sat'day open thread

by lboros on Mar 10, 2007 9:26 AM EST in St. Louis Cardinals News

cards vs orioles today; gameday link is here. wainwright pitches, and adam kennedy is supposed to make his ST debut. it's on ktrs, and mlb.com's got the live audio feed.

also, a quick plug for the debut edition of "The Sports Report," SB Nation's new podcast, which will happen live tomorrow night at 7 pm central daylight time (don't forget to spring forward). access the show here. it'll be hosted by the writers for Stampede Blue, the network's indianapolis colts blog, and Mile High Report, which covers the broncos. a little more info:

The Sports Report is the official podcast of SB Nation, and it will happen live, allowing listeners to call-in or IM the hosts to discuss anything and everything sports related. The premiere episode is hosted by TheSportsGuru (John Bena of Mile High Report) and myself (BigBlueShoe of Stampede Blue). Our main topics will focus on NFL free agency, the Signature Pharmacy steriod scandal involving baseball and football, and the NCAA tournament. Guests on the show include Fooch from Niners Nation, the immortal Peter Bean of Burnt Orange Nation, and SkinsPatrol of Hogs Haven.

Moving forward, we will have two SB Nation podcasts a week. The show hosted by John and myself will cover all sports, but (because of where we reside) it will be more East Coast and Midwest centered. The other podcast, hosted by Raymond of Silver and Black Pride and David of Niner's Nation, will also cover sports in general, but will slant more to the West Coast. This way (unlike ESPN) we cover everything. Raymond and David are still developing their podcast, and we should get some info soon on when they will do their show.

i'll put a link up again monday once the 'cast is archived.

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Tomorrows game

is KSDK (local NBC) debut. Anyone know who is sched to pitch?

Cheers

by Alxfritz on Mar 10, 2007 12:57 PM EST reply actions

Carp

by liam on Mar 10, 2007 1:29 PM EST up reply actions

Atlanta Pitcher:

It looks like Kyle Davies is scheduled to pitch.

By the way, for any gameday audio listeners, mlb.com gives the Baltimore feed by default from the scoreboard page, but you can change to the KTRS broadcast.

by liam on Mar 10, 2007 2:17 PM EST up reply actions

Wainwright isn't getting anywhere near

the number of Ks that I would have expected this spring.

by azruavatar on Mar 10, 2007 1:54 PM EST reply actions

The difference between starting and relieving

I don't think its that big of a deal. When you are a reliever, you go as hard as you can go for that inning and try to strike out everyone. A starter has to save some in the tank and get groundballs. To determine Wainy's success you should look at his gb/fb ratio and his WHIP.

Remember Bull Durham and Crash Davis - "Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic."

I couldn't agree more.

by stl3bagger on Mar 10, 2007 2:07 PM EST up reply actions

groundballs are all well and good

but I'd like to see a somewhat healthy strikeout rate from Wainwright. He hasn't struck out anyone today.

If he can only get strikeouts when going full throttle than that doesn't bode well for him as a starter. Even if he only gets around 5K/9 that would be enough with groundball tendencies. He doesn't need Carp-like strikeout rates but he does need to be able to get someone out without having the ball put in play.

by azruavatar on Mar 10, 2007 2:20 PM EST up reply actions

Surprising, but not worrisome

He hasn't been in a situation where he needed to strike anyone out yet—RISP with less than two outs or some such. I don't think anyone's gotten past first on him yet, and he's erased a bunch of baserunners with the DP. Once he gets himself into a situation where he needs a K, it'll be reassuring to see if he can buckle a few knees and miss bats.

by liam on Mar 10, 2007 2:21 PM EST up reply actions

agreed

just surprising

by azruavatar on Mar 10, 2007 4:34 PM EST up reply actions

Fastballs vs Curveballs

I'd imagine Wainwright is pounding the zone with fastballs to build his arm strength and get by with fewer pitches. (I could be wrong, I'm not watching his starts or anything)

We already know Wainwright can get a strikeout when he needs one. Don't sweat his ST K-ratio.

by musial6 on Mar 10, 2007 6:32 PM EST up reply actions

Today's Repertoire

Wagonmaker told David Ginsburg of today's start:

I think it was just OK. My curveball was terrible today but my changeup was pretty good and my slider was all right.

by liam on Mar 10, 2007 6:35 PM EST up reply actions

I don't

really think it's a problem that wainright is showing us that he knows how to pitch

by The Butcher on Mar 10, 2007 4:21 PM EST reply actions

No argument there

But when looking over the stats so far for this Spring Training (1/3 of the way through ST), Wainy's lack of SO does sort of jump out at you.

His line so far this spring:
W L ERA G GS IP H R ER HR BB SO GO AO GO/AO WHIP OBA 2 0 0.00 3 3 11.2 5 0 0 0 4 2 16 16 1.13 0.77 .225

But even though it's early, you've GOT to like his performance so far, even with the odd lack of SO.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

by Mr Clean on Mar 10, 2007 5:12 PM EST up reply actions

Is it just me

Or is that G:F problematic w.r.t. the counts of GO and AO.

by liam on Mar 10, 2007 5:18 PM EST up reply actions

Well,

If you're talking about the 1.13 properly reflecting 16 GO and 16 AO (which would intuitively be a 1.00 GO/AO ratio), then I would add that there are probably two sacrifice hits in there. 18/16=1.13. The stats were from the official site, so I presumed they must know something I don't, like whether or not a sacrifice bunt officially counts under the GO stat. My guess was that it does not since it's not an official at bat, which would then make the 1.13 number accurate.

If you are merely reflecting that you would prefer a higher ground ball to fly ball ratio than that, then I would merely point out that Adam's MLB career GO/AO number is 1.28, so he's fairly close to that for such a small sample.

You probably meant the former, however.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

by Mr Clean on Mar 13, 2007 7:03 PM EDT up reply actions