in the above analysis. Since coming back to the bigs on 8/06 he’s put up a VERY solid line. 13.1 IP, 8 hits, 4 BB’s, 16 K’s, 3 ER’s (on back to back blown saves). He has a 2.06 ERA and .92 WHIP in this time with 7 saves in 9 opp’s. He’s also young and should improve overall…I don’t expect him to do better than a 2.06 ERA. I vote against Fuentes who IMO is at best marginally better than Young Pitcher while significantly more expensive. KRod while probably a good deal better will likely get 5 years at $13 mil/yr (at least)…compare that to the $13 million (total) we will pay Perez over the same period of time. Also K-Rod is 3.5 years older than Perez – and has a lot more mileage on his arm.

…if we did get KRod – I mean if yer gonna break the bank you might as well go for the big gun, right? If we did, we cud use Perez as primary set-up (and give him a couple of extra years to learn the closer trade), along with Motte, Franklin, etc. We would STILL, however, need to sign a solid lefty (Damaso Marte is the one I keep championing). Signing Fuentes would give us a closer and a solid lefty in one go, except he’s not as good as KRod and not a whole bunch better than Perez in his better mooments. We cud probably get Fuentes for 3 years, but we’d probably have to go to 5 years with KRod, meaning Perez would have a long time to wait before closing again. if we sign Fuentes as our closer we’d STILL have to sign an-udder lefty to use in non-closing situations, only we probably cudn’t afford Marte then. We’d have to go the Embree route.

If, cowever, we’re committed to Perez as closer, it wouldn’t make sense to sign KRod at all, obviously. Fuentes would still be a good signing as primo set-up guy and occasional closer, keeping in mind, again, that we’d still need an-udder lefty in the pen.

I say get Fuentes & Marte or Embree and try to lock down a SP and a SS.

Oh, and if we can pull off a trade with Atlanta for Kelly Johnson we should do that too!

:=8)

There are going to be two holes in the starting rotation that need solving first with Looper and Lohse becoming FAs. Then the outfield situation needs to be firmed up to make room for Rasmus to start. Schu is more valuable to smaller market teams from a cost/ability viewpoint as a starter for us to waste as a fourth outfielder. Trade him for LHP bullpen support.

A 2009 bullpen of Perez, K-Mac, Franklin, Motte, Kinney, Springer, lefty 1 and lefty 2 is enough to help the team regress back to the mean in Blown Saves.

…I love Rassy as moooch as the next Cards fan, but he needs to earn his way into the outfield.
:=8/

I think the Cards passed their event horizon and its time to talk about getting ’em next year.

not counting Encarnacion (who I often forget is still on the team), Clement and Mulder, we’re heading into the ‘final turn’ lacking, from what we envisioned as our best roster in spring training, our CF, 3B, C, LF, #1A SP, #1 LH reliever and closer

add in our top prospect is shut out of the bigs and our top pitching prospect is shut down for the year and potentially career. Burn some more incense, Aki.

The Glaus injury was the straw that broke the camel’s back….wouldn’t be september if we didn’t have a sore shouldered 3B.

IBB to AK….thought it was a stupid idea at the time as it greatly improved Pujls chances of batting again in the 9th. Pujols comes up in the game situation….an appropriate natural consequence would be walk off retribution. But the Baseball gods have it in for us this year(s)……………..

re the extra points:
1) from the Birdhouse article, seems like Memphis really pushed for a 4 year deal. Sounds like a good fit for both clubs, glad the Cards didn’t shoot themselves in the foot
on this

2) the timing of dropping the suspension appeal is a bit strange….don’t see that it impacts our plans for Lohse, my guess is we have none.

3) Carp being shut down for the season….didn’t see that coming. oh wait……
Just hope he’s ready to go next season

1.) I don’t mind holding back on Rasmus, but I hate this stuff about him allegedly being in TLR’s “doghouse”…he hasn’t even BEEN here yet…let him prove or disprove himself on this level before he gets the Reyes treatment.

2.) Memphis and the Cards have a solid history to this point and I am glad they re-upped with them…I am a traditionalist in that regard…I long for the days when your AAA was with you for decades and they weren’t that far away geographically…it obviously helps that the big club provided them with a better on-field product that can’t hurt them at the gate.

3.) Ties are awesome, not just because of the excitement, but also because they screw with network TV post season programming plans, which have to make Bud Selig nervous…anything that does that is fine with me.

But I was wondering about the international VEB readers. Most of you are from the US (right?), but I would like to know which countries we have covered. I read about Thailand recently. I myself am Dutch but live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Do we at least cover all the continents?

for not only giving us the chance to make up ground on the Astros for a few short days but also for forcing the Cubs/Astros to play an extra game after the last day of the season if the Astros are still in Wild Card contention.

was that even cubs fans acknowledged that Brendan Ryan was safe at 3rd after the overslide. then Skip’s hit would have at least tied the game right? how much more bad luck can we have? to lose the last two games of that series by 1 run was disheartening to say the least

and i don’t mean to flog a dead horse here, but that’s probably what i’m doing.
so, i was wondering; if albert finishes the year with an OPS+ at 190 or above, that’s his career high. how unusual is it for a hitter to have an OPS+ of 190 or better? is it pretty rare like i think it should be?
i looked up the single season OPS+ records on baseball reference. turns out, albert’s currently in a five way tie, at OPS+ of 191, for the 89th best season OPS+ of all time. king kelly, deacon white, cap anson, and rogers hornsby have also had a 191 season mark. an OPS+ of 190 or above would put him in the top 101 single seasons of all time.
(there have only been 59 seasons of OPS+ 200 or better, and only george brett, jeff bagwell, frank thomas, sammy sosa, mark mcgwire, and barry bonds did so after 1961. so that’s pretty damn hard to do these days.)
also fun: albert’s tied at 7th in career OPS+ with dan brouthers and joe jackson. jackson needs no introduction, but he played his last leason in 1920. brouthers had 5 at bats in 1904, the rest of his career taking place in the 19th century. so, who ranks ahead of albert? from least to greatest: mickey mantle, rogers hornsby, lou gehrig, barry bonds, ted williams, babe ruth.
can anybody help me come up with a TLA (three letter acronym) for albert’s 2008 campaign?

Pineiro will start as planned.

Per Bernie:

Izturis 6
Phelps 9
Pujols 3
Ludwick 8
Lopez 5
Stavinoha 7
LaRue 2
Pineiro 1
Barden 4

-B

starting tonight, premium subscribers can choose between home and away feeds.

why did they wait until september to do this??

he’s pitching much much better than he was earlier in the year

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/saving-in-anaheim

“he looks clearly to be on a decline and he’ll be coming off a (meaningless) record-setting season. It’s a recipe for an overvalued contract that’s not likely to bear much fruit for whichever team signs on the dotted line.”

Stay far far far away.