Blogs By FansC70 At The Bat
Sponsor


Cardinals_WideSkyscraper.jpg

Baseball Schedule is your best source for the latest St Louis Cardinals Schedule information as well as keeping up with division rivals including Cubs Schedule, Reds Schedule, Brewers Schedule and Astros Schedule.

Bet on the Cardinals with Sports Interaction's MLB betting lines


Slots Galore Casino Tournaments

Get your tickets from Bubba! Cheap St. Louis Cardinals Tickets and more, including tickets for the next MLB All-Star Game. Bubba's got Boston Red Sox Tickets and New York Yankees Tickets

Authentic, large selection of Cardinals memorabilia, guaranteed and certified.

Subscribe
RSS Feed

Archives

Players

Categories


Alliance tickets has an extensive inventory of St. Louis Cardinals Tickets , Colorado Rockies Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and Seattle MarinersTickets.

With all of the St Louis tickets out there, Cardinals tickets and Rams tickets make for great presents. GoTickets.com can fill all of your sports tickets needs, just check out our testimonials!

The Name of the Game Is Pitching

Posted on March 7, 2011 at 12:00 PM
Filed Under: Approval Ratings | Florida Marlins | Houston Astros | Minnesota Twins | St. Louis Cardinals
Three different games, three interesting pitching lines.  Granted, one of them was interesting in the car-wreck sort of way, but it may have a lot of bearing on the 2011 Cardinals.

First up was Kyle Lohse on Friday.  Lohse has the potential to make or break this rotation, at least to some degree.  If he's strong, he's an overqualified fourth starter.  If he's off, a rotation missing Adam Wainwright gets a whole lot weaker.  Strength prevailed on Friday, as he only gave up one run in three innings of play.  More importantly, his command was strong. Thirty strikes to only 11 balls in his outing and he struck out Brett Wallace with a changeup to end his outing.  He seems to be getting his full array of pitches back and if he can regularly control them, he should be closer to the 2008 version of Lohse than the subsequent ones, though to be fair he started 2009 off strong as well until the injuries started coming into play. 

Some aren't going to believe it until they see it, though, and it's tough to argue with that mindset.  The team's been burned on Lohse a couple of times and they've overpaid him during that stretch.  A team that has to watch their expenses like the Cardinals really needs to get their money's worth out of Lohse this year.

Then it was Kyle McClellan's turn on Saturday.  I lauded Lance Lynn for coming out when the pressure was on and throwing a wonderful outing.  McClellan didn't rest on his projected laurels, though.  He also went three innings, allowing no runs and just a couple of hits.  McClellan seems to really want to start and is making sure no one takes that slot away from him.  If Lynn, McClellan and Brandon Dickson continue to pitch like this, it could be a very fun spring.

The Cardinals only managed one run off of Houston after scoring 10 on them the day before.  It took Colby Rasmus reaching on a Wallace error and coming around on singles by Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday to win this one.  Also interesting to note that all the starters went at least eight innings in this game (save McClellan, of course).  Seems a bit early in spring for that to be happening--would think there were still enough player that the team needed to evaluate for Pujols to get his third or fourth at-bat.  Still over three weeks left in the spring.

Sunday's results weren't nearly as good for the Cards, as they fell 7-2.  The biggest reason why was that Jason Motte allowed five runs in his inning of work.  Dathan, who came out of the bullpen to relieve a sick Bill Ivie last night on Gateway To Baseball Heaven, and I speculated that Motte was just working on some of his offspeed pitches, trying to get something else consistently working.  That doesn't seem to be the case, as he was out there "just chucking."

That's really not what you want to hear about the guy that may take over the closing role at some point this year if Ryan Franklin struggles at all.  Motte's had enough times in the past where he's been lit up that he's got to know he can't just rely on smoking things past batters. I remember a quote I read a long time back, "These are major league hitters.  Eventually, they'd time bullets."

Like to think this kind of outing was a wake-up call for Motte.  If nothing else, he's gotten a value lesson on throwing rather than pitching.

The Cardinals only put up two against the Marlins a one run game the night before.  Very hard to get a feel for anything this early in the spring, of course, but you'd hate to think that the stop and start, feast and famine offensive threat was returning again this year.  That was one of the things Lance Berkman was supposed to help stop, keeping the lineup turning over.

Of course, he actually has to be in the ballgame.  He did play DH the last couple of days, which means he should have impacted the offense still, but he continues to be nursing different aches and pains.  Will these things work out as he gets back into actual playing shape?  I know he worked out a lot this offseason and got his weight down and everything, but there's a difference between working out and actually playing.  Hopefully he'll be back out in the outfield very soon.

If he's not, maybe Tyler Greene will be.  Greene started in center yesterday against Florida and that has to only add to his chances of making the team.  This is a day after he made a nice play in the hole at short against Houston.  If he's not the main utility guy come March 31, it'd be a huge shock.  Once he gets acclimated to the majors, he could be a pretty potent threat off the bench.

There was a public declaration early in the weekend that David Freese would start Sunday. It may not be surprising to you to know that he actually didn't, because Saturday he fouled a ball off his foot in batting practice.  This would be a warning sign that things were descending into parody, into the "you-can't-make-this-stuff-up" realm, but thankfully he's in the lineup for today's game against Minnesota.  Unless a bat slips out of someone's hands and conks him in the back after he drinks JoBu's rum.

Ryan Franklin turned 38 this weekend and, despite his earlier thoughts about retiring at the end of this year, he's not slowing down.  I don't think Franklin's a Cardinal next year--a successful season probably puts him out of the budget-conscious team's range, a less than successful one and they won't want him back--but he's been much more effective in the closer role than I ever thought.  I expected a big letdown last year and it really never game.  Plus, if you aren't following him on Twitter, you really should.  He's good about at least responding to just about any Tweet directed at him.

Chris Carpenter threw off a mound this weekend, missing his start on Sunday due to that hamstring injury.  He is still feeling it right now and couldn't go full bore in his bullpen session, but it apparently is getting better.  I don't know if he'll miss another start or not, but if so that might be more of an opportunity for the staff to see Lynn or Dickson.  

Interesting story about Allen Craig working on getting the inside pitch.  He worked with Mark McGwire this offseason and so far, the spring results are positive.  I think Craig is one of the more intriguing possibilities for this team this year, what with being able to move around some or be a pinch hitter with pop.  We'll see if he can keep this going through the spring and then into the season.

The first cuts of the spring were made, and Zack Cox and Shelby Miller were sent out.  This isn't a big surprise, being that neither of them were going to make the team, but I thought it was interesting in Miller's case because he stuck around so long in spring last year, getting 3-4 outings.  This year, he threw two scoreless innings, while Cox had a very good game in Berkman's stead last week.  We could see them again--it's not that far from major league camp if they need someone to fill in on a split-squad game or so--but a little bit of the luster leaves camp with them.

Before I get into today's Cardinal Approval Ratings, a quick link.  Chris Jaffe has written another interesting article with a Cardinal tie-in.  This time, it's about managerial milestones that are coming up in 2011.  Obviously, when those words are bandied about, Tony La Russa tends to make the list.

OK, approval ratings.  As those that voted (this year, 62 different entries, though not all voted for every person) know, this year they are broken up into three groups: Players, Management, and Media.  Every day between now and when I get them done (sometime next week), I'll reveal the voting on one of each of the groups.  I want to note that a couple of the voters used descriptions instead of numbers for their vote.  I have translated those into numeric values using my best judgement.

Today's player is Chris Carpenter.  Last year, Carp rated the third highest among polled players, coming in at 93.6%.  He then went out and had a slightly-less-than-standard Carpenter year, but stayed healthy for the whole season.

This year, Carpenter scores a 86.9% from all 62 voters.  I personally ranked him pretty high (94), but I would expect that there was a little recognition that he wasn't the Cy Young guy he was in the past.  At least one commenter was not impressed with his personality, saying that Carpenter "comes across arrogant, whiny, hot-headed and entitled."  One man's arrogant is another man's focused, so your mileage may vary.

The first management subject is the principal owner, Bill DeWitt Jr.  The man that signs the checks always stands out in the fanbase's mind, and yet five people did not rate him in the poll.  Last year, he received an 83% mark, but after a year where the team didn't make the playoffs and then were embroiled in Pujols negotiations that were unfulfilled, that marked slid to 71%, a three-year low.  (Fair disclosure: I put him down at 91.  You'll find I'm a fairly easy grader.)  Comments included that he's "consistently failed to field a competitive team" (which I strongly disagree with) and he "will score higher when he signs Pujols."

Our media member for the day is Post-Dispatch writer Derrick Goold.  Derrick's never been rated in these polls before, but he's regularly posting on his Bird Land blog as well as writing stories and interacting on Twitter.  I'm guessing media members are a little more interesting to us bloggers than some other fans, since there were only 47 ratings on him.  Those that did rate him, though, had a generally positive impression, as he tallied a 87.8% mark.  Interesting how people are perceived, though.  One commenter said that he "willing to tell Cards fans what they don't want to hear," while another indicated he was unwilling to step on any toes.  (BTW, my score for him: 90.)

A couple of Playing Peppers in the hopper for today, so be sure to check back on those!



Leave a comment




Leave a comment




Cardinals_MediumRectangle.jpg

UCB_11_trans_dark_sm.png

Search



BallHyped Best Sports Blogs Book
This blog was featured in the Best Sports Blogs of 2010 Book!
• Pick up the limited print edition
• Free Best Sports Blogs ebook 


United Cardinal Bloggers

FRIENDS OF THE UCB


Download the iPhone or Android UCB app by clicking on the nice orange picture.
Open in Mobile App 

And check out the UCB Network over at LockerDome!
lockerdome-share_63x63.png
  



Other Cardinal Blogs

Recommended Cardinal Forum

Other Cardinal Sites

General Baseball Blogs/Sites



Heroes
Matt Holliday (5)
Matt Carpenter (4)
Rafael Furcal (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Jon Jay (3)
Kyle Lohse (3)
Lance Lynn (3)
Yadier Molina (3)
David Freese (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)

Goats
Matt Holliday (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
David Freese (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Jason Motte (3)
Marc Rzepczynski (3)
Adam Wainwright (3)
Rafael Furcal (2)
Tyler Greene (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 Flights
Happy 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