Bullpen Fails Cardinals (Kinda)

Yesterday, the Cards lost the game in the ninth inning.  While that was a fairly regular occurrence last year, I'm only remembering one game this spring that's been like that.  The bullpen, on a regular basis, has been a source of strength or, at the very least, not one of heartburn.

While I didn't get to see the game, I understand that Chris Perez looked OK, just a little rusty.  The walk was the most incriminating thing on the record, I'd guess.  Perez will have a few more opportunities, but right now I think he's probably Memphis-bound, at least for a little while.

Dennys Reyes got into the game yesterday as well, just allowing a hit in his inning of work.  Sounds like he wasn't expecting it to go that well, so perhaps he won't need that much spring work to get into the flow of things for the regular season.  Tony La Russa's going to love having two effective lefties in the pen.

Even Kyle McClellan, who threw two innings, looked better, though he still allowed three hits and a run in his time on the mound.  McClellan really liked how he was throwing, though, and hopefully with the shift to the other side of the pitching rubber, he'll start looking more like the McClellan we saw last year.

That works us back to the starter, Joel Pineiro.  Yesterday, I said that if he got beat by the Astros, that might tell us something.  That was before someone at CardsClubhouse pointed out to me that the Astros had won five in a row.  I still don't have a lot of hope for the 'Stros this season, but perhaps that means that Pineiro's outing, when he allowed two runs in five innings, isn't quite as bad as I might have otherwise made it out to be.  Pineiro struck out five, which is nice, but those strikeouts are almost a necessity when you give up more than a hit an inning.  Still, there are reasons to be optimistic about him throwing in the fifth slot in the rotation.

Offensively, you have to wonder if Albert Pujols is just bored.  He's said that he's already ready to go and his spring average has slid somewhat.  Not that I'm worried about the big guy, he'll be fine when the bell sounds.

Nobody had two hits in the ballgame yesterday, though listening to the Houston radio announcers it sounded like Colby Rasmus almost got a second hit in the last AB of the ballgame.  From the sound of it, the first baseman leaped and made a great catch of a liner.  Y'all that saw it on television can correct me, but I imagine that if he doesn't catch that, Rasmus is on second with the tying run and two outs.

BTW, that five-hit game Rasmus had last week has really helped out the average.  I didn't realize he was up to .290 right now, a far cry from those low-.200 days earlier in the spring.  He's done more and more to earn his trip north.

Cardinals cut Royce Ring yesterday.  It's still possible, if no one claims him, that he'll wind up in Memphis, but reading that description of him cleaning out his locker makes me think that might not be a strong possibilty.  There was some discussion of this on Twitter yesterday, with Matthew Leach maintaining his belief that, without Reyes, Ring makes the team.  My contention, though, was that if they were content with Ring, they wouldn't have gone out looking for Reyes.

Apparently TLR is tinkering with his tinkering. Some days he'll hit the pitcher eighth, some days the pitcher ninth.  There was a good discussion on this during last night's UCB Radio Hour.  (And if you didn't listen, make sure you download the podcast from iTunes or wherever.  It goes an hour and a half and Derrick Goold has some great thoughts during it.)  The argument espoused by Pip states that anyone is better than a pitcher in that slot, even if they don't appear to be a regular "leadoff hitter".  It'll be interesting to see how this plays out during the season.

Cards get the Mets today.  Adam Wainwright is on the mound and hopefully will continue to round into shape against a Mets team that looks a lot different than the bare-bones one the Cards faced earlier in the spring.  David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado all will be back from their World Baseball Classic sojourns.  The lineup:

Schumaker 2B
Ankiel CF
Pujols 1B
Duncan LF
Greene SS
Molina C
Freese 3B
Wainwright P
Rasmus RF

A link to wrap all this up.  It's an older story, but I'd not seen this one about Albert's wife until today.  Just reading the story makes me hungry!


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