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I agree on the retired numbers, as far as their being too many. I don’t think they should retire manager numbers.
Still I think of Medwick in a similar way as Slaughter, and they retired his number 9. I always thought of 9 as Maris, Torre or Pendleton, but then somewhere along the line the club stopped issuing it and retired it for Slaughter. If they are going to do that for Slaughter, I would think they would for Medwick.
But again, I also think the retired numbers are too plentiful. After Stan, Red, and Gibby, I am not sure any others should be retired other than number 5 at some point.
Great article on the Musial number 19 mystery, Brian. It reminded me of the Mantle situation, where Mick wore number 6 during his 1951 partial season rather than the famous number 7 he wore thereafter.
Speaking of number 7, I am still puzzled why the Cardinals have never retired that number in honor of Ducky Medwick. I thought perhaps after Holliday was no longer with the team, that they would finally retire the number, but see that Luke Weaver is now wearing it.
They seem to have retired all of the numbers worn by prominent Cardinal HOFers except 7.
I respectfully disagree on Pham and 2016. I remember that time well, and on the forum kept questioning why Pham was not given more playing time when Moss was tanking in August.
Sometimes you have to look at the player, and see beyond the numbers. Watching Pham in ’15, you could see he was a talent; very athletic, great speed and power, good arm. When you have a guy like that, you play him.
Looking at the 2016 numbers, Moss had a .784 OPS and a 106 OPS+. Pham, in what is supposedly a horrible season, finished at .764 and 103. He only played about a third of the time as Moss. There simply was no compelling reason to continue to play Moss over Pham the last six weeks or so of 2016, especially against left-hand pitching.
Now earlier in his career, Pham was a good prospect but had the injury bug. I am not sure how much opportunity was missed then. But he definitely was not treated right in ’16 in my opinion. Both he and Kolten Wong could have been utilized better. Not one of Matheny’s better years in terms of handling younger players.
Obviously I would rather see Pham take the high road, and speak intelligently about his frustrations rather than throw a consistent barrage of f-bombs out. The “street talk” style reflects a lack of character, which I don’t think is truly how Tommy is, but obviously do not know for sure. But the club’s management needs to see the big picture, and know that they have a special player who is coming into his own right now. Do not give him away because he vented. Keep him in the lineup day after day, and lets see where we are this off season.
I was surprised to see Leone come back out for the ninth. But I think the problem is deeper – we just do not have the depth of quality pitching it takes to consistently win.
I also think management can be questioned for their philosophy on how to use the pitching personnel. One is their refusal to allow a starter to go through a lineup the third time. This puts a lot of strain on the bullpen. Flaherty was at 91 pitches and looked good. Who knows if it would have made a difference to bring him out for the sixth, as he did give up the run in the 5th. But sometimes you have to do that, unless you have about 4 bullpen pitchers that are lights-out. Not sure any team has that much bullpen depth.
In full disclosure, some of this is just me griping. I do not like the way the game is played in this era. I hate 13 man pitching staffs and only 4 bench players. It’s stupid – it’s all micro-management based on pitching, with little ability to utilize the bench.
If you are going to play the game this way, you gotta have a DH as at least that takes away some of the need for a deeper bench.
Anyway, it’s always going to be an adventure early in the season with this pitching staff, and Matheny at the helm. Once Holland is ready, things could gel and we will see guys settle in and effective. But if Holland turns out to be Cecil-esque, we will really be in trouble.
I have always been a big fan of Pham, and have also been frustrated that he was not given more opportunities earlier. The worst time was in late 2016, when Matheny kept running Brandon Moss out there rather than Pham. Tommy did have a high K rate that year, but he would only get an AB here and there.
I just looked at the talent he had, and compared to Moss it seemed a no-brainer that you had to give Pham the playing time to see if he could work through things.
The language is over the top, but the guy is frustrated. It’s not all the club’s fault – Tommy’s career has been beset with injuries. I imagine he is frustrated with that as well, although most of his anger is vented towards the club.
If I am management, no way I trade him because of the comments. Any time you make a trade based on emotions, you risk making a bone-head deal. The guy is our best player right now. You do your best to understand his frustration, and figure it fuels him to be the best player he can be.
Whoa, that was rough. But with this bullpen, we are going to have games like that. Hopefully Holland will bring some stability.
This signing is looking worse every day. Hopefully he can positively contribute at some point, but thus far this one is clearly in the “bust” category in judgements on free agent acquisitions.
That sleeve on his right arm is quite compelling – there is obviously an issue with the arm. Time will tell if it impacts his offense, especially in the power department.
As for defense, when runners are on base you let Pham take anything he can get to on the left side.
Good. solid win. Liked what I saw of Mikolas early, although it would have been good to see him get through 6 and get a quality start. 4 earned in 5 2/3 usually is not a winning formula.
Too bad for Gyorko, as he looked like he could have gone on one of his hot streaks. Had to go to work during the last half of the game, so missed that part but it looks like the ‘pen did well.
Good all-around game. Great to get this one, as you figured it would be tough against their two studs and thus we really needed to get this third one.
Pham looked like the ’17 version – getting on base a lot. Good to see Ozuna get untracked a little and produce a couple of runs. Bullpen shut ’em down, which is great to see.
No kiddin’. Didn’t he hit fourth for us most of the time last year?
My order would be to once again flip Carpenter and Pham, and hit Gyorko 6th, moving Molina and DeJong down a notch. Then you would have DeJong hitting 8th, who hit third a lot for us last year.
Here is an order with this group that might be a good one for the pitcher-hitting-eighth theory:
Pham, Carpenter, Ozuna, Martinez, Gyorko, DeJong, Molina, Weaver, Fowler
Loved The Sporting News back in the day. From the time I was 15 or so, my parents would renew my subscription to TSN every year as my birthday present.
I was an APBA player, so like you Strat guys I used it a lot with APBA. Being a SABR member, I have online access to every single TSN. Sometimes I take a trip back in time and peruse the old issues online.
Happy Easter. it’s also my wife’s birthday – no foolin’!
Matz’ name works out pretty good. His uniform will have “Matz” on the back and “Mets” on the front.
Another pretty good example was in 1970 and early ’71, when the Cardinals had Jose Cardenal.
The all-time best example though was when Jerry West played for the Lakers, where he usually made the all-star team. His all-star uniform had “West” on both the front and back.
27 Ks in 54 outs. 50% K rate.
What’s going on?Sometimes you gotta give credit to the opponent. Syndergaard and deGrom are probably two of the top 10-15 pitchers in baseball when healthy.
I am not concerned about the offense. Our pitching is so ordinary though. Syndergaard or deGrom would easily be the ace on our staff. Plus I don’t see anyone in the bullpen that is a consistent shut-down guy.
But we’ll see. Sometimes these things work themselves out. We are roughly 1.2% into the season – lots can happen. Not that I expect much – I predicted we would win 80-83 games, so this is about how I thought we would look against two great starting pitchers in their ball park.
Get a win tomorrow and you feel pretty good about things.
Tagging on to the Ozuna comment, Syndergaard did not phase JMartinez at all. He has that look of a guy that can just plain hit. In a way, his approach reminds me of Jesus Alou. Similar build, and Jose is a little bit herky-jerky and unsettled at the plate, although Alou was even more that way than Martinez.
But when you freeze-frame them at the point of contact, their head is right on the ball and they tend to square up most of the time.
Today’s lineup. Rinse and repeat.
Fowler
Pham
Carpenter 3B
Ozuna
Martinez 1B
Molina
DeJong
Wong
WachaMy changes would be to flip Carpenter and Pham, and Molina and DeJong. Otherwise not bad. I guess Matheny got over the “Carpenter can’t hit except in lead-off” thoughts.
Ozuna looked bad on Thursday. Seemed to not pick up the ball very well, but then Thor can do that to you.
Jedd is a good guy to have around. He plays most any infield position, and is better defensively at first or third than Martinez or Carpenter. He is capable of playing every day and carries a strong bat. I get the sense that Matheny will platoon him and Wong at second, especially with Jedd trimmed down. I don’t like that, and think Wong needs to play every day, but then they will need to get Gyorko some ABs if they go with the Martinez/Carpenter combo every day.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Eventually I think Garcia is the odd man out. However, the big advantage for him is he is a lefty bat.
It is good to know that we are covered should Carpenter end up being out for awhile with his tender back.
Thanks Brian. I may try that. The problem with pitch selection yesterday was no doubt complicated by Martinez’ lack of control. Another thought – when you cannot locate pitches, a type of pitch you may prefer to use in a particular situation might not be the one you call because of the poor location exhibited to earlier hitters.
The Cards actually hit Syndergaard pretty good, and had Martinez pitched his normal game we probably win that one. But Syndergaard did not compound his team’s problems by walking guys.
Most telling stat of the game: Cardinal pitchers struck out 8 and walked 9. Met pitchers struck out 15 and walked 1.
Another one: Cardinal pitchers threw 164 pitches, Mets 129. Games like the Cardinals had will wear down a staff in a hurry.
Did not really notice. But McCarver made a point about the pitch selection on 2-2, saying (I believe) that Martinez seemed to be going with something other than his best pitch, which he (McCarver) did not think was wise.
He added a comment former Cardinal catcher Hal Smith said about pitch selection on 2-2 as well, but I did not clearly “catch” the comment. Basically though, McCarver felt Martinez was not using the best 2-2 pitch he could, which was getting him into the 3-2 count too often.
Wish I could play it back as it was interesting. Maybe others heard it better.
Lance Lynn took less than the QO as well to sign with Minnesota. Pitchers over 30 look to be less valuable than in the recent past. Teams are not willing to take on the risk that comes with signing an older pitcher to a multi-year deal.
Man, what a clunker to start the season. Obviously we are not writing off the season based on one game, but this showed what I think is our weakness, pitching. Martinez also displayed an example of how even guys with great stuff are not going to win without control. Sandy Koufax might have had better stuff than any pitcher in history, but until he could throw strikes he was nothing special.
We’ll see. Hopefully things come together. But when you get a bad start, it tends to set the tone for the entire game. And our bullpen seems a bit of a mish-mash, although perhaps once Holland settles in he will give some focus to the rest of the group.
Wacha was good last year and had a good Spring. Let’s hope he can continue that tomorrow.
The pitching and manager still has me holding back a bit. I say were at this point on the cusp but right now just outside of playoff spot.
I am pretty much in line with 858booyah’s assessment on the 2018 club. I do not think we have the quality nor depth in pitching to hold up over the course of the season. We will go through some stretches where the offense is clickling and reel off 5,6,7 in a row by scoring 6-10 runs per game. But I think we will also go through times where the offense will stall a little and we are not able to win those games. This will keep us from being in contention at the end. Below is a copy-paste of my thoughts as I expressed them in the Regular season game 1 thread:
The plan to move relievers back and forth between Memphis and St. Louis does not bode well in my opinion. They say they are going to do it to keep fresh arms available at all times. So what is Stubby supposed to do when he has one of the “shuffled” players, not use him? Plus we are dealing with people, not robots or player cards from a table top game. I would think all of the moving around and changes in roles, locations, levels of play etc would make it tough for a guy to get into a groove.
Hopefully I am wrong and the club “goes crazy” and wins 97 games or so. With some better fundamentals than last year, they could add a couple of wins right there. But it just seems like they are running the show in the way Matheny always does things, which is micro-manage. You cannot do that and expect players to get the most from their talent.
My prediction is a low 80s win total.
Any predictions for the Cardinals this season? I do not see us as a serious contender this year, although the late Spring success is good see. But I think the starting pitching is too thin to hold up over the long haul, and am not a big fan of this bullpen shuffle approach they plan to take.
So I will go on record as seeing us finish in the low 80s for wins, say 82-80 or 83-79.
The plan to move relievers back and forth between Memphis and St. Louis does not bode well in my opinion. They say they are going to do it to keep fresh arms available at all times. So what is Stubby supposed to do when he has one of the “shuffled” players, not use him? Plus we are dealing with people, not robots or player cards from a table top game. I would think all of the moving around and changes in roles, locations, levels of play etc would make it tough for a guy to get into a groove.
Hopefully I am wrong and the club “goes crazy” and wins 97 games or so. With some better fundamentals than last year, they could add a couple of wins right there. But it just seems like they are running the show in the way Matheny always does things, which is micro-manage. You cannot do that and expect players to get the most from their talent.
I met Ozzie at a sports collectibles show in Houston back in 2015. I told him I was not real big on the trade when we got him, and as I started to tell him my story he went along with it saying “….I don’t know, Templeton…..”
I went on to say that here we had a Southern California guy at shortstop, who seemed to want to go back there and play. Now we get another Southern California guy, and he’ll probably be with us a couple of years and then leave as well. I then told him “Thanks for sticking around”. He cracked up and enjoyed the banter.
But at the time of the deal, Templeton looked like a future Hall of Famer. Great offensive player, with a glove that was not as good as Ozzie’s, but darn good. I also recall a KMOX broadcast one night when we were playing in San Diego in the late ’70s, and Ozzie made a great play and Jack Buck commented how “they really like this guy (Ozzie) out here”, and Shannon chimed in that he was good, but he’s “not in Templeton’s class”. That changed a few years later of course. Ozzie was actually the NL MVP in 1987, although the award when to Andre Dawson.
Fortunately, Garry got his act together. But for some reason he never hit anywhere else like he did as a Cardinal.