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Big Weekend For CardinalsPosted on May 2, 2011 at 10:30 AM Filed Under: Atlanta Braves | Florida Marlins | Heroes and Goats | Houston Astros | St. Louis Cardinals While the national news of Sunday night overshadowed the diversion that is this game we love, it was still a strong weekend for St. Louis. A weekend that, with a better outing on Sunday, would have resulted in their first broom usage for the season. Let's quickly review, starting with Thursday's game against the Astros. Thursday (11-7 win) Hero: Lance Berkman. Another two home run night for the Puma, exciting the Twitter fan club. Berkman had a lot of fun back home in Houston in this series. A four hit night to go along with those big bombs. Goat: Rough night for Daniel Descalso, who went 0-5 in the leadoff slot and made two errors to go along with it. Thankfully, the errors didn't wind up losing the game, unlike what happened later in the weekend. Notes: Nine run inning? I can't imagine that would have happened last year. With no huge gaping holes in the lineup, it's a little easier to sustain rallies, though obviously not to that extreme. Three hits for David Freese and then what you'd expect from the bullpen--Trever Miller walks his guy, Miguel Batista allows runs, and Fernando Salas shuts the door. A tough outing for Kyle McClellan as well, but as it's his first hiccup, there's not necessarily cause for concern yet. Hero: Nick Punto. Punto roped a two-run triple in the eleventh that gave the Cards the win, jumping on a mistake pitch and driving it down the line. It was his only hit in the game, but it was a big one. Goat: Colby Rasmus. Punto may have only had one hit, but that was more than Rasmus was able to produce, going 0-4 (though he did manage two walks). After a hot start, Rasmus has cooled off somewhat, slipping under the .300 mark. Notes: Eduardo Sanchez got his first win with two almost-perfect innings and three strikeouts, bouncing back from his rough outing against Houston. It was an interesting and very questionable decision to remove Jason Motte, who got the first two outs via strikeouts in the eleventh, for Trever Miller, even with a lefty coming up. Miller finally did get someone out, though, and notched the save. Chris Carpenter winds up missing out on yet another win and has gotten through April with a 0 in that column, even though he's pitched well enough to have 2-3 wins. Saturday (3-2 win) Hero: David Freese. 2 hits, including the game-tying two-run single. Sadly, that'll be the last time he can be the Hero for a while, but more on that later. Goat: Albert Pujols. 0 for 4 with a strikeout left him hitting .245. I know that Albert will wind up being Albert, but whenever he'd like to start going on a hot streak to get his numbers back up, I'm good with that. Notes: Good to see that Jake Westbrook seems to be getting back into that groove that we expected out of him when he was re-signed. Lot of talk recently about how he has bad Aprils and then things start clicking for him, and now with back-to-back positive outings, we can hold to that and expect it to be true. Miguel Batista got a lot of help to get out of his jam without allowing any runs, but that's about what you'd expect out of The Poet. (On a side note, Christine now has a page for Poet Poems and, if you head over there, you'll see my latest attempt at a song parody. Just fair warning.) Sunday (6-5 loss) Hero: Matt Holliday. Holliday has proven that you don't need an appendix to play major league baseball. His two for four day got his average up to .408 for the season and he drove in a couple of runs. Goat: Ryan Theriot. If there ever was a blatant Goat, Theriot would be it for yesterday's outing. Not only did he hit into a bases-loaded double play with nobody out in the sixth and the Cards only up by one, but then he had the mind-blowing error on an easy popup in the ninth, which led to the Cardinal loss. The debate about which should rank higher, offense or defense, is a tough one to answer, but it'd have been nice to have a Brendan Ryan as a defensive replacement right about then. Notes: Even though he took the loss, not only is Ryan Franklin not to blame for it, but Sunday's outing indicates that perhaps he's getting a bit better with his pitching. He pitched a perfect eighth inning and, if Theriot gets that popup in the ninth, odds are he gets through that inning as well, as he never did let a ball be hit hard against him. Jaime Garcia had another game where he was dominant to a point, then struggled afterwards. Don't know if he just hits a wall, if running the bases at the top of the inning wore him out, or what, but it'd be nice to see him take that deeper into games. Obviously he can, since he already has a complete game this year, but since that first start it seems he often doesn't get through seven. Given the choice, it's usually where you'd want to see the young guns in the bullpen over the old veterans. That said, Sunday was not a good outing for Jason Motte, probably the weakest link of the youngsters. Not the worst outing by any means, especially when you factor in the Pujols error behind him, but he still gave up the lead with a couple of hits around that error. Speaking of Pujols, he played a little third base for the first time in a long time. He played second a couple of years back in an extra-inning game against the Brewers, but I believe it was 2002 when he was last manning the hot corner. I don't expect that to be a regular thing, even with Freese out, but it'll be interesting if Tony La Russa uses that option occasionally. As noted above, Freese is out for a month after taking a pitch off of his hand during an at-bat. Tough to lose Freese, who hadn't shown a ton of power yet but was producing at the plate and really helping the offense go. Apparently, when everyone was bubble-wrapping the ankles, they ran out before they could get the rest of him. From what I heard yesterday, there's a good chance that Allen Craig comes off the DL and takes his slot today, which doesn't necessarily help out the infield situation. Craig played third in the spring, of course, and he'll probably get the bulk of time there with Freese out, but if that doesn't work there would seem to be a good chance that Matt Carpenter would get a look, if they can figure out how to get him on the 40-man. So with a month down, the Cards are in first place. I think this quote from Bernie Miklasz's recap of the month is very appropriate. "That's right, the Cardinals are in first place on May 2 with no Wainwright, no wins from Chris Carpenter, five one-run leads lost in the ninth-inning fire, seven errors by shortstop Ryan Theriot and a .245 batting average by The Great Pujols." Who would have thought it? It doesn't seem possible that a team that we thought was so finely balanced on the razor's edge between good and bad, a team that had no margin for error, could give away games and have issues like this and still be in first. Baseball is a strange game at times. It's also a long game, where good teams win out, and we'll have to see if the Cardinals can continue this stretch over the long haul. The team returns to St. Louis (which, if it's anything like here in Central Arkansas, is a soaked and sodden mess) to take on the Florida Marlins. Today, Kyle Lohse takes the hill vs. the Marlins. Here's his career line against them:
Lohse has had some success against these guys, save Hanley Ramirez, which may bode especially well with his new-founded pitching prowess. It'll be interesting to see if he can still handle these guys like he's handled the rest of the league so far. Chris Volstad goes up against the Cards:
A couple of housekeeping items. First, as I noted the last time I posted, this marks the 1,000th post on C70 At The Bat that I've put up. (1,016 if you count the guest posters that have filled in on my vacations in the past, but that's not important right now.) I want to thank everyone who has read, commented, disagreed, and in any way supported my efforts here in the last three and a half years. I especially want to thank all of those in the United Cardinal Bloggers, without whom this wouldn't be nearly as much fun and, honestly, might not still be around. In relation to that, I want to give away a couple of tickets to the Social Media Night coming up for the Cardinals on May 17th. I would love to go, because I think it'll be a fun night, but it just doesn't fit into my schedule. I've seen others that are giving them away with various contests and I think all of those are great things to be involved in. I was going to have you point out your favorite post of mine from the first 1,000, but I decided to skip that portion. (Though, honestly, if you've got a favorite, I would love to hear from you on what it was!) Basically, though, the first two people who Tweet me (@C70) for the tickets can have them. If you want to write a recap and have it posted here, that'd be great, but I really just want people to go and have a great time. Thanks for everything! Here's to 1,000 more!
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 HeroesMatt Holliday (5) Matt Carpenter (4) Rafael Furcal (4) Carlos Beltran (3) Jon Jay (3) Kyle Lohse (3) Lance Lynn (3) Yadier Molina (3) David Freese (2) Jaime Garcia (2) Adam Wainwright (2) Lance Berkman (1) Allen Craig (1) Shane Robinson (1) Fernando Salas (1) Jake Westbrook (1) 2011 Top Hero: Lance Berkman (24) 2010 Top Heroes: Matt Holliday and Albert Pujols (24) 2009 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (28) 2008 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (25) GoatsMatt Holliday (4) Carlos Beltran (3) David Freese (3) Jaime Garcia (3) Marc Rzepczynski (3) Adam Wainwright (3) Rafael Furcal (2) Tyler Greene (2) Jason Motte (2) J.C. Romero (2) Fernando Salas (2) Mitchell Boggs (1) Matt Carpenter (1) Tony Cruz (1) Daniel Descalso (1) Jon Jay (1) Erik Komatsu (1) Kyle Lohse (1) Victor Marte (1) Eduardo Sanchez (1) Jake Westbrook (1) 2011 Top Goat: Ryan Theriot (12) 2010 Top Goat: Brendan Ryan (14) 2009 Top Goats: Rick Ankiel and Todd Wellemeyer (13) 2008 Top Goat: Troy Glaus (13) 2012 Happy FlightsHappy Flights: 7 Happy Flight Opportunities: 12 Happy Flight %: 58% Through 5/20 Cardinal Nation Approval Ratings (March 2012)Adam Wainwright 91.9% (down 2.8%) Chris Carpenter 90.1% (up 3.2%) Lance Berkman 88.6% Tony La Russa 88.2% (up 17.4%) Yadier Molina 87.4% (up 3.7%) Matt Holliday 87.3% (down 3.8%) David Freese 85.5% John Mozeliak 85.4% (up 13.3%) Mike Shannon 85.3% (up 0.4%) Jose Oquendo 84.7% Derrick Goold 82.8% (down 5.0%) Mark McGwire 82.6% (up 20.1%) John Rooney 81.5% (down 2.8%) Mike Matheny 81.1% Bill DeWitt 79.8% (up 8.8%) United Cardinal Bloggers 78.9% Skip Schumaker 73.3% (up 9.2%) Jim Hayes 71.9% (down 4.2%) Jon Jay 71.1% B.J. Rains 69.5% (down 0.9%) Kyle Lohse 68.9% (up 13.8%) Dan McLaughlin 68.0% Joe Strauss 67.7% (up 10.2%) Ricky Horton 67.5% (down 1.6%) Al Hrabosky 66.4% (up 3.2%) Albert Pujols 54.9% (down 45.5%) Colby Rasmus 46.5% (down 35.3%) 2011 Dave Duncan 87.9% (up 0.9%) Matthew Leach 85.5% Pop Warner 76.7% Ryan Franklin 72.8% (up 3.1%) John Vuch 68.9% Jeff Luhnow 66.4% Dan Lozano 58.7% 2009 Rick Ankiel 83.9% Chris Duncan 69.1% Looking for St. Louis Cardinals Tickets? TicketCity is your source for New York Yankees Tickets and World Series Tickets. Looking for Cardinals tickets? Stop by OnlineSeats. We’ve got Blues seats and even Rams games. Go to the coasts as well and catch a Celtics game or get Dodgers tickets. Referrals |
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Great post as usual. Congrats on hitting the 1,000 post level.
I REALLY love the match up segment of your posts when you show how the batters have done against the opposing pitchers. Super feature.
Congratulations on the milestone 1,000 post!
I will echo what William says in his comment -- I love the match ups as well and look forweard to reading them.
Here's to your next 1,000 posts!
The Puma has been surprising this season and it is good to see that he still has some left in the tank.