And I wouldn’t say he has been in perfect health. Elbow problems have nagged him early on. However I agree with you. His BABIP isn’t going to stay that low all season. His numbers will get better. Maybe not ’07 better, but he will be an acceptable offensive SS by the end of the season.

“Khalil turns it around post” for later in the season, where I can credit his rising average and increased home run totals to a minor change in his swing/improved focus/working in the batting cages/a serious talk with tony/eating a ham sandwich with that spicy mustard not the French’s?

how much better over the course of the season he would be versus Tyler Greene. Tyler has shown plus ability on defense but not much yet on o. Just with the naked eye he looks like Khalil with a touch better defense and a little less patience at the plate.

We’re still dealing with a relatively small sample size, so his low BABIP and HR/FB rates could be explained by a lack of solid contact. However, no one goes a whole season without making solid contact at some point,* so I would expect he’d pop a few more out and put up a better line over the rest of the season. Now, by better, I don’t mean great…just better. Something like this maybe:

.250/.300/.450

I wouldn’t hold my breath for Greene to turn in to Hanley Ramirez though. The guy swings at too many pitches to be a good hitter for any lengthy stretch of time.

• Footnote: I would be willing to alter this argument to include Adam Kennedy circa the 2007 season or Cesar Izturis.

I said during the off-season I’d have rather kept Izturis than getting Greene, and that’s saying something.

I’m not too worried about his bat. Light hitting SS is a prerequisite to being a Cardinals team. I’m more concerned that he seems to have a noodle arm on any throw he has to make from the 3B hole.

Is much like the rest of the team, his walk rate has dramatically dropped in May.

In April, he didn’t hit much, but he walked a ton (for him, anyway, 9 walks). In May, he’s got 1 in about half the playing time.

I really wish I knew whose bright idea it was to stop hitting the way it was in April, and be more aggressive at the plate.

but I was never overly excited about him either. It was a low risk move that put a warm body at SS for one year but didn’t solve anything long term. I think people were secretly hoping the guy would be the second coming of Ludwick- this year’s reclamation project that comes out of nowhere and goes crazy, or at least that he would play great defense and not suck as bad as Izturis at the plate. He still might come around and suck slightly less, but we’re about where I though we’d be with him- hoping he comes around to slightly above average. At the time I said I’d rather have had Orlando Hudson to play second, or a pitcher like Penny or Wolf, even if it meant (gag) another year of Izturis, or a platoon of Memphis redbirds. I really wish they could have put something together for Escobar with the Braves but I think at the time he was tied up in the Peavy deal that never happened, and I have no idea if that was even a possibility. Hey, he’s a cardinal, so I hope the guy goes on a home run tear and proves me wrong, but so far not so good.

How about Jason Bartlett? He has been lights out on offense and is controlled to 2011. The Rays have plenty of prospects behind waiting in the wings for a shot, but the price will probably be too high or something we don’t have.

I’ve gone all Superman and started calling him “Son Of Jor-El”. (Actually, The Dugout made that one up. I don’t care, though.)

Anyway.

Without looking at stats (I’ve never been a huge numbers guy myself), I’m calling early returns on the “Son Of Jor-El Experiment” mixed. He’s not tearing the cover off the ball and defensively we’ve gotten pretty much what’s expected (well . . . I didn’t expect the world, anyway), but it’s not like he’s a huge embarrassing failure either. And obviously it’s not nearly enough to extend a multi-year megabucks offer at him to keep him here. That said, there’s still four and a half or so months left in the season, so there’s plenty of time for him to change our perception of the guy.

I’ll be rooting him on at the ballpark tomorrow. If he’s in the lineup.

I hope you understand when I was trashing “Greene” the other day and you made the comment about bad luck, I was referring to the other Greene on our team (that Tyler kid). I totally agree about Khalil and can’t wait until he starts to heat up.

agreed. I don’t think his defence is as bad as it’s looked so far either.

There was mention of a forearm problem causing him to not get any mustard on the ball fielding wise.

Also I would wonder if this could sap his strength and cause his funk at the plate.

Maybe the forearm thingy is a carry over from him breaking his hand. I would guess you throw a punch with the same hand you throw a ball.

If so maybe it is just a flair up or maybe a chronic condition. Although he looked good to me in ST but so did a lot of players.

I can’t believe with his awesome UZR (near the worst in the league) anyone would bash him?!

Khalil hits something other than a weak groundball or shallow pop fly, well I just may have a stroke. The whole BABIP argument goes out the window when you NEVER hit the ball hard. Never. The pitiful plate appearances have become unbearable.

at rare times this year. My point was that the vast majority of his plate appearances end with him rolling over on a groundball or a popping something up. All I’m saying is that he was pretty awful last year and he’s been pretty awful this year, so forgive me for not giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m tired of all the excuses…

I thought it was a sensible gamble at the time. So far, it doesn’t seem to be working out all that great, but at least it is only a one-year gamble. It is still early, so he has time to prove that viva is right. Maybe this is just bad luck.

Unfortunately, his defense is a concern. I’m not a fan of the approach that the team has taken this year towards defense. They have seemed to be extremely willing to trade defense for offensive potential. The problem is that defense, like speed, should never go into a slump. Pitchers hit dead-arm periods. Even the best hitters go through slumps. The reason teams build around defense is because it can carry a team through those down-turns.

Even the best Khalil Greene would have been sacrificing some defense for offense. With the Skip experiment in action, this seems like it was a bad idea. Right now, our pitching staff needs the defense up the middle more than we need the potential for 70 RBI from the SS position.

while.

… or doesn’t anyone else read the P-D?

apparently the Baha’i faith includes self-flagellation if you aren’t good at baseball.

generally reaction to K Greene’ s psych situation and instead found what is an uncharacteristically (for this site) antagonistic tone.

I do believe this is one of the most untypical responses to a post I’ve seen at Viva El Birdos.

I guess I can take solace in that it never fell off the cliff into juvenile stupidity as in so many other blogs.

Deep breaths dudes and dudettes, deep breaths.

Moving on- it appears the Cards are in a position where the only decent thing to do is ride out the storm with Greene and hope for the best.

Having read the initial P-D article, I have a difficult time determining if they’re talking about anxiety in the clinical sense or the more commonly accepted colloquial definition of anxiety. The whole thing was a bit cryptic.

If it is in the clinical sense- I’m going to assume that he is under psychological guidance right now and as part of his therapy it may very well have been determined the most beneficial to him to leave him on the team. If that is true, no public statement to that effect will be forthcoming. That would be kept private.

My point is that it would be very difficult on how the Cards are handling this w/o more clarity on the nature of his situation (which wouldn’t/shouldn’t/needn’t be made public) and the details of how it’s being treated (ditto).

at PD

Teammates noticed Greene punishing himself during the season’s first road trip. When one Cardinal player approached Greene in the Wrigley Field dugout to ask what he was doing, Greene responded of his frustration, “It’s the only way I can get it out.” Last weekend Greene left PNC Park in Pittsburgh with one hand bleeding. He had not sought treatment from the team’s training staff. One person in uniform described Greene’s struggle as “scary.”

cutting or what? heavy shit, either way

WTF after the PD article implies FO is behind him?