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Not only is “devastating” way too dramatic for losing Yadi a month, it might actually work out better in the long run. Having Yadi out for a month should in theory anyway, make him stronger over the second half of the season.
Kelly has not hit much in the last year plus, so it will be interesting to see how he does with a chance against the big boys for awhile. Then again, he might split time with Pena.
And as Brian states, a good chance for Knizner to show what he can do in AAA.
Brecheen and Lankford were probably overdue in their selections to the Cardinals’ Hall. I believe they were the two highest players in career WAR as a Cardinal to not be included in the club’s Hall of Fame.
I lobbied for John Tudor to get in as the third candidate, and outlined several noteworthy accomplishments of his in my article on the players a couple of months ago.
Coleman was a little too one-dimensional to be a Hall of Fame player in my opinion. I looked at him similar to last year’s induction of Mark McGwire. They each primarily did one thing better than just about anyone, but that “one thing” seems to resonate with fans. Vince was electric when he played, and could disrupt an opponent to the point of madness.
I think that those of us who grew up watching a lot of Cardinal baseball in Busch II, think of our teams as being special due to speed. We seemed to regularly have guys who could fly around the bases, and lived and died with speed and defense, while other teams tried to over power opponents. It was not like today where every team has several guys who hit 20+ homers. Back then, we would have one guy who could hit 20 homers, and a bunch of guys who ran the bases well and play defense.
Then Vince came along and stole bases like no one else before him, and we win 101 games. That was the Cardinal baseball we loved, and it still lives in fresh in fan’s memories.
Congrats to Albert. I have a cool vinyl record called “Stan The Man’s Hit Record”, that my dad got me when I was a kid. The record is essentially Stan’s advice to kids on how to hit. But it starts off with the KMOX broadcast of Stan’s 3000th hit, with the famous Harry Caray description going “There it is! There it is” There it is!”
Man, as a kid listening to that, you thought it was the equivalent of man landing on the moon.
Albert has been a truly great player. As Jack Buck chimed in on the broadcast of Stan’s 3000th, “I bet he’s glad that’s over, Harry”, I imagine Albert is glad to get the big 3-0-0-0 in the books and move on.
Three straight 3-2 wins against Chicago teams. With Weaver going today, we most likely will need more than 3 to get a win.
Was very impressed with Mikolas last night. It just shows that despite all the hype about guys throwing high 90s heat, the name of the game in pitching is location. If you can throw a ball where you want it to go, with a bend in it or some movement, you will be successful. Just throwing darts, but either missing the zone or not having much movement is not going to get you anywhere. Probably every small town in America has a legendary prep pitcher who could throw the ball 100 mph, but he never made it much past the low minors due to lack of control. It’s the Steve Dalkowski (think that is the guy’s name) syndrome.
We’ve harped on this some here, but I just do not see Matt Carpenter bringing any value to the club right now. He hits like Chris Carpenter, can’t throw very well, is a poor base runner, and below average fielder. i think you gotta go with better guys at first, second and third and see if Carpenter can adjust to a role of pinch-hitter and part-time player.
Fowler is not far behind. He is hitting more like Art Fowler (for those who remember the former hurler and pitching coach).
I encourage votes for Keith Hernandez at https://Cardinals.com/hof/ .
I like Hernandez a lot, and would have had him third on my list this year. I actually voted for him last year, along with McCarver, as he ranks higher than McGwire in my opinion. But I can understand the sentiment for Big Mac as he did something no one else had done, and was such a (literally) huge presence on those late ’90s teams.
Oh man, this brings up memories of that deal that I was adamantly against – Haren, Calero and Barton for Mark Mulder. Hated that deal when it was made, but in retrospect I thought Barton would end up being a much better player than he was. At least the fact that he did not have much of a career kept the deal from being overwhelmingly bad.
But it looks like Haren is still paying dividends, but not for the Cardinals so the deal still is haunting the Redbirds.
Fairly big early-season series, as the Cardinals need to show they can compete and beat the better teams. So far the club is 9-0 against the Reds and White Sox (1919 World Series opponents who 99 years later are looking for better days), while going 8-12 against good clubs.
I like sltcard25’s preferred lineup, other than second base where I would keep Wong in there for defense and speed, and then have Carpenter available for a potential big moment later in the game against a righty reliever.
But I agree, that Matheny will most likely go with the second group.
Great stuff. I am not surprised on the comments about Wong. I am still high on him, and think he can be a solid player. I have the same sense of him as I did Pham in 2016. What you do is look beyond the stats to the players tools. Pham was a five tool guy, he just had not shown that on a consistent basis a couple of years ago.
Wong is similar. Above average defense, which will get better with playing time, speed, range, occasional power. He seems to struggle some with confidence, but he is a guy where you just keep running him out there and as he relaxes and let’s his ability take over, he will get better and better.
Now some guys can never get to that point. Sometimes a guy will have a lot of “stage fright” (anxiety, whatever you want to call it) and just can’t seem to get to the next level. I believe Tyler Greene was a bit that way.
…and of course I am wrong on the lineup. Today’s lineup just came across on my cell phone app, and Carpenter is at third, and Martinez at first again. It’s the exact same lineup as last night in fact.
Maybe Matheny is taking my constant barrage of comments about lineup stability to heart.
Sounds like the shooter and victim had some history of confrontations. But it is indeed sad when people cannot walk away from each other in tense situations, or at least “take it outside” and get in to an old fashioned fist fight.
When you combine tension, perhaps vengeance, and alcohol, most likely no good will come out of it.
I don’t get that either, gscottar, and have always lobbied for Gyorko to be the regular third baseman. The league is catching up some to Martinez, and he probably needs to take a day off here and there. Carpenter might be ready to go on a hot streak, with those two late ABs last night.
I look for Carpenter to get a couple of starts at first base coming up.
Maybe Carpenter can put together a good stretch of hitting. He looked much better in his final two ABs last night; got aggressive and attacked pitches he could square up, rather than being tentative and trying to get a walk.
With first base open, I was surprised they gave Molina anything to hit. But they wanted the righty-righty match-up. Fowler seems to have done fairly well in the clutch for us as well, but he has struggled all year and as an opponent you would think the better option is to take your chances with him, and create a force at any base.
I wonder if our ball club would be better had we not made either of our “big” deals the last two off-seasons, and had an outfield of O’Neill, Pham and Bader this year. Plus we would still have Alcantara. But of course nothing happens in a vacuum. Before last year, the organization did not think Pham would be able to play at this level. And maybe by July, things will look a lot different.
The bunting idea with Carpenter is a good one, especially when teams employ the shift on him. Another thing I believe Carpenter needs to do is be more aggressive early in the count. It seems he often gets good pitches to hit early, but never jumps on them.
As a hitter you gotta keep the pitcher guessing. The book on Carpenter is likely based on him not swinging at strikes early. So as a hitter you start attacking early in the count. When pitchers start to adjust, you pull back some and be a little more patient.
But the over-riding factor might be the change in his swing, where he upper-cuts more now than he did when he was going good. Supposedly he is aware of this and has worked on it, but in yesterday’s broadcast Rooney said he still seems to dip the back shoulder too much. That is part of the low BABIP, as he hits a lot of fly balls.
I really don’t like all of this pitcher shuffling, as I think for all of the supposed advantages of having “fresh arms”, it really screws up a guy’s routine. Plus the Memphis club is put under a lot of stress managing their staff.
It is one of those things that sounds like it would work in theory, but as we have talked about here on occasion, we are dealing with people, not machines.
Usually the best way to go is for a club to have a steady roster, and steady lineup. Edmonds was talking the other day about how players are okay with changing batting order spots, but you really prefer a steady place in the order. Matheny tends to move guys all over.
This pitching jockeying is the another example of that. You got guys coming in and going out several times a week, different batting orders almost daily, and there is just no sense of order. It communicates sort of a panic, where “we have to do something!”.
Well, that is my opinion anyway. But then as most everyone knows who pays a little attention to my posts, I have always subscribed to the thought that you take your most talented players and let ’em play day in and day out, with the occasional day off here and there. Over-managing is usually counter productive.
Sometimes, you have to do what’s best for the team.
True. There was a time when even Babe Ruth and Willie Mays were told they were going to be replaced by younger players.
What was good enough for them is certainly good enough for Carpenter and Fowler, although I suspect if both were told that they would lobby for a trade to a place that they can play every day. In fact, that is basically what happened in the case of both Ruth and Mays. The Yankees shuttled Ruth back to Boston, but to the National League franchise in Boston, while the Giants sent Willie back to New York, to the expansion franchise Mets. Interesting comp there with those two greats.
Then you have our own Stan the Man, who said after the Cardinals won the 1964 pennant, greatly aided by in-season acquisition Lou Brock who settled in to left field, “They would not have won with me in left field”.
After the fiasco last night burned some pitchers that we should not have needed had Holland & Co. done their jobs, I figured we would go back to the unlucky 13.
I would prefer a lineup with Gyorko at third and Bader in right on a more-or-less everyday lineup. You then have Fowler and Carpenter as sort of super-subs to use in key situations.
But that is no doubt tough to do in reality. Two fairly expensive, well traveled vets being told they are going to be part-time players is not easy.
Matt looks at peace with the world in that photo. He is likely a couple of years younger than Albert, although that is a different topic.
The Cardinals did the right thing when they signed Matt to the contract after 2009. I recall some people were actually hoping we would sign Jason Bay at that time, rather than Holliday. That would have been a huge blunder. Bay screwed up his career by not signing a good offer from Boston, where he was in a park tailored to his style.
But more than that, I had seen a lot of Holliday with the Rockies, and knew he was a much better player than Bay. Plus he is a class act as a person (not that Bay isn’t, but I did not know much about him).
The errors hurt of course, but Holland was the key player in last night’s loss. He was not fooling anyone. The issue on the Pham error was that Mercer smoked that ball. Had it been a routine fly ball, or grounder, or strikeout, we would not be discussing this.
I was a bit concerned when Holland came in for the ninth, but felt it was a good opportunity to get him into that role since we had a three run lead. But because he has struggled, you gotta have someone getting ready. After a double and single to start the inning, you really need to have guys ready.
Specific to the errors, they killed us, no doubt. But they were not errors on routine plays. Moran and Mercer both scorched those pitches.
We went in to this season with an uncertain rotation and bullpen, where we are jockeying guys around and sort of trying this and that. And then our defense is not great. When we play Carpenter, we are going with below average defense at first, third, and right field. DeJong is probably average at short, although he seems to be getting better on the defensive side.
Tough one to lose, but we are going to see more of this with our bullpen. Not to mention Matheny’s questionable late game decisions.
And there we have the difference between Pugs, and many of our heroes of World War II. Our heroes lied about their age, sometimes saying they were 18 or 19 rather than 17 in order to get into the military and fight for their country.
Pugs lies, adding three years to his age in order to have a better chance with an older babe.
Great win today, and it was big getting the series after losing a tough one on Tuesday. Some good things came out of this series, along with the 2 wins of course. Kolten Wong played well, and hopefully gained some confidence in himself and his manager. It really should not be an issue with him getting playing time I- he should be in the lineup every day.
Tommy Pham continues to be a great player; our best all-around player in fact. The guy is a grinder, and does the job day in and day out.
Good starts by Wacha and Martinez, which were important after Weaver was poor in the series opener.
It will be interesting to see how we fare in Pittsburgh against a Buc club that is off to a good start. Polanco might be on the verge of a break out season for them, and they still have some solid talent in Mercer, Marte, Harrison (injured), and Cervelli. They have had good starting pitching so far, but their bullpen seems to be still working things out, sort of like ours, although we have done better.
Most of the games I have watched on TV this season, including Cardinal home games, have a lot of empty seats. But then there has been a lot of cold weather the Spring.
When you think about it, baseball today really should be a 144-150 game regular season, played from mid-April to around the last week of September, with the playoffs concluding the third week of October.
Not realistic, as the game is ruled by financial considerations and thus will try to squeeze ever last dime out of a season. Plus seasonal marks would be tainted when compared to 154 and 162 game norms. But when you think of the toll the game takes on the players, especially pitchers, and the greater emphasis on the post season, not to mention the cynicism that people have regarding the long season, a roughly high-140s-low 150s game regular season makes a lot more sense.
Ozuna will come around. He’ll go on one of those hot streaks where he carries the club for awhile.
What will make or break the Cardinals season is pitching. Before the season I felt we had a so-so staff, with too many uncertainties to call us more than a .500 club.
There is some nice potential on the staff with all the young, hard throwing guys in the organization. If some of those guys gain consistency, which means throwing the ball where you need to most the time, we could have a strong staff. But just going out and wowing people with the gun reading does not necessarily translate into success.
And we need to see Mikolas pitch against someone other than the Reds to gauge his value. Thus far there is not enough evidence to make a determination – it’s the old adage the stat geeks love to say, “small sample size”.
Interesting. The “21 year old” Pujols of 2001 did seem to be ahead of his time. And the current Albert seems older than 38. There is certainly a strong case to put Albert at 40.
Great career, great guy. His career and the Cardinals are similar to rocker George Harrison in a way. Harrison noted that the best thing to ever happen to him was becoming a Beatle, and the second best thing was getting out when the Beatles broke up.
For the Cardinals of recent times, the best thing to happen was drafting Albert. The second best thing was him signing with the Angels after the 2011 season.
Great story. Albert still is a class act. Yeah, he took the money and ran, but who among us would not have done the same thing when you are overwhelmed with a deal like that. A lot of the criticism Albert got was due to his comments a few years before the deal, when he said how he loved being a Cardinal, and made plenty of money.
But when someone waves an insane amount of cash in front of you, it’s tough to walk away.
In sort of an odd consequence, his walking has kept Stan as the undisputed King of the Cardinals. If Albert were still in St. Louis, he would have eclipsed many of Stan’s team records.
As it is, he is on my Cardinal Mount Rushmore. My four guys are Stan, Albert, Rogers Hornsby and Bob Gibson.