86(?)-91 isn’t going to cut it long term. It looked like there were quite a few 84s sprinkled in there as well, gameday labeled them changes but I think that’s wrong watching them. Regardless, he’s not gonna be the #2ish guy we were all hoping for even in another uniform at this point. The stuff just isn’t there.

Although I vehemently dislike the idea of putting Wagonmaker back in the bullpen to close (that should be what we are getting Chirs Perez ready to do), then I read this in DG’s notes today

General manager John Mozeliak cautioned against any knee-jerk read that Wainwright was rehabbing in the minors to be the closer in the majors. He said Wainwright’s role would be based on his health — which checked out fine immediately after Friday’s start — and the club’s need.

Are you kidding me? We are going to rush him back so he can pitch the sixth inning? What are they thinking?

for the morning pick-me-up, RB… =)

a long time ago. One of TLR’s biggest flaws as a manager is his love for veterans and his disdain for young players. I think its been fairly obvious that McClellan has been our best reliever this year, but only now is he finally pitching in the “biggest” innings of games. Perez was every bit as good as Franklin and Izzy, yet he was sent down rather than given an opportunity earlier this season.

Motte has an ERA of 0.47, 34 Ks, and 4 BBs in 18 IP since the beginning of July, yet he’s still in AAA when this team needs a legitimate bullpen arm. Why use our best starter as a reliever if this kid hasn’t even been given a shot…

The answers for this team have always lied within, yet somehow, someway, this team has failed to recognize it. Not sure if that is TLR’s doing, or Mo’s, or some combination of the 2, but someone needs to get their head on straight before we end up with a 7 game wild card deficit.

aaron.

Oh my. It’s one game. Sure; it was against Chicago. But it’s one game were a successfull suicide squeeze, or Glaus getting a hit somewhere would have resaulted in a W. It stings. But it will go away.

Can’t complain about the line. Except maybe Mather batting leadoff. But Skippy can’t hit lefties so that would have meant either Izy2 or Kennedy leading off. The only way the lineup would have been better offensive wise is if we put in miles at short. In qhich case we would be bitching about that.

Can’t really complain about the Pitching either. Looper gave up 2 runs in 7 innings and pitched a great game. Sure those two runs stung because they came from Edmonds. Can’t put the blame on the bullpen. They pitched 4 innings and gave up 1 run against the leagues highest scoring offense. Sure you could say Tony shouldn’t have left Franklin in there for another inning. But who would you have had pitch it instead? Izzy, Villione, Garica? It’s the Cubs. Best offense in the league. At Wregley. They would have got to someone.

Sorry, But as long as Tony is at the Helm, and we have such fine sailors as Carpenter; Pujols; ludwick; etc..(okay, sounds a little that sounded a little fruity but im already running with this analogy) I’m going go ahead and stay aboard this ship. If you guys want off, I dont blame you. It does look like rough seas ahead.

Besides. If it does sink. Im an Evil Amphibian. I’ll be fine.

when you make a plan, you have to stick with it, good or bad…one game or even one series should not be the benchmark on the success or failure of the 2008 season, we still have about seven weeks to see how that works out…now, the decision was made to get rid of Edmonds and move on and get younger in the outfield…I don’t regret that decision for a second…for what he meant to us for 8 years, he deserves to finish his career with a winning team, but I like the possibilities we have with Ankiel, Ludwick, Mather, etc…as for Edmonds, let’s see what happens in the postseason…Cubbie Blue may be singing a different song along about Oct 15.

I would have loved to win yesterday’s game…I live in Chicago, so I get it hard and heavy when a game like yesterday happens…I had the leave work out of the backdoor last night…If we lose the next two games, you can bet the rent money that there will be a broom on my desk Monday morning…but I’m not giving up on this team, and I like the direction we are going, even if there is some pain along the way

Same feeling I got this morning.

Twas a fun few months, no?

but we just won a series against the Dodgers, we’re still only 2 games back in the wildcard, Mather is getting hot, and we have an improving Chris Carpenter going for us. Not to mention we have the most feared 3-4 combo in the league right now. I’m not ready to count us out. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played.

This season has been very exiting with almost all of the games competitive. Look back at the Community Projections for the NL Central. Playing .400 ball the rest of the season will beat 75% of the expectations.

April’s success has erased the rebuild mentality that existed in spring training. Edmonds needed a new place to succeed, unfortunately it wasn’t San Diego. We still have 44 games to go. The Cubs have a very tough finish so let’s keep playing the games. Here’s to taking the next two games and the series.

For God’s sake we are battling for a wildcard spot in early August on a team that noone exected to go anywhere this year.

I think its a little too early to throw in the towel.

I can understand why some would question the roster management decisions, but I don’t know why people would be dissapointed with how the farm has been utilized. We have gotten 3 starting outfielders (Ank, Skip, Lud), a shutdown reliever (McClellan), a 4th and 5th outfielder (Barton and Mather), and a possible dominant closer (Perez).

Not everything is gonna go our way. We will have meltdowns, and beatdowns, and a variety of losses.

We will also have wins, and some spectacular and fun ones.

I’m not ready to decide we’ve failed with almost 2 months left to play.

there are only 2 other teams in NL with better won loss record ours…it just sucks that both are in our division

BAD post. HORRIBLE post. I live in Chicago and you sound like a whiny Cubs fan.

I was listening on the radio to the Cubs broadcast so I didn’t get the best description of what happened. Reading on here about it, it sounds like Iz2 broke for home and Lilly threw it low and in on Looper. Why did Looper get out of the way? Wouldn’t it have made sense for him to let the ball hit his foot, it’s a dead ball, Iz2 goes back to 3rd and Loop is on 1st? If he was going to try and dodge the ball, couldn’t he have at least stabbed at it with his bat? I’m just a little perplexed.

just like yesterday
I get on my knees and pray
we won’t get fooled again.

Good post RB. It’s sad to see the little team that could has completely run out of gas. Shoulda, woulda, couldas only take you so far. If the new boss is going to continue to act like the new boss and give away games with ridiculous bullpen management, then I tip my hat to the new Constitution.

For any lingering hope of this season, the Cardinals would have to sweep the rest of this series and go pretty spotless on the rest of the roadtrip. The problem with losing to the Cubs is that a late season ‘run’ at a playoff spot would have to revolve around said Cubs. They have the tougher schedule come September, where as the Brewers have cake the rest of the way in.

Cardinals can’t keep kicking the can down the road with the shoulda, woulda, couldas. Stop using built in excuses like ‘we just didn’t hit in situations’ or ‘the bullpen just couldn’t hold the lead’. Either start getting hits and holding leads or start playing for next year. I’m sick of hearing about how bad the bullpen is. It IS bad, but the decisions revolving around it are far worse.

has cleared waivers..can they call on him now?

Bernie Mac passed away http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080809/ap_on_en_mo/obit_bernie_mac

there are certain things you CAN blame him for, but I think he has helped more than he has hurt:

- Religious sticking to Izturis as the team’s shortstop out of ST.
- Remaining loyal to Jason Isringhausen.
- Replacing Franklin with Isringhausen again.
- Sending Mike Parisi out to get shelled in extra innings.
- Refusing to give up on Chris Duncan, at the expense of Joe Mather.
- Continuing to play Skippy vs LHP, while Brian Barton sits.
- Using the team’s MVP, Ryan Ludwick, in a strange reverse platoon situation for the first 2 months.
- Playing Felipe Lopez in LF.
- Refusing to give the closing duties to Chris Perez.
- Obsession with Hit and Run instead of straight steals. Probably has cost the Cardinals upwards of 20 stolen bases this year.
- Refusal to use squeeze in situations where it makes sense, then uses it yesterday.
- Playing Miles at SS.
- ‘Warrior’ mode abuse of Wainwright early on in the season, much like Matt Morris.
- Using Randy Flores when he was clearly no longer effective.

Those are things you can blame LaRussa for that probably cost us games. However, his ability to motivate the team and get the most out of a lot of players on the roster probably outweighs all of that.

The wife did two (what the f*cks?) this morning when I debriefed her of the news (the other being Edmonds odd statement). What a random weekend.

summer isn’t over until Sept. 21st. This team still has a chance to make the playoffs, no doubt about it. it’s just not as a good of a chance as we would all like it to be. even if they don’t make it, it will be somewhat close. Albert still has a lot of home runs to hit this year imo, and it will be very interesting to watch how Ludwick closes up the season. not to mention, what will Ankiel do? we don’t even know how hurt he is, how much he’ll play, etc. there does seem to be some blundering lately with the odd pickup of Felipe Lopez, the strange contradictory statements about the bullpen, and still a lot of question marks and wtf’s with how this team is being run. But it’s still in it, and we have seen some strange things happen late in the season. the sand may be slipping, but we have over a month and a half of very interesting and entertaining baseball left.

Garcia?

God I hope Izzy is DFA’d

It seems like all year, everyone has been saying how it’s been a great ride so far, but now it’s time for the cards to fall back down to earth…BUT THEY HAVEN’T. I don’t know how many times that type of thing has been posted here, and just to spite us, they keep on winning. Now, it actually seems like they have a great shot to make the playoffs with pu, glaus, and luddy hot at the same time and carpenter back, I hope they do listen to stuff like RB posted and keep thinking they’re underdogs and keep proving everyone wrong!

even after today’s blow out win, your words still ring true.

it’s been a hell of a ride, but baring a major miracle, it’s probably over.

and I never could root for the home team back home (the Red Sox) because I couldn’t stand the “sky is falling” mentality that seemed to grip them every year. Granted, the fans there probably had legitimate reasons to doubt their team’s prospects for each season given their long drought, but it drove me crazy to have to listen to their whining attitude about the season being over because of an Opening Day loss.

Since I have moved to St Louis I realized that perhaps it is the nature of the beast for fans to be pessimistic about a team’s chances. I have to admit though, I find it very disappointing and discouraging to listen to people nit-picking every managerial decision and every rough game. Sure it is easy to get caught up in the emotions of a roller coaster season (as they all are, that’s why we play a marathon-like 162 games), but I think people have an unfortunate tendency to… get a little carried away.

Has there ever been an undefeated baseball team? I’m guessing the reason not is because NO TEAM IS PERFECT. No player is perfect, no MANAGER is perfect. A baseball season is designed to have highs and lows, streaks and slumps. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Etc etc cliches.

I was ambivalent about TLR coming back this year. You can’t argue with his results, but I wondered if it might be time for some fresh blood leading this club, especially since the off season attitude was one of youth and rebuilding. But I have to agree that I think OVERALL he has done a fine job of coaching this team this year. I mean, with most of our major stars spending time on the DL and a host of untested young players being thrown into the mix, I really don’t know how you argue it.

Sure he has faults, sure he has made decisions that make me want to pull out my hair in frustration, but who is the magician manager the TLR haters are expecting to replace him? Who’s going to lead the Cardinals to a 162-0 season and not make any mistakes? That won’t have a different perspective on managerial decisions than Joe (or Jane) Cardsfan out there?

I for one am still excited about this season’s possibilities. I wish we had done something for the bullpen, yes. But I trust that the price for a trade was likely one not worth paying. I pray that Wainwright isn’t put back in the bullpen when we need him to anchor our rotation. I hope that Tony finally realizes that, despite the sentimental wish for Izzy to reach his milestone as a Cardinal, his late innings solutions aren’t working.

But we are still in this. 6 behind the Cubs, right in the WildCard race. The Baby Bears have a tough end of the season coming, and we have enough games left with them and the Beer Men that the team can make or break its own postseason chance. And I appreciate what this team has already done and believe that they will play the rest of the season with as much heart and effort as they have shown to date.

And I remind myself of those things when I get too fired up about a current slump or a inexplicable mid-game coaching decision. Or when I read posts and comments like these.