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Good to see the offense stay on this post-all-star-break roll. We needed every one of those 11 runs last night. But that was a brutal game.
First, Jose Martinez might be the worst outfielder I have ever seen. He can hit, but is a proto-type DH. Why in the world doesn’t anyone use two hands to catch the ball anymore, like us kids of the ’60s and ’70s were taught. I guess because it doesn’t look cool. It’s okay for guys who can actually catch the ball do that, but Martinez needs to be told he absolutely must use two hands every time on routine fly balls, or he is fined.
Man, our bullpen. As Al said last night, when you’ve got eight guys out there and feel like you’re not covered, something is wrong. Mayers cannot even protect an 8 run lead, Cecil is a roll of the dice, as is Oh. Bowman might be slightly better, but is nowhere near a lock down guy. There is no one in that group of 8 at this point that you can say will almost assuredly keep a game in check. Lyons might be the one guy who we can turn to as a reasonably consistent bullpen arm.
From here on, or until someone steps up as a shutdown guy, Matheny needs to get at least 8 innings out of the starter if they have pitched mostly low stress innings, like Martinez did last night.
It looks like the difference between us winning the division and not will greatly hinge on whether or not we can come up with a strong late inning pitching combination.
We might need a white knight, a “1964 Barney Schultz” to ride in and literally save the day. Is that guy out there, or on the roster right now? We will see. I think Brebbia or Tui are candidates to be that guy, although neither made a strong case for themselves in their most recent outings.
One thing to consider on the Sutter comparison, is that closers were used differently when he pitched. Sutter averaged roughly 1.5 IP per appearance while with us, whereas today closers are almost strictly one inning pitchers, with an occasional 4-out appearance.
Essentially Sutter went 2 innings every other appearance. That would tend to increase the standard deviation of his outings – in other words, chances are greater for him to get the blown save, or a win or loss rather than a save.
Rosenthal’s W-L record was 8-20 coming in to 2017. If you look at Sutter’s W-L with us, he had many more times being the pitcher of record; 26-30 in four seasons in St. Louis.
Sutter was +8 over Rosenthal in W-L, and had to get more outs per save than Trevor. Not that this data in and of itself makes Sutter a more reliable closer than Rosenthal, but it presents a more complete picture in comparing the two.
It will be interesting to hear what the deal was with Rosenthal. I was surprised he threw an off speed pitch on that 3-2 count before he came out. The TV announcers were all over it before he even came out, saying his velocity was down a little.
Some nights guys just don’t have it, and of course Rosenthal tends to be more up and down than many. Usually a guy like Kimbrel is fairly consistent, but Rosenthal as we are painfully aware of, can be very good or very bad.
That was one of those games where I just never felt like we were going to win it. It was eerily like our earlier season games, where we score early, and cannot add to the lead.
That ninth inning was horribly played. We looked defeated by our actions and body language – all the timeouts, the stalling. The umpire got to our heads, similar to 1985 game six. Once that happened you could just see where were unsure, and kept stammering like we knew the inevitable would happen, but maybe if we just do not pitch we can keep it from happening.
Just a weird game. What is it about us playing Boston. Seems we can never beat them. Fortunately we do not play them much.
Right field has been our weakest offensive spot so far, and it is a position that is customarily offensive oriented (along with a strong arm if possible). So while Upton does offer a significant upgrade there if you use April-mid August numbers, that does not necessarily mean he does the same thing from here on out.
I am not convinced he is a significant enough upgrade to take on now, and looking ahead we appear to be looking at a glut of outfielders.
So I would pass on acquiring him. However, if we do make the plunge I would not be overly upset about it.
Well the streak had to end sometime. We need to keep playing steady baseball – just keep winning series; don’t lose more than 2 or maybe 3 in a row the rest of the season. Avoid the long losing streak, and we’ve got a good chance at the division.
Thanks to the hot streak, Matheny has cut off two games from his Actual-to-Pythagorean deficit this year. We are now only a -3, with an expected record of 64-53 compared to 61-56 actual. He was -5 a week ago.
Joe Maddon is -1, 60-55 compared to an expected mark of 61-54. Milwaukee is right there as well, with an expected mark of 61-58, one better than the 60-59 pace they have set.
Thus based on runs scored vs runs given up, we are the best team in the Central over the first roughly 70% of the season. We have been sabotaged by poor fundamentals, inconsistency on both offense and defense – some of which is due to injuries, an under-performing bullpen much of the year, and some less-than-stellar late-and-close game management decisions.
I think what has gotten us back on track, is a steady lineup that has come together, and the improved bullpen pitching. We finally have a solid eight starting lineup and fairly consistent batting order. A major key has been the return of Kolten Wong to everyday status, and Dexter looks much better since coming back. Grichuk responds better to every day play and needs to stay in right field the rest of the season. Pham is a lock in left, and DeJong has rejuvenated the shortstop position.
Eight is great! Sort of an “ugly” win yesterday though. The ninth turning out to be a stressful inning for Rosenthal, and he no doubt is unavailable today. Matheny probably should have stayed with Martinez another inning at least, but we still got the “W” despite the bad ninth inning.
Wacha has been as consistent as any starter the last six weeks or so. We’ve got a great shot at number 9. I imagine Dickey is no fun to face though. Remember back in the ’80s when Whitey would never play Silent George Hendrick against Phil Niekro? Hendrick said one game against Niekro would “mess up my swing for a week”.
Clark is a real nice guy. At least he was when I met him at an autograph event a few years ago. Does anyone know if he and Pujols patched up their differences, or are they bitter enemies still?
Speaking of Pujols, I wonder if he will be there in 2024 or 2026 when the Cardinals celebrate a reunion of the 2004 and 2006 pennant winners and World Series champs, respectively? He will still be on the Angels payroll in a non-playing capacity, so it will be interesting to see if he shows up. My guess is that he will be there and receive a huge ovation. Tune back in in 7 and/or 9 years to see if my prediction is correct.
Good point on the 13 pitcher situation. I think we could go with 12 and bring in another position player, perhaps Diaz or Sierra, for Cecil. But then again, in 3 weeks we’ll expand the rosters and likely add some bench strength, although it could be a little longer to keep Memphis strong for their post season.
After Cecil’s outing last night, you could see that he was real dejected. Obviously he feels worse about things than we do. But man, you can’t have those performances in a pennant race.
Really, the last two games were examples where we should never have had to go to a closing situation. Matheny did not do a good job in the late innings in the last Kansas City game by allowing Oh to pitch to Moss, although again had Cecil done his job it would not have come to that. But he did get the strikeout of Gordon I believe it was, after allowing the first two to reach. At that point I was saying to leave him in, because you knew Moss was going to hit in the 9 spot and so if you bring in Oh, you then need to go to someone else to face Moss.
Matheny stayed with Oh and things got dicey. But again granted, if Cecil does his job, and then Oh gets his guy the pressure stays off.
I think Bowman is okay to keep, although he has been used a lot and we may see diminished performances from him down the stretch. Cecil is the real drag on the pen, plus the fact that Oh gets tatooed by left-hand hitters.
I think this group can get it done, but adding Montgomery in place of Cecil would be a decent switch.
Right now the Cardinals are probably kicking themselves for signing Cecil and Piscotty. But those signings might look a lot better a year from now, or even a month from now. You just never know.
That was an over-achieving team, that might have won the World Series had we played it in an even-numbered year where the NL got the four home games. I still remember after game seven, Whitey was interviewed on the field and asked about the Twins. His reply was “They are good in this ball park”.
That is a bit strange on Oquendo not coming back. Another guy I would like to see is Terry Pendleton, although he might be coaching somewhere (I have lost track of him). Todd Worrell spent some time in the TV booth of last night’s game, and is a very articulate and thoughtful guy. Despite being from California, he lives in the St. Louis area, saying he and his wife wanted to raise their family in the Midwest.
Man, this is a nice run. Seven in a row, and we seem to score 8 runs every night. I really like watching Pham and Wong play. Both guys are players I have liked for a long time, and have always felt with their athleticism that if they were allowed to play every day and get into a rhythm, they would be valuable.
On Cecil, since he got a nice contract and has had success in the past, all you can do is give him time. His location has been terrible – too many pitches up in the zone. For now we’re stuck with him, and so you put him in low leverage situations and hope he can develop better command and pull those pitches down in the zone.
If this keeps up though, he might end up being the pitcher’s version of Piscotty, and be a very well compensated player for Memphis.
Rally kitty!! The offense continues it’s surge. Let’s hope it continues. The one thing I would change with this club right now is the batting order. Although we are playing well with roughly the order MM is using, I think you gotta get DeJong out of the 3 spot.
Wonder if the last 3 games have been a fluke, or just the law of averages starting to catch up
on offense.I wonder that as well. Is this offense as bad as they have shown all season? They were expected to be better, but the regression of Piscotty and Diaz took some time to figure out, and then the batting orders have been all over the place.
Maybe we are seeing some true up to the mean. Sometimes teams just gel, and come together. Time will tell if this club is more like the team that struggles with the fundamentals and loses too many close ones, or is actually pretty good and is beginning to show that capability.
As a way to tell how a manager performs, still imperfect but at least it is statistically based, is looking at how a team’s won-loss record compares to expected won-loss (the so-called “Pythagorean” W-L record).
I tracked the difference between actual records and the pythag expectation for Whitey (1982-1989, throwing out the 1981 split season), LaRussa (1996-2011), and Matheny (2012-2016).
While Matheny comes out the worst of the three in average Pythag difference over his managerial career, the numbers are not all that different between him and TLR. Mike is at exactly zero, with a high of 7 wins over projected in 2014, and a low of -5 wins in 2012.
LaRussa averages a +.375 wins per year, with a high of 7 over in 2007, and a low of -6 in 1997.
Whitey does the best, with an average of +1.75 wins per year. He was also the most consistent, with no season coming in under the expected wins. His best year was 1987 at +4.
My thoughts on Whitey are that his teams usually had great speed and defense, and good bullpens. Thus he would literally “steal” a game here and there, and his bullpens kept the close games in check. On a side note, I still think speed is under-rated in baseball, because it gets lost in the metrics used today, which put value on OBP and power.
But back to the topic at hand – Matheny’s big year of 2014 was when Neshek was lights out, and Rosenthal saved 45 games. He had a real good late inning pitching.
LaRussa has the longest track record, and thus his teams were all over the board. One interesting note, Tony’s 2011 team finished at a +2, so they played a little better than expected. Then in 2012 and 2013, when Matheny took over, the team finished -5 and -4 compared to expected. That makes sense in a way, in that the rookie and still inexperienced second-year manager probably contributed to botching some close games with his late game managing. Of course just plain old bad luck also plays a part.
Then in 2014 and 2015 he reversed the trend, going +7 and +4. 2016 was back down at -2, and so far in 2017 he is -5. But that 2017 number is a bit skewed by the sudden offensive explosion of the last three games.
Overall it looks like Whitey was a real good manager, never getting in his team’s way, and getting the most out of what he had. Tony’s good teams were good, and bad teams not so good although it is interesting that one of his worst teams, 2007, were probably even worse than their record.
Matheny’s teams performed well for him 2014 and 2015, but have not so good of late.
If we bring in the post season, Matheny also gets the lowest marks of the three although he has not managed as long as the other two. Whitey won a ring and two other NL pennants. He probably wins a second ring in 1985, when his team was the best in baseball and likely beats the Royals in six games in the World Series despite playing without Vince Coleman, but that terrible ninth inning call seemed to zap the life out of the club and inspire the Royals.
LaRussa had the two teams that were not expected to do much win it all, and the powerhouse 2004 team fall on their face in post season. And he had several other post season qualifiers not get to the finish line.
Mike’s got the one pennant so far, and some post season flops that include some questionable decisions.
Wow, holy offense Batman! Three Nights In August. Hot August Nights! Apparently this is the first time in modern franchise history a Cardinal club has scored in double figures three consecutive games.
Are we sure this is the 2017 team, the club that consistently plays 2-1 and 3-2 games, losing more than half of them?
Can we just stay in the friendly confines of Kaufman Stadium and play these next two there? We’ll even let the Royals bat last.
You wonder if this is the lineup that clicks, and we can keep this going. Matheny needs to stick with this group for awhile, minus the DH spot of course, and see what they do. Wacha looked real good and is pitching with confidence. We have a great shot at winning three of four in this “home and home” series with Kansas City. I am not real confident about tonight’s game, although Leake has pitched better than his record shows. He was probably thinking after the recent outburst that the offense will take tonight off – just his luck.
Nice to see the guys having fun out there the last couple of nights. That ball that Gyorko hit was one of the more impressive home runs I recall in recent times. I mean, he jumped on that pitch and really turned it around! That was the difference maker and put the game away for all intents.
There is hope in Redbird-land, at least for the time being.
I was a bit surprised the club did not at least make an offer to Francona when we interviewed for managers after 2011. But I thought the Matheny hire was a good one, as he seemed like a natural to one day manage a ball club. His Cardinal heritage helped as well.
The big mistake, which Brian has pointed out a few times, was not having someone like say a Dave Garcia (not that he would be the guy, but he just came to mind as an example, probably because his grandson is on our club) as a bench coach to provide veteran counsel.
At this time it’s mostly a moot point on Matheny. I felt management should have held off on the contract extension and evaluate the on-field staff after this season. They chose to stay with the status quo and push the contract out, and no doubt will go in to 2018 with Matheny and crew unless the whole ball club does a “Brandon Moss” and falls apart between now and September 30th.
Matheny’s on-field work has obviously been flawed. He continues to fumble around and favor certain players. Another example came up recently when he made some silly comment about playing Grichuk and letting him “sink or swim”, despite the fact that Pham is the best player on his team. Grichuk has been given more opportunities to sink or swim than Michael Phelps, and Pham has shown what he can do when healthy, yet Matheny does this stuff over and over.
Fortunately despite saying that, he has kept Pham in the lineup as Piscotty’s flop makes it so Pham has to play.
Wacha vs. Ishikawa was notable because of the magnitude of the failure, but not unique.
What bothered me even more about that decision, was when asked about it Matheny simply said “I felt good about Wacha in that situation”. and then moved on to other questions.
What we need to hear if we are going to take Matheny seriously as a manager, is for him to explain why he felt good about Wacha – maybe his fastball had a lot of movement in recent warm-ups; maybe Matheny felt he was an unknown to the Giants and might be someone they had not planned on facing. Stuff like that.
The question got a quick brush off, and so it makes you question whether Matheny really knows his craft. But that was a few years ago and hopefully he has become a more critical thinker. Questions still abound though, due to the poor fundamentals of our club.
The one actionable problem is the manager, who should have been fired before Travis Ishikawa touched home plate.
The late game managing in that game might go down in history as the prime example of what not to do. There were a series of mistakes made. However, Maddon screwed up a lot in last year’s World Series, over-using Chapman for one when he did not need to, but got away with it. Had Cleveland completed their comeback in game 7, Maddon’s decisions would have been highly criticized.
The situation with the 2017 Cardinals is fairly easy to assess. The offense and bullpen have not performed to management’s expectations, and on-field management is so-so. The fact that the players have not done the job is probably first and foremost, but this team under Matheny makes far too many fundamental blunders and mistakes, and those do not seem to get addressed.
I do believe Mike has gotten better at using his bullpen, and has gotten away from using a push-button approach and sticking with guys in order to better their stats.
But the poor use of players, and a general style of playing guys and constructing batting orders almost based on what they did the day before contributes to players being uneasy and pressing, which leads to the fundamental errors.
I love the potential Kelly shows, and obviously he should be groomed as the catcher starting in 2019. I wish he was playing every day in Memphis now though, then next year start playing a couple of days a week sort of like Molina did in 2004.
Then in ’19 you probably play Molina and Kelly each about half the time, depending on injuries and results.
As for Tui, he is another guy I think Matheny should use more often. I am surprised Oh is still on the club, as Tui could have filled his spot. Like with Lynn, we must not have gotten anything worthwhile offered for Oh, although you would think a contender would have wanted him. Then again, technically we are still contenders despite the season long slightly-less-than-mediocrity performance.
Marco was rocked around some – 7 hits and 5 earned runs in four innings. Struck out 5 and walked only 1, but it looks like he was hit rather hard as two of the hits were doubles, both by Cain, and he gave up a homer.
Man, Letterman is looking old. I like the original Angels hat the guy to the left of Letterman is wearing. I still think those hats blow away the current one, and that the Angels should go back to it.
So we outscore the Redlegs by 12 in the series, yet only win 2 of 3. It’s just been that kind of year.
Jose Martinez reminds me a bit of Jesus Alou, who is probably not remembered by anyone here. Alou had a real herky-jerky approach to hitting, fidgeting and moving his head all around, but when the camera would do a freeze-frame of him when the bat met the ball, his head was right on the ball.