Posted 4:59 PM by Brian
THE BIG DEBATE I'm talking, of course, about my picks for the postseason awards. I wrestled with a few of these (I cribbed a bunch of categories from Will Carroll), and I'm not confident I got every one right, but rather than explain my reasoning I'll open the floor for a good old-fashioned rhubarb. And feel free to add any categories of your own...

NL MVP Barry Bonds, SF
AL MVP Vladimir Guerrero, Ana
NL MVP, Mortals Division Jim Edmonds, StL

NL Cy Young Randy Johnson, AZ
AL Cy Young Johan Santana, Min

NL Rookie of the Year Khalil Greene, SD
AL Rookie of the Year Bobby Crosby, Oak

NL Manager of the Year Bobby Cox, Atl
AL Manager of the Year Eric Wedge, Clev

NL Best Free Agent Signing Roger Clemens, Hou
AL Best Free Agent Signing Vladimir Guerrero, Ana

NL Worst Free Agent Signing Andy Pettitte, Hou
AL Worst Free Agent Signing Brian Anderson, KC and Rich Aurilia, Sea

NL Best Trade Brewers (Sexson and Nance for Overbay, Counsell, Spivey, Moeller, Capuano, and de la Rosa)
AL Best Trade Tigers (Santiago and Gonzalez for Carlos Guillen)

NL Breakout Season Oliver Perez, Pit
AL Breakout Season Travis Hafner, Clev

NL Most Underrated Mark Loretta, SD
AL Most Underrated Melvin Mora, Blt

NL Most Overrated Kerry Wood, Chi
AL Most Overrated Bernie Williams, NY

NL Executive of the Year Walt Jocketty, StL
AL Executive of the Year Theo Epstein, Bos

NL Coach of the Year Dave Duncan, StL
AL Coach of the Year Orel Hershiser, Tex

NL Alien of the Year J.T. Snow, SF
AL Alien of the Year Ryan Drese, Tex

NL Least Valuable Player Hideo Nomo, LA
AL Least Valuable Player Desi Relaford, KC

NL Least Valuable Manager Larry Bowa, Phil
AL Least Valuable Manager Ozzie Guillen, Chi

NL Disappointment of the Year Mark Prior, Chi
AL Disappointment of the Year Jason Giambi, NY

NL Comeback of the Year Jaret Wright, Atl
AL Comeback of the Year Orlando Hernandez, NY

Posted 11:46 PM by Brian
ASTRO ONSLAUGHT On August 14th, the NL Wild Card standings look like this:

               W    L    GB

Chicago        63   53   ---

San Francisco  63   55   1.0

San Diego      62   54   1.0

Philadelphia   59   58   4.5

Florida        57   58   5.5

New York       56   59   6.5

Cincinnati     56   60   7.0

Houston        56   60   7.0

1. Anderson, 2B         1. Biggio, LF

2. Taguchi, RF          2. Beltran, CF

3. Cedeno, LF           3. Bagwell, 1B

4. Rolen, 3B            4. Berkman, RF

5. Edmonds, CF          5. Kent, 2B

6. Renteria, SS         6. Ensberg, 3B

7. Mabry, 1B            7. Vizcaino, SS

8. Matheny, C           8. Ausmus, C

9. Suppan, P            9. Clemens, P

Posted 11:19 PM by Brian
THE CURSE OF THE KILLER TARP Don't expect to see Chris Carpenter on a pitching mound again in 2004. The Cardinals finally, officially acknowledged that they have no idea when Carpenter will pitch again, and that his symptoms bear an eerie resemblance to Brad Penny's recent arm troubles. Penny, as you may know, is probably done for the season -- and no one is really sure why. Evidently it's just "one of those things."

What does this mean for the Cardinals' playoff chances? I'm not sure -- you're dealing with such a small number of games (Carpenter would likely pitch anywhere between one and six postseason games). But we do know that most of CC's starts will go to Jeff Suppan. What's the difference between Suppan and Carpenter? Both pitches throw about an equal number of innings per start (6.5 for Chris, 6.27 for Jeff), but Chris edges him by more than half a run allowed per game, 2.68 to Jeff's 3.27. But again, that's over a full season. Who knows how this will play itself out in a short series -- Suppan has been pitching poorly lately, but he's also pretty sharp on the road (until tonight, anyway). If the Cards are in a tight series, they'll most likely miss Carpenter tremendously; if not, they won't.

I've mentioned this before, but there seems to be a new curse taking hold of the Cardinals in the postseason -- call it the Curse of the Killer Tarp. Seems every time the Cards march into October, they're felled by some freak injury:

1985: Vince Coleman
1987: Jack Clark, Terry Pendleton
1996: Ray Lankford
2000: Mike Matheny (and Rick Ankiel?)
2001: Mark McGwire
2002: Scott Rolen (and Darryl Kile?)
2004: Chris Carpenter

Of course, postseason injuries are more common than you might think. Last World Series, for example, the Yanks were essentially without Jason Giambi and the Marlins were missing hotshot righty A.J. Burnett. And of course, if the playoffs started tomorrow, the Cards wouldn't be the only contender plagued by injuries. Brad Penny and Darren Dreifort are down for the Dodgers; Andy Pettitte and Wade Miller for the Astros; Jerome Williams and Robb Nen for San Fran; and Matt Clement, Joe Borowski, and Todd Hollandsworth for the Cubs. The only truly healthy team out there is the Braves, who just got Horacio Ramirez back after four months on the DL. Otherwise the Cardinals are not alone, so we don't really have any right to complain.

Posted 10:59 PM by Brian
JINXED! So the Cards have made the cover of Sports Illustrated -- further proof that we aren't ignored by the mainstream media.

To some people, this is an unwelcome bit of attention, mostly because of the notorious SI cover jinx. I never did buy this nonsense, but if you're unpersuaded, note the three athletes who have appeared on the cover more than anyone else: Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, and Jack Nicklaus, each of them apparently star-crossed forever.

The article isn't anything new to you hardcore fans (although you'll be happy to know that it mentions Redbird Nation -- but only the phrase and not, unfortunately, the website). My favorite part of the article is when an exec refers to the Cardinals as "the best team out there." It's funny because the exec in question is Pat Gillick, ex-GM of the Mariners and Blue Jays. What, they couldn't find anyone in the NL -- much less anyone currently employed -- to go on record endorsing the Cards?

My other favorite part of the article is this snippet at the end:

[O]n Sept. 20, after a 7-4 victory over Milwaukee clinched the NL Central title, La Russa cut himself and his charges loose, romping around the visitors' clubhouse at Miller Park soaked in champagne and beer. When King gave him an impromptu ice bath from a plastic wastebasket, La Russa, easily 75 pounds lighter than King, chased the reliever around the clubhouse, leaping on top of him and riding him piggyback, fists pumping in the air.

Posted 9:51 PM by Brian
THE MERELY GREAT Ben Jacobs of The Hardball Times asks a simple question: Are the Cardinals a great team? He doesn't mean a merely great team, in the sense that every year sees its great teams and its not-so-great teams. He's talking about a truly great team, up there with the '98 Yanks and '01 Mariners.

Ben's conclusion: no, the Cards are not a truly great team. He lays out his argument in three steps --

1. The Cards have not been winning at a high level for a number of years (witness their 85-win total last year).

2. The Cards have an unusual number of players enjoying career years (Edmonds, Rolen, Womack, Mabry, and Carpenter), which, again, suggests an element of luck rather than sustained excellence.

3. The Cardinals have been extremely lucky on balls in play, which distorts the true value of their runs allowed totals.

I don't mind Ben's conclusion -- in general, I think you need a few great seasons to be considered a truly great team -- but his reasoning seems a tad bit off. As for point (1), I think it's reasonable to group the '04 Cards team with the '00-'02 Cards teams, which averaged 95 wins per season. As for point (2), yes, Edmonds and Rolen are enjoying career years, but they're not egregiously out of line with their established levels of play. And as for point (3), you can't fairly discuss our success on balls in play without at least mentioning the Cardinals' superior team defense.

Again, I'm not arguing that the Cards are a classically great team; that remains to be seen. But Ben seems to me a bit cavalier about his answer.

Posted 9:32 PM by Brian
THE GREATEST Today is the 50th anniversary of "the Catch" -- Willie Mays’ famous running, over-the-shoulder grab from the 1954 World Series. ESPN.com has an article commemorating the event, which frankly isn't very good, but it did remind me of something Bob Costas said about the catch from Ken Burns' Baseball documentary:

It was more than just a great catch. It was a catch no one had ever seen before. When that ball left Wertz’s bat -- and this is one of the great things about baseball, where you calculate so many things simultaneously -- a ball is hit into the gap: How good is the outfielder’s arm? Where is the cut-off man? A quick look and a glance at the runners between first and second -- how fast is that runner? How many outs? Should he try for third? Is his history that he’s daring? Will he try for third? What’s the third base coach doing? And you take in all these things and with depth perception you try and calculate in those fleeting seconds, "what are the possibilities?" Well, when the ball left Vic Wertz’s bat, in the massive Polo Grounds, where it was headed, where Mays was standing, there was only one possibility: Could he get to it before it was an inside-the-park home run? Could he hold it to a triple? Catching it was out of the question. And he turned and ran to a place where no one can go to get that ball starting where he started with the ball hit as it was hit. So it was more than just a great acrobatic play. It was a play that, until that point, was outside the realm of possibility in baseball.

Posted 9:22 PM by Brian
THE BODYGUARD Last June I wrote a quick piece about all the baseball characters you grew up with who turned out to be fairy tales: the clutch hitter, the quadruple-A hitter, the mistake hitter. Now, says JC of Sabernomics, you may add one more to the list -- the "lineup protector," as in, the 800-pound gorilla who makes pitchers throw fat pitches to the guys ahead of him. The post includes four studies that all conclude that the idea of lineup protection simply doesn't exist. It's an interesting read.

Posted 11:38 PM by Brian
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME There's so much great baseball going on right now -- Dodgers vs. Giants, A's vs. Angels, Cubs vs. Astros vs. Giants -- that I feel sorta silly talking about the Cards lining up their postseason rotation, but oh well. There was still plenty of drama down in Houston tonight.

It was one of those rare good games for both teams. Good for the Astros because the Cubs are now within a half-game of their crosshairs; good for the Cards because our only real job is to get healthy and audition guys for next year, and on both counts we did all right. Scott Rolen played for the first time in two and a half weeks, and even though he didn't have any hits I was pretty pleased with his play. He went to his right and his left, jumped up for a ball, and came in beautifully on a Craig Biggio bunt -- all without any apparent creakiness. His timing was a bit off at the plate (he popped up on a fat 2-0 fastball in his first AB), but he did drill a ball into right center his second time up. Give him a week to get up to speed and he should be fine for October.

The other good news was Danny Haren. The only surefire starters in our rotation next year are Jason Marquis and Jeff Suppan. We have a team option on Woody Williams (normally it'd be a no-brainer to bring him back, but the $8 million pricetag muddies things), and Morris and Carpenter are set to become free agents. I'm guessing at least one of these guys won't be back in 2005, which makes it crucial that Haren be able to step into the void.

If he pitches like he did tonight, we'll be fine. Haren does have six wins in a Cardinal uniform, but only one of them (this past Aug. 15th vs. Atlanta) came against a good offense. Tonight he faced a serious Houston offense that has scored as often as any team since the All-Star break. And Haren pitched well. He went five, gave up two runs, and struck out six. He looked better than he's ever looked in the first, striking out the side, including Jeff Bagwell on a nasty splitter. The only real mistake he made was when he threw a 1-2 hanger in the 5th that Carlos Beltran just drilled to the base of the wall, 436 feet away. All in all, though, it was an encouraging outing.

As for the game, well, it was the type that would've driven you to tear our your fingernails with pliers if we were in a pennant race. And Brandon Backe -- well, I'm sorry to be ungracious about this, but he was not throwing well tonight. Fortunately for him, the Cardinals, at times impatient, at times distracted, let him junk his way through 5 innings of one-run baseball.

Oh, and then there was that play at the plate, where Reggie Sanders was safe by a mile but called out by umpire Brian Onora. (Is it just me or have there been more egregious miscalls this year than in years past?) If any Cubs fans out there are looking for evidence of malediction, look no further than this play, which may well have cost the Cards the game and allowed the 'Stros to creep back into the wild-card hunt.

Speaking of the wild-card hunt, it's grown truly wild. I heard a story once about Prussian soldiers who would relieve boredom in the barracks by tying two cats together by their tails, hanging them over a washing line, and leaving them to fight. That's what the National League looks like, with the Giants, Cubs, and Astros tied by the tails, clawing it out for supremacy. I'm just glad we're bystanders to all this, because things might get even crazier in the next couple days...

Posted 11:17 PM by Brian
WHEELING, DEALING The Astros and Cubs won the NL Central in the preseason polls. They were the two sexiest teams in the division, full of movement and life and optimism. The Astros beefed up on a double helping of ex-Yankees, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, while the Cubs fattened themselves with the likes of Derrek Lee, LaTroy Hawkins, Michael Barrett, Todd Walker, and Greg Maddux. In the springtime, both clubs appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated – one read BRINGING IT HOME: THE BEST OF TIMES FOR ROGER CLEMENS, while the other announced HELL FREEZES OVER: THE CUBS WILL WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

Meanwhile, the Cards more or less sat on their hands all winter. They pulled off one splashy move – dealing J.D. Drew for pitching – but they mostly watched as other teams gobbled up the pricey free agents. At the time, local columnists and chat room trolls were begging for the Cards to do something – anything! – to improve the team, but Walt Jocketty was content to make a series of quiet moves, a nip here and a tuck there, nothing too drastic. It seemed to many people (and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t one of them) that the Cards were on the wayward side of history, destined for another third-place finish.

We were all wrong. It remains to be seen whether Walt’s team can go all the way this year, but it’s hard to argue with his roster moves. So I thought it’d be fun to go back and evaluate all the choices he made last winter. I’m not going to give the moves letter grades or anything like that (the way myopic “draft experts” do 24 hrs. after the NFL draft ends) – after all, many of these deals can’t be fully evaluated for many years. If, say, Jeff Suppan wins 20 games next year, or if Eli Marrero bops 40 homers the year after that, it’ll greatly affect our reading of Jocketty’s moves. It’s sorta like Zhou Enlai’s response to Henry Kissinger when asked, in the early 1970’s, about his views on the French Revolution: "It’s too soon to tell."

So with that perspective in mind, let’s a size up all the Cards transactions over the past year and see how we’re doing so far…

10/31 Declined the option on Sterling Hitchcock

Good call. Hitchcock has had a host of health problems over the years, and after battling groin, rib, and elbow problems most of the year, he’s made only 4 starts (bad starts) for the Padres all year. The only bummer is the Cards had to pay the guy $1 million just to let him walk, but he did go 5-1 down the stretch last season, so it wasn’t all wasted.


11/2 Declined the option on Jeff Fassero

You’d think this was a no-brainer, but it’s precisely the kind of move Jocketty didn’t make in the winter of ’02, when he was still nursing at the teat of old crusty types like Fassero, Painter, and Springer. (Sorry for the mental image.) This was Step 1 toward making the bullpen younger, leaner, and better.


11/3 Declined the option on Fernando Vina

Another good call. It seemed obvious to all of us that Vina was washed-up, but I’m certain there are some GMs out there who would’ve held on to him for fear of finding a suitable replacement. I mean, just look at the Tigers, who got snookered into paying Vina $3 mil for an offensive line of .226/.308/.270. And that was before he went down with a torn hammy (what else is new) and missed almost the entire season. Fortunately that was someone else’s problem, not ours.


11/7 Declined the option on Mike DeJean

We had to pay DeJean a small buyout ($200,000) last November, but that’s a lot less than the O’s paid ($1.5 million) to acquire him. If DeJean put up the same numbers with St. Louis this year, he’d have been far and away the worst pitcher on our staff, and he’d have blocked the progress of better pitchers like Kiko Calero.


11/18 Signed Cody McKay to a minor league contract

Not a terrible idea in theory – sure, you had to get past the whole nepotism thing, but lefty-hitting catchers are rare, and McKay did have some pop in the minors (freaky, no?). As it happened, his OPS was 80th among 80 major-league catchers. You know you’re doing something wrong when your stats are bad for a backup catcher.

Who the hell knows how you find good reserve catchers, but in retrospect we’d have done better with our old friend Alberto Castillo, who could have proved a good alternative to Matheny against RHPs. What’s more, McKay’s failure might have hurt the Cardinals long-term, as it forced the club to use Yady Molina on the bench and robbed him of daily at bats in the minor leagues.


11/20 Traded Tino Martinez for right-hander Evan Rust, first baseman J.P. Davis, and walking-around money

Let’s admit it – Tino was good this year. Maybe not good for a starting first baseman, but he managed to out-hit almost every member of our bench, which raises the inevitable question: as long as the Cards were paying 9/10th of his salary, and as long as we didn’t get much in exchange, couldn’t we have just kept him as a lefty bat off the pine?

There are complications with this argument. One, the Cards signed John Mabry, another slow lefty, for next to nothing to replace Tino. Mabry hit better than Tino this year, and he’s more versatile too (I can’t believe I just used the words Mabry and versatile in the same sentence), so we more or less had Tino Plus off the bench anyway.

The other complicating factor is the clubhouse stuff. It’s pretty clear, especially now, that Tino was the fulcrum for a lot of nasty stuff that went down behind the scenes last year. I have no idea if he was at fault (as Bernie Miklasz has suggested), or if he was just the scapegoat for a disappointing season (as Scott Rolen and others have suggested). Either way, his tenure was tainted heading into the last year of his three-year contract. And one can always make the case that Tino’s departure was addition by subtraction – an opportunity for the Cards to heal and congeal.

To be honest, I’m not equipped to make that call. I usually check out when people start talking about "intangibles" and "clubhouse chemistry"; and generally I’m inclined to agree with people like Bill James, who wrote the following back in 1983 (by the way, this is from Rich Lederer’s wonderful twelve-part retrospective on Bill James’ old Baseball Abstracts; if you haven’t dived into this series yet, do)... anyway, James wrote way back when:

When Enos Cabell was hot early in the year, you’d ask Sparky Anderson about him and Sparky would say "Enos Cabell is a we ballplayer. You don’t hear Enos Cabell saying 'I did this' and 'I did that.'" I think that’s what drives me nuts about Sparky Anderson, that he’s so full of brown stuff that it just doesn’t seem like he has any words left over for a basic, fundamental understanding of the game. I want to look at a player on the basis of what, specifically, he can and cannot do to help you win a baseball game, but Sparky’s so full of "winners" and "discipline" and "we ballplayers" and self-consciously asinine theories about baseball that he seems to have no concept of how it is, mechanically, that baseball games are won and lost. I mean, I would never say that it was not important to have a team with a good attitude, but Christ, Sparky, there are millions of people in this country who have good attitudes, but there are only about 200 who can play a major-league brand of baseball, so which are you going to take? Sparky is so focused on all that attitude stuff that he looks at an Enos Cabell and he doesn’t even see that the man can’t play baseball. This we ballplayer, Sparky, can’t play first, can’t play third, can’t hit, can’t run and can’t throw. So who cares what his attitude is?

VORP, 2004



Drew       81.3        Marquis      47.9

Marrero    20.6        King         20.0

                       Wainwright    0.0

------------------     -------------------

Total:    101.9                     67.9

If Drew was gone after '04, then we didn't trade away his career. We only traded away one year of his career -- and got in return at least one year of Ray King, two years from Jason Marquis, and six of Adam Wainwright. The way I see it, the Cards were in a Catch-22. They s may have had enough money to re-sign Drew next year, but only if he had a so-so season. But if he had had that monster season we've all been waiting for, well then he'd have been unaffordable for '05 anyway.

Support Neutral Wins above Replacement

Available Pitchers Making Under $4 Million



1. Ted Lilly ($2.5 MM)       5.0

2. David Wells ($1.25 MM)    4.3

3. Jason Marquis ($0.5 MM)   3.3

4. John Thomson ($3 MM)      3.2

5. Kenny Rogers ($3 MM)      2.8

There are two ways to look at our season. The first is this: You could argue that the Cardinals are more like the 97-win team of 2002 than the 85-win team of 2003, that this year was a mere aberration, a bad year done in by bad luck and few bad players. If this is the case, then the game plan for next season involves spackling a few holes (like our bullpen and our bench) and committing resources to one last pennant run, long-term future be damned.

The other viewpoint is more pessimistic. It sees the Cardinals as an aging, overpaid team with little renewable talent; it looks at the upstart Cubs and the rebuilding Reds and Pirates and sees the Cardinals sliding inexorably into the second tier of the NL Central within a year or two. If this is the case, then the Cardinals should take more drastic measures; they should be prepared to significantly alter our team in order to remain competitive for 2004, 2005, and beyond.

Posted 3:28 PM by Brian
103-WIN FEVER So the Cards now have more wins than any Cardinals team in my lifetime. And if you're under 60, they've got more wins than any team in your lifetime too. I'd love to take this time to gloat in the face of all the people who didn't see this coming way back in April, but unfortunately I'd end up gloating at myself, because I sure as hell didn't predict this. I mean, I thought the Cardinals would do better than the pundits thought, but 103 wins? And counting? That's obscene.

The weekend series with the Rockies was pretty uneventual -- another TCOB special. But of course, a couple things have me worried. The first is the health of our team heading into the playoffs. It looks like Rolen will be back, Kline will be back at less than 100%, and as for Chris Carpenter -- well, I don't know any more than you do, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's already thrown his last pitch of 2004. Everything about his situation (the nature of the injury, the evasions and unknowns emanating from the Cards medical staff, the eerie similarities to Brad Penny's condition) seems rotten to me, and I'm girding myself for the worst.

The other concern is Rick Ankiel, although, to be honest, I'm not nearly as concerned about him as I was when I opened up the live box score online and saw that he'd given up 5 earned runs in 2 innings. My eyes immediately went to the walks column -- okay, no walks, breathe a little easier -- but it's still not a great situation. Ankiel did give up 6 hits, including four extra-base hits, and 60% of the pitches he threw were out of the strike zone. In fact, only 10 of his 59 pitches were either called or swinging strikes (and two of those were after he went 3-0 on the opposing pitcher).

So it was a bad game. Should we be worried? I guess it depends what kinda mood you're in. The pessimist in me remembers a few games that Ankiel threw in 2001, in both AA and AAA, in which his chief problem wasn't throwing strikes per se. It was being able to air it out and throw strikes at the same time. As I recall (and it's notoriously difficult to find box scores from individual minor-league games, so I hope my memory isn't faulty here), Ankiel had a few games where he started out throwing balls to the backstop. With runners on base, he was able to spot the ball and get it over the plate, but apparently he wasn't getting anything on the pitches and the hitters would just hammer him. He was short-arming the ball, or aiming it, or somehow getting out of his rhythm in his obsession to avoid wild pitches. His appearance yesterday, in which he hit the first batter he faced -- then got hit hard -- fits that pattern.

But just because that's the pattern doesn't mean that's what happened. I didn't see the game, and I'd hate to infer too much just by looking at the box score. To be fair, it's more likely Rick just had a bad outing, which we would expect from any reliever, particularly one fresh off the DL. Add in the fact that Ankiel was pitching in Coors, and the thin atmosphere seemed to be doing funny things to his curveball (both Ankiel and Matheny admitted that his pitches weren't breaking), and I think we can give Ankiel a pass on this one. We'll know more after his next outing, but don't be surprised if his progress is a bit touch-and-go from here on out. Even if things turn out well, I think Ankiel's rough outing lays to rest any idea that he'll be pitching for the Cards in the postseason.

Posted 2:46 PM by Brian
KAP KONSPIRACY This whole charade with Julian Tavarez's suspension really pisses me off. As we pointed out a few weeks ago, there's almost no evidence against the guy (beyond the uninformed word of a habitually self-serving umpire, Joe West), and yet MLB not only upheld a lengthy suspension for Tavarez, they imposed it at a terrible time, and offered no justification why.

I'd normally vent a bit here, but Joe Strauss of the Post-Dispatch already vented for me with these spot-on questions:

This much isn't known:

Why did the process take so long, leaving Tavarez only two days of eligibility before the end of the regular season?

Why is Tavarez's infraction seen as more injurious to the game than one of the game's icons using a corked bat, teams fighting in the middle of the field, or a pitcher intentionally throwing at a hitter?

Why was the evidence produced at last Tuesday's appeal hearing in Milwaukee judged irrelevant?

By almost any measure, Edmonds has been the second best hitter in the league this year, after Bonds... All this guy does is hit like crazy and play a great center field year in and year out, and people ignore him. Even baseball itself, which presumably ought to know a thing or two about baseball, disses him. What did he ever do to anybody? Is it the blond highlights?

And look who is a candidate: Aramis Ramirez. Aramis Ramirez! Holy cow! Fine player, but one of the top six hitters in the league?... I didn't spend all morning on it, but I did put in a little time trying to find a statistic, traditional or sabermetric, in which Ramirez is higher than 10th in the league. Zip. He's 12th in OPS. He's 25th in runs created. Like the traditional stats? He's 14th in batting average, tied for 10th in home runs, 16th in RBIs.

Obviously what's going on here is that baseball wanted a Cub on the list, because Cubs fans mean hits on a Web site, I can tell you from experience. If Neifi Perez were the Cubs' best hitter, he'd be on this ballot. And if baseball decides the winner entirely on the Web voting, he'd win.

The same is true with the Red Sox in the American League. The Sox have a legitimate candidate in Manny Ramirez, but if they didn't, there'd be a Boston on the list anyway...

Posted 11:58 PM by Brian
BIG YADY I swear, I saw it with my own two eyes. I mean, not technically -- I actually saw it on TV, maybe a good half-hour after it took place, on ESPNews. But there it was: a clip of Yadier Molina hitting his first major-league home run. Now, I knew Yady wasn't going to go his whole career without going deep, but I also didn't think he'd hit a major-league homer so soon. I said after his first game in the bigs that I couldn't see him ever hitting a home run, and nothing before today had changed my mind. Seriously, he had only 4 XBH's coming into today's game, and I probably saw at least three of them, and not one of them made it to the wall. They were all grounders or banjo hits down the line.

But today Yady took one over the wall, and better yet, it was a big hit too (or as big as hits get when you're ten jillion games up on everyone else), for it won the game for the Redbirds, our 100th victory of the season. Maybe 100 wins isn't a big deal to you, but I'm the type of guy who likes watching the odometer flip over to zeroes, and I like big round numbers. This is only the second time in my lifetime that the Cards have reached triple-digit wins in the season, and the last time it happened I was starting my sophomore year of high school (oops -- I just accidentally gave away my age, provided you're good at math). In fact, there are still nine franchises -- Anaheim, Florida, Colorado, Milwaukee, Montreal, San Diego, Tampa Bay, Texas, and Toronto -- who have never won 100 games in a season. So we should count ourselves lucky.

Dan Wetzel, who writes for Yahoo! Sports, claims that the Cardinals are winning all these games under the radar, that they're the Rodney Dangerfields of baseball:

Did you hear about the team with 99 wins, the best record in baseball (by 4½ games) and home-field advantage throughout the National League playoffs already locked up? Of course you didn't... That team is the St. Louis Cardinals, who may wind up with around 106 victories and no national profile. Has there ever been a team this good that received this little attention?

In some ways, they are a victim of their day-in, day-out excellence. These guys produce very few juicy news items. After reaching the playoffs three times (but winning just one series) from 2000 to 2002, the Cards dropped to third in their division last year. Instead of reworking the roster in the high-profile free-agent market, they chose to sit tight because manager Tony La Russa believed they were on the verge of becoming truly great with what they had. How boring, which is why they entered the season out of the spotlight.

Before games, the clubhouse is serene, with hitters watching video of that night's opposing pitcher and pitchers comparing notes on the hitters they'll be facing.

Posted 10:55 PM by Brian
M*A*S*H UNIT When I was younger I knew some girls who, as part of a home ec assignment at their high school, had to carry around a bag of flour for one week. The flour was supposed to represent a newborn baby, and at the end of the week this pedagogical exercise would apparently teach these young women that they were in no way prepared to hazard the responsibility of raising a child round the clock (think of it as birth control for Catholic schoolgirls). One of my friends went out of her way all week to be a good, responsible, hypothetical mother -- she took the flour "baby" everywhere she went, made sure she kept it swaddled in blankets and never left it sitting at home or in the car or somewhere where the dog could attack it. But on the very last day of her assignment, she dropped the bag onto a curb, punctured the paper covering, and saw flour from inside spill onto the street.

I thought of this today in regard to the Cardinals injury situation. All year we've been nurturing this wonderful season, and the only thing that could mar it down the stretch is a serious injury heading into the playoffs. Scott Rolen seems like he might be on the mend, but we've been hit by two other injuries lately, and both of them look to be rather serious.

Chris Carpenter, easily the Cardinals' ace this year, is suffering from both a strained right biceps and nerve irritation in his upper arm. Evidently there's no structural damage, but trainer Barry Weinberg still said that Carpenter's status is "very uncertain." It's unlikely that Carp will pitch at all the rest of the regular season, and he could miss a start -- if not several starts -- in the postseason.

If that weren't enough to bum you out, Robb at Random Redbird Reasoning draws some frightening parallels between Carpenter's condition and the one that's afflicts Dodgers' righthander Brad Penny. (And Robb wrote his post before we got word of the nerve irritation in Carpenter's arm, which also mirrors Penny's symptoms.) Penny, as you know, has thrown only 3 innings over the past 6 weeks. If Carpenter's situation is at all similar, that's a blow to our postseason hopes. I mean, the fall-off between Carp and Suppan isn't enormous, but I sure don't feel good about an October rotation that includes both Soup and Matty Mo.

Adding injury to injury, Steve Kline is fighting through a partially torn flexor tendon in his left index finger. What I don't get is why, if Kline's finger has been torn for some time, the Cardinals didn't address it sooner. I understand recovery time from surgery might take up to 10 weeks, but Kline was going to miss significant time with the groin anyway, and he's said his finger has been hurting for awhile. If you were the Cards, wouldn't you have risked surgery around the All-Star Break (when the Cards had a big lead already) and hoped for a healthy Kline by the end of the season? Something about it seems awfully strange.

Of course, we could find out that Kline is ready for the postseason, but how much time will he need to ramp up to speed? (He had a 3.72 ERA in spring training, but I have no idea if that means anything.) And if Kline isn't ready to go, who takes his place as the second lefty (after Ray King) out of the pen? I know we all start salivating, Pavlov-dog-like, at the name "Ankiel," but I find it almost impossible to believe La Russa would take the risk of putting him on the postseason roster. Ankiel has yet to pitch more than two innings straight, and he hasn't been allowed to enter any game mid-inning. Besides, the postseason was the scene of Rick's first Chernobyl incident, and if he experienced another October meltdown this year, they'd erect a statue of La Russa outside Busch Stadium, right alongside Musial and Gibby, but for the sole purpose of letting fans throw feces at it.

A better bet is Randy Flores, who actually isn't half-bad. He's given up only one run in four innings of work with the big club, but more telling is his solid track record in the minors. He pitched decently in both Colorado Springs and Memphis, showed an ability to get out lefties, and sported a 2-to-1 ground-to-fly ratio, ideal for this ballclub. I'm not fooling myself -- he's no Kline -- but I'm trying to come up with reasons not to fret about all this.

Posted 10:41 PM by Brian
ST. ALBERT Here's an interesting article about Albert Pujols' religious faith. To be honest, the article is a little eerie -- not because Pujols is so passionate about his religion (I admire that about him, even if at times I couldn't help but think of The Onion headline BASKETBALL STAR BLAMES GOD FOR DEFEAT). No, the part I found eerie was when Albert talked about how demanding he was of himself:

"Just a week ago we were having dinner together," [Pastor Phil] Hunter said in a Sept. 1 interview with The Pathway. "[Albert] was sharing with me and my son, Josh, about an illustration he had heard when Christian apologist and popular author Ravi Zacharias spoke to the Cardinals on a trip to Atlanta. Zacharias said he once asked Billy Graham what he prays for every day."

Graham's reply: That he would do nothing that would jeopardize the things God had done in and through his life.

"What thrilled my heart," Hunter said, "was when Albert looked at me and asked me how long I had been a Christian. I told him 42 or 43 years." Pujols, picking up on what Graham had said, then asked Hunter: Did he realize that if he did anything wrong, it would undermine everything he had done since he became a Christian?

Posted 10:14 PM by Brian
JOHAN TUDOR Next time you look at Johan Santana's stats, make sure you keep your eyes from popping out of your skull. Since the All-Star break, he's 12-0 with a 1.16 ERA, with a 118/18 K/BB ratio in 93.1 innings. Whenever I see pitching dominance like this -- whether it's Pedro from '97-'00, or Unit from '99-'02 -- I always think of one guy: Dwight Gooden, specifically Gooden in 1985.

For those of you too young to see him, I just can't describe how overpowering Gooden was back then. His 1.53 ERA is still the second best since WWII (only Gibby in '68 was better), plus he was only 20 years old. Little did we know that 1985 would be far and away Gooden's peak season -- back then it seemed as if he he'd 300 victories (and not struggling through drug rehab) by his early 30's.

But Baseball Tonight recently came up with another comp for Johan Santana, and oddly enough, it's another pitcher from 1985 -- our very own John Tudor. You have to understand, John Tudor is my very favorite baseball player of all time. I don't even know why really. I guess I sorta empathized with the loneliness he exuded out on the mound, or maybe it was because he was always the only guy on the field who seemed to be getting as agitated at the ballgames as I was. Whatever it was, I never would have thought of him as a proto-Johan Santana. Tudor was an off-speed specialist; Santana can bring it. Tudor grew up a pale East Coaster; Santana is from Venezuela. Nevertheless, BBTN's comparison seems apt:

Tudor was a decent, but not dominant left-handed pitcher who had never won
more than 13 games in a season. He struggled mightily in the first two months of the [1985] season, and at the end of May, was 1-7 with a 3.74 ERA. Much like Santana's fortunes turned after a start against the Mets on June 9, so too did Tudor's on June 8, 1985 with a three-hit shutout against the team that would be the Cardinals' chief rival for the division title. That was the second win in an absolutely incredible stretch. Over the last four months of the season, Tudor went 20-1 with a 1.37 ERA, including 10 shutouts. He threw three straight shutouts to open the month of September, the last a 10-inning, 1-0 gem against the Mets (whose opposing starter was NL Cy Young winner Dwight Gooden) at Shea Stadium on Sept. 11 that moved the Cardinals into a first-place tie with New York. The Cardinals went on to win the NL East by three games.

Posted 1:14 AM by Brian
BREAK OPEN THE BUBBLY Okay, so I'm a day late celebrating the Cards division title. But I gotta say, the whole affair was pretty ho-hum, and not nearly as thrilling and emotional as our last division title, when Scott Rolen speared a liner to seal the victory and the Cards lovingly hoisted Darryl Kile's jersey at midfield.

This year things were, well, odd. First there was that business about the Cards clinching (undeniably, mathematically) on Saturday, but withholding from celebrating because it wasn't in a manner fit for Tony La Russa. Then there was that kooky loss on Sunday at home, which meant the Cards had to go on the road, officially clinch when the Cubs dropped a game in Florida, and finally allow themselves to celebrate after a strange come-from-behind win before only 14,000 fans.

But there were still some genuine moments of revelry. My favorite was this tidbit from the Post-Dispatch:

After the game, a battery of players climbed Bernie's Dugout, the perch of Brewers mascot Bernie the Brewer, to pose for pictures and climb his yellow slide. Inside a darkened stadium, another team member swam beneath the sprinklers.

Posted 11:25 PM by Brian
DOES SEPTEMBER MATTER? Of course September matters for teams in the playoff hunt -- in fact, it's a matter of life and death for the Cubs, Giants, A's, Angels, Padres, Astros, and (suddenly) Dodgers. But what about those teams that have been assured of playoff spots for some time now, teams like the Twins, Braves, and Cardinals? Do the last couple weeks of the regular season mean anything for them?

In one sense, the answer is no; it would be foolish to place much stock in how these teams are playing. Take the Cardinals -- every day at least one big starter gets a day off, La Russa is pulling his starters after five innings, So Taguchi and Hector Luna are getting regular starts, and guys like Randy Flores and Al Reyes are carrying heavy workloads out of the pen. Clearly this isn't the Cardinals team that raced to a massive 17-game lead in early September, nor is it the team that the Cards will likely field in the playoffs. In other words, consider the rest of the regular season like spring training -- pay less attention to wins and losses and more attention to the beautiful sights and sounds of the game.

And yet, I have trouble following my own advice. I still find myself rooting for the Cards to win most nights -- partly out of habit, partly out of a desire to match the all-time franchise win total of 106, and partly because I fear the team is going flat. I mean, it doesn't seem like a totally unreasonable fear. Some Cardinals are struggling mightily (Renteria is hitting only .183 this month, and Jason Marquis has given up 16 runs over his last 17 innings), while other Cardinals seem to be wearing down (Chris Carpenter with his strained biceps; Rolen with his strained calf). It's not like we're playing terrible or anything (we're 11-8 for the month), but it's hard to shake the impression that we aren't operating at full-on Redbirdosity. The fear is that our recent mini-funk is a harbinger of things to come, or that we'll be unable to summon our mojo in time for the playoffs.

Does this really happen? Do teams with big leads become too complacent? Does a poor record down the stretch spell doom when it comes to the playoffs?

To answer these questions, I invented a little study. I took all the teams that had made the playoffs since the '95 wild-card format, and tried to determine if their record in September had any bearing on their performance in October. I judged September records not in absolute terms, but in relation to the team's record coming into the final month of the season. For example, the '97 New York Yankees went 17-11 in the final month, which was pretty good, but normal compared to their 79-55 record over the first five months of the season (that's only an .018 difference in winning percentage between September and the rest of the year).

After determing the relative value of each team's September record, I put them into three different bins: playoff teams were either "rolling," "holding on," or "flailing." And I wanted there to be an equal number of teams in each bin so I could compare them pretty easily. The teams that were "rolling," then, were in the top third of September teams. The '95 Yanks improved the most, at 22-6 after playing only eight games above .500 going into the final month. Second best was the '01 Athletics, who went 23-4 down the stretch and were playing their best baseball of the season heading into the playoffs. (I don't want to give too much away, but you may note that both those teams lost in the first round of the playoffs.)

The teams that were "holding on" more or less played up to their expectations, with September winning percentages no more than .050 above or below the average of all teams in the study. And the "flailing" teams simply flailed. The worst September team of all was the '98 San Diego Padres, who played 40 games over .500 heading into September, but went only 9-15 in the last month of the regular season.

So without further ado, here's a breakdown of how those teams did when October rolled around:

SEPTEMBER    Lost in LDS   Lost in LCS   Lost in W.S.   Won W.S.

Rolling          14            8             1             1

Holding On       11            7             5             2

Flailing         11            3             3             6

Posted 11:56 PM by Brian
"NO SHAMPOO TODAY" That's what Cards co-owner Drew Baur said after this afternoon's loss. The shampoo in question was essence of champagne, division champion variety. Technically the Cards have clinched the division, although Tony La Russa isn't convinced, and our magic number still stands at one for outright possession of the NL Central title.

The Cards split the six-game homestand and took two out of three from the D'backs, outscoring them 13-6, but while all that sounds okay on paper, the Cards still seem like they're in a real funk. Part of this is due to our opposition -- I mean, seriously, anything less than a sweep against the Diamondbacks is a little embarrassing. Check out the lineup they've been trotting out lately; I just can't recall anyone fielding a team this faceless:

1. Luis Terrero, CF
2. Alex Cintron, 2B
3. Danny Bautista, RF
4. Shea Hillenbrand, 1B
5. Chad Tracy, 3B
6. Chris Snyder, C
7. Josh Kroeger, LF
8. Jerry Gil, SS

On Friday the Cards somehow struggled to beat this team. Then on Saturday they won -- but it felt like a loss, on account of a biceps injury to ace Chris Carpenter (turns out he'll probably miss only one start). And then today the biggest question seemed to be whether the Cards would clinch by beating Arizona, or whether we'd clinch with the help of the Reds beating the Cubs. Neither came to pass.

The Cardinals are on pace for 106 wins; they have the best record in baseball; and they're just days away from clinching home-field advantage throughout the NL playoffs. And yet, amazingly enough, the mood around the ballpark seems almost funereal. The postgame article in the Post-Dispatch says no music played in the clubhouse after today's game, and while several players took turns apologizing for failing to clinch at home, La Russa griped to reporters who claimed the division was already sewn up. The Cardinals suddenly seem, without a doubt, the unhappiest champions in history.

I guess it's a bummer we didn't get to celebrate in front of the hometown fans, it's a bummer we lost to a AAA pitcher recovering from a torn labrum (Mike Gosling), and it's an even bigger bummer that Jeff Suppan has suddenly turned into a first-class weakling. But overall I'm not worried about our recent play. If we're still in a funk the last week of the regular season then I might be concerned.

In the meantime take heart in this quote from Alex Cintron about Rick Ankiel: "His curveball -- I've never faced anything like it in my life." When you consider some of the charleys that Cintron has faced already in his career -- David Wells, Ben Sheets, Josh Beckett -- that's definitely something to get excited about.

Posted 10:44 PM by Brian
REDBIRD NATION MAILBAG A few items from our fine readers:

I'm not sure of when I first had this thought, but I wondered from time to time if LaRussa "played harder" later in the year... Not that it happened much this year, but other years it seemed like he would rest guys more often early. Once he has his team set, he gets into September and bears down. Now this year may be skewed because of the big lead, but I wonder if there are stats by month of the teams he's managed that shows his teams have an upswing in September. If that could be seen statisticaly, it might even make me think he's better then I think. I think. -- Dan McDowell

I was having a casual discussion with a friend about who the MVP should be, assuming it were to come from the Cards (which we both acknowledge probably won’t happen). I said it should be Edmonds, mainly because of his ~20 point lead in OBP over Albert and Scotty. He countered by bringing up Jimbo’s hefty strikeout total. I trotted out the lame argument that strikeouts aren’t all bad, and that grounding into a double play is one thing that’s worse. Then I decided to check my facts, and I was somewhat shocked. Pujols leads the team with 17, whereas Jimmy has the lowest total of all our full-timers. Then I looked a little deeper and found that Edmonds has only ground into 86 DPs in 5000+ career AB’s. Pujols, in his first 2300 AB’s, has 71 GIDP’s. I don’t know which is closer to the norm, but either Edmonds is amazing at avoiding the DP, or Pujols is extremely succeptible to it. -- John VonBokel

Of the top 50 in MLB in total bases, Edmonds is #1 in fewest GIDP. -- Richard Lederer

What's up with Milton Bradley? I was sitting a few rows behind the Cardinals dugout [last Sunday], and in the 8th inning Bradley grounded out. He took his time getting back to the dugout, and apparently something must have been said by one or a number of the Cardinals players, because once he got back to the dugout, he started screaming and yelling toward the Cardinals and then flipped them the bird. I'm sure LaRussa will not forget the tirade should the two teams meet in the playoffs. -- Tom Esswein

Posted 9:07 PM by Brian
WALK YEAR The Cardinals have announced that they won't resign any potential free agents before the end of the season, which means several players on the team will be eligible for FA after the seasons ends: Morris, Renteria, Womack, Matheny, Lankford, Eldred, Kline, Mabry, and Marlon Anderson.

I'd care if we lost all those guys, but I wouldn't care much if we lost any one of them. Morris will probably ask for more than he's worth. Womack is handy, in part because he's played good ball, in part because he's cheap, but he becomes less useful the less cheap he gets. As for Matheny, well, I'm still not convinced Molina is ready for prime-time play (the guy just has no pop whatsoever -- check out that .276 slugging average), but I've never liked Matheny as a starter (especially one making $4 mil a year). Lankford, Marlon Anderson -- shrug. Mabry has been a very nifty bench player, but like Womack, his solid play may have priced him out of our budget. I'd like to see Eldred and Kline around, but Flores, Cali, and (depending on whether he's ready to start) Ankiel could probably fill their spots adequately.

That leaves Renteria as (no surpise) the big question mark. Which is the real Edgar Renteria -- the one who had the greatest offensive season by a Cardinals shortstop since Rogers Hornsby in 1917, or the one who currently trails Julio Lugo and Cesar Izturis in OPS? One theory is that Renteria is doing poorly precisely because he's in a walk year. La Russa has hinted as much, and Renteria's recent performance (a 2-for-33 tailspin, a shocking number of dropped ground balls, getting picked off the other night) certainly suggests his mind is elsewhere. But my general belief is that these psychological explanations only go so far -- and besides, if a guy's psyche is so fragile that his contract status overwhelms his play, then surely that's a strike against him.

It's situations like this that make me thankful I'm a fan and not a GM. It's possible Renteria will be able to land $40 million for 5 years in the offseason -- that's great if he plays like he did in 2003, but much too steep if he plays like he did in 2004. I'm inclined to think he's better than this year suggests (I'm also inclined not to see Hector Luna's name on the lineup card every day), but it's a tough call. Worse yet, if we don't sign Renteria, one of our division rivals might:

A windfall of almost $30 million between Sosa and Alou, whose $11.5 million option likely won't be exercised, would allow [the Cubs] to pursue the free-agent likes of J.D. Drew and Magglio Ordonez, if not exorbitantly priced Carlos Beltran. In desperate need of a closer, general manager Jim Hendry will find Armando Benitez on the market. There also is the question of Nomar Garciaparra, who may have too many nagging injuries to merit a sizable long-term investment, meaning Hendry may have to use big money to steal Edgar Renteria from St. Louis.

Posted 8:05 PM by Brian
GREAT EXPECTATIONS Bernie Miklasz passes along this item in his latest Bits column:

Speaking on the ESPN morning show, "Cold Pizza", columnist Skip Bayless offered this analysis of the Cardinals' postseason prospects: "Their biggest plus is the fans of St. Louis, but I think they become a minus in the postseason, because they put too much pressure on the home team. And I don't think that team will be able to live up to it and will crumble under huge expectations."

Posted 9:07 PM by Brian
THE WAITING "You don't want to surgarcoat it," said Tony La Russa. "Bad ballgame." The Cards have had a string of bad ballgames lately, dropping their third straight series. The last time we dropped even two straight series was... are you ready for this?... April 28th!

So yeah, we're slipping a bit. This poses particular problems for a blogger. I mean, you don't want to overreact to something that's not a problem. The Cards are still 14.5 up, and they've basically sewn up both the division and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. If our problems are temporary -- say, we're simply losing our focus (have you noticed how many times Edgar Renteria has dropped easy groundballs lately?), or we're merely nursing injuries -- then there's no reason to complain, just as long as we can regain our sharpness by the time October rolls around.

Then again, there's always a little voice in the back of your head (or at least in the back of my head) that says we're acting out some version of the Peter Principle, that we've risen to our level of incompetence. Is there any evidence for this? Well, we've all heard about our Achilles heel of a pitching staff, how they're not durable enough to whether the hurricane season that comes around every autumn. And indeed, some recent outings might give you pause:

Chris Carpenter, 9 runs in his last 12 innings
Matt Morris, 9 runs in his last 9 innings (although that does include one good start)
Jason Marquis, 12 runs allowed in his last 12 innings
Jeff Suppan, 9 runs in his last 8.2 innings

All in all our starting pitchers have surrendered 43 runs in their last 51.2 innings pitched. Not good. But again: is that because they've lost their focus (I mean, why wring yourself dry when you've got such a big cushion?), or are they genuinely hitting a wall? Who knows?

In fact, there may be no scenario that would make us (or me, anyway) completely comfortable. For example, imagine everyone in our rotation were pitching lights-out baseball. Isn't it possible that we'd then wonder if they were burning themselves out, failing to pace themselves. The bottom line is that nothing that happens now matters much at all. We won't know anything until the playoffs start, and as Tom Petty once sang, "the waiting is the hardest part..."

[A quick administrative note: I've been swamped with other commitments lately, hence my light blogging. I hope to correct this soon, but bear with me if I'm a bit AWOL the next couple days. Thanks.]

Posted 11:38 PM by Brian
HOME SOUR HOME The Astros may resemble the Cardinals more than any team in baseball. They've got a slick-fielding, power-hitting centerfielder, one of the best middle infielders in the NL, a good-field no-hit veteran catcher, a fearsome middle of the lineup, and some rough spots at the edges. Where they differ from us is starting pitching. This year we've got a lot of good, but not great, arms -- an entire rotation of #2 and #3 starters. The Astros have two aces and then (because of injuries) a whole lotta crap.

But when they've got their big boys taking the hill, look out. I hope Roger Clemens stays retired after this season -- he's 3-0 against us this year with a 1.64 ERA in four starts. But to be fair to the Birds, they trotted out members of the JV squad tonight (Cedeno in left, Mabes at third) and played as if they had their minds on the post-game spread. Fully 17 of our 27 outs were when guys swung at the first or second pitch. Remember last year, when certain Cubs bloggers accused the Cards of rolling over against the Astros so that the 'Stros would win out over the Cubs? Well, no one was throwing tonight's game, but I could see how an outsider might come to that conclusion.

At least through the first 8 innings. What happened in the bottom of the ninth was one of the damnedest things I've seen on a ballfield. The score was 7-1 going into the last frame and, as I said, the Cards were just going through the motions, playing out the string. But with one out they built a rally on a walk to Luna, a single by Matheny, a single by Marlon Anderson, and a double by Cody McKay. Luna, Matheny, Anderson, McKay! They didn't all get hits in a row (Mabry struck out in the middle of all that), but each of those guys has an OBP well south of .300. The chance that they all reach base in the same inning can't be much greater than, say, 2 or 3%.

But that wasn't even the weirdest part of the inning. That would be with two outs, during Reggie Sanders' at bat, when he popped up between short and third. Joe Buck declared the game over, probably took off his headset, and might have been in his car traveling down highway 40, when the shortstop and thirdbaseman got tangled up and the ball dropped in the infield! You see that kinda thing -- what? -- maybe once or twice a decade? And how many times do you see it to keep the game alive? Never?

That brought Pujols to the plate as the tying run, which would have been great and all, but Brad Lidge was coming in from the pen, So Taguchi was on deck, and all Lidge had to do was issue a pass to Pujols then carve up the Gootch. Which is exactly what happened. It's a shame SoTag came in to spell Edmonds in the 7th, with the Cards down by six runs, or it would have been Lidge vs. Edmonds for all the marbles (or at least Lidge would have been compelled to come at Pujols). Oh well. I guess it was too much to ask for back-to-back miracles, and the Cards took a 7-5 loss. And truth be told, losing to the Astros (a great story this Fall) and Roger Clemens (great, period) doesn't hurt much at all.

Oh, and one last point: is there any doubt that Jeff Suppan is the odd man out when it comes to the Cards' postseason rotation? Dave Duncan says he and La Russa have "pretty much decided" who won't make the cut, and it seems highly unlikely that it's Morris. According to the Post, Dunc "heavily implies" that Matty Mo is in, and "a club source indicated this month that Morris 'absolutely' would be in the postseason mix."

Now, of course, the other ax victim could be either Carpenter, Marquis, or Woody, but none of those names add up. Carpenter has been our best starter, and Woody is a bulldog -- a La Russa player if there ever was one. Normally I could see TLR cutting a youngster like Marquis, but Marquis has been too good to cast aside in favor of Suppan, and besides, La Russa did start young Rick Ankiel in the playoffs a few years back. (Although that might be an argument against him going with youth.) Suppan didn't do himself any favors tonight by giving up 10 hits (many of them rockets) and 7 runs in 3.2 innings.

I argued the other day for Morris as the odd man out in the postseason -- and I stand by that -- but I won't lose any sleep if it's Suppan. Just like last year, Suppan has been bad after the All-Star Break (a 5.00+ ERA) and he doesn't seem to be fooling many people. Over the course of the year he's averaged 3.19 runs allowed in his 27 starts, which is 0.47 runs better than the 3.66 runs-per-start allowed by Morris. That seems like a lot, but seriously, half a run isn't that big a number when you're dealing with only a handful of starts. Morris' stats are worse than Suppan's, and I still think he's more likely to go nuclear on us, but Suppan isn't the worst choice for the chopping block.

Posted 9:34 PM by Brian
HOW HURT IS ROLEN? I don't know. If you read the unofficial Cardinals paper of record, you'd get the impression that he's not that bad. Yes, he suffered a setback with his calf injury, and yes, he'll likely miss a week or so of total playing time (almost surely costing him the RBI title, by the way), but overall it seems like a mild injury that the Cardinals are taking precautions not to push. But if you read Will Carroll's latest column, you might get a different impression:

The information on Rolen's injury is a bit confusing. He fouled a ball off his shin, yet the injury is a strained calf (gastrocnemus, if you really want the technical stuff). According to Cards trainer Barry Weinberg, Rolen injured the muscle because the nerve sensation was lessened, forcing him to have an awkward gait. Rolen certainly has time to rest and return from a simple strain, even if it is a Grade II -- moderate -- strain. At this stage, the symptoms aren't matching up directly with the injuries. It's impossible to tell if this is double-talk, smoke screens, or whether we simply don't have enough information to make a clear analysis.

Previous Start   IN   ER   ERA

< 100 pitches    89   28   2.83

> 100 pitches    91   64   6.33

Posted 9:13 PM by Brian
CHECKING IN ON THE WILD CARD RACE I don't know if the Cubs are the best team in the NL this year -- did you know they're closer to last place than to first place? -- but they may well be the most interesting. Seems like every day they're involved in some heated affair (like tonight's game-tying and game-ending home runs from Corey Patterson) or else some wild extracurricular brouhaha (the latest is Miguel Cabrera bush-leaguing it up by re-enacting the Bartman escapade on the field at Wrigley). Dayn Perry sums up their Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of a season thusly:

If I'd told you at the beginning of the season that the Cubs' three, four and five starters all would've ranked in the top 35 in VORP, that GM Jim Hendry would acquire Nomar Garciaparra at the deadline for little cost, that Moises Alou, Aramis Ramirez, Sammy Sosa and Derrek Lee would've combined for 120 homers by Sept. 10 and that Michael Barrett would slug almost .500 in full-time duty, you probably wouldn't have believed me. If I'd told you all that and then said the Cubs would be locked out of a playoff spot with three weeks to go, it would certainly strain credulity. What an odd team.

Posted 8:09 PM by Brian
DE-FENSE DE-FENSE! With the Cards defense getting a lot of credit lately for the team's fine record, I thought it made sense to check in our players' fielding numbers. As always with this stuff, there's a caveat: defensive stats are something of a jungle, and no one's invented a statistical machete sharp enough to hack through all of it. But the best instrument I've seen so far is Fielding Win Shares (it's even more useful, I think, than Offensive Win Shares), so I'll use that as my guide.

Mike Matheny is second in the NL with 7.1 Fielding Win Shares at catcher. In fact, Matheny has racked up the fourth most FWS of any player at any position in the major leagues (only Jack Wilson and Christian Guzman at short, and Brian Schneider at catcher, best him). I know it's easy for me to poke fun at Matheny's shortcomings -- and Lord knows there are a lot of 'em -- but any fair evaluation of Matheny must include his defense, and by this measure he's worth a couple extra wins just with his glove alone. Just like last year, Matheny isn't throwing out a ton of guys -- his caught stealing rate is only 29%, a couple ticks above average -- but hardly anyone is trying to steal off him. What's more, he always seems to do a great job stopping balls in the dirt and blocking the plate, and he's allowed fewer passed balls than any starter in the league. Not bad.

Albert Pujols is currently fourth in the league at first in FWS, in a knot with a couple other first-sackers, and behind perenniels Todd Helton and Derrek Lee, as well as newcomer Brad Wilkerson. (Question: does anyone ever call first base the cold corner?) Pujols has made a fair number of errors (10, included a costly one tonight), but he seems to have great range for a big man, and he's wonderful at picking one-hoppers. Scott Rolen's misfire in San Diego last week, for example, was his first throwing error all year. No doubt that's due to Rolen's deadly-accurate marksmanship, but Pujols probably deserves a little cred too.

Tony Womack is sixth in Fielding Win Shares, which surprised me. He leads the league in errors at second, and at the beginning of the year he had no arm to speak of (he was still recovering from TJ surgery), which made him awful on the pivot. He does have a superior range factor (3rd best in the league), but I had assumed that was just because the Cards pitching staff got a lot of ground balls. But Win Shares accounts for this, filtering out an excessive reliance on balls in the infield. So Womack's numbers might be legit, and even he has admitted that he has turned a corner from his early season woes.

Scott Rolen is the best.

Edgar Renteria -- well, he's won a couple Gold Gloves, but I've never seen what the hubbub was about. I think he's good to his left, and I know he's sure-handed, but I've never found him very impressive going to his right and/or in the hole, and his arm seems pretty middling. And I don't think he has the same rhythm on double plays that he shared with Fernando Vina. Win Shares agrees with me on this one -- it has Edgar 7th, just ahead of a couple guys with less playing time. There are plenty of reasons to re-sign Renteria in the off-season, but I hope defense isn't one of the primary ones.

Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker are difficult to assess, partly because of limited playing time, partly because the Win Shares data I consulted doesn't organize outfielders according to left/center/right. As best I can tell, Reggie's numbers are so-so, which jibes with my first-hand observations, and Larry Walker's numbers are subpar, which does not. Win Shares gives Walker only half a share, which isn't very good, even for a guy who's missed a lot of time. And unfortunately, Walker's range in right is not as good as you would like -- he's made 1.96 plays per game, which is only 13th best among RFers who have played more than 400 innings in the field, and a hair behind Sammy Sosa, who become a bit of a statue. So who knows -- maybe the stats are fluky. And he still has a pretty good gun.

Jim Edmonds is enjoying probably his best season offensively and defensively. His 6.2 Win Shares with the glove puts him second among all outfielders, behind only Andruw Jones (possibly the greatest centerfielder of all time) and well ahead of the #2 man, Corey Patterson. He's been great coming in and going back, and he leads the league in assists by a centerfielder. Yet another reason to put him way up high on your MVP ballot.

Oh, and as for pitchers -- none of them have accrued any Fielding Win Shares, but I've always thought Woody Williams and Jason Marquis were pretty slick at fielding their positions. Woody has made an uncharacteristic three errors this year, but he still seems to be a valuable commodity going forward.

Posted 7:31 PM by Brian
TRADER BING Steve Treder, who's been doing some great stuff over at The Hardball Times about team-building (which reminds me of Armour and Levitt's work on Paths to Glory), has a fine article about the construction of the Cardinals' mini-dynasty in the '60s. As Treder points out:

[T]he 1960s St. Louis Cardinals simply had no business winning any pennants at all, based on the talent produced by their farm system. The 1960s Cardinals were, in fact, almost certainly the greatest trade-built baseball team of all time.

Posted 6:41 PM by Brian
GOING BACK TO CALI I'm gonna be honest with you: when the Cards called up Carmen Cali on September 3rd, I had no idea who he was. And after I saw him pitch -- he's allowed 7 baserunners while recording only 4 outs -- I just assumed he was filler, the baseball equivalent of wood putty. But according to Ken Rosenthal over at FoxSports.com, Cali might be something:

One scout tracking the Cardinals says LHP Carmen Cali, who throws 95 mph
with a tight slider, has "arguably more impressive stuff" than Ankiel. Cali,
described in some scouting reports as a Mike Stanton type, had 17 saves and a
2.85 ERA between Class AA and AAA this season, averaging a strikeout per
inning.

Posted 11:29 PM by Brian
8 THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEKEND I spent a lot of time down in Chavez Ravine this weekend. I watched 27 innings of baseball, ate 7 Dodger Dogs, picked up two free promotional Dodger slouch caps, and learned exactly eight things. In no particular order, they are:

1. The Cardinals seem a little distracted.

I don’t want to take anything away from the Dodgers and Padres, who are legitimately good teams, but I don’t think either team faced the 2004 Cardinals at their best. The Cards phoned it in on Wednesday against the Pads, falling 10-5 after Matt Morris claimed he wasn’t properly warmed up. Friday night Jason Marquis booted away two early leads because he was distracted by the birth of his first child moments before the game. And Saturday night was perhaps the sloppiest Birdinals game all year, specially gift-wrapped for the Dodgers on account of three hit batters by our staff, two bobbles by Renteria, a bobble by Womack, a flub at third by Luna, bad relief work, and, horror of horrors, Larry Walker – reputedly the best baserunner in the league – getting thrown out for failing to touch second base. The Cards dropped that game 6-5 but just as easily could have won 6-2. Even today the Cards let the Dodgers sneak back into the game, in part because of a misplay by Jim Edmonds in center.

In other words, the Cardinals team I saw in person this weekend didn’t resemble the one I saw in the first 142 games. (They seemed a lot like another team I used to follow.) I’m not sure why that is – either our players are losing focus, or they’re fatigued by travel, or they’re simply coming down to earth after months of playing .750+ baseball. Chris Carpenter suggested that the team might just be bored. "I think,” he said, “that maybe we want to end this and get the playoffs going and start getting excited." Whatever the case, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about – we’re still 17 game up, for God’s sake. It's just sorta disorienting.

2. No one leaves Dodger Stadium in the 7th inning anymore.

The caricature of the L.A. fan is one who shows up in the 3rd, talks on his cell phone for a few innings, then takes off in the 7th. Not anymore. And there’s one reason for the change: Eric Gagne. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a city have a more visceral connection with one of its players, and that includes Big Mac in St. Louis, Bonds in San Fran, you name it.

As soon as Tracy calls on Gagne, and the gates open in left field, the whole stadium starts to quake – the loudspeakers blast “Iron Man” by Sabbath, the crowd chants “game over!,” the video board vibrates with hypnotic Mao-like images of Gagne’s face, and the whole atmosphere becomes so magnetized you half-expect everyone’s hair to stand on end. Truly, it’s the best thing that ever happened to the franchise. The ninth inning is relevant again!

Unfortunately it’s not as fun if you’re pulling for the visitors. I understand the fascination with Gagne, and if he were wearing Cardinal red I’d probably get his goggled face tattooed to my ass, but man he brings out the blowhard in Dodger fans. On Friday night a guy sitting next to me – some seemingly mild-mannered O.C.-type guy – keeps chanting “men among boys, men among boys” after every Gagne pitch. His kid kept screaming, at the top of his lungs, “GAME OVER!!!” On Saturday night Gagne came in and set down the first Cardinal hitter, which caused my section to launch into the old standby chant: “Cardinals suck! Cardinals suck!” (If the Cardinals suck, I don’t know what that says about the Dodgers, but I digress…) Again, I think all this bloodlust is good for the Dodgers, but like the new bad-boy element up in Wrigley, it’s a departure from the que sera sera mood at Dodger Stadium in seasons past.

3. Edgar Renteria had a rough weekend.

While most of the Cardinals were getting their licks in (Walker was 7-13 with a couple jacks, Pujols reached base six times, Edmonds went 5 for 11 with a long home run), Renteria took a series oh-fer in 14 plate appearances. On Friday he struck out 3 times (and looked terrible each time). On Saturday he went 0-4 and muffed two critical balls up the middle. And on Sunday he went 0-5 and skipped a throw to Pujols that opened the door to the Dodgers’ four-run inning. I don’t want to read too much into one lousy weekend, but it’s worth noting that Renteria is running out of time if he wants to put up big numbers in his walk year. Among the 11 NL shortstops who qualify for the batting title, Edgar is a distant 7th in OPS. The good news: that makes him cheaper to re-sign in the offseason. The bad news: there’s a reason for that.

4. Dodger fans think Adrian Beltre deserves the MVP award.

At least I think that’s what they think. What tipped me off is the way they chanted “M-V-P! M-V-P!” after every pitch of every at-bat he took over the weekend. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I think you should only chant MVP when you’re guy is absolutely, positively the best player in the league, like for Robin Yount in ’82 or Michael Jordan in ’93, that sorta thing. In other words, it should be more a statement of undeniable fact than an argument. Which means it’s sorta silly in the case of Adrian Beltre.

Well, maybe “silly” isn’t the right word. I mean, Beltre’s numbers this year are sick – at the rate he’s going, he’ll be the first guy since Mantle in ’56 to hit .340 with 50+ home runs. And he might be having one of the ten best years ever by a third baseman (I’d put him in the top twenty, but still, you can make a good case for him). The problem is, Beltre plays in the same league with Barry Bonds, who does everything Beltre does (but field well at a demanding position), plus a lot of things Beltre can’t. Bonds has been more productive than Beltre while expending 143 fewer outs. That means Beltre makes one more out than Bonds every single day. He’s not the MVP.

And to throw even more oil on the fire, I wouldn’t even give Beltre my runner-up for MVP. If the season ended today, I’d pencil in as my #2 Jim Edmonds. His OBP is 50 points higher than Beltre’s, his slugging percentage is 40 points higher, he plays a more demanding defensive position, and he plays it better than Beltre plays his. I think that one’s a no-brainer. (And please don’t give me the argument that Beltre is better because "where would the Dodgers be without him?" I mean, suppose one guy has two cars, a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. And another guy also has two cars, a Toyota and a car made of literal shit. Would you say that the guy with the Toyota has the best car because, without it, he'd have to drive a shitmobile to work? Of course not.) Maybe Beltre is #3 in the MVP race, but certainly no higher. Which means we’re gonna have to teach all those Dodger fans to change their chant to “Top Five for M-V-P! Top Five for M-V-P!"

5. The Cards oughtta cross their fingers and hope everyone is healthy for the playoffs.

The luxury of having an umpteen-game lead in the NL Central is that you can be pretty lax about pressing the wounded into service. Larry Walker got a couple extra days’ rest in San Diego after bruising his knee last Sunday, and Scott Rolen was treated pretty gingerly after tweaking his calf on Friday. Which is good. But man, we aren’t the same team without those guys. Especially at third base. When Luna mans the hot corner, you can expect a drop-off of about half a run at the dish, and untold slippage with the glove. To be fair, Luna made one outstanding play this afternoon, to rob Tom Wilson of a shot down the line, but otherwise he looked a little clueless out there. And John Mabry was even worse. It’s not that he doesn’t try hard; he just doesn’t have the footwork to make any plays that aren’t right in front of him. I was a bit surprised the Dodgers – who have a lot of good, fast bat handlers – didn’t bunt silly on those guys all weekend. The one time they tried that tactic, with Dave Ross leading off the eighth on Saturday, it worked beautifully. He bunted down the line and Luna, who had much more time than he thought, tried to barehand the ball to nab Ross at first. Ross reached and eventually scored the tying run.

The bottom line is that the Cards have a great team, no question, but like all teams who want to go all the way, they need all their guns blazing. (Okay, maybe that’s not totally true – for example, the Marlins won it all last year without A.J. Burnett.) At the very least we need Rolen, Pujols, and Edmonds ready to go.

6. La Russa will probably use Ankiel sparingly the rest of the way.

The highlight of the weekend for me was watching Rick Ankiel retire the side in the 6th inning of today's game. Not only did he safeguard our slim lead (a welcome relief; before that, five straight Cards pitchers over two games had come in and given up runs), he was also a joy to watch. The fact that he was there at all was pretty rad. But the fact that he was there and pitching well was icing on the cake. That curveball of his is a thing of beauty if you’re sitting along the third base line, as I was this afternoon – you can see the bottom drop right out of it.

Even though Ankiel came into a key spot today, it made much more sense to bring him in last night, when Tavarez was struggling against lefthanded hitters (three of the four guys who reached off him batted from the left side). Where was Ankiel? Who knows? I guess La Russa is sticking to his plan of bringing him in only at the beginnings of innings. I can’t argue with that logic – Tony knows his troops better than I do – but if Ankiel isn’t even ready to enter games with runners on base, then I doubt he’s ready for playoff baseball. His next stop after September may well be winter ball.

7. Robert Wuhl is nicer than Walt Jocketty.

I had great seats on Friday night, a few rows behind home plate, right next to the specialized catered seats that ring the field between the dugouts. So of course I got to see a few C-level stars (Cathy Lee Crosby, anyone?), including, at one point, actor/sports fiend Robert Wuhl. As he passed by my seat I said, “whaddup, Arliss.” (Only later did I realize that I forgot to pronounce the dollar signs in Arli$$.) And Wuhl gave me the old Arli$$ salute (that’s not a euphemism for an erection; he just saluted me like regular), and then said, “a green Cardinals cap?” I was indeed wearing a green cap with the STL logo on it. In fact, I was dumb enough to wear it two nights in a row, which cost us both games – my bad, St. Louis. (I switched to the traditional red cap on Sunday and picked up the win… and a gift certificate from Hamilton Jewelers as the star of the game.) Anyway, I thumbed my green cap at Wuhl and said, "hey, it does the trick" (which obviously turned out not to be true), and he just sorta shook his head good-naturedly.

A few innings later, Walt Jocketty passed by my seat and my brother and I both yelled something like “Go get ‘em, Walt!” (we didn’t have time to think of “Free John Gall!”), and Walt looked at us, then took off like he just remembered he left a curling iron on a bunch of tissues back in his hotel room. Oh well.

8. The Cards and Dodgers are developing a bit of a rivalry.

I’ve been to a lot of great games at Dodger Stadium over the years. I saw a game with 9 home runs between the two clubs (including what turned out to be Rickey Henderson’s last major-league homer). I saw the first game where Woody Williams went from Innings-Soaking Also-Ran to Top-Tier (or at least Near-the-Top-Tier) Starting Pitcher, and I also saw a game where the Dodgers stormed back against Dennis Eckersley to win a crucial game down the stretch in ’96. I even saw the glorious game where Fernando Tatis jacked two grand slams in one inning (which is and probably always will be the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen at the ballpark – the only things that are close are the unassisted triple play my brother Patrick saw Randy Velarde turns at Yankee Stadium and the game in Fenway where my friend Dan saw the Twins turn not one but two triple plays).

Anyway, I've seen some pretty intense things at Dodger Stadium, but none of them with half the emotion or energy that Dodger Stadium had this weekend. 161,613 fans took in the three games, which, if you’re scoring at home, is more than the Expos drew during their recent 13-game homestand. And the mood was simply electric. The Dodgers know they’re going to the playoffs; they know the Cardinals know they’re going to the playoffs; and they know they might have to go through St. Louis to get where they want to go. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t the same congenial, hospitable attitude toward us Cardinals fans as there was in Dodger Stadium in years past. There was the “Cardinals Suck” chant that I mentioned earlier (which went on and on, even out into the parking lot), as well as some general bad blood in the neighborhood. A guy sitting next to me on Friday griped out loud, “man, this ballpark is half red.” And a buddy of mine found himself in the middle of a brawl on Saturday night when a group of Dodgers fans kept pegging his friend with peanuts to the back of his head. (The friend was wearing a Musial jersey, which must've brought up some touchy memories from Ebbets Field.) I didn’t get much shit myself, but I did walk out of the park on Saturday night with my hand clutched tightly around the nunchuks hidden in my jacket. I was ready to go.

What this means is that if the Cards and Dodgers do meet again in October, it should be a doozy. In case it beats the last time these two teams hooked up in the playoffs, I hereby give you permission, in advance, to go crazy, folks, go crazy.

Posted 1:25 PM by Brian
OFF TO CHAVEZ RAVINE As many of you know, I live in L.A., which means I usually only get to see the Cards when they come westward. A friend of mine gave me some great seats to tonight's game in Dodger Stadium, right behind home plate, which means I'll have to get my rainbow wig out of storage and wave at the TV cameras while talking on my cell phone all night.

I actually love Dodger Stadium. It's old school without trying too hard -- that is, it's not crammed with faux retro touches and push-button homages to Ye Olde National Pastime. And yes, I know, Angelenos get a bad rap for taking off in the 7th inning, but you have to understand that the difference between leaving in the 7th and leaving at the end of the game is often the difference between an extra half-hour in the parking lot and another hour or two on the 110 and the 5. (By the way, here's a quirk you probably noticed if you've ever visited L.A. -- people always put the article before the highway name, so that it's the 10 or the 405. In St. Louis, on the other hand, you would simply get on 40 or 270, or whatever.) Overall I've found the fans out here to be extremely likable, and they're generally not the type of people to give you shit for wearing an opposing team's cap. (I say generally.)

In fact, if I were ranking the ballparks I've visited, trying to be as objective as I can (i.e., without any favoritism toward King of Beers Field), I'd probably put it like this:

1. Wrigley -- sorry, I have to admit it's the best. It's a great no-frills ballpark, but that ivy gives it just a touch of Wimbledon or Churchill Downs.

2. Dodger Stadium -- Nice, breezy, San Gabriel mountains in the distance... Mmmm...

3. Fenway -- Would rank higher on aesthetics alone, but it was designed in an era when the average American was two-and-a-half feet tall.

4. SBC/Pacbell -- Gorgeous, functional, but a little too much of a Williams-Sonoma vibe.

5. Buschhhhhh -- I'm docking it a few points for that mint-colored rat-fur Astroturf we had for so many years.

6. Jack Murphy -- Now defunct. Fine enough as ballparks go, but it was really a house for the Chargers.

7. New Comiskey -- I saw Bo Jackson hit a home run here with a bionic hip on Opening Day, 1993. Woulda been better if I didn't have to see it through a gauze of thick black netting they put up to screen foul balls.

8. Anaheim -- A little better since they got those Disney boulders in the outfield, but still a fairly unpleasant experience. The stadium fills every crack and crevice in the action with loud assaultive music, and the music supervisor must base his song choices on the assumption that, at any moment, the entire ballpark might lapse into a mass coma. Mitigating factor: the stadium has the best scoreboard I've ever seen. Easy to read, and it has OBP and SLG for every player.

9. Metrodome -- The HHH. I'm sure my impressions of the place were altered by the fact that I saw the Cards get outscored 18-5 in back-to-back losses here to open the '87 World Series. But there's an odd sense of irreality to the place, like perhaps the action is taking place against a green screen. I'm still not sure we actually lost those games or if I was simply the subject of some over-produced, Capricorn One-style dupe.

Posted 2:43 PM by Brian
THE LONELIEST NUMBERS Last June I got geekishly excited over a 19-13 win by the Devil Rays, because it was the first game with that final score in modern major-league history. Well, it's happened again -- today the Royals squeaked by the Tigers 26-5. To the best of my knowledge, no game has ever ended with those numbers on the scoreboard.

Posted 9:44 PM by Brian
A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA INSIDE MATT MORRIS Less than one week ago, Matt Morris pitched one of the best games of 2004. It was a two-hit shutout in which he punched out 11 and walked nobody (in fact, he went to three balls on only one hitter). One of the hits was a broken-bat blooper by the pitcher.

But last Friday's performance was more than just numbers. Morris had all of his pitches working -- a deadly, egg-falling-from-a-table curve; a pinpoint change; and even a wicked 94-mph fastball that seemed to be hibernating for the last eighteen months or so. The game was so technically sound that you couldn't help but think, hey, this is the real Matt Morris, the gunslinger who went toe-to-toe with Unit and Schilling in the '01 and '02 NLDS.

And there was more cause for hope heading into today's game. Morris was facing an ideal opponent -- a Padres team adept at walking (7th in the league) but lousy at hitting homers (dead last). Morris, who rarely walks people but surrenders a lot of homers, seemed poised to exploit the Padres biggest weaknesses, especially in cavernous Petco Park, and assuming a little carryover from last Friday's masterpiece.

As you all know, the carryover didn't happen. Morris allowed seven runs in two short innings of work, including two bombs. He didn't strike out anyone, and, in fact, threw as many balls as he did strikes. Where was his curveball from the other night? Gone. How 'bout that new cutter he was sporting? MIA. He was a completely different pitcher.

This wouldn't be so frustrating if it weren't such a pattern. According to Michael Wolverton, Morris is one of the three flakiest pitchers in the NL, predictably unpredictable from start to start. Which makes me feel stupid for expecting him to build on his success from last week. I've got to start thinking of Matty Mo like an amiable but incorrigible drunk -- despite his charms, despite his promises, despite his dry periods where he seems to be on the wagon for good, I've got to realize that he's always gonna go on a bender now and again and let me down.

So now for the big question: does Morris belong in our postseason rotation? If we get last Friday's Morris, the answer, obviously, is yes; if we get today's Morris, just as obviously, no. How do we decide?

Well, for starters, let's accept as a given La Russa's vow to go with a four-man rotation in the playoffs (as opposed to the notion that they just keep their present configuration intact). That means someone has to go. If we rank the five starters by Support-Neutral Winning Percentage (which is simply the winning percentage each pitcher would have given league-average support), we get this list:

1. Carpenter    .568

2. Marquis      .547

3. Suppan       .502

4. Williams     .493

5. Morris       .443

1. Marquis     14.09

2. Suppan      15.00

3. Williams    15.37

4. Carpenter   16.42

5. Morris      19.42

Posted 6:10 PM by Brian
B TEAM Here's David Wells after today's win against the Cardinals: "They are so powerful and explosive. I wanted to be on the mound to see what they've got. I get fired up even more so with a lineup like that. That's a Yankee lineup. It's huge."

Uh, not to take anything away from Wells, who was being pretty complimentary and all, but today's lineup featured Taguchi in center, Mabry in right, and Luna at second. That's a lot closer to these Yankees players than these Yankees players.

Posted 9:46 PM by Brian
ANKIEL RISING How'd he do? Well, let's put it this way: I bet the butterflies in my stomach were a lot bigger than the ones in Rick Ankiel's. He looked as relaxed and as fluid as could be, throwing nice and easy, no fuss. In fact, all the drama of Ankiel's performance was subtextual -- that is, if you hadn't known his backstory, you'd have thought by looking at him that he did this kinda thing every night.

All in all, Rick threw 14 pitches, 11 for strikes, 3 for balls, and -- this goes without saying -- none to the backstop. He didn't do a great job of changing speeds, as the Padres were able to sit on his curveball more than you'd like (a base hit shot up the middle to greet him and a couple of ringing fouls). But his charley certainly looked like it had a lot of dip, and his fastball was terrific. He hit 94 on the radar gun, but more importantly, his heater had movement. I'm so used to watching the Cardinals' parade of flutterball specialists that it was nice to see someone come in with real pop on his fastball.

We had all speculated about the proper time and place for Ankiel's comeback, and most of us assumed we'd see him in garbage time during some blowout -- i.e., in a setting that was the very opposite of his first meltdown, during the charged playoff atmosphere of 2000. And while the game he entered wasn't exactly pressure-packed (on the road, against the lower half of the order, with the division race all but settled), it wasn't meaningless either, as La Russa sent Ankiel into a tight game in the 6th inning, without any bubble wrap. It was one more reason to take heart from tonight's performance.

I'm happy as hell for Rick as a player, but I'm even happier for him as a person. Last July, on the occasion of his 24th birthday, I wrote the following:

In 1999, the Cardinals called up Rick Ankiel for the first time. Tony La
Russa said about him at the time, "Everything they've said about him is true.
He's the real deal. He's a great talent and he's got good insides and a good
head.'' He was 19 years old.

Posted 4:13 PM by Brian
THE SALARY FIGURE-OUTTER The Internet is, after the Crimean War, the biggest time-waster in the history of civilization. I can't tell you how many hours I've invested playing mini-golf, or flying a chopper, or controlling a yeti who thwacks the bejesus out of a falling penquin. And now I have a new little toy to keep me buzzed -- the Sabernomics Salary Estimator.

This handy tool was designed by JC of the fine Sabernomics website (formerly Old Fishinghat, which you might remember from a piece we did last March on Barry Bonds). The way the Salary Estimator works is this: you punch in a player's batting, slugging, and on-base averages; then put in his debut year; and then his current salary. The system will tell you how much he should be making, and how much he's over- or under-valued by his current team.

The program is not intended to measure a player's worth per se, just how much he might fetch in a more equable market. (Note that it includes service time and labor classification.) It's a fun tool. Like for Tony Womack, you just enter in his line of .300/.346/.384, then his primary position of second base, his debut year of 1993, and his 2004 salary of $300,000. The Salary Estimator tells you that T-Dub should be making $3,687,813, which is almost $3.5MM more than he actually makes.

I should tell you that there are a few holes in the system. Because it works with rate stats, it's practically useless when it comes to part-time players (for example, the estimator says John Mabry should be earning $6.5 million per year). And the system doesn't do pitchers at all (apparently that's forthcoming). But it's still fun to fool around with. Like here's the Cardinals starting lineup according to estimated worth:

Tony Womack         $3.7 million

Larry Walker       $14.8 million

Albert Pujols       $1.2 million

Scott Rolen         $7.1 million

Jim Edmonds        $19.3 million

Edgar Renteria      $4.0 million

Reggie Sanders      $7.9 million

Mike Matheny        $2.8 million

1. Albert Pujols      $12.59 million

2. Jim Edmonds         12.25

3. Scott Rolen         10.13

4. Jason Marquis        7.41

5. Chris Carpenter      5.66

6. Woody Williams       4.63

7. Edgar Renteria       3.94

8. Tony Womack          3.75

9. Jeff Suppan          3.24

10. Reggie Sanders      3.15

11. Matt Morris         2.75

12. Steve Kline         2.69

13. Ray King            2.62

14. Jason Izzyhausen    2.58

15. Julian Tavarez      2.44

16. John Mabry          2.31

17. Larry Walker        1.85

18. Cal Eldred          1.42

19. Kiko Calero         1.35

20. Ray Lankford        0.77

1. Matt Morris         $9.75 million overpaid

2. Tino Martinez (duh)  7.00

3. Jason Isringhausen   4.67

4. Edgar Renteria       3.61

5. Mike Matheny         2.94

1. Jason Marquis       $6.88 million underpaid

2. Albert Pujols        5.54 

3. Chris Carpenter      5.16

4. Scott Rolen          3.95

5. Jim Edmonds          3.65

1. Rolen         $11.30 suggested salary

2. Pujols         10.66

3. Jedmonds        9.36

4. Renteria        5.17

5. Womack          4.84

6. Marquis         4.20

   Sanders         4.20

8. Carpenter       3.55

9. Izzy            3.23

10. Matheny        2.91

11. Williams       2.58

12. Mabry          2.26

    Morris         2.26

    Suppan         2.26

15. King           1.94

    Kline          1.94

    Tavarez        1.94

18. Lankford       1.61

    Walker         1.61

20. Cedeno         1.29

21. Anderson       0.97

    Calero         0.97

    Luna           0.97

    Molina         0.97

    Taguchi        0.97

26. Lincoln        0.32

    McKay          0.32

Posted 11:56 PM by Brian
NON-LOSERING With back-to-back sweeps against the Pads and Dodgers at home, the Cardinals have guaranteed that they will have a non-losing head-to-head record against every team they played this year, except... the Milwaukee Brewers, of course. We're 3-3 against Montreal, San Fran, and Philly, and only 4-5 against the Brue Crue. But we still have 8 more games against the Millerites of Milwaukee, so hopefully we'll tilt that losing record the other way. In case you're wondering, though, it wouldn't be historic or anything to beat up on every team we play. The Seattle Mariners did it just a few years ago. And believe it or not, they not only had a non-losing record against every team -- they had a flat-out winning record against all 18 teams they played that year.

Okay, so we're not as winning as the '01 Mariners, but we've been pretty winning all the same. For the latest Eye-Popping Cardinals Stat of the Day, try this one on for size:

Cards record through May 26th    23-22

Cards record since May 26th      69-22

the cards are 92-44. the best thing: i've never lived through anything like this. the worst thing: i never will again.

One thing I can say with assurance is that Matt Morris doesn't belong in the postseason rotation. My fear is that Tony La Russa will say numbers be damned and put the humbled facsimile of a staff ace in there anyway. Maybe a road start at Dodger Stadium would be defensible, but otherwise his gopheritis will be a problem.

Posted 10:41 PM by Brian
MUDSLINGING Our friend diamondbkr (I'm guessing that's not his given name) recently alerted me to a chat that Rob Neyer did for ESPN.com last Friday, in which he said, among other things:

I think the Cardinals would lose to any of the three or four best American League teams...

...the Cardinals aren't as good as the best American League teams...

...they're the fifth-best team in the majors...

...Don't look at the numbers, look at the names. You're telling me that Jason Marquis and Chris Carpenter can match up with Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder? Sorry, but I just don't buy it. And, again, there's good evidence that the American League is simply the better league this season...

Let me say off the bat that Rob has been trying on this whole new "bitchy" persona for the better part of a year now. You can see it in his chats, in his mailbag columns, in the defensive posturing of some of his articles -- it's definitely there. I have three theories about where it comes from: (a) one of his editors told him he needed to be less soft and more antagonistic; (b) the fatigue of writing a daily column for years on end is causing him to try something, anything, to shake things up; or (c) he's trying to emulate his hero, Bill James, who is without a doubt the biggest bastard who ever hosted a chat on ESPN.com.

(Don't get me wrong, I love Bill's writings and he's been hugely influential to me, but here's a sample Q&A from a chat he did last year:

Tim - Cohasset, MA: Bill, I'm very interested in your work and was wondering how a 20 year old college student would get in on the ground floor working for a team like the Red Sox.

Bill James: Learn to throw 95.

Posted 10:23 PM by Brian
THE SKY IS FALLING A couple months ago we enumerated the various forms of smack talk regarding the Cardinals chances for winning the division. With those naysayers politely put in their place, Bernie Miklasz lists new causes for doubt, this time about the Cards' chances to go all the way. Here are the doomsday scenarios that he spells out (I'm paraphrasing each of them):

1. Scott Rolen's Knee Gives Out, or Injury Concerns.
2. We Don't Have Jason Schmidt, or Starting Pitching Concerns.
3. We Don't Hit Jason Schmidt, or the "vs. Power Pitchers" Concerns.
4. Tony's Gonna Let Morris Bat in the 9th Inning Again, or Managing in the Playoffs Concerns.

Bernie does a nice job swatting away each of these paranoid fantasies, but I'll add one more worry. Actually, it's more of a superstition, but here goes:

Only one team since 1990 (the '98 Yankees) had the best regular-season record and went on to win the World Series. Just one. Yikes. I mean, I'm not the only one who wakes up in the middle of the night with images of this team, am I?

Posted 8:49 PM by Brian
JUMPIN' JIMMY Our pal Richard Lederer is back at it again, with another eye-opening ode to Mr. James Patrick Edmonds. You'll learn, among many other things, that Jim's seasonal slugging percentage (.684) is the 4th highest all-time for a centerfielder. Check it out.

Posted 7:37 PM by Brian
WHERE'S ANKIEL? Spotlighting any one pitcher in the Cardinals bullpen lately can turn into an exercise in Where's Waldo?, what with Kiko Calero, Randy Flores, and even Carmen Cali manning the roster. (I can't wait until Carmen Cali relieves Kiko Calero and Chris Carpenter one of these days to face Coco Crisp... with Cody McKay catching, of course.)

Anyway, even with all the new faces in the pen, I kept hoping the Cards would blowout the Dodgers this weekend so that we might see an appearance by Rick Ankiel. (Truth be told, I was half-hoping the Dodgers would blowout the Cardinals, if that's what it took to see ol' Dick Ankle.) But alas, Reggie Sanders ruined things today by singling home Heck Luna (a.k.a. the Moon Man), which means we wouldn't get that 18-inning Battle of the Somme standoff that would necessitate an appearance from young Rick.

By the way, Joe Sheehan -- who I've now linked to twice today -- has this to say about the latest chapter of the Ankiel saga:

Now 25 years old, he's probably being rushed to St. Louis, given that he's thrown just 15 innings this year coming off of Tommy John surgery that ended his '03 season. He's been mentioned as a candidate for the postseason roster, which is insane, except for the fact that you know Tony La Russa wants a third lefty in that pen. Getting overly excited about three rehab starts is a mistake. Everyone involved would be better off just letting Ankiel make some low-leverage appearances in September, then returning in the spring to a job in middle relief.

Posted 7:01 PM by Brian
THE PINNACLE OF PUJOLS One of our readers named Mike passed along this kind email recently:

One thing that's great about RBN is how you occasionally revisit old posts and sometimes even admit you're wrong about things you wrote earlier in the season -- it's refreshing to see honest sports writing. In your defense, on May 27 you wrote:

"Bernie Miklasz has a fine piece on Al Pujols that's tonic for anyone who thinks Alberticus has grown lazy and head-swollen since his big contract extension... Albert will be fine."

Since then, Albert's played 81 games. Here are his numbers:

G   AB   R    H   HR  RBI  BB   AVG   OBP   SLG

81  321  75  115  31   76  42  .358  .433  .729

Faced with arbitration, the Cardinals took the plunge this winter, signing Pujols to a seven-year contract worth over $100 million. Now, Albert Pujols is so good that he almost breaks any mold we might have sought to establish; he doesn't need to improve to be well worth the money. When the question is, "Do you sign Albert Pujols?" the answer is a resounding "Duh!" The news was handed down amidst the persistent rumors that Pujols may really be as old as 28. If he is, the odds of topping what he's already done grow slimmer, but not by much. As we've seen, players who are excellent early also plateau early. Most of the time, anyway. Pujols might top that .612 [Marginal Lineup Value rate] mark next year, or in three years, or when he's 35. But if you're lucky enough to find a bar where the locals are familiar with MLVr, and someone will take your bet that Albert Pujols has peaked at 23, jump on it. Youth is important, but when you're this good, it's hard to get better.

Posted 6:13 PM by Brian
ICHYCOO PARK I thought the days of Ichiromania were over -- so 2001. In fact, I thought all Nipponophilia had reached its apotheosis with last year's Lost in Translation, that it was all downhill from there. I became convinced of it when, over the course of a couple months, Kaz Sasaki hung up his cleats for good, So Taguchi made the Cards opening day roster (from which I assumed he'd hit about .190), and Ichiro got off to a sluggish start, hitting .255 in April.

Since that time he's gone 199 for 495, hitting .402 in 112 games. (I can't decide if that's evidence that an active player can hit .400 for a full season or not. I mean, 112 games is a lot, but it's still 50 games short of a full season.) The exciting thing, though, are all those hits. After Saturday's 5-for-5 game, Ichy was on pace for 269 safeties, which would shatter George Sisler's single-season record of 257. (To be fair, George Sisler collected his total during his team's 153-game season. At his pace, he'd have had 272 hits in 162 games. My grampa, who played in the St. Louis Browns' minor league system, would have appreciated me pointing that out.)

Still, 269 hits is, like, a lot. And it's rare that one of the "core" stats -- you know, the kind you'd find on the back of an old Topps baseball card -- is due to fall. If you took the old-time batting line and expressed it by the year in which each single-season record was set, it'd look like this:

 G     AB    R     H     2B    3B    HR   RBI    SB    BA

1962  1980  1921  1920  1931  1912  2001  1930  1982  1901

1901  Batting Average   Lajoie         .426

1912  Triples           Owen Wilson      36

1920  Hits              Sisler          257

1921  Runs Scored       Ruth            177

1930  Ribbies           Hack Wilson     191

1931  Doubles           Earl Webb        67

Posted 6:06 PM by Brian
A REGULAR FRIGGIN' EINSTEIN I don't know if this story is true or not, but supposedly a number of years ago the Texas Rangers convened a meeting to see who would be the team's players rep, and Kevin Brown stepped forward and said, "well, I'm the smartest person on the team, so obviously I should represent us." Ah yes -- the smartest player indeed.

Posted 5:53 PM by Brian
THE DISTILLED ESSENCE OF BASEBALL My friend Mark passed along this interesting tidbit -- Major League Baseball will be selling digital downloads of baseball games, but with pitching changes and long at-bats (and, presumably, downtime between innings) deleted. The typical running time? About 20 minutes. That means about 2 hours and 20 minutes of most baseball games consists of nothing but filler. But here's an interesting question: is baseball without the "filler" -- i.e., the pitching changes, the batter's box antics, the fixing and futzing -- still baseball?

That's the kind of question you can ponder when your team is 17.5 games in first place.

Posted 5:42 PM by Brian
LIKE CLOCKWORK Okay, this is one of the more off-point topics I've ever brought up, but while watching the game the other night I got to wondering: why do ballplayers run the bases counterclockwise ? Does anyone know? I mean, someone made a choice at some point -- why not clockwise? A little Googling undercovered this from The Straight Dope's website:

Omni magazine game czar Scot Morris has written a lengthy treatise on the subject. Scot came up with the following list of counterclockwise phenomena: the Indianapolis 500 and other auto races, track and field events, Roller Derby, indoor bicycle races, horse races, speed skating, merry-go-rounds and other carnival rides, revolving doors, the chariot race in Ben-Hur, the customary flow of people around an ice-skating rink, the usual direction in which people spin Hula Hoops, the base runners in baseball, cable-operated model airplanes, and tornadoes and hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere.

To be sure, Morris concedes, there are a lot of clockwise phenomena as well: the direction of the pieces on a Monopoly board; the "on," "higher," or "tighten" direction on knobs, dials, faucets, light bulbs, screws, and bottle caps; dialing on a rotary telephone; record turntables; and turning a manual can opener, eggbeater, or pencil sharpener. But most of these -- at least the ones that involve exertion -- are easy to explain: most people are right-handed, and righties have more strength turning clockwise than the other way.

But no one really knows why most races (apart from European horseracing) are run counterclockwise. With auto racing there's some explanation -- if racers go into a wall, they're more likely to hit on the right, or non-driver, side -- but that doesn't explain earlier racing forms, or baseball. Anyone have any ideas?

Posted 9:11 AM by Brian
A VISIT TO THE NORTHSIDE I did a guest post for my friends at The Cub Reporter about emotions running high at Wrigley Field. Let me know what you think if you get a chance. (I especially enjoyed Alex Ciepley likening us to the Evil Eye of Sauron -- sounds about right if you're on the other side.)

Posted 11:44 PM by Brian
THE GREATEST SHOW ON GRASS They say that baseball teaches you humility. We've all heard that old proverb about the best hitters failing 70% of the time, and we all know that the best teams are bound to lose 50, 60, 70 times a year. If you can't bear losing -- if, for example, you like your teams to steamroll over their opponents day after day -- then you should probably follow some other sport, like, say, women's softball.

Unless of course you're a fan of the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals. They've won 75% of their games over the past few months. They're 45 games over .500. Since May 31st they've had 8 winning streaks of at least five games. And with over a month left in the season our odds of not making the postseason are approximately 40,000 to 1.

It's strange getting used to all this bounty. There seems to be no disconnect between what the team can do and what it does do. The 7th inning tonight is the best illustration of this picture-perfect execution, the dream version of Cardinal baseball at its zenith:

Posted 10:12 PM by Brian
THE HAPPY HOUSE OF HOMERS Sorry for the light postings -- I've been crazy busy lately -- but I have found time to watch the first two games of this series with the Pads. A few stray thoughts:

            AVG   OBP   SLG

Loretta    .342  .396  .515

Hernandez  .344  .417  .513

                   ERA    H/9    K/9   BB/9  HR/9

Soft-Tossers       4.69  10.99   5.17  2.59  1.13

Hard-Throwers      3.33   7.57   8.21  3.06  1.05