Game 12 Open Thread: April 16, 2007

I like Reyes, he seems like a nice kid and a decent pitcher, but take away two of his MLB starts and... well... he still has something to prove. Go out and earn your job, Anthony.

Moving the new, work fast, pound the bottom of the zone Looper to a set-up role or even a closers role in the pen would make sense. the guy, for the first time in his pro career, has learned to pitch. And he looks effective and confident.

most of the best teams in baseball right now are built on young pitching. look at the 4 lcs participants of last season: athletics, tigers, mets, and cardinals. the a's and tigers have their young pitchers in place, and the mets and cards are both moving in that direction. notice how even the spendalot new york teams passed on overpriced veterans this winter? they're filling their rotation holes with cheap youngsters like wang, maine, pelfrey, and hughes. the chisox dumped one big contract (garcia) for cheap young arms, and they're going to let buerhle go too; they're putting their future into the hands of gio gonzalez, john danks, and gavin floyd. the angels will sink or swim with saunders and santana and weaver the younger.

all the smart and successful organizations are moving in that direction, and it's the way the cardinals have to move if they're going to keep up. anthony reyes can help them get there ---- the organization needs create the conditions in which he can succeed.

trapping him behind looper and mulder is not the way to get there.

and nobody's suggesting tony / dave should be fired --- no matter what happens with reyes. but they are not infallible.

1. not sure to what extent the coaches won the world series. i think the players, particularly the pitching staff, had quite a lot to do with it.
2. one of those pitchers was, in fact, anthony reyes, who pitched eight superb innings to win game 1.
3. many people, here and elsewhere, have noticed that tlr seems to develop emotional affinities for certain players (e.g., so taguchi) and disdain for others (e.g., anthony reyes) that appear not to make sense based on the numbers. doesn't mean there's not some other basis for them, but just not by the numbers. and this frustrates people who would make different personnel/playing-time decisions (e.g., demote/cut so, stop jerking reyes around/making him insecure in his rotation spot).
4. reyes was a stellar pitcher in the minors throwing a four-seam fastball; duncan has more or less required him to learn a two-seamer as a prerequisite for making the rotation; the process of learning and incorporating the two-seamer has coincided with reyes struggling more than some people expected, leading them to believe the addition of the two-seamer has hurt reyes' progress rather than helped.
5. pointing out 3 and 4 does not really make anyone an "apologist," and certainly not a "conspiracy theorist."

that actually doesn't look as good as i thought it was going to before i started. the bottom of the bottom half of the order still looks awful. helpful to remember that by moving eck down (which i don't think there's any question would be the right move in this case) adds 25 points of OBP to the leadoff spot (and 100 points of SLG).

ichiro's ops is only about .800, but that's a moderate improvement over instant breakfast, and his defense would be better as well.

Reyes still has some development time and huge upside. He's only been in the system three years.

Ichiro's going to test free agency this coming winter.

Reyes is just sucking REALLY REALLY bad.  Pathetic is the word that comes to mind.

He's let loose with it this inning and looked a lot better.

Seems like he expects hitter to just swing at whatever he throws up there and they are not in the least bit fooled this year.

Scouting report is out: Be patient.

"man, those are some unlucky bums."

Cazana!  At least when he strikes out he knocks the catcher down.

I have no problem with using Skip there. He hit a nice line drive in his last AB. It sucks that he couldn't get the job done there.

And Rodriguez hasn't had a hit since April 8th.

A hit and a walk, and it gives Duncan a chance to do something.

And Saloman Torres has had issues with the Cardinals this year.

It probably wouldn't have been a close play--can't expect Paulino to screw up the same play twice within a week's time.