boyer (5) v flood (12)
the tournament's lack of a defense component is nowhere more glaring than in this matchup, which pits two of the best glovemen in franchise history. both were infielders in the minors whom the cardinals shifted to centerfield as young major leaguers. boyer made the transition in 1957, but it didn't take; he returned to 3d bag the next year and newly acquired curt flood, age 20, took over in center. the modest, even-keeled boyer (a missouri native) embodied the midwestern mystique, if there is such a thing --- very high substance-to-style ratio. flood, the first player bing devine ever traded for, was big on substance too, a transformational figure long before he challenged the reserve clause: he was, unless i'm mistaken, the first african-american to play on an everyday basis in st louis, the city that had given jackie robinson so much grief 10 years earlier. the year after flood joined the cardinals, bill white arrived, and julio gotay and lou brock and the latin american julian javier soon followed (along with a pitcher named gibson).

i got to see flood play in his last season as a cardinal (i was 6 years old); boyer i knew as the guy who preceded whitey herzog as the st louis manager. these two players were teammates for eight years and won a world championship together; both of them died too young. the lineups:

hit "read more" to get to the games . . . . and follow all the tournament action at cardinal70's tournament page.

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we got 57 responses in the rolen community projection. results:

oy. looks like i should have made playing time a variable after all. PECOTA and ZIPS both expect rolen to miss significant time in 2006, and a number of you expressed doubt that rolen would amass the 650 plate appearances i postulated for this exercise. i'll grant that 650 plate appearances may be unrealistically high -- but the numbers offered by ZIPS and PECOTA strike me as unrealistically low. in 9 big league seasons, rolen has failed to reach 500 plate appearances only once -- last year. his career average over those 9 seasons, including 2005, is 578 plate appearances; exclude last season and he has averaged 622 pa / year for his career. (the foregoing calculations exclude the 1996 season, when rolen wasn't called up until august 1.) for the four seasons prior to last year (ie, 2001 thru 2004) rolen averaged 642 plate appearances.

there's no reason he can't return to that level if the shoulder is sound; he's still only 31 years old. and if he's healthy enough to post a .906 ops, as ZIPS projects -- 16 points higher than rolen's career ops -- then it makes no sense to me that he would be limited to 500 plate appearances. a .906 ops means the shoulder has completely healed, in which case scottie will be out there every day. PECOTA's projection is more internally consistent in that regard, as it postulates a diminished level of ability -- .833 ops, 57 points below his career avg -- along with the diminished playing time. if the shoulder is preventing rolen from being rolen, that would explain why he might miss about a third of the season.

because the projected playing times are so disparate among these three models, i'm going to bring them into synch by pro-rating each batting line to 550 plate appearances. apples to apples and all that. here we go:

that's more like it. the VEB projection no longer looms as pie-in-the-sky optimism; on the contrary, our numbers come in remarkably close to ZIPS's (just as spot-on as we were with edmonds) and only slightly higher than PECOTA's. even those of you who were dubious of the 650 pa standard calibrated your projections appropriately.

you guys are good.

let's play around with these numbers some more; it's february and there's nothing else to do. if rolen meets the performance projected here, how much of a boost will the cardinal offense receive? let's keep him at 550 plate appearances and give the other 150 or so plate appearances to deivi cruz. ZIPS puts deivi at .270 / .299 / .384; PECOTA's got him at .272 / .306 / .383. roll 150 units of that in with 550 units of rolen's projected line, and you get a cumulative .277 / .359 / 478 -- a 130-point boost in ops over last year's third basemen:

last year's third basemen -- nunez, rolen, mabry, seabol, and luna -- created 74 runs as a group, or 4.6 runs per 27 outs. our roughed-out tandem projection for rolen/cruz yields 105 runs created, or 6.4 runs per 27 outs. so we'd be talking about a 30-run improvement at the position, roughly 3 to 4 wins in the standings -- enough of a boost to offset (or at least minimize) the impact of any decreased production at the corner outfield positions.

may it come to pass.

i'm taking a poll to determine the subject of our next community projection -- see the right-hand sidebar.

i never have been a huge fan of interleague play. well, let me rephrase that: i have always considered interleague play a cheap gimmick the owners foisted upon their fans in the wake of the strike. it pollutes the playoff races, and it introduces a misplaced "big-game" mentality into the regular season. we're supposed to place great emphasis on this week's series against the boxos and yanks, as if winning them somehow means more than winning a series against, say, the dodgers or the braves. the only "big games" i care about this year are the ones against the cubs; and the next of those is still six weeks off.

there is only one interesting thing about this week's irregular matchups: edgar renteria's return to busch stadium. it's a big enough event that this morning's p-d had not just one but two articles on the subject -- both of them urging open arms and a show of appreciation toward a player whose departure injured many feelings in cardinal nation. all spring that chat rooms and sportstalk airwaves, edgar's struggles in boston have been discussed in tones of smirking satisfaction; his pain is bringing a lot of cardinal fans pleasure. even TLR has voiced opinions on the subject, drawing return fire from herr von schilling.

a petty spectacle all around, and one that does not reflect well on the so-called best fans in baseball. unfortunately, we've seen this before -- long ago, in 1982, when ex-card ss garry templeton first appeared at busch in a road uniform. templeton spent five and a half seasons (1976-1981) as the stl shortstop and was arguably the most exciting one in franchise history up to that point. debuting with the cardinals at the age of 20, he .305 over the next 5-plus seasons, stole 138 bases, led the league in hits once and triples three times, and appeared on two all-star teams. he had extraordinary range and a rocket arm and phenomenal speed; at the time he left the cardinals he was very well positioned to reach 3,000 career hits -- 911 on the books already at the age of 25.

the kid was a potential hall-of-famer, in other words. but he was dumb and immature, and an obscene gesture directed toward the box seats in late 1981 sealed his doom in st louis. whitey herzog literally banished him from the team for nearly a month, then traded him in the offseason to the padres for ozzie smith. a lot of st louisans hated the trade; smith was a career .231 hitter with absolutely no extra-base pop. but he got off to a fast start in 1982, and so did the cardinals -- by the end of may they were 12 games over .500 and 2.5 games ahead of the field in the nl east. this was heady territory for a city that hadn't whiffed the postseason in fourteen years; our honeymoon with "whiteyball" was in full flower, and particularly with its signature practitioner, osborne earl smith. and we'd thought our old shortstop was a great player? hah! how cheap and unhealthy and childish that old infatuation now seemed. that was mere puppy love; this was the real thing. garry was a boy; ozzie a real man.

we let them both know it when templeton and the padres came to busch on friday night, may 28, 1982. when templeton came up in the top of the first, batting third (and hitting just .246), we flung ugly boos at him like peasants at a stoning -- likewise our malignant cheers when templeton flied out to right to end a 1-2-3 first. ozzie was the very next hitter, leading off the bottom of the first (and hitting .279), and on him we showered glowing cheers of unconditional embrace. there was a flash of anticipation when he bounced it to templeton -- maybe he'll boot it! -- then another ovation for ozzie as he trotted back to the dugout. we punished templeton with more boo-bombs when he led off the fourth inning; he smashed one up the middle of the infield, but ozzie laid himself out to his left and gloved the ball, popped up from his belly and threw templeton out by a step. when the ump punched him out, you'd have thought the cards had just won the world series, so delirious and loud and long did we roar our approval. the ovation lasted into the next at-bat and eventually morphed into a chant i had never heard before -- for all i know it was born that very night: oz-zie! oz-zie! oz-zie! the game itself (which the cards led 1-0 at the time) was completely forgotten; things had gotten personal, and we were reveling in it. oz-zie! oz-zie! oz-zie! -- take that, templeton!

the cards won the game 5-2; both shortstops went 0 for 4. the next night templeton reached on a force in the top of the first, stole a base, and scored on a single; he later doubled home a run, and the padres won 4-2. on sunday the padres took a 1-0 lead and held it when lonnie smith drew a walk with one out in the bottom of the fifth. the san diego pitcher, tim lollar, caught him leaning and threw it to first baseman gene richards, who wheeled and fired it to templeton as lonnie bore down on second base. ball and baserunner converged, and something went amiss; the throw struck templeton flush in the face and bounced away into the outfield. smith ended up on 3d base, templeton prone at his position; he left the game and was replaced by mario ramirez.

i wasn't there, so i don't know how the stadium felt. i would imagine there was some initial glee over the misplay and the humiliation of the now-despised templeton; then a hush as it dawned on the crowd that the injury might be serious; and then, i would guess, relieved applause as he walked off the field. must have been a chastening moment for those in attendance -- one moment wishing every ill upon templeton, the next moment horrified to see the wish come true. and to see their petty hatreds so starkly exposed.

this turned out to be a memorable game for other reasons: the cards tied it at 3-3 with three runs in the 9th, fell behind 5-3 in the top of the 10th, opened the bottom half with a couple of outs, then proceeded to win the game by going single-double-single-hbp-single. a second straight three-run rally and a series win. templeton's hurt proved not to be serious; he started the next day at wrigley and went 3 for 5 with 2 doubles. but he never fulfilled the promise of his stl youth; he regressed as a hitter and batted just .250 in the last ten years of his career. if you had asked me on may 28, 1982, if such would be a fitting trajectory for garry templeton's career, i would have said it was too good for the son of a bitch . . . . . but if you ask me today, i say it's a shame things didn't work out better for him. and a shame, too, that i and the other fans at busch on may 28, 1982, couldn't have welcomed him back with a little more class.

tonight's crowd will have a chance to show edgar that st louis fans really are the best in baseball.