The Messenger

go do some yard work or something and stop thinking about the Cardinals for a few hours. What you do not do is make decisions about tearing or buttressing anything at the end of a week like that. That is a recipe for panicky, bad decisions.

I actually like what I am seeing right now, except for the injuries. I see no reason to either tear it apart or try to make a quick short term improvement. I would be really pissed if we gave away some of our top prospects just to rent Sabathia for a few weeks.

Our outfield is fine. Yadi is having a great year with the bat (remember he is suppose to be a all defense .240 hitting catcher), Glaus has been fine with the glove and his hitting is coming around. Alberts been having a fair year, not great, but I think that’s because they pitch around him so much. Only soft spot is the middle infield which is OK defensively but not contributing much offensively. Starting pitching has been in the top half of all the teams in both leagues as has the relief.

Forget about last night. Every team has a game like that once a season. Just hope you don’t have more than one. Yes we are picking up a few injuries, but every team does that. And no we aren’t going to catch the Cubs and their half billion salary. But we are still having a good year and have a very entertaining ball club.

I think management is on the right track. Churn the roster a bit. Bring up someone from Memphis every couple of weeks and see what they can and can’t do at this level. If some veterans like Kennedy don’t start hitting, dump them. Make a cost effective deal or two next month if it’s there. But don’t go to extremes. Go with the young cost controlled guys. Play moneyball. This team isn’t heading for last place like everyone predicted. Go Cards!

“momentum” is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher… a lack of command is also a sign of a guy who hadn’t pitched in eight days. Let’s see what happens in “The Colonel’s” next start.

While the Phillies do have one helluva lineup, they ain’t as good as they looked last night, and the Cardinals ain’t as bad as they looked last night.

Keep “grinding” each at-bat, keep throwing Strike One, and keep playing good defense… that’ll win ya a bunch of games, no matter the injury news.

It seems wayyyyy to early to write off the season now. Every team has the one night when everything goes wrong. We have been winning series after series and still can easily win this series. Thankfully, run totals don’t carry over to the next day. We just have to forget about last night, put a couple runs on the board early, and focus on now.

As for what to do at the trade deadline, getting another starting pitcher seems a bit rushed at this point in time, when we have two more pitchers on the way back who haven’t had set-backs, even though they may be long-shots. Shoring up the middle infield would be at the absolute top of my priority list. Plenty of names available when you look past the veteran status – even Ian Stewart of the Rockies could be an option as he has been working at second with Colorado so far.

So this latest surgery on Carp didn’t take….boys, I gotta tell ya, I didn’t see this one coming. Who would have thunk it?

I’m sure not ready to throw in this seasons towel yet, how about you guys?

Anytime there’s discomfort to the elbow, there’s cause for concern but I’m not really bothered by his inability to throw strikes last night. Wellemeyer’s only recently become a strike-throwing machine and so it’s not that surprising to me that, given 8 days off, he’d have some trouble throwing strikes upon his return. Hopefully, he just needed to shake loose some of the cobwebs and he’ll be ok next time out. I think it’s premature to believe that a guy who’s had trouble throwing strikes his entire career until this year is injured simply b/c he has trouble throwing strikes his first start out following injury. You may be right, but I’ll need to see more evidence than one bad start.

The Phils got some pop in thier line-up.

Let’s see how the series goes and then we can freak out if we get shelled the next two games and the offense continues to sputter.

If it all does go to hell then I would say trade the contracts due to expire and bring up the kids and see what we have for next year.

from top to bottom and really like their crusty old manager. I was hoping that our team would end up with that type of manager this offseason.

Did Springer intentionally throw at Howard? Why? Down by 17 or 18 runs, why in the hell would we throw at anyone?

and it was about time, and of course TLR had to grandstand. It’s old time baseball, no big deal. The Phillies sure acted like no big deal and responded the correct way by throwing behind and not hitting our batter the next inning. Messages were sent and no one got hurt.

it’s not like the Padres need an aging veteran like that, and it’d buy us some time to get the rotation back in shape.

disagree about the panic. I still think we have to look at it like any success this year’s team has is gravy and set things up for ‘09.

RB, I think you are right on regarding Welle’s elbow and I don’t see the point in running him back out there so soon. I really don’t think there is any question that the correlation between elbow issues and control is a pretty tight one. Most guys who are tough enough to get to the bigs are not going to tell you anything is wrong with their arm unless it is fairly serious. Pitchers deal with pain on a regular basis when things are going well.

I just think they should have been more cautious with him, but I can imagine that the choice came down to pitching Welle, doing a bullpen start, or calling up Reyes. If that is true then the decision, while disappointing, is not surprising.

Goold reports Mather and Worrell are being optioned out today.
I can see optioning Worrell out, just to get a fresh arm up (and it can’t be Jiminez, so yay!), but if Mather is sent down and Colby is not called up, I might be so pissed I won’t watch the game today.

In the starting rotation yet?

Carp’s surgery is obviously different, and I’m certainly no professional athlete. But, back in February, I had arthroscopic surgery on a major joint…my knee. Since that time, I have experienced 3 distinct set-backs where I had major pain and had to reach for my crutches again so I could walk. I even was using weight training and physical therapy, and they still happened. I think that these post-surgery set-backs are just part of the recovery process for some people. Thus, I’m not too surprised or upset that Carp’s rehab isn’t pristine right now.

Its the Cubs year sadly, but the baseball gods have given us a taste of what a great team we will be next year. Carp and Mulder back. Ludwick the new Rolen. Ankiel the new Edmunds. Perez the new Izzy. Albert the old Albert. Lots of depth.

Colby

Having said that, they are the Cubs…... and with some luck we might sneak into wildcard.

they should have sold parts like Lohse, Duncan, Reyes, Izzy, and Skippy off at the trade deadline anyways. This just should harden the teams resolve to do so.

the prospect of a brewery sale doesn’t really bug me, and it seems kinda funny to see a republican governor expressing interest in a government blockade on free market activity. i don’t mean to open a big can of worms on that, but there it is.

i wasn’t depressed by the blowout, and i enjoyed several parts of it. the standing ovation for so taguchi was great, the ejection hijinx were interesting, and i always get a kick out of watching a position player pitch. i don’t think springer threw intentionally, and should not have been warned but not ejected. it just doesn’t make sense to me that we’d want to burn through another bullpen arm just to send a pointless message. i also think that the phillies’ pitcher should have been instantly ejected after the trigger-happy precedent was set.

i’m not doom and gloom about any of it, really. albert has been on shaky physical footing for a while. i didn’t necessarily expect to see carpenter this year. i think wellemeyer has shown marked improvement, but that was good fortune. didn’t expect anything out of mulder. clement seemed iffy too, but i’ll call that a disappointment so far. the only thing that’s even surprising to me, and thus annoying, is wainwright going down. i still see that as an opportunity to see stuff like jaime or a converted mcclellan, though.

i wouldn’t be in favor of making any hasty decisions, and i don’t think a “veteran presence” will stablize the team, or even that the team on a whole requires stabilization. i’d like to see a better middle infield, but wouldn’t literally bet the farm on it at this point. i think we’re in an arguably enviable position by being in wildcard contention at this stage of the year and an ability to flip switches that could propel us into player development or playoff contention. as a cardinal fan, there’s still a lot to love. even in this state, if you want to call it that, i like this year much better than the last.

is that the Cubbies lost

since the scrubs are playing already and the ChiSox are playing tonight. I’m pretty damn excited about that, kind of tired to listening to games on the radio

I LOL’d, how about you? Funny joke, tell it at Christmas parties.

I think that maybe DG misquoted APu. He obviously should have put it down as “What can you say, mang? Everything happens for a reason”

Izzy has been activated and Reyes has been recalled. I’m sure that lifts morale in the clubhouse after a crushing defeat yesterday. On the other hand, if Izzy comes out and dominates, it really could.

Meanwhile, Reyes continues to get jerked around.

Today might be interesting…. and not necessarily in a bad way; but maybe.

didn’t they used to kill the messenger for bad news?

But Azru won’t die, he’ll just be replaced by up-to-date machinery

Hooray! Fox picked up the Cardinals today for me! :)

helping my fantasy team, not helping my real team.

I better not be getting red sox -reds

As if Kevin Kennedy wasn’t incompetent enough, they brought in Rob Dibble!

They announcer just said that Tony will have the team ready to Rock-and-Roll. And that the Phillies shouldn’t expect the Keg party to continue.

Doesn’t Buck work for Fox? Couldn’t we have got him for this game?

Just check the FanPost section

The lineup looks the same as yesturday.

Also …No game thread?

On top of that MLB.COM teases me by putting up a t.v. link only to tell me it’s blacked out.

I’m getting Surly.