El Zombi Birdos, 2011 Deadition

The whole bit about, “respecting the game by putting your absolute best team on the field,” and all that jazz.

The only problem with that is if you want to somehow ensure teams are putting their best team on the field at all times just to somehow make the stretch run even, then you’re also essentially telling those teams they’re not allowed to do what’s best for their teams because it somehow changes the dynamic of the rest of the league. If a team is out of contention, then calling up players for auditions and the like is quite possibly what will best serve them. You cannot remove a team’s option to act in its own best interests for the sake of propping up whatever notions of competition the others may be holding.

Or, if you’re arguing calling up more players gives the teams who do so an unfair advantage, then the logical step to be taken would be to call up more of your own players. There’s absolutely no prohibition against calling up a full fifteen extras for your own team. Arguing that calling up all those extra players is somehow unnecessary or damaging to your team but then crying foul when some other team does it on the basis it gives them an unfair advantage wouldn’t pass the logic test of a five year old.

I appreciate the attempt to get into someone else’s head, but as I said before I don’t think any of the arguments you can come up with are really defensible.

where you said ignore the fact the other team could get this advantage too… My apologies. Still, the mere fact you have to include this bizarre bit of thought process to make the argument make sense should quite clearly demonstrate it’s incredibly flawed thinking if that is, in fact, what the manager (or anyone else, for that matter), is thinking.

It’s not just the “fairness” angle. I think another argument that La Russa and his ilk would theoretically make is similar to the argument against expanding the playoffs. People talk about how adding wild cards teams makes the regular season “matter” less. They said the same thing about going from a strict pennant chase to a divisional system.
As the system is currently set up, you have roughly five months of baseball where rosters for each team are 25 players. Then the last month jumps to a different set up. The way people from this perspective see it, it’s making the normal 25 man competitive system “matter” less, and if you assume that the 25 roster form is “true” baseball, then all of a sudden we have a bizarro version of baseball for 1/6 of the season, and that 1/6 of the season counts quite a bit towards determining who makes the playoffs. Again, I’m not even talking about “fairness” in the sense of teams getting advantages against each other, I’m talking about the notion that there are almost two different seasons. There is the “regular” regular season of 25-man rosters, and then the “bizarro” regular season for one month with 25+ man rosters.
My guess is that La Russa would say, basically, “darn it, baseball playoffs should be determined by who manages and plays with what they are given at the beginning of the season (i.e. a 25-man roster) the way it used to be!”

[I have no clue when roster expansion began. I’m kind of reaching here]

Anyway, this is getting more subjective obviously.

Motte, Salas, Craig, Freese, and Descalso all performed in a way during their September callups that contributed to them and their relative low cost receiving roster spots in subsequent seasons.

have left you exhausted and slower on the Post button. You may need to lie down for a bit.

The full story is rarely reported in situations such as these. If we ever get the full story it won’t be for a couple of weeks if not until Spring Training when the Post-Dispatch publishes a story about how Holliday had been playing through a hand injury for weeks before cutting his season short.

2010 w. StL .218/.208/.232/.250 – wOBA .216

I hate that this team is making me long for the Feliz era.

what he said, basically

I’ve said before that Furcal could be the Berkman of 2012—one-year contract, excellent offensive production, relatively cheap. If the decision is to let Furcal play out 2011 as the everyday shortstop and sign him for 2012, I’m okay with that.

It is artificial to narrow it to a Furcal-or-Greene choice because Greene can play more than shortstop. One would think that if Greene factored into the 2012 plan in any way, he would at least have one start or even one plate appearance since his callup. I don’t think Greene is in the plans in any way, shape, or form. If he were, he’d have played somewhere and had the opportunity to hit.

Also, when the manager is sending up Corey Patterson to pinch hit in crucial situations it is tough to accept the “doing everything to win” rationale. Patterson batting, by definition, is not helping the team win. It’s a tremendous detriment to the team winning. As you also point out, Theriot and/or Schumaker playing second base isn’t doing all that much to help the team win, either. Furthermore, Delscalso over Freese at third doesn’t appear to help the club win; it’s probably a minor downgrade in winning capability.

You’re right to point out that circumstances change and the sweep of the Braves certainly gave the Cardinals a glimmer of postseason hope. Perhaps everything said about Greene getting playing time was premised on the assumption of being out of contention. Then again, it could also have all been lip service. It’s likely unknowable what the real plan ever was or how the Cardinals’ playoff chances affected the plan.

Whatever the original plan, the current one does not seem to involve getting Greene playing time anywhere.

As soon as I typed that I started wondering how we opened the season in interleague…

and hated Harry Bailey.