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New Digs, Same Stuff

Welcome to the new place! 

Some of you are coming over from the Wordpress blog, having read me some the last few months.  Glad to see you.  I hope you’ll feel as at home here as you did over there and make it a daily stop.

Probably a number of you are coming from one of my fine neighbors here on the Blogs by Fans network.  Nice to meet you!  Let me tell you a little about myself.

I’m a 32-year-old CPA in Arkansas, married to a wonderfully tolerant woman (which gets tested yearly between March and October) and have two kids, a three-year-old son who is really starting to get into baseball and an eight-month-old daughter who doesn’t realize she’ll be really into baseball in a year or so.  Besides this blog, you can find me in an administrative capacity over at CardsClubhouse, either moderating the forums, organizing the fantasy baseball leagues or creating YNOT games.

I recently documented how I came to be a Cardinals fan, but the short version is I really grew up in the tradition and very glad that I did.  And, as is typical in Cardinal Nation, I’m passing that down the line as well.

What will you find here?

Well, I’m not really a sabermetrician.  I’ll do a few things with stats now and again, but you won’t see a lot of VORP or things like that.  I know there’s a lot of value to those stats, but I’m not quite hip enough to keep up.

I don’t have any inside sources.  You don’t run into too many people connected to the Cardinals down here.  (Though, interestingly, I used to have a couple of ties to the assistant trainer of the Cardinals.  He’s now the Cubs head trainer.)

All I’ve got is my view on what’s happening.  A lot of reaction, a decent bit of second guessing, maybe a little predicting.  I also head up the United Cardinal Bloggers and we, from time to time, do a blogging project.  In fact, one is scheduled for Thursday, so stay tuned for that.

I hope you’ll like what you see and will come back often.  I’m glad to be part of the neighborhood, so to speak, and I’m looking forward to seeing how things go in the future.

Spanning the Globe, AL Style

Yesterday, we took a tour around the National League. Today, let's hit the junior circuit.

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Spanning the Globe, NL Style

One of the great things about having XM radio is being able to hear other teams' broadcasts, getting a general idea of what the fans in that market are thinking about (plus, of course, all the great voices!) Thanks to the internet, we can do that daily. The next couple of days, we'll take a look at each team that doesn't play in St. Louis. I'll have a blog link and a newspaper link, with a little discussion tossed in there as well. Blogs, for the most part, come from the team lists at striketwo.net.

And, without further adieu, let's look around the National League:

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Reader Interaction Post #1: Why Are You a Cards Fan?

With the general slowness of the offseason, it seemed like a good time to find out about the people that read this blog.  If you’ve not commented before, this would be a great time to start.  I think you will find it’s a fairly easy and painless process. 

The question before you is why are you a Cardinals fan?  How did you come to follow the Redbirds?  (This, of course, assumes that most of the readership of the blog is a fan of the team from St. Louis.  If you are fans of another team, feel free to substitute their name and tell that story.) 

My first real baseball memory isn’t of the Cardinals, but of the Detroit Tigers.  My family visited my aunt and uncle that were living outside of Detroit in 1984 and we went to see a game at the old Tiger Stadium.  I remember that fall watching those same Tigers win the World Series. 

However, in this area, it’s tough not to be a Cardinal fan.  I remember in 1985, we had just moved into a new house and the cable had yet to be hooked up, so my dad stood in the kitchen listening to the Cards and Royals on the radio.  I also remember being very disappointed the morning after Game 7 when the DJ on the radio said, “This one is for Whitey Herzog” and played “Goin’ to Kansas City.” 

This is Cardinal country, mainly due to the fact that St. Louis is the closest baseball team, the fact that KMOX helped raise a generation of fans that are passing it down to their offspring, and the fact that the Cardinals usually win.  When I really started following baseball, it was 1987 and the Cards were going to the Series for the second time in three years. 

I latched on to Ozzie as my favorite player, followed by Big Mac (who I followed while he was in Oakland as well) and now Albert.  Somewhere along the way I got onto message boards and now into blogging about the team.  It’s been a gradual transformation and there’s no one definitive moment in my fandom, but it’s been fun all along the way. 

And it’s a lot of fun to have my son very excited about baseball and the Cardinals already as well! 

So that’s me.  How about you?

General Stuff

*Congrats to Future Redbirds for their 500,000 hit. They do some great work over there following the minors and probably are the second-most visited blog after VEB. Great job, guys!

*In case you are curious, this blog is just shy of reaching 5400 on the hit meter in exactly five months. Way off of 500,000, of course, but it makes me feel pretty good to know that someone is reading this stuff. And I really appreciate those that comment, because I hate feeling like I'm talking to myself.  I'm also proud of my fourth-place ranking in Cardinal blogs at Striketwo.net.  And everyone above me has multiple authors, so I'm the top solo artist.  (Hey, I'll take what I can get!)

*For those of you that participated or were otherwise enthralled by the Cardinal Blogger Awards, you might be interested in this. The inspiration for that was the Boardie Awards at CCH, and the ballot for the fifth incarnation of those awards was posted today.

*A not-so-joyous comment for the holidays: Bernie says that there is "nothing going on...it's going to be a hard winter." He's also not big on the signing Prior idea, though Deadspin does say that the Cards are very interested in him, though whether that is true or just Will Leitch wishful thinking, I don't know.

*David Eckstein signed with the Blue Jays for one year. That market for shortstops dried up quickly. Hopefully he will have a good year with the Blue Jays. He had a great run as a Cardinal, but it was time to part ways.

Examining the Wreckage

So the Mitchell Report came out yesterday (available for download here).  Have you heard anything about that?

I'll be honest with you.  I've not read it.  At 400+ pages of legalese, I'm not sure when and if I'll make it through the report.  However, like you, I've heard a lot about what's in it.

First off, Pujols is ticked and I can't blame him.  That initial list that came out (you can read the real-time reactions in the Mitchell Report thread at the Clubhouse) had a lot of people, including him, on it that were nowhere to be found in the report.  However, even just having your name tied to a report like that, even if it is an inaccurate report that is withdrawn, can cause your reputation a lot of harm.  I saw someone later claiming that was a list of players that they didn't necessarily have enough evidence to put into the report.  (BTW, Nate Silver at BP did a good job debunking that list.)  Some guy that doesn't pay much attention may have caught that report and now think AP is a user.  Or people will say, as that other one did, "there's no smoke without fire."  For my part, I don't think there was anything to it, just someone throwing out names.  I'm glad Albert did make a statement about the whole thing, though.

Second, from what I can tell, the Mitchell Report doesn't tell us just a whole heck of a lot that we didn't already know.  We knew lots of players used steroids in that time period.  We knew most of the names from one leak or another.  Even the big names of Clemens and Pettitte had before been tied to steroids and been suspected for some time.  While there were some former Cardinals on the list that we didn't know about (Gary Bennett being the most recent, probably Fernando Vina being the most prominent), none of them made that much of an impact on me or the team.  Vina was a fan favorite and there could be some people disappointed with him today, but that's about it.

And lastly, the most interesting thing out of the report was the lack of evidence tying Mark McGwire to steroids.  His andro use was talked about, but of course that was legal at the time and well known.  The only other information was the stuff from Jose Canseco's book.  Mitchell investigators could find no one to verify those charges.

So the question for Hall of Fame voters, who are filling out their ballots now, is how do you keep him out?  There is less evidence against him doing things than certain Hall of Famers Bonds and Clemens.  As probably numerous people have said in the last couple of days, if you start keeping out people you just suspect used, you have to not induct anyone for a good 10 years or so, until this new class, people that have gone through testing, are eligible.  I don't think that will happen.

We have players from the Dead Ball era in the Hall that probably wouldn't be there if you used today's criteria on them.  But the game was different then and most everyone played with the same conditions.  You could make the case that the Steroid Era was the same way.

More Random Thoughts

Just because there's not that much out there:

• The Mitchell Report is due tomorrow.  Assuming that the dog doesn't eat his homework, I'm sure Mr. Mitchell will give us plenty of things to talk about in the grand scheme of baseball.  Will there be any Cardinals on the list?  Supposedly 60-80 current and former players will be, so it'd be hard to have the Cardinals passed over.  Also, what are the odds that the report makes it to tomorrow with no leaks?  I'd place those odds pretty darn low.


• Apparently our good friends to the north have picked up another outfielder.   We'll see how well he translates to the major leagues.  He's 30, so he's in the middle of his prime.  Being the Cubs, you'd figure it'd blow up in their faces.  Even if he does well, I don't think he's a difference-maker, but maybe I've just not followed him enough.  I still think the Brewers are the team to beat in the NL Central.


• That same article indicates that Mark Prior will be non-tendered today.  I've talked about picking up Prior a couple of times, under the non-tender scenario and the trade route.  I think Mozeliak should be on the phone with his agent as soon as the paperwork clears the MLB front office.


• I remember reading something (and I've searched for a link, to no avail) that Mozeliak said before the winter meetings that he expected to have stuff done by mid-December.  It's getting to that point and not much has happened.  I know the Cards are in an awkward position of basically giving up on '08 for '09 and '10, but still Mo, throw us bloggers a bone and make some sort of move!


• If you want to look around the Cardinals minors while the news is slow, check out Future Redbirds' prospect lists.  That should give you a pretty good indication of who is who in the farm system.  I'm guessing Erik and company will be adding the community top 25 they just finished to that page soon.

The First Annual Cardinal Blogger Awards

The votes have been cast. Now let's see who won!

First off, a comment from Kujo at Rockin' the Red for a new title for the group:

How about Cardinals Bloggers United, in the likeness of the soccer hooligan firms in England?

That's not bad. Those involved, what do you think? Or perhaps United Cardinal Bloggers would be more your style? If we are going to keep doing projects, we gotta find a name. And I do hope we keep doing projects.

OK, to the awards. I'll post some quotes from those bloggers that elaborated on their selections.

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Stirring the Pot

Bernie loves to get people riled up sometimes, I honestly believe that. Take, for example, his latest tease over at the Pressbox:

They have their eye on one guy who had a poor 2007, but who has been good in the recent past.

--B

Of course, that sent everyone into a guessing spree. Bernie then ruled out Dontrelle Willis (good), Matt Morris (good) and Cliff Lee (probably good). He doesn't seem to say whether it's a free agent or a trade, but the assumption on the thread was made that they were talking trade.

Some of the names tossed out included Kevin Millwood, Jeremy Bonderman, Randy Johnson and our focus from earlier in the week, Mark Prior. There are too many names and too many possibilities to really start making guesses and discussing if it is a good or bad thing the team is looking at them.

That said, last week there was a mention at the end of Derrick Goold's blog entry about the shortstop situation that I found pretty interesting:

Breaking News that Hints at Future News: The Cardinals put a claim in on Cody Haerther a few days after losing him in the waiver process and successful re-claimed the outfield prospect. Haerther is a lefthanded-hitting outfielder — familiar, eh? — and his addition to the Cardinals 40-man roster puts them at the limit. Teams do not like to go into the winter meetings with a full roster, especially when the Rule 5 draft requires an open spot to participate. The Cardinals do not plan on reaching the meetings with a full roster.

Could this be the move that Goold was speculating about? That would mean that it would be at least a 2-for-1 type trade if it was to free room up on the roster. Which probably means that it would be someone with some potential to be worth two men off the 40-man.

It's a lot of speculation, but since the Rule V draft is a week from today, we will have to see something soon, even if it's just someone being waived.

Also stumbled across this at MLB Trade Rumors:

Probably since they hope to include him in a Johan Santana deal, the Red Sox won't trade Coco Crisp until that situation is resolved. The Rangers liked Crisp, but are considering interesting alternatives: Rocco Baldelli, Jim Edmonds, and Juan Pierre. (emphasis mine)

I'm sure the Rangers may have inquired about Edmonds, but I really don't see him going anywhere. He just opened the restaurant, he's a 10/5 guy so he can veto a trade, and he really seems to like St. Louis. You know, all the stuff I said two weeks ago.

Oh, and here's another one at MLBTR that was just mentioned at CCH:

 McCalvy says Melvin confirmed having internal discussions about Scott Rolen.

Another one I can't see happening, though imagine the improvement from Ryan Braun to Scott Rolen at third for the Brewers.  They are already going to be the favorites next year, in my book, but that's just be the icing on the cake.  That said, I can't see Mozeliak getting good value from Milwaukee for him and you know he'd be beating the Cards constantly if they traded him in the division.  Seems a non-starter to me.

What Others Are Thankful For

Hey, I've got some time tonight. Let's see what everyone else is giving thanks for this year!

John Mozeliak: That Chris Antonetti didn't want to leave Cleveland.

Mark Mulder:  That he's left-handed.

Billy Beane:  That Mark Mulder's left-handed.

Scott Rolen:  That Larry Bowa isn't TLR's bench coach.

Albert Pujols:  That this year's ninth-place finish in the MVP award gives him more motivation.

Brad Thompson:  That there are no puppies around to kick.

Jason LaRue:  That he can now play on the good side of Missouri.

Tony LaRussa:  That they make tofu turkeys.

Walt Jocketty:  That he no longer has to put up with Jeff Luhnow.

The St. Louis Cardinals:  That they play in the NL Central.

Hope you all have a great day!

Also on the Network: √ Yanks Beat A Lefty? [Depressed Fan] √ Yanks Start Second Half With "W" [Green Pinstripes] √ All-Star Breather: The Giants Catchers [El Lefty Malo] √ Rock Is Dead; Shea Stadium July 18, 2008 [Loge 13] √ Citi Field Revealed (FYI: No Loge Here) [Loge 13] √ My Rifle, My Pony and Me [Beantown West] √ Quick Chicago roundup [Tremendous Upside Potential] √ Giants Reveal New Stadium Ticket Plans [Loge 13]