Posted 9:35 PM by Brian
CALL THE PARAMEDICS Are all the games against the Cubs this year going to be this nerve-wracking? My nails are worn down, there are divots from pacing all over my hardwood floor, and my heart rate is about that of a hamster's in a Revlon lab.

I did not expect to win this game. Woody going up against Wood -- that's like bringing a knife to a gun fight. And to be honest, 9 times out of 10 the Cards don't win this game. I've never seen Wood so sharp. His slider had extra venom, he struck out 10, walked no one, and made only two mistakes -- the 2-2 yard job to Sanders in the 5th, and the wild pickoff throw the next inning. It was the best game pitched by a Cardinals opponent since... well, maybe since we last saw Wood back on September 2nd (the Cards won that game too).

How did we beat his team? Well, there were, by my count, at least seven moments in this game that could have gone either way, and the Cardinals came out on top of most of them:

1. 4th inning: Barrett hit a long drive to left that curl juuust foul (it was initially called a home run). Had it stayed fair, the Cubs would have been up 4-0. Instead Alex Gonzalez was caught stealing two pitches later, and the Cubs missed a chance to extend their lead.

2. 6th inning: Womack was on first with a leadoff single and Wood's pickoff throw was just wide of Derrek Lee at first. The Cubs had a shot at Womack at third, but the throw was, again, wide. That gave the Cards their first lead of the game.

3. 8th inning: with two outs, Womack hit a shot into left center. Alou dove and just missed the ball -- he really should have had it -- but this one turned out well for the Northsiders, as Ray Lankford grounded out to end the threat.

4. Top of the 9th inning: the Cubs got their leadoff hitter on, and Alex Gonzalez tried to bunt him over. His popped bunt stayed fair; Matheny scooped it up with a bare hand and started a 2-4-3 double play. Back-to-back singles after that weren't enough to put the Cubs on top.

5. Bottom of the 9th inning: with Pujols on first and no one out, Edmonds laid down one of the prettiest bunts you've ever seen -- but it rolled juuuust foul. The Cubs, flush with a second chance, couldn't deliver, though, as Kent Mercker (one of the game's big goats) couldn't find the strike zone, even though the Cardinals were prepared to give him an out. Edmonds walked and pushed the winning run into scoring position.

6. Later in the inning: Rolen sacrificed the runners over to second and third, but he should have been called safe. But first-base ump missed a tough call (Derrek Lee missed the tag on Rolen) and the Cubs at least had a little breathing room. For the record, though, I disagreed with the decision to have Rolen bunt. (a) He's never laid down a successful sac bunt in his career; (b) he's a legit RBI man, and could have scored the runners any number of ways by swinging away; and (c) it was clear that if the runners were batted over, the Cubs would walk Renteria, and Sanders -- who strikes out a lot -- would be the hitter. Then again, the move left the Cubs no wiggle room, which allowed the Cards to win (but I still disagree with the call by TLR).

7. The last batter: Matheny had an unbelievable at bat. He fell behind 0-2, then laid off a series of nasty pitches by LaTroy Hawkins. It was extremely difficult not to go fishing, especially given the circumstances. And the last pitch -- the one for all the marbles, 3-2, bases juiced -- was perhaps the closest call of any of the six above. Was it a strike or was it a ball? I thought it was juuuust high, but I wouldn't have argued if the ump called it a strike. How Matheny laid off I have no idea.

Bottom line, though: we snuck one from the Cubs, and all the bad mojo we've had at Busch this season came back to us as lucky excess. It was especially sweet because of the playoff atmosphere down at the stadium. It seemed like Duke-North Carolina to me, and we haven't seen much of that this year (the only other game quite like it was the 12-inning nail-biter in Houston). Finally something to get excited about.

And one more thing -- remember the last time Woody Williams faced the Cubs? It was that awful game up in Wrigley, where Woody came in out of the bullpen, asked to get the final 5 outs of a game the Birds simply had to win. Of course the Cardinals -- whose call to Woody was a public admission of their mind-numbingly putrid bullpen -- went on to lose the game and the division, and Woody seemed for all the world like a frail, beaten man.

He looked the same way in the early going of this game: huffing, puffing, generally ineffectual. But somehow he gathered his wits, got the Cubs to chase a number of pitches, and gutted his way to a fine performance. He could have snapped at any moment, but somehow he held together with Band-Aids and baling wire, just like the rest of his team.

Posted 9:21 AM by Brian
HERE COME THE CUBBIES! Is this a must-win series for the Cardinals? Of course not. A split at Busch wouldn't hurt much -- after all, we're only 2 1/2 games out, despite our middling, muddling play so far. However: three or more wins would be much sweeter, especially since the Cubs -- who will get their best player back in a couple weeks -- might just go a little nuts on the National League come June and July.

As we gear up for Williams/Wood and Suppan/Clement, let's look at the Big Picture. I mean the Big Big Picture:

All-Time Record
St. Louis Cardinals, 9474-8910 .515
Chicago Cubs, 9667-9124 .514

That's 120+ years, only 21 games separating the two clubs (that's less than 1/5th of a win per year). Pretty wild. How about head-to-head?

Head-to-Head Wins
Chicago Cubs, 1,097
St. Louis Cardinals, 1,042

Again, pretty damn close. And what about the last 25 years (or, roughly my lifespan as a baseball fan)?

Head-to-Head Wins Since 1979
St. Louis Cardinals, 205
Chicago Cubs, 189

There's really only one area where the Cardinals have the Cubs clearly licked, and I was reminded of it recently while reading The Big Red C:

Head-to-Head Wins at Busch Stadium Since 2000
St. Louis Cardinals, 25
Chicago Cubs, 5

Let's hope that trend continues...

Posted 8:28 AM by Brian
APRIL SURPRISES So tonight's game wraps up the first month of the season. And one team that hasn't surprised anyone so far is the St. Louis Cardinals. Sure, they've had various individual surprises, but most prognosticators thought they were somewhere around a .500 team -- maybe a little better, but, you know, in that second tier of mediocre clubs -- and here they are, on April 30th, at 11-11, behind the frontrunning Cubs and Astros.

But if the Cardinals' performance has been ho-hum, there are plenty of other surprises to this young season. Some of these are genuine flukes (remember the sizzling Aprils last year from Tampa's Rey Ordonez and Florida's Alex Gonzalez?), while others are the real deal (last year Esteban Loaiza started the season like a house afire, and pitched the same way well into July).

So I spent a little time browsing through ESPN's sortable stat pages and (without making distinctions for sustainability) came up with some numbers that most surprised me as we reach the end of April. In no particular order:

Sean Casey Who's the best firstbaseman in the NL this April? Pujols? Helton? Thome? Those guys are all having good seasons, but would you believe the best first-sacker is Reds (non-)slugger Sean Casey? He's hitting well above .400, he's finding the gaps, and he's a prime reason the Redlegs are hanging tough in the NL Central.

Brandon Inge Inge was one of those guys who made the '03 Tigers what they were: special. With a line of .203/.265/.339, he was quite possibly the worst starter in baseball. This year he's at .333/.410/.574 and, like Casey, one of the reasons his team has snuck up on people.

Derek Jeter I know, I know -- this story has had a ton of press (Jeter recently suffered the longest hitless streak of any Yankee since 1977). But I'm still a little shocked at just how putrid Jeter has been this year. Of the 209 guys who qualify for the OPS leaderboard, Jeter ranks #209. Of all the guys below replacement value, Jeter is the absolute lowest. In short, he remains a champion: at this moment, he's 2004's worst player in baseball.

Ray Lankford I didn't expect him to be that good, and if was going to be any good, I thought it would take him a while to stretch his legs and re-adjust to big-league pitching. Nope. Lankford has been thwacking line drives again, and, more surprisingly, he's hitting for power, with 9 xbh's in only 47 at bats.

Tom Glavine My cousin plays in a simulated baseball league, and in that league Glavine is a 38-year-old, washed-up bum who sits on the bench. I thought the real-life Tom Glavine would be closer to that than what he is -- a guy with a fancy record and a wicked 1.64 ERA. His peripherals aren't too sharp, and he got off to a similar start last April, but still, it's something.

Kansas City Royals I thought the preseason talk about them contending was a little overheated, but hey, it is the AL Central, and with Carlos Beltran, Mike Sweeney, and a number of solid winter moves, I thought our Show-Me brothers might hang in there for a little while. Well, Beltran has worked out. Not much else has.

Jack Wilson I've never lost any sleep about trading this ex-Cardinals farmhand for Jason Christensen back in 2000. But maybe it's time to start -- Wilson hasn't just been the best shortstop in the NL, he's been far and away the best SS in the NL. His numbers at the plate (.375/.393/.538) are phenomenal, his glovework is as good as anybody's, and he's only 26 years old. Think we could've used him as insurance if Renteria walks at the end of the year?

Danny Bautista If Wilson has been the best NL shortstop, Bautista has probably been the best NL rightfielder (yes, even better than Miguel Cabrera, Richard Hidalgo, or Reggie Sanders). His OBP is well above .400, his slugging is well above .600, and, after going hitless on Opening Day, tore off a 20-game hitting streak that's still alive right now.

Mike Mussina I thought it went death, taxes, and Mike Mussina, not necessarily in that order. His numbers are for shit (1-4, with a 6.55 ERA and a terrible K/BB ratio), but you don't need the numbers. If you've seen Mr. Reliable pitch at all this year, you'd know that something is terribly, horribly, wonderfully wrong.

Scott Rolen's patience Can you ask anything more from Scott Rolen this year? Actually, yes. I mean, I know he's got a .349 batting average and 8 home runs, but his walks are way down from last year. At the end of April last year he had 25 walks; this year he has 7. That's why his OBP in 2004 is lower than it was a year ago, despite the gaudy BA. And this is the same guy who recently extolled his teammates for their patience.

Lew Ford I didn't even think the Minnesota Twins -- who have this curious habit of developing awesome outfielders then letting them rot on the vine -- would even let Sweet Lew play much this year, much less let him play every day when Torii Hunter went down with an injury. So far Ford is raking the ball to the tune of .407/.455/.695. The other surprising fact about Ford: he's white.

Florida/Philadelphia I didn't think the Phillies, who looked like the strongest NL team on paper as the season started, would be languishing below .500, and I really didn't think the Marlins would seem like the class of the league so far. As world champs, I thought they'd be like those husbands who marry the girl of their dreams and let themselves grow a spare tire around their midsection. Instead they picked up where they left off and seem as voracious as ever.

Roger Clemens, hitter He's surprised me as a pitcher (I thought he'd be very good, but not unbeatable), and he's surprised me even more as a hitter. Did you know his OPS is higher than Bernie Williams' and Derek Jeter's? (Although then again, that's true for a ton of pitchers.)

Ronnie Belliard I'll admit it: sometimes in my head Ronnie Belliard merges into the same creatures as that pudgy waste of flesh Rafael Belliard. But Belliard -- who's starting every day and reaching base in over half of his at bats -- is finally cashing in on his promise from a few years back, and he's giving a serious run as the Best Belliard of All Time.

Jermaine Dye I'm sick of hearing about this guy (mostly from Rob Neyer, who oughtta just find a room with Billy Beane and get it over with), but yes, his numbers are surprising.

Barry Bonds I should take a laundry marker, and write on my forehead, backwards, so that I can see it every time I look in the mirror (which is often) the following sentence: NEVER BE SURPRISED BY BARRY BONDS. I can't help it. I keep thinking he's reached Max Q, and then he reaches Max Z. He's reaching base in over 70% of his at bats and at one point he reached base in 39 of 50 plate appearances. Don't guys only do this in American Legion Ball?

The Milwaukee Brewers They will finish the month with a winning record. They're ahead of the Cardinals in the standings. And, perhaps most surprising of all, they've had a tough schedule -- seven games against the Birds, four against Houston, and three against pre-season darlings San Francisco. The next few weeks they play a bunch of games against the Reds, Pirates, and Expos, so get used to seeing their name in the win column -- they might just hang in there for a little while.

Moises Alou When is this guy -- who has to be one of the 5 most abhorrent personalities in baseball -- going to develop some geriatric disorder and fade away? Apparently not anytime soon. He comes into Busch with a .738 slugging percentage (although if you follow a lot of Cubs games, as I do, you'd be shocked to see he's actually gotten out a few times this year).

Marly Womackson We all laughed and hooted and hollered at the Cardinals second base situation, especially the Womackian part of that arrangement. And yeah, I know, Marlon Anderson and Tony Womack are playing well over their heads, which is precisely why we need to honor them right now, before the sand castle gets carried into the ocean. Collectively those two guys are hitting .359/.412/.564 from the keystone position. (But one last potshot, if I may: Anderson has only 1 walk in 57 ABs, and he's got one of the longest, loopiest swings I've ever seen.)

AL Firstbaseman First base in the AL used to be baseball's glamor position, with a seemingly endless supply of big boppers: Frank Thomas, Jim Thome, Mo Vaughn, Jason Giambi, Carlos Delgado, even some guy named McGwire. But with Giambi's bum knee, Thome moving to the NL, the Big Hurt moving to DH, and guys like Delgado and Olerud showing their age, there's no longer any AL first-sackers who strike the fear of God in you.

Miguel Batista He was the One That Got Away, the right arm I dwelled on all winter -- how, I thought, could the Jays land such a valuable property for only $3.6 million? Hell, that's not much less than we're paying Tavarez! But so far Miguel Batista has been pitching about as well as the guy who overthrew Fulgencio Batista -- a 6.04 ERA and more walks than strikeouts.

The Cubs' Power Hitters Here are the team leaders in home runs for the entire major leagues:

1. Cardinals, 39
2. Cubs, 36
3. Rockies, 35

We all know the Cubs have some thumpers, but did you think they'd be treating opposing pitchers like they were London c. 1939? Me neither.

Aubrey Huff I thought this year would be Aubrey Huff's coming-out party. He's improved every year, and he seemed poised to become one of the premier corner outfielders in the AL. So far he's hitting only .189/.238/.284, which means he's hitting below the Mendoza Line in BA, and below the Ordonez Line (.600) in OPS.

The Rangers' Pitchers For a franchise that has compiled some of the ugliest pitching staffs in modern major-league history (I'm not exaggerating -- they've been, year in and year out, just about the worst collection of arms in our lifetime), the performance of Texas hurlers this April has been perhaps the most surprising item of the Spring. They're fourth in the AL in earned run average, and they've received great bullpen work from no-names like Almanzar, Cordero, and Mahay. Their next big test: May.

Posted 10:11 PM by Brian
WOE IS WE I was only able to watch the first five innings of the game tonight -- I had to head to my softball game with the scored tied three all. My softball team got throttled 15-5. I came home, checked the scoreboard, and, sure enough, the Cards got throttled too, falling to the Phillies' bullpen 6-3.

The Phillies made it a point to beef up their pen in the offseason, what with Jose Mesa and Mike Williams stinking up the joint last year. Enter Billy Wagner, Tim Worrell, Roberto Hernandez, Amaury Telemaco, about $15 million in new contracts, renewed optimism in the City of Brotherly Love, and, so far, solid results (their bullpen ERA is 2.39). Oh, and I should also mention some guy named Ryan Madson.

I confess -- I'd never heard of Madson before tonight, but he made some kind of impression: 4 innings, only one baserunner, and that guy was erased on a caught stealing to end the 6th. Madson is a big kid (the media guide calls him 6-6, but he looks taller than that to me), with decent minor-league numbers, and even better numbers in his young major-league career -- he's yet to give up an earned run in 15 (!) innings of work.

As for the Cardinals' bullpen -- well, I didn't see the game, so it's hard for me to comment, but I was surprised to see Mike Lincoln go three innings with Izzy fresh and ready to go down in the pen. La Russa used Isringhausen very aggressively down in Houston, and I hoped he would be used more often in non-ninth inning, non-save situations. You could argue that tonight, with the game tight and the Cards needing to break our hex at home, could have used the Big Man.

But the more I look at the box score, the more it looks like it was a decent move sending Lincoln out to pitch the ninth. First of all, he looked sharp, buzzing through the heart of the order to retire the side 1-2-3 in both the seventh and the eighth. Second, he shouldn't have been tired -- he threw only 8 pitches in the 7th and only five in the 8th, so for all practical purposes he was pitching like a guy who'd thrown only one inning. Lastly, I tend to think you go with your ace to face the best hitters on the other team. Due up in the ninth: Bell, Rollins, and Ledee, and if anyone got on, Doug Glanville.

So you tell me -- was it the right move keeping in Lincoln? The box score seems to indicate yes, but I'd like to hear from people who actually saw him pitch.

There's only one thing that makes these two losses go down any easier, and it's this thought: at least we aren't the Cincinnati Reds. Did you see how they lost the last two nights? On Monday night they entered the bottom of the 9th up 8-6 on the Brewers. They got two quick outs (sandwiched around an infield single), and then they got Chad Moeller (who had already hit for the cycle) to hit an easy grounder to 3B Brandon Larson for the game-ender... except... Larson threw the ball into Sheboygan county, the runner scored, and the Brew Crew were given one more sliver of hope in the person of pinch hitter Bill Hall. Walk-off two run homer, Brewers win, Reds lose.

You wouldn't think the Reds could top that, but check out what happened tonight: they were leading 9-0 in the 4th (and 9-1 in the 6th), only to once again see their bullpen collapse. They ended up losing 10-9, with their arch-nemesis Bill Hall squeezing home the winning run in the 10th inning.

So lament the Cards drought at Busch all you want, but hey, it could be worse...

Posted 10:10 PM by Brian
PATIENCE, PATIENCE Scott Rolen recently praised his teammates for their "good" at bats:

"Hitting in this lineup is going to be unbelievable. And I think that's true for everybody. All the way through the lineup, they're all good hitters and have good at-bats. That doesn't mean just a threat, but they grind out tough at-bats. They work counts and go deep into counts and get on base."

Is that true? Are the Cardinals a patient team relative to the rest of the league? Do they see more pitches than other teams?

I turned this last question over to the great Dave Studenmund at The Hardball Times, and he replied:

The Cards are sixth in the majors in P/PA at 3.85 vs. a major league average of 3.76. The teams ahead of them are the Red Sox (3.97), A's (3.95), Mariners (3.92), Rockies (3.9) and Royals (3.9).

If you'll notice, four of those teams are AL teams (who you'd expect to have longer ABs, what with no pitcher batting and all), and one is the Rockies, who play all their games in the funhouse of Coors Field. So I think we can safely say that, yes, Scott Rolen is right -- the Cardinals do tend to have good, long, gritty at bats.

But we should also take this data with a grain of salt, only because team pitch counts aren't that diffuse throughout the league. Notice that the Cardinals are the 2nd best team in the NL at stretching out ABs, but that doesn't really tell you much. Through 27 hitters, here's how we stack up against an average team:

Cardinals: 104.0 pitches seen
Average team: 101.5 pitches seen

Two and a half pitches. Clearly not a big difference. No, the best way to wear down a pitcher is, in fact, to not get out. It's sending extra batters to the plate, not necessarily seeing extra pitches per batter, that truly escalates those pitch counts. Cardinals hitters, who avoid outs, on average, 34.9% of the time, are fifth best in the league in this category. Not great, but not too shabby.

Posted 10:22 PM by Brian
HOME SOUR HOME With all apologies to Jim Thome and Bobby Abreu, tonight's final score should read Pat Burrell 7, Cardinals 3. Pat the Bat did everything tonight -- collected four hits, reached base five times, got two huge two-out doubles, robbed Rolen of extra bases (which may have broken the game wide open) by leaping up against the wall in the fifth, and later gunned down Pujols trying to leg his way into third. Burrell, who reportedly lost confidence in himself last season (and saw his batting average plummet to .209), performed a one-man self-esteem seminar on the Cardinals tonight, raising his season average to .339.

I don't want to get too worked up about tonight's game -- after all, the Phillies are a respectable opponent -- but the numbing sameness by which we're dropping games at home has me a bit worried. There were the usual bugaboos: early longballs given up by our pitchers (this one to Bobby Abreu in the first), the parade of walks handed out (a staggering 7), the defensive miscues (Bo Hart flubbed a grounder in the 3rd that would have ended the inning), and, of course, the lopsided final score (we're now 3-8 at home, and we've given up 7 or more runs in seven of the eleven games).

And Matt Morris -- well, I'm beginning to think we may have to wait until June or July before we fully assess his fitness for office. Almost all the goodwill he built up in Houston was frittered away tonight. He had trouble finding his rhythm, walked four in six innings, and gave up two more bombs (he's now surrendered nine on the year). And yes, I know, Morris is still over .500 at 3-2, but we've scored 8.8 runs for each of his starts. With that kind of support, suddenly 3-2 is looking sorta limp.

Can we arrange it so that our starters pitch only on the road? I don't know what accounts for this discrepancy, but our starters have a potbellied 6.97 ERA at Busch, and a svelte 2.11 ERA on the road. That's especially odd given that every road park we've played in -- Bank One, Minute Maid, and Miller -- is murder on pitchers. Add to this the strange observation from Greg Simons -- that scoring at Busch over the last two years has shrunk by 9% relative to the league average -- and I've run out of explanations for this phenomenon.

Posted 9:44 PM by Brian
TOUGH CROWD Doug Pappas reports that major-league attendance is up 14.4% this year, with a per-game average of 29,718. Unfortunately this spike hasn't affected the crowds at Busch. The Cardinals currently rank 13th in team attendance, with a pedestrian 31,193 (down from 33,345 through the first 11 home games last year, and well below the 37,000+ average the past three years).

Posted 9:27 PM by Brian
EDGAR THE ORDINARY A number of people -- including readers of this website -- have claimed that Edgar Renteria should stay batting in the 6th or 7th hole (as opposed to 1st or 2nd) because he's so good at hitting in the clutch. Actually, there's not much in Edgar's record (apart from a blistering .372 in '02 with RISP) to suggest that Renteria is any different with ducks on the pond than without, and the early-season returns are no different. So far this year, he's oh-for-10 with runners in scoring position.

Posted 9:06 PM by Brian
THE CHICAGO WAY If you have an image of Cubs fans as smug suburban pretty boys, this Flash cartoon won't help change your mind. Can you believe someone spent so much time on something so lame?

Posted 9:05 PM by Brian
TY COBB'S PENIS This week's Sports Illustrated passes along a a funny tidbit from Tom Callahan's new memoir, The Bases Were Loaded (And So Was I):

[Callahan] recalls a conversation with [Pete] Rose and New York Times columnist Dave Anderson, as Rose chased Ty Cobb's hit record. Asked how much he knew about Cobb, the manic, obsessive Rose replied, "Everything about him but the size of his" private parts. For the Times, Anderson bowdlerized the quote, as "the size of his hat." The next day a livid Rose greeted Callahan, shouting, "Seven and five fucking eighths! Seven and five fucking eighths!"

Posted 9:02 PM by Brian
FORWARDING INFO One of my favorite blogs -- Get Up, Baby! -- has moved here. If you get a chance, stop by and check out his new digs.

Posted 9:00 PM by Brian
SAD ALBERT It wasn't a great night for Albert Pujols. He got thrown out at third on a key play in the 5th, he bungled a hot grounder off Burrell's bat in the 7th (which led to a couple runs), he made the last out of the game, and -- horror of horrors -- his batting average dipped all the way to .284. Unless Alberticus rips it up these next three nights, it'll be his first month under .300 since June of 2002. (Here's some solace, though -- by July 1st, 2002, Pujols was hitting .283, even lower than he is now, and he ended the year at .314.)

Posted 5:37 PM by Brian
BIG BOY A-COMIN' Maybe it's because he's from rural Illinois, or maybe it's because of his cartoonishly barrelled chest, but I've always thought of Jim Thome less as a human being and more like, say, a prize-winning squash at the county fair. I get a huge kick out of the guy. I love his high socks; I love his pine-tar goopy batting helmet; I love just about everything about him, except, of course, the way he obliterates Cardinal pitchers. Here are his career numbers against us:

AB: 56
R: 17
H: 25
HR: 13
RBI: 28
BB: 19
AVG: .446
OBP: .587
SLG: 1.179

That's ferocious. In fact, as much as I like the guy, I probably fear Thome as much as any player in baseball (he's tied with Bonds). I just assume that any pitch within three feet of Thome's strike zone will end up a souvenir for someone staying at the Omni Majestic Hotel.

Fear, of course, is a main character in my life as a baseball fan. Take this lineup we're playing tonight:

1. Byrd
2. Polanco
3. Abreu
4. Thome
5. Burrell
6. Lieberthal
7. Bell
8. Rollins
9. Milton

As a Cardinals fan, here's how I translate that:

1. No fear
2. No fear
3. Some hair standing up on the back of my neck
4. Quivering, bowel-loosening terror
5. Fear factor: 4
6. Starting to settle down
7. No big whup
8. Paxil
9. Zzzzzz

And then the whole thing starts all over again. I would imagine the Cardinals lineup -- which has both it's doldrums and it's shark-infested waters -- is even worse for the opposition.

Speaking of which, an online publication recently raised an interesting question --

The debate will linger as long as Scott Rolen is among the best third basemen in major league baseball. Are the Phillies better off with or without their former franchise player?

If you listen to members of the Philadelphia press -- who chided Rolen all winter for joining a sinking ship in St. Louis -- you'd conclude that the Phils got a great deal by letting Rolen go. They shipped off a so-called malcontent, got a productive secondbaseman in return, and saved enough money to land the aforementioned prize-winning squash, Jim Thome.

Personally I'd take Rolen. He and Thome are about equally productive relative to their position, but Rolen is nearly 5 years younger, and figures to stay in his comfort zone for a much longer period of time. By the time Rolen turns 34, Thome will probably have stopped hitting all those shots over the rightfield wall, and we'll all be resting a little easier.

Posted 3:32 PM by Brian
SOMETIMES IT SNOWS IN APRIL Show of hands: how many of you thought we'd roll through the Astros down in Houston, then run into a brick wall up at Miller Park? Sometimes the game of baseball can make you feel like a meteorologist on Mercury -- you just can't predict this kinda stuff.

A few thoughts and observations from our weekend showdown:

• As much as Friday's game sucked, in some ways it was a "good" loss. Chris Carpenter looked absolutely phenomenal -- he only threw 85 pitches, but had a good inside fastball and a great sweeping curve. One of the charlies he threw to Gary Bennett looked like an egg rolling off a table (and gave me flashbacks of DK57). If he can start getting that thing over for strikes, look out.

• Albert Pujols struck out in his first at bat of the season. He then went 81 plate appearances before striking out again, when he went down swinging after a 9-pitch duel with Matt Kinney on Friday night. The very next AB, he struck out again. It was that kinda weekend.

• Discussion topic: Scott Podsednik is the new Craig Biggio.

• The Cardinals got into Milwaukee at 4 a.m. Friday morning, and it showed that night -- their 2-1 loss was about as inspirational as a Kevin Spacey melodrama. So I just assumed the team would be well-rested come Saturday and take their frustrations out on poor Chris Saenz (if you're curious, here's what he looks like). After all, Saenz had only pitched two games above A ball, and he was brought up strictly as an emergency. In fact, the Brewers wanted to bring up another pitcher, but that guy had just pitched and wasn't available. Naturally, of course, Saenz (with the help of Jeff Nelson's Grand Coulee Dam-sized strike zone) dominated the Birds, tossing six innings, giving up only 2 hits, and punching out 7. After the game, Saenz was sent back to AA. It was that kinda weekend.

• Discussion topic #2: the 2004 Brewers are the 2003 Reds.

• At one point during this road trip, the Cards had scored only 3 runs in 31 innings.

• Oddly, the Birdnals finally busted loose for a few runs off of Ben Sheets, who's been one of the best hurlers in the National League so far (34 K's/3 BBs). [Side note: when people discuss the brilliance of Billy Beane, they frequently mention how he took Barry Zito one spot ahead of the highly touted Sheets in the '99 amateur draft. Zito was a great call, to be sure, but I'm not convinced Sheets isn't the better pitcher at this moment, and it's possible he'd be even better given the fine coaching in the A's system.] Anyway, it was nice to see Albert and Jedmonds go back-to-back in the first, because otherwise Sheets looked pretty deadly today.

• Scott Rolen had a base hit on Saturday that reminded me of Barry Bonds in a weird way. It was a little flare into rightfield -- would have been an easy pop out if, say, Tony Womack was at the dish -- but the rightfielder, Brady Clark, was camped so deep that even after a long sprint he couldn't catch it. It was smart of the Brewers to play Rolen deep, as there was a runner on first, two outs, the Brewers were only up by one, and Rolen has been really driving the ball this year. But no one drives the ball as far as Bonds, and no one gets played any deeper. Which seems like one more reason why Bonds may actually hit .400 this year. There's been some discussion about Bonds going Ted Williams on us this season, and if fielders play him super-deep (in effect, sacrificing XBH's for singles) he might have a shot.

• Remember the other day when I boasted about the Cardinals ridiculous .956 team OPS? Well, that was just four games ago, and our hitting has been so dormant since that our OPS no longer even leads the lead. The new frontrunners? The (gulp) Chicago Cubs.

• On the plus side, last Tuesday we mentioned how poorly our rotation had been pitching, with an ERA of 5.96. Evidently our Big 5 were sufficiently shamed by Redbird Nation and decided to do something about it. Since that time, no Cardinals starter has allowed more than two earned runs, and our rotation had a 1.63 ERA on the road trip (in two of the best hitter's parks in the NL, mind you). In the process, the Cards shaved almost a run and a half off their team ERA.

Posted 2:09 PM by Brian
OMAR VS. OZZIE Baseball Tonight recently asked and answered this question:

Is Omar Vizquel a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate? He actually compares favorably with Ozzie Smith, both offensively and defensively.

Um, no. Here are the leaders in career fielding Win Shares at shortstop:

...............................
1. OZZIE SMITH	139.8
2. Bill Dahlen	128.0
3. Rabbit Maranville	123.2

...

...............................
34. Bobby Wallace	87.5
35. Lou Boudreau	87.2
36. OMAR VIZQUEL	86.8

So, yeah, Vizquel compares favorably defensively to Ozzie, in the same way that Darrell Evans compares favorably to Hank Aaron as a power hitter.

Even as a hitter Ozzie is superior. He has 500 more lifetime hits than Vizquel, 230 more runs created, and, relative to his league, a better career OPS. What about other areas? Baserunning? Ozzie, by a mile. Intangibles and special skills? Ozzie has a ring, and totally redefined his position, whereas Vizquel was once traded for Felix Fermin. I'd say Vizquel is a Hall of Famer, but only if they widen membership to include 2,000 ex-ballplayers.

Posted 1:36 PM by Brian
BASEBALL AT THE 1/10th MARKER Dayn Perry points out how "parity" in the NFL is a simple consequence of their shortened schedule. Consider what the NL Central would look like if, like the NFL, each team played only 16 games this year:

Cubs 10-6
Reds 10-6
Astros 9-7
Cardinals 9-7
Brewers 8-8
Pirates 7-9

No division in football last year was as close as that, and yet pigskin types like to brag about how competitive their sport is and how backwards and stratified baseball is. It's a scheduling illusion, nothing more.

Posted 1:25 PM by Brian
LASERS Studes over at The Hardball Times has been keeping track of line drives -- specifically, the number of line drives per at bat for each player in the major leagues. Number 7 on the list is our own Ray Lankford, who has hit a liner in 31.8% of his ABs so far. I take this to be a very good sign. RayRay developed a severe uppercut in his last go-round in a Birds uniform, but he worked strenuously this past winter to shorten his swing and straighten out his hits. The early results are promising...

Posted 1:16 PM by Brian
WASTED MOTION Ex-Cardinal Rex Hudler committed a crime. He spent some time in jail, then boarded up in his house for two weeks, got suspended from his job for three months, got scolded and ridiculed by people in grocery stores and at ballgames, and was moved to exclaim, "to have my sin exposed to the nation is a humbling thing."

His sin? He used marijuana. How much? Let's see... He says he never smoked much, rarely on the road, never before games, would sometimes go an entire season without smoking, and usually took only a few tokes at night to help him sleep.

After Darryl Kile died, a pot pipe was discovered on his nightstand and traces of marijuana were found in his system. It was refreshing back then that no one made a big deal out of this -- it was understood that ballplayers sometimes smoke recreationally, and that, all things considered, there's little difference between getting plastered in the hotel bar and stoned in your hotel room. I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone, though, that the media types who overreacted to Rex Hudler the ballplayer (he was a lot of wasted motion, in my opinion) would now overreact to his fall from grace.

Posted 12:49 PM by Brian
FARM REPORT Pitching coach Dyar Miller is doing some kinda job with our young arms down in Memphis. You probably know about the early success of Adam Wainwright (20 K's and only 12 hits in 17 innings) and Danny Haren (4-0, and he leads the PCL with 33 strikeouts in 24 innings), but our third young gun, Rhett Parrott, is also heating up. After a shutout last Thursday, he lowered his ERA to 1.04 (2 runs in 17.2 innings).

Posted 12:22 PM by Brian
BEANE-COUNTING Here's an excellent post about the All-Moneyball All-Star Team. As you'd expect, the roster is composed of players who have generally overlooked skills, high on-base percentages, and lots of ways to beat the hell out of you.

Posted 12:10 PM by Brian
ECKERSLEY EXPURGATED I got this email yesterday from my buddy Brian:

Dennis Eckersley does the post game studio show for local Red Sox TV and he almost dropped the f-bomb in the middle of his post-game wrap up. The Yankees were awful at the plate today, and Eck says "The Yankees... I mean, what can you say about the Yankees. They fuc- . I mean they just couldn't get it done today." Absolutely hilarious.

Posted 12:06 PM by Brian
STAY PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN Maybe Mike Crudale really is a lazy bum. He was recently released by the AAA Fresno Grizzlies after an unsightly 15.63 ERA.

Posted 12:01 PM by Brian
A GIANT AMONG GIANTS Joe Sheehan has a new nickname for Barry Bonds, who plays on a team full of duds: "Kelly Leak."

How much better has Bonds been than his teammates? Consider this: after receiving five intentional walks in the first two games against the Dodgers this weekend, Bonds has extended his career record for IBB's to 496. Runner-up on the list is Hank Aaron, with 293.

Posted 11:49 AM by Brian
FILTHY STUFF Interesting article about the 10 best pitches in the major leagues. Mariano Rivera's cut fastball is #1; Kerry Wood's Uncle Charlie is #2. Number 11? Jeff Fassero's hanging curveball.

Posted 11:45 AM by Brian
THE CLEVELAND REGGIES I'll admit it: I thought Colin Porter was black. As Bill Simmons has pointed out, it's a banner season for members of the Reggie Cleveland All-Star team (composed of ballplayers you think are black but turn out to be white, or vice versa), what with Caucasian newcomers Lew Ford and Khalil Green. Past members include Marcus Giles, Jarrod Washburn, and Troy O'Leary.

Posted 11:44 AM by Brian
CRANK IT UP The Baseball Crank is raising money for a good cause, so stop on by if you get a chance.

Posted 12:13 AM by Brian
SMALL BALLIN' In their baseball preview issue, Sports Illustrated ran an article about the stat wonks, cyber-seamheads, and sabermetricians that are taking over Major League Baseball. And, not surprisingly, they got a little hate mail for it. Like this response from Zak Redding of Madison, Wisconsin:

So instead of building a team by grooming young players with sound fundamentals, we should be paying attention to VORP, LIPS and OPS? If you give me a group of players who can put the ball in play, move runners, hit the cutoff man, change speeds and keep the ball down, I'll give you a team that puts up big numbers in the only column that really counts: WINS.

Now, of course, I could do something really snide right now and pick apart this argument piece by piece. But goddamn it, Zak Redding, after watching tonight's game down in Houston, I gotta tell you: I'm sold.

The 2-1, 12-inning squeaker was the apex of our young season (although don't look now, but the regular season is already 10% over). Of course, we didn't see the offensive pageantry that we saw in the first 15 games of the season, but that's precisely why this win was so sweet: we didn't need great offense, or even good offense, to win. A few thoughts:

• I'll confess: earlier today I was thinking this was one of those games that it'd be "okay" to lose. I wasn't rooting for it, mind you, but I figured, well, we've already won 2 down in Houston, we're going against Oswalt, and our 5-0 road start has gotta end sometime. Fortunately, the Cardinals -- who played a tough, gritty game -- were thinking "sweep" all the way.

• Zak Redding would have been proud of tonight's Whiteyball Revival Tour. We had a key infield hit and then a stolen base by Sanders, a squeeze bunt by Luna, excellent D, stellar relief work (including no walks in 5 innings), and a great job mixing things up by Jason Marquis. The Astros, on the other hand, ran themselves into an out and made an error in the top of the 12th that spelled their doom. We simply out-fundamentaled them.

• A few people (including folks on this site) have badmouthed the Cardinals for obsessing over the stolen base lately. I disagree. The Cards are stealing at an 83% success rate, which is well above the break-even threshold. In fact, three of our caught stealings were from Pujols and Edmonds. Our real basestealers -- Womack, Sanders, Renteria, Anderson, Taguchi, and Luna -- are 18-1 trying to steal bases. Hard to criticize that.

• There was a key play in the Houston 6th, when Bagwell singled to left center with one out and Everett tried to make third. Edmonds scooped the ball, gunned a laser to Rolen, who put down the tag, and Everett was called out. Only problem was, Everett was safe. It looked that way to the naked eye, and the replays made that doubly clear.

A bad break for the 'Stros, for sure, but here's the thing -- the next batter, Jeff Kent, hit a single, and the Astros broadcasters reminded us a few times that the single would have scored Everett from third if the play had been called correctly. That's sort of a pet peeve of mine. Every act in baseball is contingent on every other -- if the Astros have first and third one out rather than a runner on first two outs, then Marquis pitches to Kent differently, Kent approaches the at-bat differently, the defense aligns differently, and so on. It wasn't such a big deal tonight, but a lot of times someone will, say, get thrown out stealing, the next guy will hit a home run, and the broadcasters will talk about how the stolen base attempt cost the team a run. What they fail to realize is that the pitcher may have challenged the hitter precisely because the bases were empty -- i.e., these "what if" scenarios only take you so far.

• How about La Russa letting Isringhausen pitch two innings for the second time this series? What's more, he brought him into a tie game, on the road, which means that TLR must have looked away from the swirling hypnotic disk that's been telling him to bring in Izzy in save situations only. Folks, this is exactly how you're supposed to use your ace reliever. You use him when the game is tight, when every out actually means something, and you let him pitch a second inning, especially when the opposing hitters are Bagwell, Kent, and Berkman. I hope Tony learned something from the experience.

Posted 12:16 AM by Brian
REPORTS OF MATT MORRIS' DEMISE are, as they say, greatly exaggerated. Less than a week ago, I basically said that Morris would never be the lights-out pitcher he once was. (To be precise, I didn't quite say that -- I said it was likely he'd never be great again, but I still had hope that with a couple mechanical adjustments he'd regain his form.)

And then lo and behold, Morris goes out and tosses a fine game, in the heart of Minute Maid, with a batallion of Astros bats locked, loaded, and ready to go. His final numbers: 6 innings, 4 hits, one earned run, no walks, 4 K's. Even Jeff Brantley, the dude who got drunk and told a barroom full of people in Florida that Morris' velocity was gone for good, declared "this is as good as I've seen Matt Morris look in two years."

So how good was he? Unfortunately I was only able to see Mo Mo pitch one inning, and he gave up a long bomb to Jeff Bagwell (although he did throw one fastball 92 mph, which was faster than any pitches he threw last week against the Rox). Anyone out there have any impressions of his game?

Posted 12:10 AM by Brian
HOMER HAPPY The Cardinals are trying to do something you don't normally see outside of Coors Field: they're leading the majors in home runs hit (with 34) and in home runs allowed (with 25). That's an insane 4.21 homers per game, more than you'd see in your typical Rockies game (3.46), White Sox game (3.23), or Cubs game (3.21).

Here's another bizarro early-season stat: the Cardinals are a lousy 3-7 at home (second worst in the NL), and a perfect 5-0 on the road. That means if we played all our games at home so far, we'd be in last place in our division. If we played all our games on the road, we'd be in first.

Posted 12:09 AM by Brian
FLUBBER IN REVERSE Remember the old Disney movie The Absent Minded Professor? Fred MacMurray's character invents a substance called flying rubber (or Flubber, hence the title of the Disney remake) that repels all hard objects. Therefore MacMurray coats some on a baseball and strikes out everyone in sight.

I think Albert Pujols has been coating his bats with anti-flubber. He has only one strikeout in 70 plate appearances this year, which puts him in sight of a rare ambition, according to the Post-Dispatch:

First baseman Albert Pujols limited his statistical goals this season to striking out fewer than last season's 65 whiffs and walking 100 times.

How rare is this? Well, it's been done 102 times in major-league history, but only 7 times by active players: Barry Bonds (2002, 2003), Brian Giles (2003), Todd Helton (2000), Gary Sheffield (1999), and Frank Thomas (1993, 1994).

The best recent figures are from Bonds, of course -- namely his 198 BB/47 K combo in 2002. But in 1941 Ted Williams had an even better K/BB ratio: 147 walks, only 27 strikeouts. Pujols is currently on pace for 150 walks, 12 strikeouts.

Posted 12:08 AM by Brian
WRECKING CREW Yesterday I looked at how opposing hitters had done against Cardinal pitching and noted that our average adversary was hitting like Eric Chavez. It's only fair to turn the tables and look at how the average Cardinal is hitting. Our team totals:

AVG: .308
OBP: .371
SLG: .585

That's similar to... let's see... Richard Hidalgo, 2003:

AVG: .309
OBP: .385
SLG: .572

A whole lineup of Richard Hidalgoes. Not too shabby. Here's another way of looking at it: the Cardinals team OPS (that includes pitchers) is higher than any of the regulars who play for the Padres, Brewers, Devil Rays, Mets, Expos, or Blue Jays.

Posted 12:07 AM by Brian
MELODIOUS THUNK Did you see Jedmonds' grand slam in the sixth? Everything about it was wrong. He went chasing a two-strike pitch, got way out in front, off balance, swung off his front foot, took a one-handed swing with his lead hand, and yet... somehow... he muscled it out of the park. It was astonishing, like a form of alchemy.

Jedmonds does this kind of thing alot. He's one of the least textbook players you'll ever see -- that big ol' windmill swing, constantly either reaching or baling out, finishing his loopy cut with his helmet wobbling off his head. For some reason the whole thing reminds me of what music critic Geoff Dyer once said about jazz pianist Thelonious Monk:

Monk played the piano as though he’d never seen one before. Came at it from all angles, using his elbows, taking chops at it, rippling through the keys like they were a deck of cards, fingers jabbing at them like they were hot to the touch or tottering around them like a woman in heels – playing it all wrong as classical piano went. Everything came out crooked, at an angle, not as you expected. If he’d played Beethoven, sticking exactly to the score, just the way he hit the keys, the angle at which his fingers touched the ivory, would have unsteadied it, made it swing and turn around inside itself, made it a Monk tune.

That's the way Jim Edmonds plays baseball. It's like someone took a film strip of Will Clark swinging a bat, crumpled it up, cut out a few frames, reassembled them out of order, ran it back through a film projector, then used it to teach Jedmonds how to swing a bat. But the results -- those high, majestic home runs -- would be as if Thrill had hit them himself.

Posted 10:55 PM by Brian
LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN We here at Redbird Nation give Tony La Russa a lot of guff when his machinations go awry, so it's only fair to give the man props when he comes through. Today Tony made three moves that I heartily applaud:

1. He demoted Jason Simontacchi. The Simo Man is supposedly a good Christian fellow, so it's hard not to root for him. But man, he's been an unholy mess on the mound. I think it's been clear for almost a year now that he's not quite ready for primetime, and lately he's pitched even worse than usual. (Anytime a reliever enters a game and gives up a home run to the first hitter, we should call it "pulling a Simontacchi." He's already done that three times this year, in only four appearances. The other time he gave up a single-sacrifice-double, so clearly he's improving.)

I'm glad TLR resisted the temptation to replace Simontacchi with another reliever, especially since he hasn't really needed all 12 pitchers he took up North. Eldred, Kline, and Tavarez have been under-utilized, and I don't think our bullpen would get much of a boost by calling up Kiko Calero.

Instead, La Russa and Jocketty made the right call by bringing up an outfielder, Colin Porter. Porter got off to a great start in Memphis, and he had a fine year last year at New Orleans in the Pacific Coast League. What's more, he's a nifty fielder, which means we won't have to be futzing around with the Marlon Anderson Experiment in left any more than we have to.

2. Tony's second smoove move came in the Cards 7th, when he pinch hit for Jeff Suppan. Might have been a no-brainer -- the bases were loaded and there was only one out -- but Suppan was absolutely cruising at that point, the Cards had a 3-1 lead, and I could a more conservative manager leaving Suppan in there. Instead Tony went for the jugular, got his insurance runs, and turned things over to his shaky bullpen. A small move, but the right one.

3. Lastly, La Russa brought in Isringhausen in the 8th inning and asked him to get the last five outs of the game. Some manager go into a "ninth inning only" trance when it comes to their closers; what's more, Izzy has been very hittable lately (in fact, he got rocked by the Astros less than a week ago). Tony made the right call by having him face the dangerous Richard Hidalgo (who was the tying run at the time) rather than saving him for the lower half of the lineup in the ninth. Except for a cheap infield single by Vizcaino, Izzy had no problem steamrolling through the Astros lineup, and he picked up a very legit save.

Actually, I was surprised to learn that La Russa hasn't been quite as rigid with Isringhausen's usage patterns as I would have guessed. Eleven of Izzy's 56 saves under La Russa have come when he pitched more than one inning.

Posted 10:11 PM by Brian
BARRY, BARRY GOOD Every year I say the same thing: this is the year Barry Bonds goes in the tank. Not by normal standards, you understand; it's just that I look at his age, and his outrageous numbers, and I figure he's due for one of those .312/37 homer seasons -- you know, the type of season you might see from, you know, a regular human being.

Forget it. Barry Bonds will not be joining us carbon-based, metabolizing lifeforms anytime soon. He's now homered in 7 straight games, and it looks like he's got his eye on a Gretzkyesque seventh MVP Award too. As of this writing, he's hitting over .500 with an OPS of 2.023. I know we're only two weeks into the season, but still, that's staggering.

We all know about Barry's home runs, but here's a thought: is it possible he'll also reach 3,000 hits? I know that sounds ludicrous given the number of walks he draws, but check it out -- he's at 2,614 right now, and he's averaging 146 hits per year. If he maintains his current pace, he should get #3,000 sometime around the end of 2006. Of course, he'll be 42 years old by then, but would you really put it past the man?

The career hit list is nice, but where Bonds really does damage is the career hits + walks list. You don't see that list very often, but Barry recently passed Ted Williams to crack the top ten:

...............................
1. Pete Rose	5,822
2. Ty Cobb	5,438
3. Carl Yastrzemski	5,264
4. Rickey Henderson	5,245
5. Stan Musial	5,229
6. Hank Aaron	5,173
7. Tris Speaker	4,895
8. Eddie Collins	4,815
9. Willie Mays	4,746
10. Barry Bonds	4,702

Bonds has been reaching base, on average, 320 times over the past three years, so he's got a chance to really move up that list.

Posted 9:44 PM by Brian
CHANNELING THE MAHATMA Here's a handy little article about our favorite member of the Cardinals brass, VP of baseball development Jeff Luhnow. The writer, Joe Strauss, does a good job staying non-partisan, although he does get one thing wrong, kinda, sorta (I mean besides referring to "win shares" as "run shares"). Strauss writes,

[Luhnow's] hiring as the team's first vice president of baseball development marked a major shift in how player evaluation is conducted by Branch Rickey's old franchise.

True, it's a shift from the way the Cardinals generally conduct business, but Luhnow is not at all breaking tradition with Branch Rickey. As Aaron Gleeman pointed out recently, Rickey (in addition to devising the modern-day farm system and breaking baseball's color line) was also something of a proto-sabermetrician. He grasped, way back when, that on-base percentage was more important than batting average, that RBIs were overrated, and that range afield was more important than fielding percentage. Jeff, you're in good company.

Posted 9:34 PM by Brian
FEEL-GOOD DEPT. Larry Dierker, who's among my favorite out-of-work managers, has a very gracious article about the Cardinals and the fans of St. Louis. Thanks, LD.

Posted 9:31 PM by Brian
EVERYONE CHILL Josh Schulz makes a good point about the Cardinals 6-7 start (now 7-7 after tonight's win): it's no big deal. For a comparison, the 2002 Cards won 97 games and had 43 stretches where they went 6-7 or worse over 13 games (some of those stretches overlapped, obviously). Even the '98 Yankees -- you know, those guys who won 114 games -- went 6-7 or worse 17 different times. It's just not that uncommon, and certainly not very telling.

Posted 9:17 PM by Brian
FREE LABOR Check out this item from Doug Pappas:

Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal reports that the Chicago White Sox are set to announce new promotions that will actually allow well-heeled fans onto the field during games. Two fans per game will be allowed to pay $1,500 for the privilege of dragging the infield. Two more will be allowed to pay $1,000 each for the honor of changing first and third bases during the fifth inning.

For $5,000 you can clean gum off the bottom of the seats; $10,000 you can regrout the team shower, and 50 G's lets you bikini-wax Paul Konerko's wife.

Posted 5:50 PM by Brian
THE CARDINALS PIGPEN None of our starters are pitching particularly well, but at least our relievers are doing well, right? Wrong. Our starter's ERA this year is a lousy 5.96, but our bullpen is even worse at 6.08.

Who's to blame? Pretty much everyone. Ray King has been bad; Izzy worse; and Tavarez, Simotacchi, and Eldred are doing everything they can to revive memories of Esteban Fasspringer. Our only passable relievers are Mike Lincoln (who's been so-so), Steve Kline (who's been sharp, although underused), and, erm, Cody McKay.

Add it all together and it amounts to one ugly pitching staff. How bad? Check this out:

AVG/OBP/SLG
Opposing Batters this year: .288/.349/.515
Eric Chavez last year: .282/.350/.514

This is a truism: it's hard to win games when your pitchers turn every opposing hitter into Eric Chavez.

Posted 12:19 AM by Brian
BARN BURNERS What's the best baseball game of the past 25 years? I pondered the question tonight as I watched, on ESPN Classic, the last four innings of the 1991 World Series finale. What a gut-wrencher. A few things about the broadcast struck me:

• I really miss Jack Buck. That rich, oaky voice -- and no one was better at lending drama and heft to a baseball game. With just the simplest cadence ("two ON... two OUT... two-two PITCH...") he'd leave you hanging on every pitch.

• Hitters in 1991 didn't work pitchers like they do today. Morris entered the 10th having thrown 121 pitches, but Blauser swung at the first pitch leading off (and popped out), and Lonnie Smith and Terry Pendleton swung at everything within ten feet of the strike zone. It was an 8-pitch inning for Morris, and I swear he looked like he was ready to heed Ernie Banks' advice -- "let's play two!" -- if that's what it took.

• Do you remember Dan Gladden's 10th-inning leadoff broken-bat blooper? It dropped in front of Gant, and Gladden, who never stopped running, chugged into second. At the time Tim McCarver said people might be talking about his balls-out baserunning for decades to come, and yet I'll be damned if I've heard anyone mention it since. Turned out it was the hit that turned the Series.

• The cameras caught a glimpse of Ted Turner in the bottom of the 9th, and I swear to you, the man was falling asleep. Falling asleep! His team was trying to win their first championship in over 30 years and he couldn't keep his eyes open!

Anyway, back to my original topic: greatest games of the past 25 years. For starters, let's eliminate all regular season games (that means toss out this bumper-car ride at Wrigley, the Pine Tar odyssey, and the Greatest Game Ever Pitched). I just feel that, when it comes to regular-season games, everyone's got their own personal favorites and very few of them took place on a national stage.

Secondly, I discounted all Cardinals games. Unfair? Sure. But I just can't be objective about them. The average Cardinals game in May gets me about as riled up as Game 7 between the Angels and Giants. I don't have any perspective. If that pisses you off and you want to add in your own Cardinals write-in candidates, just click on the "comments" link.

So... onto my selections for the 10 (Narrowly Defined) Greatest Games of the Past 25 Years:

1. Game 7, 1991 World Series (Jack Morris goes 10)
2. Game 6, 1986 World Series (ball, Buckner, legs, ballgame)
3. Game 6, 1986 NLCS (16-inning nail-biter straight out of Joseph Conrad)
4. Game 7, 2001 World Series (Super Mariano isn't so super)
5. Game 1, 1988 World Series (Kirk Gibson = Roy Hobbs)
6. Game 7, 1992 NLCS (Francisco Cabrera ends it; a personal favorite)
7. Game 6, 2002 World Series (Angels storm back from 5 down)
8. Game 5, 1986 ALCS (Dave Henderson kills Donnie Moore)
9. Game 7, 2003 ALCS (Aaron F. Boone: Sox killer)
10. Game 7, 1997 World Series (Edgar Renteria crowned King of Colombia)

Honorable Mentions: Game 5, 1980 NLCS (wild see-saw game to put the Phils in the Series); Game 6, 1993 World Series (Wild Thing Williams, meet Joe Carter); Game 5, 2001 World Series (Byung-Hyun comes undone agun); Game 4, 1996 World Series (Wohlers vs. Leyritz)

Let the arguments begin...

Posted 11:13 PM by Brian
CARDS FAN TRAPPED IN A CUBS FAN'S BODY In the Denver airport over the weekend, my cousin Mark overhead a guy say this into his cell phone:

"I'm the worst Cubs fan in the world. I'm sitting here in the airport wearing a Cardinals hat."

All part of growing up, big guy.

Posted 3:49 PM by Brian
CHOPPING WOODY The first two years of Woody Williams' career in a Cardinals uniform were a thrill. At the All-Star Break last season, Woody's career record in St. Louis: 28-8, with a 2.67 ERA. Considering Woody wasn't expected to do much (Jocketty mostly just wanted a consolation prize after dumping Lankford on the Pads), his success always came gratis, like we were gambling with house money.

It appears, however, that we're now out of chips. Woody is simply not a quality pitcher anymore. I know it; you know it; the press and the front office seem to know it; and anyone who doesn't know it isn't being totally honest with themselves. Consider:

• Since the All-Star Break last year, Woody has a 5.56 ERA. For comparison's sake, two guys had a 5.56 ERA in 2003: one was Quadruple-A hurler Jason Simontacchi; the other was 19-game loser Jeremy Bonderman. Not a group you want to associate with.

• Perhaps you think we're being unfair judging Woody on only a half-year's worth of stats. So let's go back a little further, and see how he's done over the past calendar year: 237 hits in 221.1 innings, and an ERA of 4.49. That ERA is awfully close to Woody's figure (4.35) as a member of the Padres, meaning he's essentially the sub-mediocre pitcher he was from 1999-2000, rather than the new-and-improved Woody v.2.0 model we've come to know and love.

• Woody is 37 years old, and it shows. He just can't rear back and sling it anymore -- every inning is a chore. Over the last three months of last season, Woodrow averaged 161 pitches per nine innings. This season he's been worse: 82 pitches in only 3 innings his first start; 99 in 6 his second start; and today, 105 in 5.2 innings. That's 176 pitches per 9, if you're scoring at home.

• What about the "three true outcomes" test (which we performed on Matty Mo the other day)? Woody fails all three portions of the exam. His strikeouts are way off (he didn't strike out anyone today, despite all those pitches; in fact, he threw 33 two-pitch strikes on the afternoon, and none of them resulted in a K). His walks are up (3 in 5.2 innings). And, like the rest of our staff, he's gone a bit homer happy, surrendering longballs to both Vinny Castilla and Todd Helton. Very ominous.

Last autumn we recommended that the Cards trade Woody Williams. We figured that his 18 wins had a lot to do with luck (he had the highest run-support in the league), and that his trade value would never be higher. Throw in some lingering injury concerns, and you'd have to say that the Cardinals may be stuck with a very mediocre pitcher, one who is still owed $7.45 million on his contract.

Posted 3:48 PM by Brian
WALK-OFF FLYOUT I'm sure many of you sank, like I did, at the ending to today's ballgame. Bottom of the ninth, Cards down by three, two outs, two strikes, bases juiced, all-world slugger Albert Pujols at the plate. Long drive to deep right, Pellow back to the track, to the wall... Caught! I couldn't help but have visions of Giambi hitting a walk-off salami two years ago, or, an even better memory, this winner from 1979. But alas, the gods weren't smiling on us today.

The Cards have an off-day on Monday, when they'll fly into Houston for a three-game set. We've got to win at least one from the 'Stros down at Dick Cheney Field, if for no other reason than to show we're actually in this race. See, the Astros are threatening to run away and hide in the NL Central. They've got mega-production up and down their lineup and some lights-out pitching from moundmates Clemens, Oswalt, and Miller.

And what about the Cubs? Well, they're doing about as well as the Cards so far, and they're suprisingly ranked 12th in the league in runs allowed. Remember in the offseason, when everyone picked the Cards to finish in 3rd? Remember the A#1 reason why? Because, according to the mainstream press, the Cardinals didn't open their wallets and land a big-name pitcher like Greg Maddux. Maddux, who seems to be treating this season as a tribute to Mike Maddux, is huffing along with an 8.62 ERA and 19 baserunners allowed per 9 innings. Come to think of it, those numbers would fit right in with the Cardinals pitching staff.

Posted 3:35 PM by Brian
WEIRD REVELATION from this profile on Mark McGwire: Saturday's game marked the first time since he retired that he watched a full nine innings of baseball. I don't know if that's because he's not a huge fan of the game, or if the games are a frustrating reminder that he's not on the field, or if he just needed to turn his attention to other areas of his life, but it did strike me as rather odd.

Posted 3:31 PM by Brian
THE UPSTARTS So a number of Cardinals -- Womack, Matheny, Anderson, Lankford -- are off to surprisingly fast starts. Who's stats are the most bankable? Probably none of them, but Josh Schulz explains why Lankford's hot hand may be closer to the real deal than, say, Tony Womack's.

Also: remember what a concern left field was before the season started? Our leftfielders, as a bunch, are so far sporting an AVG/OBP/SLG line of .321/.393/.642. Okay, I know it won't last, probably not by a long shot, but I'll take whatever I can get for now.

Posted 3:23 PM by Brian
TAKE ME OUT TO AFGHANISTAN As everyone knows, the most essential ingredient of a solid infrastructure and a progressive democracy is the game of baseball. The photos along the righthand side are priceless.

Posted 3:21 PM by Brian
KING HENRY I didn't think I'd read a piece on Hank Aaron that was much better than Jim Baker's recent ode, but Dayn Perry tops him with a truly first-rate, loving look at the Hammer. Enjoy.

Posted 3:18 PM by Brian
BUS DRIVER Mike Celizic of MSNBC.com argues that the Cards should fire La Russa. When this should take place, I have no idea, but I assume Celizic means after the season (which makes the timing of the piece awfully strange). Other parts of the article are just as bizarre. At one point Celizic argues that the Cardinals have little chance to make the postseason --

Which raises the question, why does [La Russa] bother to stay on and why do the Cardinals persist in keeping a very expensive man around to manage the team? It's kind of like paying Dale Earnhardt Jr. to drive a school bus.

So let me get this straight: the Cardinals (you know, guys like Pujols and Rolen) are the school bus and the racing champ is Tony La Russa? You lost me, Mike.

Posted 3:09 PM by Brian
POLICE BLOTTER It pales in comparison to the Mike Danton murder allegations, but you can't help but worry about Ray Lankford's troubled personal life.

Posted 3:04 PM by Brian
GRUESOME PHOTOGRAPH WARNING You think the photo editor at The Cincinnati Post has it out for Bud Selig?

Posted 2:45 PM by Brian
AND PHINALLY My brother-in-law is a Phillies fan, so I feel obligated to pass along a cool new website dedicated to all things Philly. It's called A Citizen's Blog for the Philadelphia Phillies, and it might serve as a nice ongoing diary should the Red Stripes go over the top for the first time since 1980.

Posted 11:40 PM by Brian
THE VELOCITY OF MATTY There's a guy, a friend of a friend, who was down in Jupiter, Florida during spring training. And one night he ran across ex-Cardinals pitcher Jeff Brantley in a bar. Brantley, so I'm told, was drunk out of his mind, and he was railing against Cards pitching coach Dave Duncan. He kept saying that Duncan doesn't know pitchers (Brantley kept chiding him as "the catcher"), and claimed that Duncan's only successes were flukes. Now, I don't know if any of this is true, or even if Brantley meant what he said. And if he did, I don't know that we should care -- after all, Brantley started going downhill on Duncan's watch, so it could just be sour grapes.

But here's the ominous part: Brantley then announced that everyone knows Matt Morris' fastball is gone, and everyone knows he'll never get it back. That's a scarier charge, and might be more than the rantings of a drunken, third-tier broadcaster.

Has Matt Morris lost his fastball? Well, we should ask ourselves: if this is true, if Morris' velocity is gone, what other things would also be true? First of all, his radar gun readings would be lower. It seems clear to me that they are. I watched Morris' readings all night, and although I didn't catch every pitch, the fastest pitch I saw clocked in at 90 mph. A year ago Morris would giddyup that thing to around 94.

What else would be true? Well, you'd see more guys pulling the ball. A few of the Rockies -- namely, Castilla, Burnitz, and Charles Johnson -- had no problem wheeling on Morris' heater tonight, but that doesn't tell you much. I'll have to keep an eye out for this one in the future.

Lastly, if Morris' fastball was going limp, you'd expect his strikeout rate to drop. Let's see: Morris' velocity is reputed to have dropped off sometime around last June. From the beginning of 2002 until June of last year, Morris struck out 7.20 guys per 9 innings. From June 2003 until tonight, Morris punched out only 5.05 guys per 9 innings. That's a plunge of over two strikeouts per game. (The '02-'03 league norm for K/9 was 6.71, meaning Morris has gone from an above-average whiffmeister to well below average in the blink of an eye.)

Well, you might say -- who cares? Morris still has a fine changeup and a good power curve, and he's won his last two starts without a devastating heater. And yes, there were times tonight (and in Arizona) where Morris seemed like he was evolving into a crafty location pitcher.

I don't buy it. Morris needs his fastball to work hitters inside and also to set up his breaking pitches. What's more, when Morris' big curve isn't working (as on Opening Day), he has nothing in his arsenal to fall back on. It's a depressing thought, but we might not see vintage Matt Morris -- the one who went toe-to-toe with Schilling and Unit in consectutive NLDS -- ever again.

Posted 11:30 PM by Brian
GAME NOTES Cardinals 13, Rockies 5

• Another big day for the bats, as the Cards pounded out 13 runs and 15 hits in eight innings. Womack and Sanders got things started with lead-off, back-to-back home runs, the first time that's happened for the Birdnals since August 17, 1958 (back then it was off of Koufax; tonight it was off of Denny Stark). That's a span of 7,176 games.

• I didn't even know Womack was capable of muscling up like he did -- he's got such a spindly body and takes such a flyswatter, Luis Castillo-like swing. But he really womacked the hell out of the ball, only his 31st homer in 4,337 lifetime plate appearances.

• The lumber in our lineup once again masked a pretty mediocre performance by our pitchers. The other day I suggested you keep an eye on the "three true outcomes" when evaluating our staff. Morris failed on all three counts. His walks were up (3 in 7 innings), his strikeouts were down (4 in 7 innings), and he gave up 3 more home runs. On the night Cards pitchers gave up 6 XBH's. If they'd given up more than two singles, things could have been much uglier. All in all I think you have to say this was another uninspiring job by our hurlers.

• Lankford's ETA, according to Al Hrabosky: Tuesday.

• I loved seeing the sprinklers come on in the top of the second -- for a moment Busch Stadium resembled the fountains at Kaufman Stadium. Remember that scene in Bull Durham when Crash and a few teammates turned on the sprinklers to force a rainout? I wonder if Rox pitcher Denny Stark was behind the sprinklers going off at Busch...

Posted 12:07 PM by Brian
ANEMIC I can't get over how lousy the Expos hitting has been. They've scored only 10 runs in their first nine games, with game totals of 3-3-0-2-1-1-0-0-0. That wouldn't look out of place as a scoreboard line for a single nine-inning game. And in fact, of the 29 remaining teams, 22 of them already have scored 10 or more runs in a single game.

Some other Expos oddities:

• They haven't had so much as a three-run inning all year. Their high-water marks this season: a two-run inning in Game #2, and another two-run inning in Game #4.

• As a team, the Expos have only 3 home runs. The Cardinals hit three home runs in one inning last Friday against the Diamondbacks.

• Not surprisingly, the Expos have had trouble with runners in scoring position. They're hitting only .058 (3-for-52) with runners on, and they have only one extra-base hit, a double, in those situations.

• The Expos play in good hitters parks -- Olympic Stadium helps offense, and Hiram Bithorn Stadium (where the 'Spos played this week) is a launching pad. Nonetheless, the Expos have scored only 4 runs in six home games.

• Only one Expos hitter, Jose Vidro, has been having an above-average year. He's either leading or tied for the team lead in runs, hits, doubles, home runs, RBIs, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Take away Vidro and the rest of the Expos have a team AVG/OBP/SLG of .174/.219/.223.

• The Braves scored more runs in the fourth inning of their April 7th game against the Mets than the Expos have all year.

Posted 12:01 AM by Brian
HOW TO MAKE A ROID MONSTER A couple weeks ago I mentioned an article by George Will that seemed destined for the Most Idiotic Baseball Editorial of 2004. Well, sorry, George, but your crown has been taken away. The new frontrunner is Stephen A. Smith of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who penned one of the most ignorant and ill-informed columns I've read in a long time.

What's it about? Well, it starts off by bemoaning all this flap about Barry Bonds as a possible steroid user. Fair enough -- I've defended Bonds on more than one occasion, and I have little patience for people who indict the man simply by measuring his hat size. But then Smith gets to the heart of his editorial: a haymaker aimed right at the mug of Mark McGwire.

See, Smith thinks Bonds is getting a bad rap, whereas McGwire (All-American poster boy and child-rights crusader) got off scot free six years ago:

Where was everyone in 1998, when McGwire forgot to stuff the dietary supplement androstenedione in a drawer instead of leaving it out for a reporter to spot? Where was the uproar in the weeks that followed when he was exposed as a steroid user? Who was talking about his legacy? What people would think of him in 25 years? His 70 home runs, which broke Roger Maris' record of 61 set in 1961? Who even thought about an asterisk being placed next to his name?

Well, Stephen, I'll tell you who thought about it: damn near everybody. Gene Woolsey of the Toronto Star labelled McGwire the "steroid pin-up boy," and his colleague Christopher Hume called McGwire's records a mere "steroid-driven home run streak." Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 1998, "I don't think we're seeing a test of how many home runs Mark McGwire can hit in a season. It looks instead like a test of how many home runs a chemically enhanced Mark McGwire can hit." David Kindred of The Sporting News began a profile of McGwire with the following taunt: "Welcome to 'Roid World. Where muscle comes out of a needle. Where home runs come out of a little bottle." Not to be outdone, Wallace Matthews of the New York Post chimed in, "Mark McGwire let a lot of children down, starting with his own 10-year-old son." He goes on to say that McGwire should come clean to America's kids about the evils of chemical enhancement, and that "anything less would be the thing McGwire hates most in the world. Child abuse." You think Barry Bonds was ever accused of child abuse?

But it wasn't just newspaper columnists tsk-tsking McGwire. Editorial cartoonists had a field day. There was the cartoon about McGwire's steroid bottle enshrined at Cooperstown; another one with Big Mac guzzling a tanker-truck-sized bottle of pills; another one with a molecular diagram for chemical supplements (rather than an asterisk) next to McGwire's 62nd home run. Cartoonists also had Mark McGwire wielding a steroid bottle at the plate instead of a bat, encouraging kids to "take steroids and break old records" just like him, posing for a picture with estrogen-enhanced breasts, and even standing at the plate with a big canine tail. (Although I know that last one isn't accurate because it shows Big Mac hitting lefthanded.)

You see, 1998 was an all-out party for anyone yearning to get on their high horse and tee off on Mark McGwire. Hell, I remember driving around one night, listening to sports talk radio, and hearing a guy talk about the asterisk that should be put next to McGwire's HR totals; I then switched stations and heard another guy on another call-in show opining that McGwire was poisoning our nation's youth.

Oh, sure, McGwire had his defenders. The din got so loud that the Cardinals front office released a statement defending their players' right to use androstenedione. Commissioner Bud Selig and Players Union chief Donald Fehr issued a joint statement that pointed out that andro was available over-the-counter and not banned by MLB. So you had plenty of mouthpieces on both sides of a nationwide debate.

All of this was lost on Stephen A. Smith, who was evidently taking some performance-reducing drugs when he spit out his diatribe in the Inquirer. He writes that McGwire had it easy, that "the level of scrutiny should have been more conspicuous than McGwire blowing kisses in Sammy Sosa's direction." (I can't make any grammatical sense of that sentence, but I think I know what he means.) Smith goes on to write that "the rumblings were like whispers at a parade compared with what Bonds is going through."

If that's not off-the-wall enough for you, Smith's piece gets even weirder. Moments after cautioning us not to judge Barry Bonds, he blatantly skewers McGwire as a steroid-user, with no real evidence to back up his case. Writes Smith:

[D]on't tell me about how andro was legal. Spare me! It's a steroid. It's a metabolic step away from testosterone, the body's ultimate anabolic steroid. Or so reports say.

Or so some reports say. There's still intense debate in the medical community about whether andro should be classified as a steroid. We do know that androstenedione is not an anabolic steroid -- it is, instead, a naturally occuring androgenic steroid, meaning it has masculinizing effects, namely the stimulation of testosterone (and likely estrogen, hence the breasts in the editorial cartoon). And the latest study that I'm aware of suggests that andro does not help much if you're looking to build muscle mass. A fair description of andro would place it in that gray area between steroids and non-steroids. And a fair examination of McGwire's andro use would recall that, in fact, McGwire stopped using the drug when he realized the bad example he was setting for children. But then again, Stephen A. Smith isn't about to let facts get in the way of a good lecture.

Smith concludes his article by discussing Bonds' stunning longball achievements, while lamenting that the great moments of Bonds career "are tinged with skepticism and doubt -- without any factual evidence placed in front of us. There's something wrong with this picture." Smith might want to reflect on Mark McGwire and read those last couple sentences one more time.

Posted 4:06 PM by Brian
JACKIE Today, as you may know, is Jackie Robinson Day, marking the 57th anniversary of the end of baseball's color line. You may do well to take a few moments and remember Jack Roosevelt Robinson, but if you do, please try to avoid the hushed pieties that usually attend a day like this. Don't get me wrong -- Robinson deserves our respect. But I fear that his status as a saintly icon is gradually swallowing the dazzling, human side of this great man.

What I'd give to be a fly on the wall during Branch Rickey's first meeting with Jackie Robinson, when he grilled him with a variety of questions to gauge his toughness. At one point during the interview, according to The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball, the Dodgers GM reared back as if to swing at Jackie and hollered, "What do you do now, Jackie? What do you do now?" Robinson replied, "I get it, Mr. Rickey. I've got another cheek. I turn the other cheek."

I suppose it's easy to see Robinson delivering that line in the deferential manner common to many African-Americans of that age. But Robinson was an extremely proud, staunch man, which made his self-effacing manner in the face of adversity all the more amazing. He was college-educated and served in the U.S. Army. He also may have been the best athlete to ever play major-league baseball (although Bo Jackson could put in a pretty nice claim). Jackie almost led UCLA to the Rose Bowl in football, was an All-American in basketball, and broke a national record for the long jump (the previous mark was actually held by his brother, Mack).

Robinson's intro to the white major leagues was important, yes, but it was also exciting as hell. He was an incredibly versatile player, as you might expect (Bill James ranks him as one of the best fielders of all time), and he possessed a brash, cutthroat baserunning style (he actually stole home nineteen times in his career). Robinson was not the type of guy to simply tune out the threats and epithets that were hurled at him from folks in the stands -- he used the adversity as fuel to feed his hunger in the field and on the basepaths.

So, yes, it's nice that Jackie Robinson has been memorialized, and it's nice that every team has retired his number, but let's not forget the roiling, combative human being behind #42.

Posted 3:23 PM by Brian
MAZZONE'S MR. MIYAGI Rob Neyer has a cool article about the Hall of Fame portfolio of Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone. Mazzone, says Neyer, compares favorably to ex-pitching coach Johnny Sain, whom many consider the pre-eminent pitching guru of all time. Now, I knew Sain was good with arms, but I didn't know how good --

In 17 seasons, Sain coached 16 20-game winners. And beginning in 1961, Sain had a 13-season streak with at least one 20-game winner in each season. Whitey Ford won 20 games only twice, both times while pitching for Sain. Denny McLain's two big seasons came while pitching for Sain. Jim Kaat's three biggest seasons came while pitching for Sain, first with the Twins and later with the White Sox. Knuckleballer Wilbur Wood won 20 games four times; all four times, Sain was his pitching coach.

In the late '70s Sain took on a young student and taught him various ins and outs about the discipline of pitching. The young man's name? Leo Mazzone.

Posted 3:14 PM by Brian
MIDWEST FARM REPORT You can hardly blame Cardinals pitchers -- who are having a cussed time keeping the ball in the park -- if they're feeling some serious heat on the back of their necks from Danny Haren and Adam Wainwright. Both pitchers have only a couple starts in Memphis, but so far they don't seem too intimidated by AAA batters.

Haren has tossed 12 innings, given up only six hits and two earned runs (for a 1.50 ERA), and had 10 K's in six innings on Wednesday night. Wainwright has been even better -- 11 innings, 4 hits, no runs, 12 punch-outs. Baseball America's Jim Callis thinks Wainwright will be "a solid No. 3 starter in the majors, and you'll probably see him in St. Louis at some point this year."

By the way, Josh Pearce has also been throwing gas down in Memphis, with 9 strikeouts and no walks in only 4.2 innings of work.

Posted 3:00 PM by Brian
YET ANOTHER MARK PRIOR UPDATE Will Carroll tells debunks the idea that Mark Prior's career is on the rocks and expects the big righthander back around the first or second week of May.

Posted 2:56 PM by Brian
HIRSUTE ESPN.com has an interesting feature on the best hair in baseball history. Their list is pretty great, but it should include Fernando Tatis' bleach-blonde highlights, the prepubescent goatee that J.D. Drew has been trying to grow for the past five years, Dave Duncan's Edgar Winter-style mullet (harkening back to his days as a backup catcher for the Swingin' A's, when his hair flowed past his shoulders like a magnificent gold Pegasus), and, my personal favorite, Nino Espinosa's gigantic topiary afro, c. 1979, which seismologists now consider one of the main precursors of the Mount St. Helens disaster.

Posted 9:56 AM by Brian
POND SCUM Remember the 1986 Mets? I can't think of a professional sports team I've hated more intensely (that includes the Christian Laettner-era Blue Devils and the Warren Sapp-era Buccaneers). Just hearing names like Gary Carter, Howard Johnson, and Wally Backman still gives me the creepy-crawlies.

For three years running the Mets and Cards engaged in a form of tribal warfare that actually rivals today's Yanks-Sox skirmishes. You had HoJo beating the Cards with a grand slam moments after a bench-clearing brawl; and then there was the stretch drive in '85, with Darryl Strawberry's Roy Hobbs-like, clock-breaking homer to beat the Cards 1-0 in ten; you also had Jeff Lahti promising to bean Howard Johnson in the head for the price of a free pizza; Busch fans showering the field with seat cushions when Tommy Herr downed the Mets with a walk-off grand slam; Mets fans praising catcher Barry Lyons for breaking John Tudor's leg; Whitey Herzog claiming he had x-rays to prove that HoJo's bat was corked; and, of course, Terry Pendleton's two-out, two-strike, game-tying ninth-inning homer that had the fans in Shea chanting "Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey, good--- wait, what the hell just happened?" As Cards utilityman Tom Lawless said about the rivalry, "It was ugly at times. We had nicknames for them in the clubhouse and we had pictures of them in the clubhouse. The wives had a shouting match down here one night."

Those were good times. But now that tempers have died down, and the '86 Mets have gone off to become either broadcasters or fat asses, perhaps we can look at the team with a little perspective. SI writer Jeff Pearlman has done just that, with a new book about the '86 Mets titled The Bad Guys Won (love the title -- those certainly weren't the huggable "Gotta Believe" Mets of yore). Alex Belth follows that up with a nice post about the Mets' legacy, and then provides a cool email from Richard Lederer which argues (definitively, I think) that the '86 Mets squad was not the greatest ballclub of the last 20 years. But they could play some serious baseball; I will give them that.

Posted 9:25 AM by Brian
HOME RUN BREAKDOWN for the Seattle Mariners:

Bret Boone......... 3
Rest of Team...... 1

And you thought the Cardinals had problems?

Posted 8:56 AM by Brian
MUSHMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN Dontrelle Willis (who's been compared to Mushmouth from "Fat Albert") is enjoying one the best starts I've ever seen -- 12.2 innings, 12 strikeouts, only 9 hits, no runs allowed. He's also 6-for-6 at the plate with a double and a home run. That means that Dontrelle has more hits than Carlos Delgado (5-31), Austin Kearns (5-28), Mike Lieberthal (2-24), Hideki Matsui (5-32), Bobby Abreu (3-25), Brian Giles (5-32), and J.D. Drew (5-27).

Posted 7:57 PM by Brian
BACK IN LAST PLACE Roger Clemens must really think the Cardinals suck. His teams have faced the Cardinals twice -- first the Yankees in June of last year, when the Cards got bombed out of the Bronx in three straight (none of the games were particularly close, and we dropped the series by a combined score of 23-8). Clemens faced us again as an Astro and, once again, his team took us in three straight by a combined score of 26-9.

Now, you might think this is just an idle coincidence, and I suppose it is. But I have the same feeling today as I did after playing the Yanks last June -- that we went up against a clearly superior team and got taken to school. How many areas did the Astros outplay us? Starting pitching? Check. Starting lineup? Check. Bench? Check. Bullpen? Check. Management? Well, I'll leave that one up to you. (La Russa made some idiotic moves this series, but perhaps the most idiotic move was Jimy Williams' decision to let Wade Miller, who's had a history of arm and fatigue problems, throw pitches 98-121 after his team was up 8-0 in the 7th.)

The central question after today must be: can the Cardinals possibly compete with the elite teams in the NL Central? Part of me thinks, sure, why not. We still have a solid offensive core and we've scored the 2nd most runs in the league. Plus, our defensive problems, which have been due largely to poor positioning and miscommunication, should diminish as the season goes on. Morris and Marquis looked sharp their last outings -- that's a good sign -- and besides, you simply cannot judge a team based on a week or two worth of games. (If you did, you might conclude that the Tigers are the best team in the AL and the Phillies are the worst in the NL.)

I mean, look: in 2001 the Cardinals opened the season with three games against the Rockies. They got absolutely blitzkrieged, lost all three games by at least four runs, and cumulatively by a score of 32-11. At the end of that season the Cards finished in first place, the Rockies in the cellar. So much for that first week. Or look at 2002 -- in the third week of the season, the Cardinals got swept in four straight to the lowly Brewers, surrendering 5 or more runs in each game. If you just looked at that one series, you would conclude that the Brewers were a 97-win team and the Cardinals were a 106-loss team. Turns out it was the other way around.

That's a long-winded way of saying: don't worry. Or maybe I should say, don't get too worried. It's a long season and we've got a lot of baseball to play. But if you're a natural worrywart and need stuff to get exercised about, I offer three suggestions:

(1) As you may know, statheads are into this thing called the "three true outcomes." It refers to the three things that pitchers have ultimate control over, independent of the fielders behind them: walks, strikeouts, and home runs. The Cardinals, so far, have been poor in all three categories. Our staff has given up almost four walks per game (luckily the Cubs and Astros have been even worse); we've struck out only 5.6 guys per nine innings (again, subpar); and we've surrendered an ungodly 17 home runs (including 15 in seven games at Busch).

But here's where it gets really scary: the "three true outcomes" are not as subject to random variation as other stats, like hits on balls in play. In other words, stats like K/BB ratio and HR allowed are sometimes better indicators of actual value than even runs allowed. Meaning our pitching staff better get command of the strike zone and find ways to keep the ball in the park or they're doomed.

(2) As several readers have pointed out, the talent at the front of our lineup is simply not adequate to hit in front of He-Men like Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen. After a hot first week, Womack has tailed off, and our replacements for Ray Lankford -- namely, So Taguchi -- are not my idea of productive. But perhaps I should hold off on tweaking T-Dub -- after all, his OBP is .395, even after the recent slump.

(3) Our defense really might be cause for concern. As I pointed out in an article for The Hardball Times, the Cards can expect a drop-off at 5 or more positions compared to last year. Needless to say, that doesn't mix well with our staff's penchant for walks and homers. And with so many injury concerns on our team, I think you'll see more guys out of position or with little experience (paging Marlon Anderson) patrolling the baseball diamond.

So there you have it -- enough cud to chew on through our day-off tomorrow. We'll climb back into the driver's seat on Friday night and see if this week's series was closer to a blip or a trend.

Posted 12:24 AM by Brian
BACK BELOW .500 Why can't we win at home? We're unblemished on the road at 3-0, but pin cushions at home, falling to 1-5 (and allowing 12 Busch taters) after tonight's loss. We also failed to score 5 runs for the first time all year. A few quick impressions:

• The idea that Roger Clemens -- who has now given up three hits and only one run in 13.2 innings, while striking out 12 -- could possibly be sitting at home right now, retired, doing nothing, simply boggles my mind. His right arm is still one of the deadliest in baseball, but for a moment there Roger thought it was better to use it for flipping the remote control and reaching into a bag of Cheetohs.

• Here's a thought: is Roger Clemens the best pitcher ever to pitch at Busch Stadium? The only other candidates are Seaver, Koufax, Carlton, Maddux, and Gibson. (In fact, Clemens -- with his swagger and his take-no-prisoners style of play -- somewhat reminds me of Gibby.) Out of those guys, I'd say Clemens has probably had the best career.

• Jose Vizcaino entered tonight's game 9-for-10 lifetime off of Jeff Suppan. Have you ever heard of a guy owning one pitcher so completely?

• When did the Cardinals morph into a softball team? We've given up the most home runs in the league; we've also hit the most (by far). In fact, a huge portion of the Cardinals offense this year (29 of 62 runs, or 47%) has been generated via the long ball. We've also been incredibly sloppy in the field, with the 2nd most errors in the league, and more gaffes than I can ever remember. So even after the Cardinals acquired a crop of wispy little speed demonds, they're playing baseball as if they were the '96 Orioles or the '82 Brewers, one of those sloppy teams that seemed to be playing with their shirts hanging out over their guts.

Posted 12:01 AM by Brian
THE WORLD IS TREATING ME BAD In the grand scheme of things, the St. Louis Cardinals have been extremely blessed. We have the most world titles of any franchise in the NL, more wins since 1900 than all but three teams (only the Yanks, Dodgers, and Giants have more), and we've been one of the better teams of this era.

But that doesn't mean we're strangers to misery. According to a surpisingly level-headed ranking system over at ESPN.com, we have, in fact, the 23rd most misery of any franchise in baseball. And although happy ballclubs are all alike (that's because there's only one of them, the Yankees), every unhappy ballclub is unhappy in its own way -- from the trials of Mitch Williams to the Curse of Donnie Moore.

The Cardinals most miserable moment of the last 25 years, at least according to ESPN, is that incident (that a few of you may remember) with Don Denkinger. It's a good choice -- after all, Denkinger put me in a funk that lasted clear into 1986, if not beyond. But what about after that? What are the Cardinals' lowest moments since 1985?

I decided to take a stab at my own list (and, out of respect, excluded the death of Darryl Kile, a tragedy that transcends anything on the field). So here it is -- my top ten bottom moments:

1. The 1996 NLCS. We revisited this debacle recently, when, under hypnosis, we recovered a memory of Donovan Osborne's Game 7 meltdown. The Cards, who at one point held a 3-1 series lead, hadn't been that close to the Series in nine years, and they haven't been as close since.

2. Lofton Rubs It In. The Cards may have been closer to a Series in '96, but the '02 club was the better team. When the dream finally ended -- with the Cardinals going 3-for-39 with RISP and Kenny Lofton taunting our dugout after his series-ending hit -- you may have had a funny feeling, as I did, that we wouldn't have another chance this good for a long, long time.

3. Ankiel goes AWOL. I'm not talking about the first time Ankiel lost control, when he threw 5 wild pitches in the NLDS against the Braves. (You could tell yourself then that maybe it's a one-time deal, a momentary lapse.) No, I'm talking about Ankiel's second implosion, against the Mets in the NLCS. Not only was the game itself a gut-wrenching come-from-behind loss, it also signaled the end of one of the most promising careers of the last decade.

4. Fernandomania, '90s Style. Fernando Valenzuela no-hit the Birdnals in one of the most flaccid performances in franchise history. It was clear then that the micro-dynasty we had established throughout the '80s was giving way to a new Ice Age. In fact, on the night of Fernando's no-no the Cards took sole possession of last place and finished there for the only time in the last 85 years. (Actually, when you put it that way things don't seem so bad.)

5. Cubbies Bitch-Slap Birds. Remember this one? We had a 6-0 lead on 9/3/03 on the strength of a J.D. Drew homer, but after a shot of Fassero and a dose of Springer we ended up falling 8-7 to our archrivals. In yet another collapse by our bullpen, we seemed to lose the game, the series, and the division in the space of about 45 minutes.

6. Twin Killing. For some reason the '87 Series doesn't burn like some of our other losses, but still -- getting bombed out of the Metrodome 11-5 and 4-2 was no walk in the park. The worst was Game 6, where John Tudor got a chance to avenge his loss from 1985, but instead became one of the great Sisyphusian characters in baseball history.

7. Wrolled Over in Wrigley. Another September battle in Wrigley, this one from 1989. Whoever won the game would have sole possession of first heading down the stretch. The Cards clung to a 2-1 lead until the bottom of the 8th, when the legendary Luis Salazar drove in the tying run. In the bottom of the 10th, the winning run was driven in by -- who else? -- the legendary Luis Salazar.

8. Alex Cintron 1, Scott Rolen's Shoulder 0. When Rolen got injured in 2002, it took a big bat out of the heart of our lineup and essentially doomed us for the next round of the playoffs. Worse, it continued a trend of freak Cardinal injuries in the playoffs, starting in 1985 (Coleman and the tarp), then again in 1987 (Jack Clark's ankle; Pendleton's ribs), 1996 (Ray Lankford tore his rotator cuff right before the playoffs), 2000 (Matheny and the hunting knife), and 2001 (McGwire's bum knee). In fact, the Cardinals have had a key player injured every postseason since 1982. Ouch.

9. Jose Oquendo Falls Short. The Secret Weapon pitched 3 2/3 innings of scoreless baseball, trying to become the first position player to win a ballgame in several decades, but he finally collapsed in the top of the 19th and took the loss. In the bottom of the 18th the Cardinals loaded the bases with one out, which would have given Jose O the win, but Duane Walker (to this day my least favorite Cardinal) hit into a double play. Still bugs me.

10. Tonight's Game. Tonight's game did suck, but I'm being a bit metaphorical here. In other words, the last loss is always the one that hurts the most.

Posted 6:20 PM by Brian
THE DIVINE DEALER Bing Devine -- who built the Cardinals dynasty of the 1960s and turned the downtrodden Mets into 1969 miracles -- has just written a breezy new autobiography. Among other things, he discusses getting hired and rehired by the Cards in the same decade, butting heads with Branch Rickey, trading for Lou Brock, and trading away Steve Carlton. If you want to hear more, either buy the book or you can catch Bing at a book signing at Mike Shannon's restaurant following Wednesday's afternoon game with the 'Stros.

Posted 5:43 PM by Brian
TOO MANY DOLLARS CHASING TOO FEW GOODS How hot are Red Sox tickets? David Pinto, who lives in Massachusetts, estimates that it would cost him more money to buy a ticket to Fenway than it would to buy a plane ticket, fly to Florida, and catch the Sox vs. Devil Rays at Tropicana Field.

Posted 4:55 PM by Brian
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE ANALYZED Slate's Josh Levin has a very nice overview of the baseblog phenomenon. He gives a tip of the cap to a number of my favorite blogs (including yours truly), so if nothing else the article is a good source for new reading material.

BP's Steven Goldman recently dissected the growing kulturkampf between the New School of sabermetrics and the Old Guard of revanchist naysayers. The blogging phenomenon -- which is overwhelmingly supportive of performance analysis -- is one measure that we're, you know, winning the war.

Hell, you don't even need to read wonkish little weblogs to see how far the revolution has spread. When a middlebrow publication like Sports Illustrated starts name-dropping Nate Silver (as they did in their preseason baseball issue), and world-wide leaders like ESPN pepper their broadcasts with references to WHIP and OPS, then you know that someone has uncorked the genie-bottle.

Of course, like any revolution, there's bound to be some Jacobins who take things too far -- and yes, there are some baseball weblogs out there who misuse or rely on statistics to an absurd degree -- but by and large I think this groundswell of D.I.Y. seamhead commentary is a great thing for the game.

Posted 9:01 AM by Brian
PICK YOUR PUN Rockin' and Rolen, Rolen Along, Rolen By the River -- they all apply to Richard Lederer's fine analysis of Scott Rolen's career credentials. As Richard notes, Rolen (yearbook photo at right) has never led the league in any hitting category, nor has he ever played in a World Series, but he has been the model of consistency:

Rolen's adjusted on-base plus slugging average (OPS+) has averaged 128, and it has ranged from 121 to 139 every season.

And he just turned 29 years old. That's exactly the type of guy you want signed to a long-term contract.

Posted 10:11 PM by Brian
BARRY BONDS, ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION Congrats to Barry Bonds, who moved into third on the all-time home run list today. Like Neyer, I think the milestone has been overhyped, but it hardly compares to the hype monsoon that will hit when and if Bonds hunts down Hank Aaron.

You can bet, though, that two guys will be sitting out that particular hypefest. One is Aaron himself, who says he has no interest in seeing Bonds break his record: "If he's in San Francisco," says Hammerin' Hank, "I'm going to wake up at six o'clock in the morning and go fly to San Francisco? No, I will not do that."

The other guy who won't be joining the Bonds love-in is ESPN's Tim Kurkjian, who writes:

Someday, perhaps, Barry Bonds will break Aaron's record, but with all due respect to the brilliant Bonds, it won't be the same. Aaron broke Ruth's record, one that had never been seriously approached. Aaron broke it in an era when the home run was significant, as opposed to today, when it is overexposed and devalued... When Aaron hit 714, he was one of only 11 players with 500 career home runs, only 15 players had 400. Now, we have 19 players with 500, and 36 with 400 -- over twice as many as in 1974. In 10 years, there's probably going to be 30 guys with 500 home runs and perhaps four players -- Bonds, Aaron, Ruth and Sosa -- with 700.

Makes sense. Only there's one problem -- people said the exact same thing about Aaron in 1974. Folks who supported Ruth back then were like proto-statheads; that is, they acknowledged that Aaron accumulated more homers, but that Ruth's HR totals were much more impressive in context. You've all heard those stats about Ruth in comparison to his peers (i.e., in 1920 he hit more home runs than any team in the AL) -- well, that business exploded around the time of Maris and Mantle, when Ruth-lovers were trying to hold onto (or reclaim) whatever greatness their idol seemed to be losing.

Kurkjian makes the point that baseball's HR leaderboard has become something of a pinball game in recent years. And sure enough, today's top ten looks significantly different from the day Aaron broke Ruth's record. Here's the latest list --

...........................
1. Hank Aaron	755
2. Babe Ruth	714
3. Barry Bonds	660
(tie) Willie Mays	660
5. Frank Robinson	586
6. Mark McGwire	583
7. Harmon Killebrew	573
8. Reggie Jackson	563
9. Mike Schmidt	548
10. Sammy Sosa	540

And here's the top ten from April 8, 1974:

...........................
1. Hank Aaron	715
2. Babe Ruth	714
3. Willie Mays	660
4. Frank Robinson	552
5. Harmon Killebrew	546
6. Mickey Mantle	536
7. Jimmie Foxx	534
8. Ted Williams	521
9. Eddie Mathews	512
(tie) Ernie Banks	512

So we've seen some big changes over the past thirty years -- 5 new guys in the top ten, and a cut-off point of 540 rather than 512. But these changes aren't nearly as dramatic as the thirty years before Aaron. Here's what the leaderboard looked like in April 1944:

...........................
1. Babe Ruth	714
2. Jimmie Foxx	527
3. Lou Gehrig	493
4. Mel Ott	463
5. Al Simmons	307
6. Rogers Hornsby	301
7. Chuck Klein	300
8. Bob Johnson	259
9. Cy Williams	251
10. Hank Greenberg	249

To put that in context, Greenberg's 249 dingers would be good for only 53rd place by the time Aaron broke Ruth's record. That's quite a sea change.

The fact is, Barry compares quite well with Hammerin' Hank in the context of their times. Bonds has 426 lifetime homers above league average; Aaron has 457. Those are the second and third highest totals in history, which shows that Barry isn't just coasting on his era's offensive environment.

The #1 guy? Babe Ruth, of course, who hit 622 home runs more than the league average over his career. It seems, then, that Kurkjian's argument about the devaluation of the homer is about 50 or 60 years too late.

Posted 9:29 PM by Brian
BATTLE OF THE BULLPENS I've never cared much for the phrase "it's a game of inches." For one, I've never seen a sport that wasn't, to some degree, a game of inches (think of the basketball rimming out of the hoop, or the wide receiver with his toe on the line). So as descriptions go, it's not too illuminating. Secondly, I'm not sure baseball is much of a "game of inches" in the big picture. The difference between wins and losses are usually structural -- they come down to personnel, resources, ingrained tendencies, and not the occasional hanging curveball or long fly that goes just foul.

Tonight's Cards-Astros game, however, was a game of inches, despite the gaudy 10-5 score. There were any number of moments that could have gone either way -- the pickoff throw from Lincoln that went into centerfield in the 7th, the 1-2 pitch from Lincoln that knicked Jeff Kent leading off the 8th, the bases-clearing double that grazed off Anderson's glove two outs later -- and each time the Astros came out on top. It was that kind of night.

• Fortunately we saw a little life from Woody Williams, even though the box score shows he got clipped for 4 runs in 6 innings. After an awful first, he settled into a groove, chewing through the Astros lineup by climbing the ladder with an effective fastball and mixing things up with good breaking pitches. The 'Stros only got three hits off him after the first, and two of them were cheapo infield nubbers. So over the final 5 innings, Woodrow's numbers were: 1 walk, 1 hard hit, 5 strikeouts. Not bad.

• Albert Pujols is one of the shrewdest baserunners I've ever seen, with just the perfect amounts of aggression and judiciousness. His fake around third in the 2nd -- in which he deked Bagwell into throwing home and allowed Edmonds to coast into second -- was brilliant. I've seen Pujols do this kind of thing countless times over the past couple years, and I'm convinced that if he had more speed he'd swipe bases as successfully as Carlos Beltran or Barry Larkin.

• We'll know more tomorrow, but Lankford's strained right hammy did not look serious to me. The injury came back to haunt the Cards in the 8th, however, when Lankford's replacement, Marlon Anderson, took a terrible route to Biggio's long drive and had it go off his glove for a philanthropic double. One more downside of TLR's decision to push his backup infielders into the outfield.

• Here's an encapsulation of tonight's game in a nutshell:

# of Cards' runs through the first four outs: 5
# of Cards' runs over the final 23 outs: 0

Posted 8:52 AM by Brian
ROSTER SHUFFLING Why did the Cardinals call up Bo Hart to replace the injured Roger Cedeno? According to the Post, La Russa lobbied hard for Hart because, as he put it --

We looked at infielders vs. outfielders. We've got a lot of guys who can play outfielder. Not that many guys can play infield.

Here's how I see our bench:

Marlon Anderson: 2B, LF, RF
Hector Luna: 2B, SS, emergency OF
Cody McKay: C, 3B, P
So Taguchi: LF, CF, RF, emergency 2B

Do you see any evidence that "not that many guys" on our team can play infield? By my count we have one outfield specialist and three infield specialists. Bo Hart, who fills the exact same role as Luna, Womack, and Anderson, leaves us shorthanded in the outfield. I think that's a mistake, if only because Edmonds, Lankford, and Sanders will ALL need rest if we want to preserve them into September.

Posted 7:50 PM by Brian
BOMBS AWAY Fun weekend of baseball -- a heyday for stat-padders, plus a little relief for those yips you may have had about our starting pitching. Not long ago we were stuck in the swirling eddies of the NL Central; now we're over .500, only a half game out of first. A few observations:

• I'm not sure how much to make of Matt Morris' performance on Saturday. The bad news is that his velocity is still down, and his CG came against a weak D'backs lineup. Beyond those disclaimers, however, I'm thrilled with the way he stepped up -- he just played pitch-and-catch all night, trusting his breaking stuff and letting the Snakes swing themselves out of innings. I mean, a 93-pitch complete game? That's Maddux/Halladay territory, and a good indication that he's learning to let his brain -- and his infield -- do more for him than his fastball.

• The Cardinals have scored 5 or more runs in every game they've played this season, and they're averaging 8.6 runs per game. Of course, this sounds more impressive than it really is -- just look at our opposing pitchers: Ben Sheets, Doug Davis, Matt Kinney, Chris Capuano, Casey Daigle, Steve Sparks, and Randy Johnson. Only the Unit had an ERA last year that was clearly above average, and a few of those guys flat-out suck. But still, let's be grateful for what our boys have done so far. Look up and down the lineup -- no one is having a bad season so far. No one.

• This year the Cardinals have scored 60 runs in 7 games. Well, you might say, that just looks good because it's the first seven games of the season. But in fact, only one time last year did the Cards score 60 or more runs over a seven-game stretch (from 6/3 to 6/10). So our 2004 performance already matches our peak offensive output from last season.

• I'm happy for Chris Carpenter and all -- he won his first game since August 2002 -- but let's be honest: if we had lost Friday's game 6-1 rather than won it 13-6, everyone would be talking about how lousy he pitched. Not surprisingly, the apparatchiks over at the Post-Dispatch declared Carpenter's Friday night outing "a successful one" because he "surrendered three runs during the first inning, then settled down to hold the Diamondbacks to three more runs in the next five innings." Six runs in six innings is now a good thing?

• Despite strong outings by Morris and Marquis, our team so far resembles another team you may be familiar with:

2003 Cardinals
Runs Scored: 2nd in NL
Runs Allowed: 11th in NL

2004 Cardinals
Runs Scored: 1st in NL
Runs Allowed: 14th in NL

• And how did Adam Wainwright do in his debut as a Memphis Redbird? Six innings, six K's, one walk, no hits. That walk is inexcusable.

Posted 6:45 PM by Brian
THE GENTS My friend Brian wrote me the following email:

Watching the Masters this weekend and the farewell tour of Arnold Palmer (the biggest gentelmen in the history of the game, probably) and I got to thinking: who would be the biggest gentlemen in the history of other sports? Rudest? Meanest?

I don't know enough about the NFL or the NBA to give good answers there (although I doubt you'll find a better guy than Tampa's Derrick Brooks). But I know a little about that game with the stitched cowhide, so I'll take a stab at it --

THE ALL-CLASSY TEAM

C Deacon White, Joe Girardi, Manny Sanguillen
1B Buck O'Neil, Willie Stargell, Lou Gehrig, Tony Perez
2B Charlie Gehringer
3B Brooks Robinson, Harmon Killebrew
SS Honus Wagner
OF Stan Musial, Roberto Clemente, Luis Gonzalez, Eric Davis, Dale Murphy
P Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, Dan Quisenberry
MNGR Gil Hodges, Joe Torre

Hell, while we're at it, let's do the other side of the coin --

THE ALL-CLASSLESS TEAM

C Mike DiFelice
1B Hal Chase
2B Rogers Hornsby
3B Pete Rose
SS Wil Cordero, Maury Wills
OF Ty Cobb, Dixie Walker, Carl Everett, Dave Kingman, Joe DiMaggio
P Denny McLain, John Rocker, Carl Mays
MNGR Billy Martin, John McGraw

Did I forget anyone?

Posted 10:22 AM by Brian
THE RESURRECTION OF RAY LANKFORD I don't know if Lankford can keep up his torrid hitting, but he sure looks like he's back. He's had a couple at bats that bring back some bad memories (fastball up, fastball up, strike three on a breaking pitch low and away). But by and large his form is good -- his stroke seems slightly more compact, and he's running well.

All spring we had heard about his new focus on going the other way, and most people thought he'd be sacrificing some power in order to make contact. But so far the power is there too, as Ray's been able to drive the ball the other way. Through five games he has six XBHs (most in the league), including two home runs to the opposite field. And oh yeah, he's also leading the league in runs (tied with Pujols and Rolen and one ahead of Edmonds).

Some people will say that Lankford is due to swoon, and of course he will tail off to some degree. But it won't be, as some have suggested, because he's a weak-minded jellyfish who flops when the going gets tough. Josh Schulz has been on a one-man crusade to prove that Lankford is not the type of guy who chokes with the game on the line, and he's right. Ray's career OPS is .845. It's higher with men on base than with the bases empty. It's higher with runners in scoring position than without. In fact, there's really nothing in his career numbers to indicate that he doesn't come through in the clutch.

Again, Lankford won't end the season with a .421 batting average. He'll have some rough patches. But for a guy trying to work his way back into the league, you'd much rather see him break out of the gate with a burst than with a hobble.

Posted 9:54 AM by Brian
HURLER IN CHIEF Reader Sean Biehle did a fun study about Presidents throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day. A few of his observations:

• 31 Republicans have thrown out the first pitch, compared to 27 Democrats.

• The most Opening Day tosses by a sitting prez? FDR, not surprisingly.

• In 1940, FDR threw a pitch that nailed a Washington Post photographer. But Ronald Reagan may have out-LaLooshed him -- in 1986, his first pitch sailed about 10 feet over Rick Dempsey's head. And Reagan started out only 30 feet away.

• Before the 1970s, Presidents always threw out the first pitch in Washington, before Senator's games. (Taft was the first.) But in 1973, Nixon threw out the first pitch outside of DC, before a California Angels game. A POW named Major Luna threw with him.

• In 1950, Harry S Truman, who was ambidextrous, threw out two first pitches -- one righty, one lefty.

Posted 9:34 AM by Brian
THE WOMACKALYPSE REVISITED In an article about bizarre lineup choices, Steven Goldman has this to say about our new leadoff hitter:

Leading off Womack is the baseball equivalent of putting your grandmother in her wheelchair and then pushing her down the stairs. Womack is fast, but you can't steal first base. Take any league average hitter, drop an anvil in his pants, and station him at the top of the Cardinals' batting order. The team will score more runs than they would with Womack up there. This is a simply inexcusable display of incompetence by Tony LaRussa.

But Steven, how do you really feel?

Posted 9:29 AM by Brian
LOOSE ENDS Two things struck me in this Useless Info column by Jayson Stark -- one, on Saturday morning, the Tigers were four games over .500 for the first time in over ten years. That some serious futility.

Also, Cody McKay's two-inning outing on Thursday was "the first two-inning appearance by a nonpitcher in a nine-inning game since June 17, 1993 -- when Chili Davis spun two perfect innings for the Angels in a 17-2 loss to Texas."

Here are the Cardinals position players to pitch in a game since the start of divisional play: Bobby Bonilla (2000), Rod Brewer (1993), Vic Davalillo (1969), Gary Gaetti (1997, 1998), Tim Jones (1990), Cody McKay (2004), and Jose Oquendo (1987, 1988, 1991). You'll find Oquendo's masterpiece from '88 commemorated here (although you'll need to scroll down a bit).

Posted 9:13 AM by Brian
SUPERBALL Check this thing out -- a baseball that's been painted to the point of gigantism. It's so big I think Wilson Delgado might be able to hit it.

Posted 6:56 PM by Brian
GRAMPA DELIVERS The Cubs and Braves are sure playing some entertaining baseball. On Friday night, the Braves entered the ninth inning clinging to a 1-0 lead. Lord John Smoltz on the mound. Here's what happened next:

Pitch 1: Swing and miss, strike one.
Pitch 2: Ground out back to the pitcher. One out.
Pitch 3: Ground out back to the pitcher. Two outs.

So Smoltz is sawing off the Cubs' bats, one out from a shutout. Money in the bank, right?

Pitch 4: Hollandsworth goes yard, ties the game.

After a tidy, but uneffective, five-pitch inning by Smoltz, the game saw 224 more pitches and stretched fifteen innings deep into the night, with the Cubs finally outlasting the Bravos on Tom Goodwin's sacrifice fly.

Tonight's contest was at least as nerve-wracking. The Braves jumped on top 1-0 in the first, and then Sergio Mitre and Jamey Wright settled into an improbable pitcher's duel. But the Cubbies chipped away -- first on another homer by Hollandsworth, then on another sac fly to give them the lead.

Skip to the bottom of the eighth. Cubs get two quick outs, then Marcus Giles bingles to chase Mitre from the game. Enter Andy Pratt, as in pratfall. First he walks Chipper Jones on four pitches, then J.D. Drew on five. Bases juiced, one-run lead, Andruw Jones at the dish. Pratt falls behind 3-0 before battling back, runs the count full, then loses Jones to a third straight walk. Game tied.

That brings up 45-year-old Julio Franco. Pratt out, flamethrower Kyle Farnsworth in. And what happened next is probably the most exciting AB of the young season. Here's how it went down:

Pitch 1: Called strike
Pitch 2: Swinging strike
Pitch 3: Foul
Pitch 4: Foul
Pitch 5: Foul
Pitch 6: Foul
Pitch 7: Foul
Pitch 8: Ball
Pitch 9: Ball
Pitch 10: Foul
Pitch 11: Foul
Pitch 12: Ball
Pitch 13: Double into deep right, clears the bases.

Braves go on to win 5-2. Rubber game tomorrow. I'll be damned.

Posted 7:18 PM by Brian
PITY PARTY I didn't have access to a TV or radio today, so I ended up following the Cards-Brewers tilt via CBS SportsLine's pitch-by-pitch game tracker. It's an interesting way to watch a game -- the drama is reduced nearly to abstraction. When your pitcher yields a home run, for example, you don't see the hanging curveball in mid-air, nor the ball exploding off the bat, nor the good guys hanging their heads in defeat. Instead you see a line like this:

Spivey homered to center.

The action sits there without any adjectives or fuss. Just pure results. This stenographic approach can have a soothing effect on the viewer. Like you watch enough games this way and you soon realize that losing is beyond your control -- it's simply what happens, part of life.

But my Zen calm was severely tested today. How bad did it get? Let us count the ways...

• Our best pitcher, by far, was our backup catcher, Cody McKay. He had the only 1-2-3 inning of the game, pitched two scoreless (and hitless) innings, and even showed off a couple of knuckleballs. Think he could give some pointers to Jason Simontacchi?

• At one point in the 7th inning I looked at the computer screen and realized that every single player in the Brewers' lineup, including the pitcher, had a base hit. What's more, seven of the nine had hit home runs in this series: Podsednik, Counsell, Spivey, Overbay, Ginter, Clark, and Moeller. Jenkins was the only position player who didn't hit a home run in St. Louis, but he did have two triples and a double. Ouch.

• Could Kiko Calero pitch any worse than Jason Simontacchi has this season? The Simo Man had a slow start last year too (an 8.35 April), but today may have been a new low for him. It took him 54 pitches to get five outs, and he clearly wasn't fooling anyone -- the Brewers didn't swing and miss at any of his pitches.

So why did Tony La Russa keep in Simo so long? It was a manageable 4-1 deficit when he entered the game, and a 10-4 rout by the time he left. TLR finally pulled Simontacchi... so that Ray King could face the pitcher with two outs. Huh? I honestly think La Russa was waiting to bring in King so he could have a lefty go up against the lefthanded hitting Capuano. Absurd.

• It's strange how bad the Cardinals' starters have been, even stranger that they've all been bad in the exact same way: an endless pattern of falling behind hitters, followed by fat pitches over the heart of the plate. The WHIP of our starting pitchers this series? A mind-boggling 1.96 (or 17.7 baserunners per nine innings).

What accounts for this? One theory is that Dave Duncan simply didn't have his troops ready coming out of spring training. Possible, especially given the health questions swirling around Woody Williams. But I think the problem runs deeper than that. Except for Jason Marquis, who reportedly cranked his sinking fastball up to 96 mph, the Cardinals starters have few "out" pitches. Morris might have overwhelmed you in years past, but his velocity looks way off to me; Woody gets by on craftiness rather than stuff; and Suppan is a finesse pitcher with only 4.9 K's/9 IN last year. In this four-game series, our starters threw 180 pitches per nine innigs of work.

Contrast this with the Chicago Cubs, who are brimming with young flamethrowers. Baseball Prospectus has a stat called, simply, "stuff" -- it's a measure of a pitcher's chances for success going forward, and includes such stuffworthy elements as K/BB ratio, HR rate, that kinda thing.

Morris and Williams had the highest stuff rating of anyone on our staff last season, with 12 (Izzy had 11). Most of the guys on team came in with a rating in the negative numbers. Here's how that compares to the Cubs:

Prior 67
Zambrano 42
Hawkins 40
Wood 38
Farnsworth 27
Borowski 23
Clement 17

See, our division rivals have made it a point to cultivate hard throwers, where the Cardinals are continually trying to eek by with rehab projects and veterans with guile. That only takes you so far.

• I keep trying to remind myself that we're only 4 games into the season, that 18.1 innings tell you nothing about a pitching staff. But I can't help recall last season, when our bullpen got off to an atrocious start and I kept saying, hey, don't worry, it's just the first couple weeks of the season, we'll right this ship. But we all know what happened there. So now I find myself, once again, looking at a couple bad starts and wondering "is that a mole, or is that skin cancer?"

• Silver Lining Dept.: Good to see Pujols yank a couple (one that seemed big in context, the other during garbage time). And, of course, congrats to Hector Luna, who welcomed himself to the bigs with a home run in his first major-league at bat. The Cardinals have now had four -- count 'em, four -- players since 2000 homer in their first ML plate appearance (Gene Stechschulte, Chris Richard, and Keith McDonald, who actually homered in his first two big-league ABs).

Only 9 guys this century have homered in their first-ever ML at bat, and the Cardinals have nearly half of them. Some other current and recent Cardinals to hit home runs in their first AB: Marlon Anderson, Dave McKay, Will Clark, Dustin Hermanson, Reggie Sanders (woops, that's the other Reggie Sanders), Gary Gaetti, and Esteban Yan. I kid you not.

Posted 5:57 PM by Brian
THE HAMMER Awesome piece by Jim Baker about Hank Aaron, who, as you may know, hit his record-breaking 715th home run 30 years ago tonight. Baker makes an intriguing point -- that, in some ways, Aaron's HR record obscured his other stellar achievements and made him, paradoxically, a bit underrated in retrospect. Says Baker:

Aaron played MVP-caliber baseball for so long, it became like wallpaper: always there and unsurprising. Imagine that you're 6 years old in 1955, heading into first grade. You're just discovering baseball and with it, a skinny, young player in Milwaukee named Aaron who is quickly establishing himself as one of the best in the game. Fifteen years later, you're graduating from college and he's still registering the best year in the league. An argument could be made his lack of anything resembling a downturn or off year actually works to his disadvantage since his greatness became routine.

Aaron's career may resemble wallpaper, but man, what lovely wallpaper it was...

Posted 9:42 PM by Brian
EVERYTHING WRONG IS RIGHT AGAIN Finally the Cardinals showed the Brewers who's boss. I thought this might have been our third off-game in a row, especially after Gary Bennett (arch-nemesis of Albert Pujols) and Matt Kinney (lifetime 2-for-57 entering the game) went a combined 5-for-7 off of Cardinals pitchers. But, man, you can't keep the heart of our order down for long -- they're more deadly than an Angolan minefield. Our 3-4-5 hitters tonight went 5-for-10 with 7 ribs and two jacks. I expect that kinda thing to happen alot this season.

I'm really liking our new bullpen so far. Honest Mike Lincoln got his first Cardinal win tonight, and our relievers went 6 innings while surrendering only one run. So far on the season our pen has a collective 2.13 ERA. Yeah yeah, I know they've only gone 12+ innings so far, but seriously, our bullpen was so bad last year that you'd be hard-pressed finding any 12-inning stretch where they didn't implode once or twice. It's just nice having a little bit of faith.

The Cardinals still have some bugaboos to overcome -- namely, bad starting pitching (Woody Williams was totally uninspiring) and a defense about as elegant as Messy Marvin. (By the way, don't expect our corner outfielders to throw out a baserunner all season.) But overall I'm pleased to get a win under our belt. And if you can get a two-bagger from the Gootch as part of the bargain, all the better.

Posted 6:49 PM by Brian
LOU LOU LOU Alex Belth has a good interview with Bill James, the Yoda of baseball analysis. It includes this insight about the progressive running style of Lou Brock:

[Maury] Wills made a huge deal out of getting the biggest possible lead, and he would lecture anyone who would listen about how to get the biggest possible lead. Brock, as a young player, tried to copy that; he tried to study pitchers, as Wills had, and figure out how to get the biggest possible lead. But eventually Brock realized that this was a mistake, that getting a big lead was delaying his break from first base, and that it was much more productive to "time" the pitcher and get an early jump from first than it was to get a big lead. Suppose that two guys are sitting at an intersection, trying to get away quickly when the light turns green. One guys sticks his bumper as far as possible into the intersection and revs his engine. The other guy lays back, waits for the cross streetlight to turn yellow, then gets a rolling start. Who gets away quicker?

Posted 6:42 PM by Brian
TO BUD -- WITH LOVE, GEORGE George Will has the inside track on the Most Ludicrous Baseball Observation of 2004. In a fawning editorial about the baseball renaissance under Bud Selig, Will writes, "Selig has been -- baseball is a game of inches, but this is not a close call -- the greatest commissioner."

The greatest? Greater than Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who saved the game from its slide into corruption and scandal? Greater than Happy Chandler, who pushed for Jackie Robinson to enter the majors, who fended off a challenge from the rival Mexican League, and who correctly urged the owners to give more latitude to players or face labor problems down the line?

To be fair, Selig isn't all bad. We argued a few weeks ago that baseball is in great shape, and it'd be disingenuous to say that everything good about the game is in spite of Bud. But to claim that he's hands-down the greatest commissioner in history is some kind of joke.

Selig has lied before Congress, manipulated financial data, applied rules arbitrarily, gone out of his way to reward his cronies, trafficked in various conflicts of interest, and used underhanded tactics to blackmail cities into financing stadiums. But of course, George Will can't mention any of that, because it might hurt his standing as one of Selig's best buddies. As Doug Pappas points out, Will was appointed by Selig to serve on his Blue Ribbon Economic Panel and last year he was selected for Selig's marketing task force. But if this latest Valentine to Selig is Will's idea of good marketing, then I ain't buying.

Posted 6:13 PM by Brian
LUHNOW REVISITED Our pal Josh Schulz has another nice interview with Jeff Luhnow, the Cards' Vice President of Baseball Development. Among many other good questions, Josh asks Jeff what the reaction was to his recent liaison with Redbird Nation. Go check it out.

Posted 6:05 PM by Brian
RANDOM CRUD Brue Crue pitcher Matt Kinney just hit a line single to tie the game 1-1 against the Cards. Kinney's lifetime batting average? .035, with 2 hits in 57 at-bats. Our pitcher, of course, was behind in the count (what else is new?). Worse, Reggie Sanders was playing so far back in right he didn't have a shot to get the runner at home. Tell me again -- why would you play Matt Kinney deep?

• Mike Shannon was just talking about Pettitte and Clemens coming into Busch Stadium next week and he shouted, "I know the Cardinals will be all jittered-up facing those ex-Yanks!" Jittered-up! God, I missed the Moonman this winter...

• Would you say that Wayne Hagin is the Jeff Suppan of broadcasters? Not great, not terrible, but he'll give you a lot of innings.

• I just found out (via The Big Red C) that this is the first time the Brewers have ever had sole possession of first in the NL Central. Think about that -- this may be the highwater mark for the Brewers since they entered the Senior Circuit. In that time, they've averaged 20 games out of first on September 1, and last year was the closest they've been on that date, 12 games out.

Posted 5:50 PM by Brian
CANNED HEAT Did you read this item about Monday's home opener from Deb Peterson at the Post?

A somewhat hostile crowd complained mightily about the problems the presidential motorcade caused with regular fans trying to get into the park. A Cards employee tipped moi that the team was so concerned about Bush being booed that they piped in fake applause when he strode out to the mound. Lamping flatly denied it.

I'm having trouble buying that the Cards were worried about boos, much less going to the trouble to pump in sitcom-style cheers to compensate. But it's a funny thought...

Posted 5:40 PM by Brian
CARDS-CUBS RIVALRY OFFICIALLY OVER Just the other day, we called the Cubs/Cardinals rivalry among the best in baseball. But not so according to George Vecsey, the patrician older brother of street-tough Peter Vecsey. In an article titled "In Baseball, 30 Franchises and Only One Rivalry," Vecsey writes that "there is only one major story left in baseball" -- the one about the Yankees and Red Sox. So goodbye Dodgers-Giants, Cards-Cubs, Cubs-White Sox, Giants-A's. Your money's no good here.

Posted 10:42 AM by Brian
WHA' HAPPENED? Two games mean nothing, even at home, even against the Brewers, even to start the season. In 2002, for example, the Cards lost 2 of 3 to the Rockies to open the season and cruised to a division title. The year before -- got swept by the Rox to start the season, also won the division. 1996: lost 2 of 3 to the Mets, won the division. 1985: lost first four games (the first two in extra innings), went to the World Series. 1982: dropped three of the first four games, won the Series.

This year's Yanks have been thwacked twice by the Devil Rays. The Astros have fumbled two games, both at home, with the pitching matchups Oswalt vs. Rueter and Pettitte vs. some guy named Tomko. The fact is, things always look screwy after two games, or a week, or even two weeks, so, as usual, I'm reluctant to draw any conclusions from the past two nights. I mean, we're only 1.2% into the season.

That being said, perhaps Jason Marquis is taking Matt Morris too seriously as a staff role model. Morris gave up 7 runs on Monday; Marquis gave up 6 on Tuesday. Morris gave up a couple dingers; Marquis matched him the next night. Morris continually fell behind hitters; so did Marquis. After the game, Morris admitted he was revved up on Opening Day; Marquis admitted he was "geeked up" during his first Cardinals start.

So yes, the Cardinals have stumbled out of the gate, and one of our key concerns -- the unreliability of the starting rotation -- has been the main culprit. Our hitters have been fine (11 runs in two games), but not quite good enough. The fact is, the Brewers have outscored, outhit, outslugged, outpitched, outgloved, and outplayed the Cardinals. And where the Cardinals have looked jittery (did you see Roger "Skates" Cedeno play Jenkins' single into a triple?), the Brewers have been fluid and composed, taking a lot of pitches and jumping on our pitchers' mistakes. They seem to realize they have nothing to lose whereas the Cards are revved up, geeked up, and acting like the roof might cave in. Relax, boys -- it's only April.

Posted 11:56 PM by Brian
AAH... For years, Hank Aaron's name came first, both in the record books for home runs, and alphabetically, as the first guy listed in the baseball register. Barry Bonds may well knock him off the top of the HR charts, and tonight his teammate, righthanded pitcher David Aardsma, knocked him off the top of the register. Alphabetically speaking, Aardsma is now the #1 name in major-league history.

Posted 8:19 PM by Flynn
WITH THE UTMOST RESPECT FOR THE JUDGE... I do believe the best nickname for Ray Lankford 2004 is Lazarus.

Posted 5:01 PM by Brian
SPRINGTIME FOR JEDMONDS We might know by May 1st whether Jim Edmonds will have a good season. Why? Well, check out his career splits (per 162 games):

	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	AVG	OBP	SLG
April	538	184	45	0	36	88	.341	.433	.629
After April	582	166	34	2	32	78	.285	.370	.519

If this were some other player, I might just write off the discrepancy as random variation. But with the way Jedmonds plays -- Ronnie Lott-style, all-out --- I think it makes sense to count on Edmonds tailing off over the course of the season. After all, here are his career OPS totals month by month:

1.062 - .927 - .898 - .879 - .880 - .840

Here's the OPS progression (er, digression) from last season:

1.268 - .784 - 1.297 - .839 - .897 - .841

Okay, that lousy May is an aberration, but I think it's clear that Edmonds tends to weaken as the season goes on. Let's hope he has another monster April and stays a few steps ahead of summer.

Posted 1:50 PM by The Judge
CARDINAL NICKNAMES 2004 Let's do it. Let's do it right:

Chris Carpenter Jigsaw
Cal Eldred Cal-El
Jason Isringhausen Izzy
Ray King Burger King
Steve Kline Stinkhat
Mike Lincoln Honest Mike
Jason Marquis The Manhassett Project
Matt Morris Matty Mo
Jason Simontacchi Simo Man
Jeff Suppan Supper
Julian Tavarez The Mad Dominican
Woody Williams Greg
Mike Matheny Math
Cody McKay Cody Canuck
Marlon Ordell Anderson Marly O.
Hector Luna Moon Man
Albert Pujols Bert Pujjy; Pudgie
Edgar Renteria E-Rent
Scott Rolen Scooter
Tony Womack T-Dub
Roger Cedeno Little Cesar
Jim Edmonds Jedmonds
Ray Lankford Sugar Ray
Reggie Sanders Suitcase
So Toguchi The Gootch

Posted 8:55 AM by Brian
WHITHER WOODY? From BP's Will Carroll:

Woody Williams is a big question mark. Coming off a harsh workload, he hasn't looked great this spring, struggling with his command. Reports from his exhibition start in Memphis indicate his command simply vanished in the fifth inning and he was repeatedly shaking out his arm. Those two issues point to an elbow problem, so watch him closely in his first couple starts.

I haven't felt good about Woody since last August, and this report does nothing to alleviate my fears.

Posted 7:24 AM by Brian
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US One year ago today, my cousin Mark launched Redbird Nation with these words:

Welcome to Redbird Nation. We are a group of Cardinals fans who have decided to make our obsession public. Our goal is simple: to write and think and talk enough about the Cardinals that we help bring a World Championship to St. Louis, where it goddamn belongs.

I would say the site got about 5 visitors that day, and I was probably related to every single one of them. The Cardinals haven't won a World Championship since Mark wrote those words, but Redbird Nation has branched out, expanded its features, produced a number of longer pieces, and increased its readership well over a hundredfold. But surely our site would not be what it is without good, intelligent fans like you dropping by and checking out what we have to say. So from all of us fools over here, we say thank you.

Posted 6:20 PM by Brian
BREAKING THE SEAL So there were things to enjoy about today's game -- Womack's two walks and three steals, Lankford's leg double, Julian Tavarez's wiggly breaking pitches -- but besides the sharpshooters poised atop Busch Stadium, it was what you'd expect from an Opening Day: sloppy and muddled, with a lot of pitchers struggling to find their rhythm.

I thought Morris looked awful. In fact, he had the same problems today as he did during his dark days of June and July '03 -- he couldn't get his curveball over for strikes, and he didn't have enough zip on his fastball to compensate. The end result was a lot of hitter's counts, and a lot of guys sitting on his pitches. For example, both home runs he gave up came after four-pitch walks.

What to make of this? Not much. It's hard to say anything meaningful this soon into the season (not without having Christian Ruzich's Small Sample Size police knocking at our door). After all, Matty Mo was just as lousy in last year's home opener, then turned around and posted a 1.88 ERA over his next ten starts.

You could also draw some conclusions about the Cards' porous defense today, but that seemed more like spring kinks than anything else. Pujols' throwing error in the third: a dumb play by a guy learning a new position. Renteria's E on the next play: lack of concentration perhaps, or lack of timing with his new double-play partner. (I remember last year Renteria bobbled some feeds as he adjusted to Bo Hart; I think the same thing happened this afternoon, when T-Dub surprised him with a quick backhanded toss.) So let's take a mulligan on this loss and start over tomorrow.

Posted 8:58 AM by Brian
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS Opening Day, Cards-Brewers, Morris-Sheets, 3:10 Central. Throw out all the spring training stats, all the PECOTA projections, all the preseason predicitons -- the games count now. So enjoy the season and, as Sgt. Esterhaus would say, "let's be careful out there..."

Posted 7:00 AM by Brian
ON YOUR MARK, GET SET... If you were born in the greater St. Louis area any time over the last 100-175 years, then you're genetically predisposed to hate the Chicago Cubs. You hated them when they kicked our ass in '89, you hated that media-staged lovefest with Sammy Sosa back in '98, you hated when Mark Prior prayed for the Cardinals to get their brains bashed in, and you hated Dusty Baker when he yelled into the Cards dugout and called our manager a -- well, this is a family publication, so let's just say it's a word that rhymes with "otherfucker."

And yet, over the past year I've come to know several Cubs fans. And the truth is, well, um... I like them. Christian Ruzich, Alex Ciepley, Derek Smart, Will Carroll, as well as other Cubloggers and readers of this site -- all of them sharp, objective, fair.

So it's in that spirit that Redbird Nation and The Cub Reporter embarked on a little exchange program -- I'd ask Christian and Alex (who now do tag-team for TCR) a few questions about this year's Cubbies, and they'd ask me a few about the Birds. Their answers are posted below; mine are over at their site. If this is what the new state of Cubs-Cards relations looks like (think less Dan Rather interviewing Saddam Hussein and more Troy taking his kemosabe Kwame into the boardroom), so be it. Onto the Q&A...

RBN: Among Cubs players, who are the biggest candidates for improvement from last year, and who are the biggest candidates for decline?

Alex Ciepley: There aren't a whole bunch of people around from last year's squad that are due to improve. I suppose Alex Gonzalez will probably hit a bit better, but that's about it. However, a couple guys who the Cubs acquired -- Todd Walker and Michael Barrett -- should perform bettern than they did in 2003.

Grudzielanek will fall back a good amount, and I'd expect a so-so year from Zambrano. But I hope I'm wrong.

Christian Ruzich: Improvement: Sammy Sosa. Last year was a season full of distractions, both physical (toe injury, beaning) and mental (corking suspension), and the result was his worst season since 1997. Plus, if I may go Jim Palmer for a moment, my completely unsupportable hypothesis is that Sammy got off the juice before the '03 season and that was another thing that led to him pressing during the season. Now, fully healed and theoretically cork- and steroid-free, he should be properly adjusted and up around 50 homers again.

Decline: Mark Grudzielanek. In fact, if he doesn't decline, I will eat the nearest available piece of headwear. 2003 saw him improve his average by 37 points, his OBP by 65 points, and his slugging by 52 points. The result was that, for only the second time in his career, Grudz was an above-average offensive player. I don't expect 2004 to be the third time.

RBN: Was Corey Patterson's leap forward last year real? And if so, is it sustainable, esp. given his recuperation from knee surgery?

Christian: I hope it was real. I think it was, though I think I hear the Small Sample Size police right outside my door even as I type this. The fact that I'm excited about his 15 walks in 347 plate appearances says a lot about how terrible Patterson's plate discipline has been in the past -- 19 BB in 628 PA in '02 -- and less about what he might accomplish. He was tantalizing last year, and if he can come through with an OBP on the right side of .310 I will pronounce myself happy.

The knee surgery shouldn't be problem, except perhaps psychologically. He was a good basestealer in the minors, and is 39-for-48 in his major league career, but that needn't be a big part of his game. I'm more concerned about his defense. Flanked by Sammy Sosa (never a great range guy) and Moises Alou (old and creaky), he's going to spend a lot of time in the gaps and I hope he can handle it.

Alex: I wrote about this in our positional review of center field over at TCR, so I'll just summarize here: the power looks like a real leap forward, the batting average not so much.

RBN: It's a lot easier to see the Cubs succeeding this year than failing, but what's the worst-case scenario for your team? (Reasonable scenarios only -- no "team charter bursts into flames" nightmares. And to make things extra tough, I'll exclude any answer having to do with Mark Prior's achilles tendon, as that's been well-covered in the mainstream press.)

Christian: Grudzielanek regresses to the mean but Dusty keeps running him out there every day while keeping Todd Walker on the bench. Meanwhile, Moises Alou suffers a series of small, nagging injuries, not enough to put him on the DL but enough to affect his performance, but Dusty keeps running him out there every day. Still, despite an inability to score many runs, the Cubs find themselves in the race for the mediocre NL Central. Then, Carlos Zambrano's arm falls off.

Alex: It would be pretty hard for the Cubs, Astros, or Cardinals to end up anything less than third in the NL Central. So I guess a worst-case scenario would be a season in which the Cubs finished third and suffered arm injuries among their young starters, hampering their ability to compete in future seasons.

RBN: Despite his mishaps in the NLCS, Dusty Baker was clearly the right man for the Cubs job last year. What particular strengths and weaknesses does he bring to the table as the team tries to go over the top?

Alex: I really don't think Dusty was the right man for the job, but I have to give him credit for extraordinary timing. Despite my grumblings to the contrary, I certainly don't think Dusty is an idiot. I just think his past winning seasons have more to do with Barry Bonds on the Giants and the emergence of Prior, Wood, and Zambrano on the Cubs than any great "change of attitude" he's able to instill on his teams.

Christian: When Dusty was hired last year, I wrote an article about the strengths and weaknesses I saw in him based on the years I watched him in San Francisco. The complete article is here, but the short form is this... Dusty has a reputation, which I think is deserved, of being an excellent motivator, the kind of manager for whom players want to play. He gets the best out of players. Manager performance is an area that is seriously devoid of hardcore analysis, and I don't think that's a problem. Albert Einstein once said "not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted," and I think this is a perfect example. Just because no one has established a numeric value for the quality of a manager, it doesn't mean who the manager is isn't important. It's situations like this that people who are afraid of, or opposed to, serious performance analysis seize on and mis-represent in order to "prove" that what people like Baseball Prospectus and Billy Beane are doing is worthless. It makes me so mad.

But I digress. Dusty is also known as a guy who's better with veterans, but in fact I think it's that he's better with players with whom he's more comfortable. My completely unsupportable opinion is that Dusty breaks down his team (and maybe the world) into Guys I Like and Guys I Don't Like. The former are the ones who get all the benefits of Dusty as a manager; the latter better hope they get traded as quickly as possible because as far as I can tell you can't get from that group into the other one. One way that affects the team on the field is through the fact that if you're one of Dusty's Guys, you'll get run out onto the field every day even if you're stinking up the joint. One might call it loyalty, but in some ways it's a blindness to the realities of what's happening on the field and it can be detrimental to the team. As I said above, I'm worried about guys like Grudz and Alou getting too much PT, not specifically because they're veterans but because they're guys Dusty likes, and as a result he's never going to bench them.

Finally, Dusty has always struck me as extremely thin-skinned when it comes to media criticism. I think he cultivates a "me against the world" attitude and draws strength from slights, both real and perceived. I thought Dusty was going to have a honeymoon when it came to the media, and I was right, but I think that honeymoon is over. Writers are starting to confront him about things they think he's doing wrong (pitcher use, for example) and he responds by getting cranky. How will this affect the team? Much like the concept of team chemistry, this is one of those things that can be a problem, but only if the team is losing. If the Cubs fail to meet their expectations, you can expect a lot of articles about how Dusty is out of touch/following his hunches to the detriment of the team/holding the team back. If they're winning, the stories will all be about what a successful maverick motivator Baker is.

RBN: You've joked elsewhere that you're uncomfortable playing the role of frontrunner. How real is that? For example, I have some friends who are Red Sox fans, and they were secretly happy when the Yanks landed A-Rod, if only b/c it put the Sox back on familiar ground -- as challengers -- and that's the role they'd like to play when they finally vanquish the frontrunning Yanks. Is there a similar effect in Chi-town? Does it "count" if the Cubs aren't cast as lovable losers?

Alex: I don't know how to feel about the Cubs being frontrunners. That said, I'd much rather see a Cubs team that is built to contend than one that is -- well, that is like all the other Cubs teams from my lifetime. All the successful Cubs teams from the last 30 years were at least moderate surprises -- this is the first year I can remember where expectations are justifiably high. So, uncomfortable? Sure. But the best description of my feelings would be, "weirded out."

Christian: How real is it? I honestly don't know. It's such a significant part of my Cub fan existence that I can't get outside myself far enough to look at it objectively. I want the Cubs to win the world Series more than I want anything else in the baseball world. As they got close to the playoffs last year, I did wonder out loud whether a Cubs World Championship would make the experience of being a Cubs fan less special, but my wife told me I was just being ridiculous. I don't know, though -- I was reading a thing in ESPN The Magazine about the Rangers (the ones in New York, not the ones in Texas), where the author posited that finally winning the Stanley Cup was the worst thing that could have happened to them. Before the Cup win, they were a storied franchise in a major market with an attendant myth that made their inability to win seem entertaining. Afterward, they were just another mediocre major market team that couldn't win. It sounded awfully familiar to me.

The bottom line, though, is that the Rangers got to drink from the Cup. Yes, they reverted to mediocrity, but first they ascended the pinnacle of their sport. The Cubs haven't had the opportunity to do that. Maybe, when the Cubs win it all, they'll gain the ability to re-write their myth and become a team that actually gets discussed year-in, year-out, and taken seriously. I don't need them to be a perennial playoff contender (though that would be nice) -- I'd just like them to be talked about the same way people talk about the Giants, or the Mariners, or the Braves: when the pre-season discussions start, people actually look at who's on the team and talk about what chance they have rather than talking about a goat or Steve Goddamn Bartman. It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the three teams I mentioned spent large chunks of the recent past being as bad, or worse, than the Cubs. Things change.

Notice I said "when the Cubs win it all," not "if the Cubs win it all." I believe that the Cubs will win the World Series. That, in and of itself, isn't a radical statement. To be more specific, though, I believe that the Cubs will win the World Series soon, like within the next decade. The myth of the Cubbie Curse is so pervasive that many people would read that sentence and think, "what a deluded fan he is." But look at it this way: In 1997, in their fifth year of existence, the Marlins won the World Series. The next year, they lost 108 games. five years later, they won the World Series again. In 1988, the Braves lost 106 games; seven years later they won the World Series, and they've won their division in every completed season since 1991. Teams turn themselves around, and they don't need to blow up baseballs to do it. They need to hire smart people, spend money wisely, and play the game the right way. The Cubs are doing that, and if the net result is that someday in the near future they aren't thought of as Lovable Losers any more, that will be just fine with me.

Posted 8:34 PM by Brian
UNHAPPY CAMPERS Can you remember a training camp with more grumblers than the one that just ended? You have Brian Hunter, who was so upset about not making the big-league roster that he refused to report to Memphis. You have Chris Widger, who complained about feeling unwanted by his manager. Then there's Kerry Robinson, who also felt slighted by his manager, then went to San Diego and took some jabs at the "tense" Cardinals clubhouse. Kevin Witt also groaned about his demotion, and Allen Levrault was cut after a confrontation with Memphis Redbirds manager Danny Scheaffer.

None of those guys are on the major-league roster, so maybe this stormy weather isn't such a big deal. But our newest acquisition, Roger Cedeno, has a historically poor attitude, and he'll be joining resident combustibles like Julian Tavarez and Steve Kline. Oddly, one of the few Cardinals who seemed as pleasant as pie this spring was Ray Lankford, who had to high-tail it out of town on a handcar just a couple years ago.

I'm not one who puts much stock in team chemistry, but you have to wonder what's going on with all this bad blood. I have a few different theories --

Right-wing spin: Ballplayers today are coddled prima donnas who bitch and moan when they don't get their way.
Left-wing spin: The Man is keeping them down.
No-wing spin: This kinda stuff happens every spring -- could be we're just hearing about it more than usual.

Posted 7:53 PM by Brian
PERRY'S PARALLEL UNIVERSE Dayn Perry of Baseball Prospectus devotes an entire article to the St. Louis Cardinals, suggesting the moves he would have made this offseason were he made emperor of the ballclub. It's an excruciating read, only because Perry's logic is so sound, so clear-headed, and so different from the path that Jocketty and Co. took this past winter.

Among Perry's recommendations: Sign Todd Walker rather than Womack to man second. Keep Drew and put him in CF. Sign Miguel Batista and John Thompson to be our #3 and #4 pitchers. Keep Tino Martinez (you heard me). Start Marrero at catcher.

You'll have to read Perry's article yourself for his reasoning, but we've been advocating some of these same options for months (like signing Batista and Walker, and demoting Matheny to backup catcher), so it's no surprise that we're nodding our heads in agreement.

But two recommendations might strike you as fairly controversial. (1) Keeping Tino Martinez. I'm glad we shipped out Tino, but I was stunned to hear how much of his salary we'd be eating. And I assumed at the time we'd get a more adequate replacement for him in the 7-hole. As much as I want to become a groupie on the Ray Lankford Reunion Tour, I just can't bring myself to do it, and I doubt that Sugar Ray will match Tino's .273/.352/.429 line from last year. I haven't lost much sleep over Constantino (even after watching him hammer an outside Mike Mussina pitch into the seats in right), but I wish we flipped him for more than a bale of hay.

(2) Dayn's other retro-recommendation is that we keep J.D. Drew. He isn't as keen on Jason Marquis as he is on Drew's upside, and he thinks he'd make a fine centerfielder while Jedmonds slides over to a corner slot and out of harm's way.

Makes a lot of sense, but I'm not on board. Remember, in all likelihood the Cardinals only gave up one year of J.D. Drew -- if he had another injury-plagued season, we wouldn't have as much need for him anyway; and if he finally tore it up, we wouldn't be able to afford him given the timetable on Renteria and Morris. What we got in return is a legitimate prospect (ranked #43 by Perry's own publication) and another pitcher who could be just fine given a new start (and, realistically, what other kind of pitcher were we going to get?). I advocated the J.D. Drew deal back in December, and despite a fair number of second thoughts, I stand by my opinion.

Posted 7:24 PM by Brian
THE BEST TEAMS ON CYBER-PAPER ESPN.com has issued its preseason power rankings. The Cardinals start off at #10. Fair enough. But are the Angels really stronger than the Red Sox? And does anyone think the Diamondbacks offense can carry them to first place in the NL West? I sure don't.

Posted 7:18 PM by Brian
CRYSTAL BALL My brother, Matt Gunn, passes along a funny tidbit from his political weblog. It seems Conan O'Brien has a regular segment called "In the Year 2000," in which he predicts future events. On last Thursday's show Conan foretold the following --

President Bush will throw out the first pitch at the St. Louis Cardinals opening game. Bush will then pitch the rest of the game when he insists that replacing him now would send the wrong message to our enemies.

Posted 7:13 PM by Brian
ANNALS OF CONSTRUCTION Opening the new Busch Stadium will be slightly more difficult than opening a can of Busch beer. Check out this Post-Dispatch link for an informative article about the potential hazards.

Posted 7:10 PM by Brian
SHOW-ME BLOG There's a new all-Missouri baseball blog up and running -- it's called Royalties and Cardinalate, run by a pair of brothers. They've got a lot of good, regular content, including a rundown of the Roger Cedeno deal. So stop by and say hello.

Posted 7:09 PM by Brian
FUN FACT According to a recent Sports Illustrated poll, the state of Illinois has as many hardcore Cardinals fans as it does White Sox fans.

Posted 3:47 PM by Flynn
ROGER THAT The deal is done.

Here's hoping that Cedeno lives up to his .434 in '85 namesake.

I love that we sent Half-Mil Widger to Shea. Also, this gives us more to fret about -- will TLR's eyes be glued to those 66 steals Roger had a few years ago? Does that mean leadoff duties? Well, I'd take his .320 OBP over the Womackdaddy's .251.

Posted 9:04 AM by Brian
TRADE WINDS A-BLOWIN' The Cardinals' insatiable lust for below-average, weak-hitting speedsters continues with an attempt to land the Mets' Roger Cedeno. According to the NY Post:

The Mets also are in discussions about trading Roger Cedeno and his $10M contract, possibly to the Cardinals. A deal is possible before rosters have to be set at midnight tonight.

It's hard to believe the Cardinals will go into the season with only four outfielders, especially given the injury histories of their main guns. I'm convinced we'll pull a deal with someone this weekend, but I sure hope it's not for Cedeno.

Posted 1:04 AM by Brian
IT IS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT IS THE WORST OF TIMES Opening Day is almost upon us. And most prognosticators have us in the John Anderson/Ross Perot/Ralph Nader slot in the NL Central: that is, third place. (Then again, most people picked the Cubs to finish in third last year, and we all know how that turned out.) So what do you think? Are the Cards contenders this year? Here's all the evidence -- good and bad -- for you to weigh however you like:

GOOD: Does anyone have four position players as dominant as Pujols, Rolen, Renteria, and Jedmonds? Anyone?

BAD: What happens after our Big Four. Our bench is a wasteland, and we have holes in the lineup you could drive a Millennium Falcon through.

GOOD: The Cardinals were three games better than the Cubs last year according to the Pythagorean Standings (a better indicator of performance going forward than actual won-loss record). By this measurement it's the Cubs who need to make up ground, not the Cardinals.

BAD: According to Pythagoras, the Astros were a whopping six games better than the Cards last year. So maybe we're doing the chasing after all.

GOOD: The Cardinals pitching staff allowed 210 bombs last year, second most in all of baseball, and you know that total's gotta go down.

BAD: Then again, maybe not. Two of our imports, Suppan and Carpenter, can go tater crazy on you if you're not careful.

GOOD: Matheny is on the rise. He's improved his batting average, on-base average, and slugging percentage each of the last two years.

BAD: Matheny's OPS was still the second lowest among all NL catchers last year (which makes Brad Ausmus sort of a beard for Matheny's ineffectiveness).

GOOD: Woody Williams seems to have tamed that whole shoulder tendonitis thing.

BAD: "My velocity is not where I want it to be." -- Greg "Woody" Williams, one week ago.

GOOD: Let's get one thing clear right now: until someone takes the crown away from him, Jim Edmonds is still the best centerfielder in baseball.

BAD: Jedmonds' plate appearances the last four years: 643 - 608 - 576 - 531. If this were an SAT question, you'd pencil in 494 this year to complete the pattern.

GOOD: Jason Marquis mastering his top-secret two-seam sinking fastball.

BAD: The thought of Jason Marquis getting rokked in his third or fourth start, pouting, and headlining a one-man Brett Tomko tribute band.

GOOD: This might be the last year for La Russa, and possibly Jocketty as well. La Russa hates to lose about as much as anyone, so expect him to bring out all his guns.

BAD: If the Cards stumble out of the gate, La Russa could be a lame duck before Memorial Day. Notice all those players who came out in support of Tino's clubhouse attitude after he left St. Louis. Was that a backhanded no-confidence vote against TLR?

GOOD: Pujols. Last year he had the 11th most extra-base hits of anyone over the last half century. And he's only 24 years old.

BAD: Maybe he's not 24. And besides, even if he was 19, you gotta figure he'll regress toward the mean. I mean, what are the over/under odds on a .359 batting average? 10 to 1?

GOOD: Hey, last year Tony Womack was injured, and the year before he wasn't that bad (.271/.325/.353).

BAD: He's still injured. And he's still bad.

GOOD: So long, Garrett Stephenson. Hello, Chris Carpenter.

BAD: I hear Carpenter's mechanics are about as precarious as this gizmotron right here.

GOOD: No one likes to celebrate when a young, exciting pitcher gets injured. But let's be honest: every day Prior spends on the DL erodes the Cubs' chances to win.

BAD: Imagine the day in May when Prior comes off the DL. He'll be the biggest performance-enhancing drug in all of baseball.

GOOD: Rolen barehanding balls on the infield grass. Rolen rifling a throw to first with half his body in foul territory. Rolen trotting around the bases with his head down, just a guy earning his daily wages.

BAD: Neck and back ailments may have turned Scooter Rolen into a very streaky player.

GOOD: Ray Lankford, all-time Busch Stadium home run king, starting in left at the age of 37.

BAD: Ray Lankford, all-time Busch Stadium home run king, starting in left at the age of 37.

GOOD: How many Astros do you figure to be worse than they were last year? I'd guess Bagwell, Biggio, Hidalgo, Redding, probably Clemens, and maybe Kent. And they don't have Dotel in middle relief anymore.

BAD: If Oswalt stays healthy and Berkman goes bananas (and I'm guessing he will), we might be staring at the Astros' rear end for the better part of the summer.

GOOD: Matt Morris in a walk year, without all those flukey injuries that kept him from pitching like Matt Morris.

BAD: Maybe those injuries weren't so flukey after all. The whispers say he's not throwing as hard as he did one year ago.

GOOD: Collective slugging percentage, Cardinals rightfielders, 2003 -- .452. Reggie Sanders, slugging percentage, 2003 -- .567.

BAD: Reggie has a history of following good years with off years, like a see-saw or a toggle switch or The Sopranos. Even years have been bad for him since 1994.

GOOD: We have Jason Isringhausen healthy at the start of the season. We got rid of Esteban Yan, Jeff Fassero, and Russ Springer. We got some new guys who are capable of finding home plate without using semaphores. We won't blow 29 saves this year.

BAD: The recurring nightmare of my pal Flynn, which involves Julian Tavarez, Steve Kline, a bullpen wrestling match, and someone brandishing a gun or two.

GOOD: The Cardinals aren't the best team on paper; we know that. But the only surefire thing in the world of baseball is that something unexpected will happen this year. Not some little thing either -- I'm talking crazily, goofily, out-of-leftfield unexpected, whether it's Javy Lopez jacking 43 home runs, or Esteban Loaiza impersonating Pedro Martinez, or Jack McKeon riding a hot streak for six straight months. Someone somewhere will astound us again in 2004. And it just might be us...

Posted 11:25 PM by Brian
THE LITTLE THINGS How did Cody McKay land a spot on the roster?

Jocketty said he had been impressed with McKay's versatility and, indeed, McKay did make a good play at third base Thursday.

Well, that clears that up.

Posted 11:22 PM by Brian
NOT THE BOARD GAME Milton Bradley, who comes from the Lawrence Phillips/Roy Tarpley School of Life Management, is on the trading block after his latest run-in with Indians management. Bradley had one of the true unsung seasons last year (he was one of the 5 or 10 best outfielders in the AL), and, as you know, a certain team that resides in the greater St. Louis area could use a bonafide third outfielder, as well as an extra bat in the lineup.

If Whitey Herzog -- who was a genius at motivating malcontents -- was our manager, I'd say gobble him up. With Tony at the helm, that's a real gamble. So you've got to ask yourself one question: do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?

Posted 11:11 PM by Brian
PRIOR WATCH From John Donovan at SI.com:

You better believe the Cubs are worried about Mark Prior. And they should be, too. Their ace is out until at least early May because of a cranky Achilles tendon. And now comes word that his throwing shoulder is a little sore, too. Missing all of April probably would cost Prior at least five starts. Last season, he went 4-1 in April. In a tight division like the NL Central, that could be critical. Maybe Prior's replacement makes up for his absence. Maybe not. It's certainly enough to give Cubs fans ulcers -- especially considering that Kerry Wood already has had elbow surgery, has a touchy back and has never won more than 14 games in a season.

Division titles are a confluence of many things -- talent, execution, and, yes, luck. The Cubs draw the short straw out of the gate.

Posted 11:07 PM by Brian
SPORTSCENTER SINCE THE FIN DE SIÈCLE Matt Feeney has a nice article over at Slate.com that explains, in part, why I don't catch SportsCenter nearly as often as I used to. Money quote:

Dan [Patrick] and Keith [Olbermann] infused SportsCenter with a knowingness (while miraculously avoiding smugness) that turned the show into a kind of meta-history of sports. In the thickly hyped world of sports television, this layer of irony was a valuable thing. In contrast, the current roster of Dan-and-Keith wannabes offers all the critical distance, and all the journalistic detachment, of a Gatorade commercial.

So true. Every time I tune into SportsCenter nowadays I feel like I'm being sold two-day-old bread.

Posted 1:03 AM by Brian
HERE COME THE CARDINALS! The 2004 roster is finally taking shape. Here are some of the battles that took place this spring, along with early lines on the winners --

Taguchi vs. Colin Porter/Mark Quinn/etc. WINNER: Taguchi. OUR PICK: Well, not a lot of great options here, but I'd probably have gone with Porter. He's got a good glove, can play center, has some gap power and some speed, plus a better minor league track record than Taguchi. And he doesn't have a rep as a lazy bum, like Quinn does.

Simontacchi vs. Calero WINNER: Simontacchi. OUR PICK: Calero. We went over this the other day -- I like Calero's stuff and upside more than Simontacchi's, but frankly this isn't a big deal either way. Whoever wins the spot will be the 7th man out of the pen; and whoever loses will likely be called up as soon as someone slips or gets injured. Besides, Calero is still recovering from a traumatic injury. I still like him more than Simo, but I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Hector Luna vs. Bo Hart WINNER: Probably Luna. OUR PICK: Luna. The Cards have to put Luna on the roster or lose him to the Indians, and he's a nice guy to have around -- he's only 24 years old, and he actually has some promise. It's unfortunate for Bodhi if he gets sent to Memphis (although he and Luna could both make the club), but that's the correct choice here.

Womack vs. Anderson WINNER: Womack. OUR PICK: Anderson. This is for the everyday second base job. Just tighten your stomach muscles, grit your teeth, and tell yourself it'll all be over someday...

Widger vs. McKay WINNER: McKay? OUR PICK: McKay. We covered this the other day too -- it's really a six/half-dozen situation. McKay seems to have fresher legs, but Widger saves the Cards money (we owe him $500,000 even if he's cut, which would be on top of McKay's major-league minimum salary). Maybe we could settle it with a game of Spin the Bottle. (Or take a cue from the denizens of Redbird Nation and trade for Craig Wilson.)

Hart vs. Widger vs. Emil Brown WINNER: Toss-up. OUR PICK: Brown. This is for the last roster slot. I have nothing against Hart as a backup, or as a spot starter against lefties -- in fact, he should be on the roster ahead of Womack. But there's no real point to carrying three secondbasemen, and Brown is likely to reach base more often and outslug him. Plus we need OF depth cosidering the injury histories of Lankford, Edmonds, and Sanders. As for Widger, well, there's no call for keeping him and McKay and Matheny. As my cousin Mark put it -- "taking up three roster spots with catchers who can't hit? Why not five? Or ten? That way they'll all be fresh all the time."

Lankford vs. Everyone (as starting leftfielder) WINNER: Lankford. OUR PICK: Hmmm... I wish we'd have gotten someone else entirely, like, say, Mike Restovich from the Twins (that organization is already sick with outfielders, and Restovich might spend all season in AAA). Nevertheless, let's show a little respect for what Ray Lankford has done. Not long ago Sugar Ray was persona non grata in St. Lou, filthy with the fetid stink from Tony La Russa's doghouse. But he worked his ass off, spent five months in the Dominican Republic working on his swing, and humbly came to spring training with no guarantees. Remember, this is a 36-year-old man with millions of dollars in the bank and a secure reputation as one of the best outfielders in Cardinals history. To make it back this far, regardless of how he does from here on out, is something that should be applauded.

Posted 12:19 AM by Brian
JINXED The cover of this week's Sports Illlustrated trumpets: HELL FREEZES OVER - The Cubs Will Win the World Series. Mind you, the last time the Cubbies won it all, the average life expectancy in the U.S. was under 50 years; the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure in the world; only 2.3 million people lived in California; Coca-Cola still contained cocaine; and both Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy were still alive. So you might say they're, uh, due.

The Cubs have a fine team this year, even if they'll face a Priorless April (and May?), but Cardinals fans are hoping the SI cover hype is just a rerun of this fine moment in the history of journalism.