The Splits

Then he just……..stopped. He’s not gonna carry a 22% BB% the rest of the year, but that coming back is certainly a plus.

was caused at least in part by the “B-E- A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E” cheers emanating from McRae and TLR, and Colby’s desire to try to avoid the TLR doghouse which had previously been occupied by Brendan Ryan.

i’m curious, what does he have to do in may to up the projected wOBA to around .385-.400? he’d be around a 6.5 WAR player, right?

he will quickly be too expensive!

Today’s not an off day unless there’s a rainout.

Because we play the Reds tonight at home. 8:15 PM first pitch.

braves run into halladay. mets… great, he’s pointing to the 20 inning game. he watched it three times! season = “it’s like a golf tournament.”

unless you have torre or cox, you need a clubhouse leader to instill confidence. (i think they asked him that question) his visual of the clubhouse leader is priceless.
“now the action has to start matching the talk.”
…

he got optioned a few days ago when they brought jon jay up

I would guess that Tyler Greene is heading back down when Lopez returns. Jon Jay stays up because he’s a LHB and can play three outfield positions, Stavinoha stays up because…..well….someone has to polish off the pizza on the post-game buffet that nobody else wants to eat.

No reason to send Mather down really, especially since he’s Boog’s roommate. They might as well struggle together.

and Waino + Penny = 7-1, not 7-0.

Was a good game till they had to play the 9th inning.

it’s in the recap, yesssss. gimme a while to take it out, multitasking.

I’m really not worried about any of their pitchers except for Halladay, I really think they missed a trick in dealing Lee for the sake of a couple of ‘spects and $9m, and then turning round and throwing 14 times that amount of cash at Ryan Howard. Who, incidentally, will get eaten up by Jaime’s curveball.

What’re the matchups in that series? I’m visiting my friend in Princeton next week (great timing, huh!) and hoping to get to Citizens Bank for at least one game. If there’s a day game, I’ll go to two. Ideally, I’d like to see Carp, but Jaime or Wainer would be a good second choice. My dread for a while was that I’d end up only being able to see Halladay vs Lohse, and so the likelihood of neither throwing in the series is a big weight off my mind!

I’d hoped to get to Pittsburgh to see a game at PNC as well, which would be preferable to sitting with a bunch of douchey Phils fans in a shitty stadium; I’m in the states for nearly 2 weeks and I know we’re there to finish the road trip, but unfortunately I’m struggling to see how I can do that and fit in with my friends’ plans.

Anyhow, can’t wait! This’ll be the first time I’ve seen the cardinals live in 7 years.

is the Cardinals.

about Freese is that, for a guy with decent power, he had a hard time hitting the ball in the air for most of April. Only in the last week has he really begun to elevate the ball consistently. His 2 hard-hit oppo field hits yesterday were encouraging … hopefully it will continue.

Another big surprise to me is how many people are freaked out about Holliday’s troubles. To me, an abbreviated spring training, some history of slow starts, and the vicissitudes of baseball seem to be the culprits.

I’ll go along with #1 and #2 from your list too.

3. David Freese? He’s showing some power, and I haven’t seen a blowup in comments about his defense for a while

Wanna know why? He’s picking it over there and has started an extraordinary number of double plays for our defense. As a third baseman, he’s been involved in EIGHT double plays in the first month of games, which is quite a lot, since he’s not turning it at the keystone like Skip and Boog or catching it at first like Pujols. That leads the NL among third baseman (Polanco is second with 6, nobody else has more than 4), while the Cardinals are tied for first in the NL with the Astros in terms of turning two (26 DP’s in the first 22 games.)

It’s got to be Garcia, with the runner up being either Penny or Hawksworth’s scoreless 9 innings of relief

Everyone here expected Colby to break out. Not to this level, obviously, but we expected big things from him and he’s delivered.

Freese has been solid, but he is what we thought he was: a solid defensive first baseman who has a ceiling of an .830-.840 OPS at the big league level. In short, we just hope he’s Casey Blake.

I think a lot of us thought Holliday would start slow, I know that I did. I think he’ll get it figured out though. Remember, he started slow last year too, much slower than this year, in fact, and still ended up with an OPS over .900 at season’s end. Do I think he’s going to have a 1.100 OPS in the last two months of the year again? No, but if he can muster a .940 we’ll be just fine.

We haven’t bitched much about the pen, simply because there hasn’t been much to bitch about and the strand rate to this point has been, for lack of a better term, ridiculous. Now, I think a lot of the bullpen’s success is predicated on our starters all going 6—8 inning every start, which is putting the bullpen in situations where they simply need to come in at the beginning of an inning and be effective (Hawk, Motte, K-Mac, Franklin, Boggs) or they’re put in situations where they are most likely to be successful (Miller, Reyes pitching to mostly lefties). If we start to see our starters going less than 6, I think the bullpen is going to suffer.

I don’t even feel the need to explain myself on that one. Just Garcia.

and I’ve been a big Garcia fan for about 3 years. I knew about the curveball and the GB rate, but the overall polish and the ability to spot four pitches reasonably has really taken me aback.

I saw one Spring Training game this year, and it was where Jaime struck out six Nationals over 3 innings. Jaime came out of the game and received a handshake from TLR. It was announced soon after that Jaime was going to be in the rotation, and while he had a great few innings, I wouldn’t have dreamed of him having such a great start.

1). Garcia hasn’t hit any bumps but he will. He’s good but not this good.
2). Not a huge surprise.
3). I’ve been more surprised by his complete offensive package than anything. I’m not impressed with his defense yet. (Double plays in this sample size, considering the groundballiness of our staff and the composition of RH pitchers shouldn’t be considered anything special, imo)
4). Holliday’s been fine. Not great but fine. He’ll pick it up.

I expected him to be an acceptable 4th or 5th starter for his rookie year. Not an acceptable ace.

with Skip’s struggles at leadoff: .207/.301/.293 OPS .594

We’re 9th in runs scored and have the best record.

Be afraid, NL. Be very afraid.

and if you have a decent stream capture program you should be able to get them back….

Carp told them "get the fucking camera out of my face or I am going to break it in half."

That is literally the most awesome thing that has ever happened.

Epic. I love that they were afraid they were never going to get it back. And of course Carp.

by wishing for the game to not be rained out.

I would sing for you…but you wouldn’t hear it.

Plus, my version of the song would likely just freak everyone out.

hope you have a good one and the Cards honor your request.

but failed. happy birthday anyway!

I noticed this: "The team’s nickname … was chosen after receiving 33 percent of the votes in an online fan poll, beating second-place choice “Thunder Chickens” by six percent."

Oh, if only.

Thanks for taking the time to include all these details. Good stuff.

Now may not be the best time.

I would think Salas is still ahead of him on the depth chart as well.

if he keeps getting results he won’t be “out”. I just hope if he loses that beard magic that tlr will pull the plug on him faster than he did with izzy

also, kinda sick about hearing about smoltz. sorry.

seems like he keeps getting big rbi’s