Rotation depth

makes the point that the health of your rotation is the key to reaching postseason (and postseason success).

Pitchers staying healthy is the second-biggest “crapshoot” in baseball; second only to the playoffs themselves! The Cards are banking on Carp actually being healthy for a full season, while Waino has found a new use for uncooked rice that may help prevent a recurrence of his finger injury.

I’m of the opinion that Carp will either be healthy for the entire season, or he’ll get hurt early. (No, I don’t have any statistical evidence to back this up; it’s just an opinion from “the gut”.)

IF the current starting five stay healthy, the Cards will be in good shape; if not, look out below! Piñeiro could be replaced by K-Mac, Boggs, the Hawkster, or Todd if he’s ineffective. Lohse seems to have found a comfort zone working with Dunc, as has The Colonel; I expect both to pitch well this season.

Yeah, I’m an optimist… but what the heck, it ain’t even March yet!

If Colby makes the team out of ST batting 9th for the month of April is probably a good way to ease him into the majors. Batting 9th means he his first AB is in the 2nd probably 3rd inning. Tony’s just trying to put Colby in a position to succeed. The theory seemed to work well for this guy.

As we all know, Tony will tinker with the lineup throughout the year and Colby batting 9th is not a season long objective. Come May, Colby will be moved up in the lineup eventually ending up at the 2nd spot for the majority of the season. He even might end up in the 4th spot moving Ludwick to the 2nd spot to break up the L & R. Ank could then move down to the 6th spot.

Now has a Devastator or a pitch-to-be-named when someone gets a piece of it. I hope it works better than it did for Vaughn.

to have dodged the O-Dog bullet. Paying $8M plus a first round pick for a 31 year old 2B who is largely a figment of his home ballpark is silly. During his time in AZ, Hudson’s cumulative road slashes were .274/.343/.392/.736 which looks a lot like Rickie Weeks, Felipe Lopez, Akinori Iwamura, and Robinson Cano. It is also pretty similar to the numbers he put up in Toronto back when he could actually play plus defense. He has been a below average defender over the last three years.

Derrick Goold just reported that Dave Duncan was effusive in his assessment of Carpenter’s latest session. Duncan is not a hype kinda guy. It looks more and more as if Carp is back to normal. Goold called Carp’s stuff “electric”. LaRussa called today a “big day” for the Cardinals. I agree that if Carp truly is back to full health, the Cardinals could have the best rotation in the NL. And their offense should be better than last year, with Chris Duncan evidently healthy, Rasmus waiting in the wings, Greene in place of Izturis, Freese likely to fill in nicely for Glaus the first six weeks or so. The closer’s performance should be improved, too, with Isringhausen gone. Lefthanded relief should be better, as well. All of these improvements are good bets. With a healthy Carpenter, it is conceivable the Cards could win more than 90 games. Just winning half of their one-run games last year (reducing blown save to a league average rate) would have boosted the team’s win total to 90 or more.

Anybody pick this guy

to be the unexpected hype guy this year? It would be a huge plus if he gets things going in the right direction.

Great article, but I don’t understand how the following two statements can be stated in the same paragraph.

Chone has Rasmus and Skip pegged for nearly identical .330 and .328 wOBAs (respectively

If Colby hits well this spring, he’s a better player than Skip and deserves to play the OF.

Aren’t they saying the opposite things? I know that Colby WILL be a better player in the future, but it seems like they are roughly the same in 2009, and there are many reasons to keep Colby in the minors for a little while longer. If the two players are roughly the same, why would you bring up the prospect and accelerate his arbirtration and free agency clocks?

I understand that Colby has more upside, but you also have to admit that he has more downside (for 2009 only). You know roughly what you are getting out of Skip this year. Letting Colby dominate Triple A for a couple of months doesn’t really have much downside to me, unless you believe he is going to go “Pujols” on everyone from the beginning of his major league career or if you feel Skip is going to regress quite a bit from last year.

Take for example: Skip at 2B, Freese at 3B, Rasmus and Ankiel in the OF, Duncan on the bench…what do you want the order to look like? Construct your lineups…

An interesting article by Brew Crew Ball details the proper way to construct a lineup:

# Of your best five hitters, your first batter should be the one with the least amount of power and the most walks. Preferably, the player here has a large split in batting average and on-base percentage because the value of a hit is similar to the value of a walk due to the fewer amount of runners on base in this spot.
# Next, you should decide who your two best overall hitters are, excluding your leadoff man. These players should always bat in the second and fourth spots in the lineup— not the third, as is usually assumed. The reason is that the third spot in the lineup comes has the highest likelihood of coming up with 2 outs, and commonly comes up with 2 outs and no runners on, mainly because of the freqent occurence of the first two batters making outs in the first inning. The second spot comes up about 30 more times per year than the fourth spot, and the fourth spot comes up with more runners on base. These factors balance out almost equally. You would prefer the second hitter to have the advantage of more walks and the fourth hitter to have the advantage of more power to fully optimize your two best hitters.
# After the three top hitters are taken, you should look at the next two best hitters on the team. The third and fifth spots balance out almost the same way the second and fourth ones do. The fifth spot has an advantage for every event except a home run— which makes sense, because a single with two outs has little impact, while a home run always scores, and we have already established that the third hitter comes up frequently with two out. If the hitters under consideration are relatively equal in skill, hit the one with more home runs third and the one with more singles and doubles fifth. Overall, the fifth hitter should be better than the third hitter.
# The quality of hitter should generally decrease through the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth spots in the order. There is one notable exception, though.
# In almost all situations, a pitcher should bat eighth in a National League lineup. The difference in plate appearances between the eighth and ninth hitters over the course of the year is about 15 plate appearances. This can be reduced to about 10 when pinch-hitters are introduced. Those 10 plate appearances are more than made up for by increasing the amount of runners on base for the top of the lineup. The overall impact of hitting the pitcher eighth would only add a few runs in a year, but that is no excuse to ignore it.

Apply this to the Cardinals, you get a lineup like this:

Schumaker
Pujols
Glaus
Ludwick
Ankiel
Rasmus
Greene
Pitcher
Yada

boggs and scherer back in the swing — boggs on a mound today, scherer to pitch off a mound in coming days.

ivan maldonado, oquendo’s closer for puerto rico, got a tryout.

MLB.com’s Matthew Leach presented a question on if Schumaker could get work in B-Games, or minor-league games. La Russa raised an eyebrow as if to wonder why he would do that. Someone asked: "You are going to want to see other people at second base, right?"

"I am?" La Russa responded.

sounds like that 2b competition just keeps heating up.

linkification.

since skip has outfield speed, will he have more range to catch up to hits that are hit in between the infield and the outfield? would this partially make up for his inexperience in the infield?

I would ask for a re-shoot…