against Duncan being on the team. Ludwick and Ank should be playing almost Everyday, and Schu needs to be platooned. Duncan doesn’t currently belong in the starting OF rotation, but needs everyday at bats.

he might get some playing time, but with mr. duncan in his pocket, so will be his son.

Admittedly, no record one way or the other.

I have no problem with sending stavinoha down for Mather.

giving him a shot before you damn his abilities. All of 16 at bats..wow

Stavinoha does not look like a player, to me. At best he looks like a Gorman Thomas type. I think I would shudder if I got to see him play defense anywahere.

why is it that Duncan’s the only one who needs PA’s? At least I’m finally reading people who are complaining about Duncan offering a solution—to bring up Mather. Everybody is so pissed off that Duncan’s in this funk that they can’t evaluate this objectively.

Mather needs PA’s too and it will do him no good to bring him up and have him ride the pine as he did when he was called up a month ago. And, does no one else remember that Mather didn’t exactly scorch the ball when he was recalled? It’s time for Duncan to sink or swim at the major league level. There’s no better option available. Well, there’s one - Rasmus - but he shouldn’t be called up until the team is prepared to play him every day and they’re not right now. He needs to play every day at Memphis.

Mather’s not going to improve the team by coming up and sitting on the bench or by hitting the way he hit when he was recalled a few weeks ago. Everyone needs to get over their anger at Duncan and deal w/ the fact that he is where he belongs. If time goes by and it seems that his success at the big league level was a fluke, we can release him but it makes no sense whatsoever to send him down and have Mather come up and ride the bench w/ the big club.

Does anybody have any video of Duncan’s swing last year? I don’t remember him having so much movement in his lower body that gives him the “flail” look. If true, then send it to McRae, or get Big Mac to sneak into town or something. Sure doesn’t look like a big league swing right now, even on the few occasions he has made solid contact.

I just want the Cardinals to win and to play the best players. I am on the fence about Duncan and somewhat conflicted about what to do about him, but I think it is less than fair to totally dismiss “the nepotism angle”. You can go all the way back to his minor league history and he was a marginal prospect at best. His career MiLB OPS is .751. In his first five full professional seasons, three of which were in low A, he struck out 24% of his at bats and never hit more than 16 HRs. Only once did he slug above .473. His career best MiLB season, the only time he ever hit 20 HRs in the minors projects to a .219/.293/.370/.663 MLB line (using minorleaguesplits.com MLE calculator).

I can’t find any fielding stats for this first three seasons, but in his fourth season of pro ball he made 19 errors at 1B in 117 games, followed by 14 in 116 games. As recently as 2005 he made 17 errors in a mere 104 games at 1B in Memphis.

In his September callup in 2005, used primarlly as a pinch hitter, he recorded 10 ABs, struck out 5 times, and hit one home run. In fact, that lone HR looked at the time as though it might be his crowning achievement as it was the last HR hit in Busch II.

To many observers, it looked as though John Gall was a better prospect as he had been, I think, a two-time minor league player of the year and had hit .270/.282/.514/.763 in limited action with the big club in 2005. The TLR rap on Gall was that we didn’t play good enough defense to be in the bigs. In 2006 Gall got all of 12 PAs before being pushed aside in favor of Chris Duncan, who started out pretty well at the plate and got better, hitting .330/.393/.634 by the end of August. His overall numbers declined, but he did hit eight home runs after September 1st. In short, the Cardinals never would have made the playoffs without him. Whether nepotism had a role in his getting the opportunity or not, he clearly made the best of it and earned his playing time.

I think we all know the story pretty well after that with Duncan getting off to a great start in ‘07 before the injury. Had he come out this spring and put up good numbers I think everyone would be happy and it would have been sort of a gritty Cinderella story of coach’s son who struggles in minor leagues, but always believed in himself and just kept working. I certainly don’t blame the Cardinals for wanting to rediscover that power stroke and get Duncan back on track.

However, I do not ever recall a young player, other than Yadi with his premium defense, getting the extended playing time in spite of his struggles that Duncan has gotten. When the club finally made the decision, against TLR’s public stance, to send Duncan to the minors to straighten things out most observers agreed it was time for that move. When he was recalled a mere six games later, after hitting a whopping .160/.300/.240/.540 at Memphis, I don’t see how anyone can say with a straight face that move was not based on nepotism. The Cardinals had a chance to give Joe Mather two weeks of full time play to see what he could do, with the out of being able to send him down when El Hombre returned.

Sure enough Duncan hit .136 in Pujols’ absence with only one extra base hit. He was so lost that Adam Kennedy actually played back-to-back games at 1B. That being said, I am relieved and happy that Duncan is 4 for 10 since EH has returned, but now that the DH is gone I am fearful of what the lineups will look like and which productive players wlll sit because Duncan needs to “figure it out at the big league level.”

As a footnote, I was never a John Gall lover and used him as an example of a defensively limited player who never got a chance with the Cardinals. It would be great if Duncan can resurrect his career, but I do think it is pretty clear that he has gotten better treatment and more opportunity than virtually any other prospect the Cardinals have brought along in the past 15 years. Maybe TLR’s eyes are just better than all the statistical measures and all our number crunching is just a waste of time, but the way Duncan has been handled has been different than all other prospects on TLR’s watch.

But I think it’s pretty well understood that he struggled with an injury for the second half of 07, which really sapped his power numbers—he OPSed .927 in the first half last year, but only .677 in the second half. And to say that he’s a first-half player would be silly, since he’s still got a better OPS in the second half over his whole career.

I don’t know what’s up with Duncan now, but if it’s not an injury, then I have to think he can figure it out. Last year it was an injury.

I’m all for him going to the minors, but I just don’t think citing his second half of 2007 as an indicator of his true ability is fair. You might as well point out that a guy who sits out the whole year didn’t manage to hit any homers.