too bad they couldn’t cash in that bit of luck in the 7th inning, ie the bases-loaded single that hit the baserunner; you don’t get many gifts like that in a season. if it goes through, the reds probably go ahead by 3 or 4 and the game’s over. alas, the LOB curse that houstoncardinal wrote about sunday got in the way again --- cards left 10 men on and had their own bases-loaded misadventure, back in the 3d inning. that’s where they lost the game. although the score was 4-0 at that point, arroyo was hardly looking sharp --- 5 of the first 12 men he faced had reached base, he wasn’t keeping the ball down, wasn’t hitting corners. he was ripe. duncan hits arroyo pretty well -- .313 career average / .625 slugging coming into the game --- and he singled in his first at-bat. here’s how arroyo pitched him in the key 3d-inning at-bat:

in, in, and in. similar pattern when duncan came up in the 5th with pujols on first ---

and the last out of the game, against cordero (again with a man on), came on a fastball in on the hands. is everybody pitching duncan this way? and if they are, am i the last one to notice? [UPDATE: apparently i am the last to notice --- or at least, not the first; azruavatar posted on this very same subject (ie, duncan getting busted inside) a couple weeks ago --- gameday screen capture and everything. . . . ]

anyway, back to the 3d inning --- duncan popped out and dimmed the prospects for the rally; they scratched out a run on glaus’s walk, but that’s a weak return on a one-out, sacks-jammed opportunity with the 4/5 hitters at bat against a laboring pitcher. even a single by duncan (or glaus, for that matter) makes it a different game; an extra-base blow and the cards have a good shot to come back and win that game.

ryan ludwick batted leadoff last night, as a few people on this board have been suggesting since spring training; the one-game returns weren’t positive, which doesn't mean anything; i’ll credit la russa for thinking unconventionally and batting ludwick there instead of going with a more orthodox leadoff type like izturis or kennedy. it's an interesting experiment, and on a team such as this i'm in favor of experimentation. but in my opinion they've got another leadoff-man experiment that's working out so far --- schumaker and barton. those two have occupied the leadoff slot in 25 of the 27 games to date, and cardinal leadoff men rank first in the league in runs and walks and 3d in obp.

wellemeyer kept the ball in the park for only the second time all year. interesting split --- in his three starts at home this year, he has yielded 22 fly balls and only 1 homer; on the road, 21 fly balls and 5 homers. not drawing any conclusions from that, but keeping my eye on it. as long as wellemeyer keeps throwing strikes, i’m fine with him staying in the rotation. last night he only walked 2 men last night and threw nearly 70 percent of his pitches for strikes, and he continues to miss bats (11 swinging strikes last night). what the hell; leave him out there and see if he can keep it up. but now here’s the irony: the stated rationale for using wellemeyer in the rotation was that the cardinals won all but one of his starts last year. i thought that was a dumb reason, as the w-l had less to do with wellemeyer than with his teammates. but now wellemeyer’s actually showing signs of being a decent power pitcher ---- striking a lot of guys out (he ranks 3d in the nl in strikeouts as of this morning, and 5th in k/9) and keeping them off the basepaths --- but the team’s only 3-3 in his starts. with mulder’s return looming, the colonel’s hold on a rotation slot remains pretty dicey.

gotta keep it short today. it’s a year since josh hancock’s fatal accident, a fitting time to remember him and think about the circumstances of his death.

the entire SB Nation network was down for 7 hours yesterday; i picture cables unraveling, servers liquifying, IT dudes fanning the smoke and flame away as they peer into their flat screens. the source of the problem, we are told, was "bad RAM" ---- just installed a few days ago. this is extremely rare and therefore was only discovered via a painstaking process of elimination --- ie, after nearly every other possible cause for the outage was investigated. that’s why the system was down for so long.

we’re cautioned that the server might still get balky today when normal network traffic ramps up. so if the site goes down again today --- or if it should ever go down for any length of time at any point in the future --- i’ll use the VEB page on facebook as a channel to keep everyone updated re the tech situation. the page is easy to find --- just type "Viva El Birdos" into the facebook search bar. i’ll write on the wall there and share whatever information i have.

my apologies to everybody for the long outage.

although we didn’t have a game thread last night, i kept picking up telepathic signals throughout the evening and jotting them down. so here they are --- an abbreviated game thread for last night’s 7-4 loss:

GAME 22 OPEN THREAD: APRIL 23, 2008

ryan’s not starting tonight? TONY!
way to get us started schu.
troy!
kennedy got another hit? mercy.
and miles kills the rally.
     ryan drives in the runs there. no question about it.
attaboy, welley!
9 up, 9 down.
     don’t jinx it.
           too late --- there’s the basehit.
                 nice going, loudmouth.
there goes the shutout.
c’mon welley, bear down.
we need some more runs.
crap --- tie game.
c’mon albert!
crap.
when was our last base hit anyway?
fourth inning.
another hit for kennedy? i can’t believe it.
     . . . . . and he’s caught stealing. never mind.
here comes reyes.
come on anthony!
what the hell was THAT??
     second baseman’s supposed to be covering.
           yeah, but where was he throwing it?
                 ryan would have caught it.
come on anthony, shake it off.
uh oh. there goes his trade value.
time to bring up mark worrell.
that was depressing.
we suck.
it was la russa’s fault.
late, everybody.

regarding reyes’ errant throw in the 8th, it sounds like he was a tad jumpy. he told the p-d: "I turned around a little too quick and thought somebody would be there. I was just hoping that it would get to him." very costly mistake, and the string of two-out hits that ensued was all too reminiscent of reyes v2007. but i can’t pin the loss entirely on him. the cardinal bats fell asleep after the first inning, putting just 7 men on base after the 4-inning rally. the at-bat that really hurt, imho, was duncan’s in the second inning. the cards had 2 on and 1 out; they’d put 8 of their first 12 men on base against snell and were poised to drive him out of the game. snell threw him a slider at the ankles on the first pitch, and duncan chased it ---- i often defend first-pitch swinging on this board, but that was the type of hack that gives first-pitch swinging a bad name; if it’s not a pitch you can drive, let it go. i suppose duncan might have been looking for a fastball in and got fooled; snell had thrown him 4 fastballs in his previous at-bat. then again, maybe chris was just overeager and took a bad swing. in any case, he swung and missed at a pitch that should have been ball 1; then he chased a borderline fastball on the second pitch and grounded into a double play, getting snell out of trouble. what might have been a fatal inning for snell ended up being a 7-pitch picnic; he cruised thereafter.

i thought the sb attempt by kennedy in the 8th inning was a good call --- sensible time to try a one-run strategy. it was late in a tie game, so they didn’t really need to play for the big inning --- one run probably wins it. and the hitters due up (pitcher, then miles, then schu, then ankiel) weren’t likely to put together a big inning anyway. so the cost of a CS was lower than usual, whereas the reward of a successful steal was higher than usual --- it’d get the go-ahead run to 2d with nobody out, and he probably would’ve scored. the pittsburgh infielders were all in motion, playing for the bunt, and the catcher (doumit) is really an outfielder; he’d only thrown out 1 of 8 basestealers in 2008 prior to kennedy’s attempt and nailed just 22 percent of baserunners in limited duty behind the plate last year . . . . all around, the attempted sb was a good percentage play. it took a very good throw, which doumit made, and the play was very close (i couldn’t say for sure he was really out).

before i sign off, i have to call everyone’s attention to the 1986 replay over at the sporting news. they’ve been dutifully simming over there for almost 6 months; the season is almost complete, and deadspin’s will leitch has miraculously skippered the cardinals to the brink of a division title: they lead the mets by a game with 10 left to play. in real life, you may recall, the 1986 cards finished 28.5 games behind new york; in the fantasy world, the cards went into shea a few days ago and swept a two-game series (winning both by 1 run) to open up a 2-game lead. last night they took a 3-2 lead into the 9th against the phillies, but ray soff (???) blew the save.

remember, everyone ---- head to facebook if the server ever bombs again.

Lincecum	Piñeiro
2-0, 2.25	0-1, 14.73

First off, I want to thank Lboros for covering for me on Wednesday.  I greatly appreciate the helping hand, Lb.  You made a very difficult time a little bit easier to bear. 

Tremendous win last night by the Cardinals.  The offense put together it's biggest inning of the year so far, the six run fourth, it's biggest run total at 11, and the largest margin of victory so far.  All of this against one of the best young pitchers in the game today. 

The real key to this game, and, in my ever so humble opinion, the key going forward, was the performance of the top of the lineup.  The top two hitters last night, Skip Schumaker and Chris Duncan, respectively, combined to go 4 for 7 with three walks.  Between the two of them, they got on base ahead of Albert and the middle of the lineup seven times.  Duncan hit a homer and a double, driving in two.  Schumaker drove in a pair as well with a two run single in the fourth that continued the inning.  Even more remarkable than the run production from those two spots was the runs scored.  The two of them combined to score six, count 'em, six times. 

There's been a ton of talk recently about trying to find some better protection for Albert in the lineup, and most of it has focused, naturally, on the cleanup position.  To me, though, the first two spots in the lineup represent the only real chance the Cardinals have to get that protection for Albert.  There is no hitter in baseball that's going to force opposing pitchers to pitch to Albert.  Runners on base ahead of him, though, will.  The top two spots in this lineup are far more important to whether or not Albert will see any pitches to hit than the hitters behind him, in my opinion.  As long as those two can continue to get on base, teams will be forced to try and get Albert out.  We saw firsthand last night what sorts of results we can expect in those cases. 

There is, however, a downside to the performance of those two outfielders last night, though, particularly Duncan.  As long as they keep producing, it makes it much harder for me to complain that Crab Man should be getting more playing time.  This puts me in a bind, as I happen to be a huge backer of Mr. Barton.  It's a very trying situation, you know, whenever reality interferes with your personal preferences.  Sigh...

As impressive as the offense was, I was personally more astounded by the performance of Wellemeyer.  I've been a very vocal critic in the past of Welley in the rotation, but I've been mostly won over.  I say mostly because I still fear he isn't able to give consistent six plus inning performances, and I worry about the burden on the pen, probably more than I really should.  Last night, though, Wellemeyer turned in probably the best start of his career, and one of the two or three best starts we've seen from a Cardinal hurler this season. 

In his seven innings of work, Wellemeyer gave only one run on four hits, (the run scoring hit, of course, being an infield single off of his- ahem- lower back type region area) with six strikeouts to two walks.  Those last numbers, to me, represent the really important statistic to look at here. 

With the addition of those numbers, Wellemeyer now has 26 strikeouts to only 9 walks, in 25 innings of work.  That's almost exactly in line with his 3:1 K/BB ratio from last night's game.  The knock on Wellemeyer, of course, has always been his elevated walk numbers and high pitch counts.  If this is a genuine improvement, (and obviously, the sample size isn't large enough to determine a whole lot, but it is getting close to being at least significant) then suddenly Wellemeyer isn't a serviceable starter, but a potential front half of the rotation starter.  I'm not sure how this has happened, and I don't know if it's sustainable, but I'm hoping. 

Last night, he was about as efficient as you can possibly imagine he ever will be.  He threw 107 pitches, 72 for strikes.  He struck out six, got seven groundball outs, eight fly outs.  Anytime you see a strike to ball ratio of better than 2:1, you have to take notice.  Wellemeyer, in addition to being efficient and aggressive, was throwing gas last night.  Going by the Pitchf/x data, (and I'm just getting used to using it, so bear with me if I'm not quite right) he was averaging 93.7 mph on his fastball, with a high of 95.5.  For a starter, that's an incredible combination of velocity and control. 

All of this, of course, really begs the question: what happens to Wellemeyer next?  When Mark Mulder comes back, which should be in about three weeks, he's expected to slide into the rotation.  Wainwright's rotation spot is secure, along with Looper.  Kyle Lohse has obviously done nothing to pitch his way out of the rotation.  Pineiro was resigned just this past offseason, to a two year deal.  He signed with the Cardinals specifically because they guaranteed him a spot starting, so I imagine they would be loathe to move him to the bullpen, even on a temporary basis.  So where exactly does the team go with Welley?  He has better raw stuff than any pitcher on the staff outside of Adam Wainwright, (and that's a close call) and, possibly Anthony Reyes, he's striking out hitters at a rate of better than one per inning, and, most importantly, he's maintaining a K/BB ratio of almost 3:1.  Yet, because of the roster numbers, he may face losing his spot in the rotation. 

I know it's still a ways off, so why don't I just table the question until it actually comes up, right?  Well, I ask because we've already seen one starter bumped for a returning pitcher in Brad Thompson, who now faces an additional crisis with the impending return of Russ Springer.  The decision on what to do with Wellemeyer and the other starters will be here much quicker than we realise, and with the way Welley has pitched so far this year, it could end up being a very significant decision. 

So, a couple of points to discuss this morning. 

One, what do you do with the looming roster crunch?  If all remains equal as it does today, (which I know will not happen, but still) who loses their spot?  Should anyone? 

Two, what have you been most surprised by this season so far?  Pleasant or unpleasant, either way.  My personal surprises have been the aforementioned Messrs. Wellemeyer and Schumaker.  Wellemeyer has improved in the one area that always kept him back, and Skippy appears, at least to my eyes, to have become a viable major league hitter.  It may still be early, but Skip has passed every test presented to him so far with flying colours, and I don't see any major weaknesses in his game to really hinder him.  I freely admit, I never saw it coming.  Reyes has been a pleasant surprise also, but I actually always believed in him.  The other two, not so much. 

Three, in last night's overflow thread, there was a bit of discussion of what theme song would best embody the glory that is the Cardinals' mulletted backup catcher, Jason LaRue.  There were many suggestions, with Def Leppard receiving some shoutouts, (or should that be shouts out?  I'm not very good with the modern vernacular...) Ratt's "Round and Round" coming up, and Styx getting some love.  I want you to give me LaRue's perfect theme song, and any song you desperately want to see used by a player, be it a batter or a reliever.  For LaRue, I nominate Foreigner's "Dirty White Boy" or, even better, pretty much anything from the Red Rocker, St. Louis favourite Sammy Hagar.  I think something from the Hagar catalogue would be particularly good; he's a beloved icon here in the Lou, especially among those who sport facial hair of a similar bent to LaRue's own, he's already associated with red, so there's a nice Cardinal tie in... I think it's a match made in heaven.  What do you guys think? 

One last thing: also from the overflow last night, Mr. Redbird referred to Troy Glaus as "Santa Glaus."  I don't know if this is the first time he's been called as such here; it's the first I've noticed.  Anyhow, I vote that we make Santa Glaus the official VEB nickname for Troy.  I think maybe a really great nickname is just what he needs to get going.  What say you, denizens of El Vivi Birders? 

That's all I got.  It was too good of a game to really complain much, so let's just bask a little bit.  Reality will kick in soon enough, right about the time Tim Lincecum goes into that ridiculous windup of his and blows the first fastball past our leadoff hitter.  Good luck, boys.  You're probably going to need it. 

Later, everybody.