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April 2010Wishes GrantedPosted on April 29, 2010 at 8:00 AM
In yesterday's entry, I said this:"I'd like to see them get a lead and then gradually increase it" As I've said before, sometimes it's like they read this blog. Last night, the Cardinals go out and score in the first, add on in the third, and then just kept going. With any Cardinal starter right now (even Kyle Lohse, if he's gotten through a couple of good innings), you never get too worried if there's a lead, because the pitching has just been so good. There are a lot of good candidates for Hero from last night's ball game, but I'm a sucker for pitching, especially when there's no obvious offensive selection. It was great to see Skip Schumaker get a couple of hits (bet he won't be changing out of the high socks for a while), Colby Rasmus to drive in one with his first hit off a lefthander, David Freese celebrating his birthday right with two hits and two RBI, and if Albert Pujols hits a ball about a foot another way, he drives in three or four instead of just one. All those were solid candidates, but you have to give the tip of the hat to Jaime Garcia. It'll be interesting to see how he does when he starts seeing teams a second or third time, but right now he's just amazing to watch. Who's have thought he'd get through his first month in a rotation with an ERA just slightly over one? (And, more surprisingly, not even lead his own team in ERA!) Garcia should be named rookie of the month this month by MLB and has put a strong foot forward in the rookie of the year race. Jason Heyward may get more press, but Garcia has been better overall. On the flip side, we have Matt Holliday. Another hitless night, though he did walk and score a run. If we counted pre-game, though, we'd have to find someone else, because smashing the C in Big Mac land is pretty darn cool, especially when you could see the ball still sitting up there. Holliday thinks he's got an idea why he's been struggling, so we'll see if it works out. Before we get to today's matchups, I want to talk a little about the new app that the Post-Dispatch has out for the iPhone and other mediums. Full disclosure: I was provided a free copy of it, though no reviewing strings were attached to that. I downloaded it last night and played around a little with it. It's a pretty sharp thing. It's got Bird Land on there, which is a must of course, and it's got the stories from the P-D. It also comes with pictures and news of all the players, and it has an easy-to-navigate menu so that you can find all the stories related to Pujols or Holliday or whomever. It even allows you to read Derrick Goold's Twitter posts, as well as other P-D members. All in all, I think it's worth the $3 that they are charging for it. If you are into these kind of things, it's worth checking out. Cards go for the sweep in the afternoon tilt today. A note that Fox Sports Midwest will be doing a live chat during the game, so check them out over there while the actions going on. Adam Wainwright goes for the Cardinals, so you feel good about the chances of a sweep. Here's what the Wagonmaker has done against the team that drafted him.
The Braves send out Jair Jurrjens to try to stop the bleeding. Numbers against the Redbirds:
No blog post tomorrow, as it's my church's annual BBQ and I'll be there from about 3:30-7. That's AM to PM. Long day, but a lot of fun. Hopefully there's a lot of good Cardinal baseball to write about when next we speak!
Another Rally By The RedbirdsPosted on April 28, 2010 at 7:49 AM
You know, it's kinda nice to see these comebacks. Granted, I'd like to see them get a lead and then gradually increase it, but knowing that a team isn't out of it is helpful.You have to give the Hero tag to Yadier Molina this time. For the second straight night, he gave the Cards the lead with a solid hit. For the last three years or so, Yadi's been a guy that I want up there when the team needs a hit, second only to Albert Pujols in that regard. On the flip side, Blake Hawksworth really had a terrible game, didn't he? He came into the game with a three run lead and left one out later with it down to one and the winning run on base. The runs weren't earned, but that's because he made the error, throwing the ball away on a play at the plate. Not exactly a night that he'll want to remember for a while. I think one of the more disconcerting things to come out of last night's game, though, was that Chris Carpenter didn't have a feel for his fastball. Normally, that's not a huge deal, but when you factor in that the game before he didn't have it either, you start to wonder exactly why not. Carp wasn't completely Carp-like last night, though he still was very effective and gave the team a chance to win, so I think that's something to keep an eye on. To be his dominant self, he's going to have to have more confidence in the heater. One person who never lacks for a heater is Jason Motte, who actually got the save last night, with Ryan Franklin having worked the last two days. Seemed to me watching that game that Motte got wild when he was throwing 96, 97, but he'd tone it down to about 88 and get the ball over the plate. He also made an acrobatic play to get Erik Henske at first after a double-play ball had bounced off his glove. (You could also tell that he wasn't exactly happy with botching the DP....) It was a little bit of a high-wire act, but it still was good to see Motte get a save in such a close game. Hopefully it'll be good for the confidence. Also, it was nice to see my friends at Pitchers Hit Eighth be relevant again. It will be interesting to see, since the fact that Brendan Ryan was hitting ninth played into the game-winning rally, if Tony La Russa will go with the pitcher in the eighth spot again tonight and for how long. I'd like to see it continue for a while, but you never know with TLR. In news that sent some worry around Cardinal Nation, Aaron Miles is back. Now, I honestly don't think he'll ever see St. Louis this year. Felipe Lopez should be back soon and Tyler Greene is fine as a backup. I would also hope that, even if he did make it, TLR wouldn't feel the need to play him much given Ryan and Skip Schumaker. That said, well, you just never know. Hopefully that'll be the case, because Miles was all right in St. Louis, but we got his career years and they weren't super at that level. Cards have at least split the series, which is good, and they have Jaime Garcia and Adam Wainwright going to get another series win. The Cardinals are already the best team in baseball, record-wise, and there's no reason to think this can't keep rolling along. Garcia goes tonight against Kenshin Kawakami. The only Brave that has faced Garcia is Nate McLouth, who is 0-1 against him. Kawakami is just as much of a cipher, as the only person that has faced him (Felipe Lopez, 1-3) is on the disabled list. Cards have had trouble in the past with pitchers they've not seen. You'd like to think that Kawakami's 4.76 ERA would indicate St. Louis would be able to take him, but you don't have to have been a fan very long to know that high ERA guys oftentimes are able to shut the Cardinals down. UCB Radio Hour is on tonight! It's one I'm pretty excited about, because not only is Nick, one of our great hosts from Pitchers Hit Eighth, on the schedule tonight but also Tom from CardinalsGM. Tom was one of the original voices of the UCB Radio Hour back in its infancy and it's great to get him back in the saddle again. 9:30 Central over at Blog Talk Radio, so give them a listen or call in at 646-929-1758!
Cardinal ComebackPosted on April 27, 2010 at 7:47 AM
First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who has expressed kind words over the Cardinal Blogosphere Guide. I hope that it results in increased traffic for the blogs listed and that you can find another source of can't-miss Cardinal writing.Perhaps it was just me, but it seems like if this was last year's team, a 3-0 deficit against Tim Hudson would have been game over. I was listening to that portion on the radio and felt like it was over. Atlanta seemed to be continually chipping away at Kyle Lohse and the Cardinals were again not getting any hits with men in scoring position. However, the last half of this game was very different than the first half. I'm not quite willing to give Lohse the Hero of the game tag, but he did stiffen and figure out how to keep Atlanta from scoring any more runs. It sounded like he was getting the ball down more in the last couple of innings, which always is a good thing. I don't think all the runs he allowed were his fault, either. It seemed to me, watching the third inning, that he made some awfully good pitches, especially to Chipper Jones who eventually walked. I thought he should have had Jones out a long time before that, but he couldn't get the calls. It seemed like he just had to lay it in there to get a strike, something Troy Glaus took advantage of in driving in the second run. I'm going to give Colby Rasmus the Hero tag again. Not only did he hit a big home run to pull the Cards within one, his continued development (and the fact that Albert Pujols was on second with first open) led to a walk in the eighth, allowing Yadier Molina to drive in the winning run (and would have had an insurance run if that ball hadn't hopped the wall). Sure, that set up the double play with Molina batting, but I'm wondering if things might not have been a bit different if it was the early-season 2009 Rasmus batting. Then again, maybe not. Bobby Cox did walk Skip Schumaker to get to Ryan Ludwick, something that I've never seen and likely won't see again anytime soon. Talking about heroes, can we give a little credit to this bullpen? I've been one in the last couple of weeks that has been on their case, but since Mitchell Boggs grooved a pitch to Mark Reynolds in Arizona, here's their combined line: 13 IP, 10 H, 11 K, 7 BB, 1.38 ERA The walk total is a little high, but it's skewed by Kyle McClellan's three in the first game of the examined period. They've really come in and shut the door in the last week and hopefully that will continue. Finally, major kudos to Bryan Anderson. In his last major league at-bat for a while, as Jason LaRue will be activated today, he had a nice piece of hitting, going the other way to drive in the tying run. Hopefully he'll do well in Memphis, though the odds of us seeing him before September (barring injury) are very slim. There was some talk on the post-game show last night about the team carrying three catchers and letting him be more of a left-handed bat, but I think if they wanted to do that, they'd have let him play more in the last couple of weeks, as they have Nick Stavinoha as an emergency backup. Even though David Freese went 0-4, there's no way he can be the Goat. He had a number of defensive gems last night, bringing back memories of Scott Rolen. To think that people were ragging on his defense at the beginning of the season! Freese is starting to look like one of the biggest steals in Cardinal history. So if we don't give it to him, we look to the other 0-4 in the box score, Brendan Ryan. It's been a tough month for Brendan and thankfully it's not really affected his glove, but he's going to have to hit over .200 soon, isn't he? The Cards made some moves yesterday, sending down Allen Craig, putting Felipe Lopez on the disabled list, and calling up Tyler Greene and Jon Jay. I put a quick look at the newcomers together for Baseball Digest yesterday, and as I did so I really got excited for what Jay especially may bring to this ball club. He's got a good high-average bat, so he may be more likely to help that "string hits together" idea. He's got speed, so he can go first to third or steal a base. I expect he'll probably get a start in this Atlanta series, maybe Thursday, and it'll be interesting to see what he does with the opportunity. The move that may affect the Cardinals the most from yesterday, though, they didn't make. Twitter blew up yesterday with the announcement of Ryan Howard's five year extension. You can find Ben's ruminations on that over at BD, but the consensus is 1) that's way more that Howard is worth and 2) it's going to make it that much harder for St. Louis to sign Pujols. I tend to agree, at least on the former. I mean, Howard has always struck me as a guy that isn't necessarily going to age well. He hits long balls and that's about the extent of it. He still can't hit left-handed pitching, so his average is never going to be really high. He's not known as any great shakes at first. He's a good player, don't get me wrong, but the second-highest annual salary in baseball? That doesn't seem right. Will this affect Pujols's contract? That remains to be seen. On the one hand, you'd think it'd have to, because it's the easiest comparison in the world. Howard plays the same position and does everything worse than Pujols, so you know AP would be looking for more than $25 million per now. On the other hand, does it really? I mean, no one expected to get AP for $25 per year, did they? Not if he's looking to be the highest player in the game. He already had the ARod contract and the Mark Teixeira contracts to use as a comparison. Does this really add that much more fuel to the fire? Look, we already know that Pujols, if he wanted to hold out for every cent, is going to be the richest player ever, no matter who pays him. I don't know that being able to point to one more crazy contract will add much incentive to either side. I still think, and I've held to this all along, that Pujols's contract is going to have some creative stuff in it. Honestly, you hear this tossed around by a lot of media types for a lot of contracts, but I would not be surprised if a small fraction of team ownership, say 3% or so, wouldn't be part of it. I'm not sure if it's legal within the rules of the game, so it might be that he gets an option to purchase that percentage at a bargain rate when he retires, but I think ownership might well be a part of his next deal. Cards get back to the field tonight and send out Chris Carpenter against Derek Lowe. You always like your chances when Carpenter is on the bump. Here is what he's done against the Braves:
Derek Lowe has looked a little shaky so far this season. Still, he's a ground ball specialist who can get it going at any time. Here's him against the Cardinals:
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