At it’s most elemental, yes, the object of a pitcher is to keep the batter from reaching base. However, in the larger scheme of things, a pitcher’s role is to prevent runs. And in the even larger scheme, his role is to prevent the other team from scoring more runs than his team scored. It is this last charge that I am talking about.

Here’s another way to look at it:

Unless you throw an absolute meatball, even if a major league hitter gets a decent swing on a ptich he has a chance to hit it right at someone, just get under it, or something like that. When you have a lead, you pitch in the strike zone and concede that you might give up a few hits or even runs in exchange for the return that the odds are in your favor that the batter will not get a hit, and that you are not “giving” them anything via a walk. The idea is that a pitcher should be able to withstand a few small innings and get his team to the 8th or 9th.

And yes, more should have been scord off of Hampton. They ahould have knocked him out in the first. But still, 4 runs against what was a very depleted roster should have been enough for a decent major league pitcher and bullpen relief.

If Wainwright and Carpenter do firm up the rotation, and other guys are moved up from Memphis (Perez? Motte?), there will be a pitcher logjam, they’ll have to move someone. Moving Jimenez is obvious. But I don’t think Thompson should be moved. He’s been very solid since his return in June-a whip of 1.2 or so. I think he’s great in the roles he plays-he can get you a groundball out when needed, but can also pitch 3 innings, or even spot-start, when needed. He’s good in his roles.

I guess I missed the fact that BR was bad at 3rd this year. I guess those were the games that I had missed. I thought he was serviceable last year.

Also, everyone who doesn’t want Bonds on the team seems to believe that most Cards fans would not be happy if he were on the team. I agree that most people probably do not like Bonds, but I have my doubts that everyone would hate him enough to want to throw fruits and vegetables at him during a game.

he may as well be a serial killer!

used to pour molten lead down the Russians throats when they were pillaging their villages? now that’s brutal! I’m glad we are bordered by Canadians and Mexicans!

because it was hotter than a, well, something or other. maybe the ball was slipping in his hand cuz of the humidity

El Pineiro is not worth $7.5M for a season’s worth of his pitching. Even an inconsistent pitcher, which El Pineiro certainly is, should beat the Richlanta Braves. What’s more, last night was our chance to claim sole possession of the Wild Card top spot.

this team should not be very money oriented. just look at the Mulder contract! just because someone is making more than someone else doesn’t mean much on this team.

I also didn’t understand why he got $7.5M for the second year.

It was Duncan Kool Aid at its worst. Based on, what, like 8 starts last season, they inked him to his deal? A one-year, $5M contract would’ve been okay and a part of me didn’t blame Mo for trying to pre-empt the market and get Pineiro locked in before what was forecast as monster deals for the likes of Lohse and Silva. However, Pineiro wasn’t worth what he would up receiving from the Cardinals, Duncan renaissance or not. Now, Pineiro is proving it.

As an aside, where are the follow-up articles on how Duncan didn’t actually turn Pineiro around at all?

I was in support of the signing too, for many of the same reasons. Additionally, and admittedly, I also had misjudged the market to a degree. Silva got the big deal, but I thought Lohse would too as well as some others. I thought the pitching market was so incredibly weak, but the demand for arms would still be there, so I assumed that all prices would be overheated, and that Pineiro’s deal would look better in retrospect than it did at the time of signing.

Well the market was incredibly weak, but for the most part teams resisted the urge to dive headfirst into the market.

I even recall some folks here saying that we got a bargain, compared to what the market was offering at the time…then, we all got a surprise coming out of ST when the system turned out to be deeper than we thought…”buyers remorse” is something you are going to see a lot of in these crazy days…I call them the “What-The-FK-was-I-Thinking” contracts…you see what Barry Zito or Jason Schmidt gets signed for, and you just know that in 3 years tops, some GM is going to be slapping his forehead and screaming, “What the fk was I thinking!!!”

without him. Then again. Though if we didn’t sign him Thompson would more than likely be in the rotation. I guess.

look at it then and realize we were signing a pitcher that’s barely above replacement level. It’s also easy to see that Mo seemingly jumped the gun (Izturis here too) and signed him too quickly when pitchers of his, uh, caliber, weren’t getting that kind of deal. Silva’s deal is terrible, but it’s not like Bill Bavasi-deals are the standard for good and bad.

Anyway, this isn’t a hindsight thing. Plenty of people hated the move and these results are fairly predictable. He’s actually been better than ZiPS thought he would be.

and we, needlessly, signed him for 2. All those things you point out impacted this year, not 2009. There’s no reason whatsoever, nor was there ever any, to be paying him next year. It made sense to sign him to a 1 year contract, as those guys weren’t ready yet, but it didn’t make sense to add the 2nd year to a pitcher who nobody wanted anyway.

At the end of last year, I thought this was a good thing, a bit pricey, yes, but still good. Now, obviously, in the perfect Cardinal World, it would be Lohse who was signed for $7.5M next year and Joel who’s contract was up.

Hey, you don’t suppose we could…... nah, I guess not!

i was set to disagree about looper, until i looked the numbers up. Looper had a 5.23 ERA at this point in the season last year…

Add Wellemeyer to your list of surprises- his performance this year has been pretty remarkable. The signing would look a lot better if Welley and lohse hadn’t been pitching like aces.

Also, do we really believe that Boggs could put up a 5.00ish ERA over 18 starts at this stage of his career? He has a 7.41 ERA right now, after 6. If he averaged 6IP over his next 12 starts, he’d have to maintain a 3.85 era over those starts to get to where Piniero is now. Joel’s contributions to the team are greater than they seem. Also, Piniero had a number of ER’s charged to him that shouldn’t have been- in his first start he had at least a couple that came as a result of uncle rico booting a catchable ball that was scored a double, and I remember TLR challenging one other scoring decision that resulted in a couple of ER’s.

Joel’s not been a “good” pitcher, but I’d bet he’s been better than most #5’s in the league. And he has the ability to be a lot better than he has been. Over the last 7 games opponents have had a babip of close to .400- that won’t continue.

Ankiel: .892 OPS, 22 HR
Glaus: .858 OPS, 18 HR
Ludwick: .952 OPS (higher than Manny Ramirez this season), 23 HR
Pujols: 1.076 OPS, 21 HR

Schmaker is hitting .303, which is top 20 in the NL batting title race, and he has an OBP of .368, which 5th in the big leagues for leadoff hitters. So, given our OF platoon’s production, which has been excellent, is there an upgrade at OF available that warrants the cost in prospects? I’d say, “No.”

Yadier Molina is batting .308, the second highest BA amongst MLB catchers. He also has the sixth-highest OPS amongst major league catchers. Additionally, we have Anderson in the system, so there isn’t really an available catching upgrade.

Where does this leave us? Middle infield. Aaron Miles is hitting .315 with an OBP of .354 and OPS of .751. There was not a secondbaseman on the market that is much of an upgrade over this. Furthermore, obtaining such a secondbaseman would not mean that they would play over Miles, given TLR’s affection for Grit. Kennedy has been very bad and shouldn’t be on the roster, but a secondbaseman wouldn’t merely replace Kennedy. If so, that’s a glaring black hole in the offense. The problem is that Miles has been very good this year, which means that secondbase hasn’t been that bad for our offense. We haven’t hit for pop, to be sure, at the position, but our secondbase BA is 7th in MLB and our secondbase OBP is an acceptable .347.

That leaves the black hole that is SS. I’d have been all for an upgrade, but there wasn’t even a SS on the market that I read about in any of the rumor/speculation thrown out over the last few weeks. About the only position that is in desperate need of an offensive upgrade is SS, which the majority of this community forecast at season’s eve. But, there wasn’t much on the FA market in the offseason at SS and there wasn’t much on the trade market either.

This nebulous “impact bat’ that TLR and others pine after seems to be a thing of myth and legend. I don’t blame Mo for not acquiring one because I don’t see any opportunities to do so.

the guy has a lot of potential imo

he has 20 days max on the rehab, right? He probably has to be DL’d or come back up by mid August, thus sending Mather down?

I, too, know the sting of being unable to use emoticons due to crippling feelings of 15 year old girlhood.

Are you using a cracked version? I believe it will still work.

Nonetheless, he came surprisingly cheap as a part of the Nady deal.

is a difficult concept. Seems the Cardinals emphasize it too much as we like guys to play at less than 100%. Edmonds would routinely play hurt and hit .190 for weeks on end. Izzy’s death march in 2006 was a disaster. Duncan played hurt last year and all it did was hurt the team and his value. Ditto for this year.

I thinkt the tough thing to do is to admit to the team that you are too hurt to be productive and let them get someone else in there who is healthy.

Not necessarily disagreeing with you, as you have to admire someone who is willing to do their best while in pain, I just think playing hurt is rarely in the team’s best interests. Of course, if El Hombre says he is good to go that is good enough for me!