I just don’t always agree. IMO, the losing brings out other issues that folks have been carrying that seem to have little to do with the problems in the recent games, for example, the defense and the closer.
The organization is misusing Hicks in my opinion, not just Shildt. As I have said many times, he should be getting his reps as a starter in Memphis, building his endurance, working on situational baseball, and grooming to be a starter over the next 10 years.
Everyone today goes crazy when a guy hits 100 on the gun. That is all well and good, but effective pitching is more about location than velocity. Sure there is a certain velocity you need to hit, but once you mature enough to consistently throw around 90mph, it becomes more about changing speeds, location, and movement.
100+ works without much else if you can paint the black. But not many can do both, and thus we have the Steve Dalkowski’s of the world.
well defense is always a problem even in and sometimes especially in low scoring games. you aren’t always gonna score lots of runs. I understand and agree with going with fowler and Martinez to this point in the outfield mainly again because bader obviously hasn’t worked enough to become a better contact hitter. but at some point especially at end of season if we are still on outside looking in, maybe we have to go a different way. I do agree with the one poster, everyone should know how to execute a bunt. its a baseball fundamental. while I would expect someone like goldy to struggle with it cause of limited times he would be asked to do it and its something you do need to practice but a guy like munoz who is not a every day starting player, you better learn to do the little things, bunt, hit to the right side, sac flies. whether it was the right thing to do there, Im not sure. the manager thought it was, so its his job to get it down right. personally im not a fan of the safety squeeze. it requires both the batter and the runner executing perfectly most of the time. either go all out squeeze or hit away.
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