I am not sure if El Hombre is eligible to return to the lineup on 6/25 or 6/26, but his activation will bring some interesting decisions along with it.  First, if he is activated on schedule there will be either three or four DH games left, so the roster mix will probably stay at 13 pitchers.  The easy move would be just to send down the current occupant of the Reyes/Thompson/Parisi spot, but that is unlikely unless the pitching staff really performs well on the trip.  More likely is that Boston and Detroit will beat the staff up pretty good and we will need all the bodies, especially if the Colonel (who clearly should have been disabled) is unavailable. 

 

If no pitchers are sent out or disabled when EH returns then a position player would have to be taken off the active roster.  Barring a dramatic change in performance, the sensible choice is to send Chris Duncan back to Memphis in hopes that he will eventually get his stroke figured out.  However, since it really made no sense that Duncan was brought up when EH got hurt, it is unlikely the sensible move will be made.  So far, Duncan has hit .161/.188/.161/.349 (yes, that’s a .349 OPS) since his return from Memphis.  Only 32 PAs, but pretty evident he needs to continue to play everyday in hope of finding something.  I wish I had some inkling that there was some sort of physical problem, ‘cause his continuing struggles are making me lose hope that he will turn around.  SleepyCA, I know you are optimistic on Duncan, give me some reason to be. 

 

If the sensible move isn’t taken and Duncan (plus 13 pitchers) stay on the roster then there only seem to be four options, starting with my favorite:

 

• DFA Kennedy and go with three MIs, then give Barden a shot when we go back to playing real baseball again.
• Make some sort of trade that creates an everyday starter at one of the MI positions or in LF
• Ship Barton back to Cleveland
• DL someone (Barton, maybe?)

 

I think the action taken will show us a little bit about who is really making the decisions on this team.  It is looking more like TLR is in charge, but maybe Mo will surprise me and insist Duncan return to Memphis. 

 

If Duncan stays it is pretty safe his tour of duty at 1B is over, so how much does he play and at whose expense?  Does Ank the Crank become less than a regular?  Does Lud the Stud get the platoon treatment again?  Does Skip and his .949 OPS over the last 28 days lose some ABs?  Do we go with small sample size “matchups” to determine playing time?

 

Come on, MO, show me you have an option I haven’t considered! 

I have decided to switch gears prior to draft day and attempt to analyze where the best hitters come from.  To that end, my methodology is pretty similar to how I analyzed the sourcing of the best pitchers.  I have gone back to baseball-reference.com and looked at their career active leaders in OPS.  I did a quick sanity check with adjusted OPS+ and the numbers were very similar so I stuck with OPS. 

 

To start with, I compiled a list of all active major leaguers with at least 3000 PAs and a career OPS over .850.  There are 37 players who meet these criteria and most of them are the ones you would expect to see.  Given that there are probably about seven true regulars on each team, for a total of 210 players, this list represents about the top 15%.  I should note that I have included Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, and Sammy Sosa as B-R still has them active on their list. 

 

The general breakdown is as follows:

 

High school draft picks              16        43.2%

College draft picks                    12        32.4%

Amateur fee aents                       8        21.6%

Junior College draft pick             1          2.7%

 

What really jumps out more than the source of these players is their draft position.  Nine of the twelve college picks were taken in the first round, with one other player taken in the second round.  Of the nine taken in the first round, seven were taken in the top ten picks and the latest one was at number 16.  Five of the top seven career OPS players were college picks with four of them having been taken in the first round.  The only exceptions in the top seven were Albert Pujols (at number 2 with a sweet 1.045 career number) and Manny Ramirez.  Six of the top seven high school picks were also first rounders.  Of the ten active drafted players with career OPS over .950, eight were number one draft picks.  Fifteen of the twenty-eight  (53.6%) players on the list who were actually drafted were taken in the first round and all fifteen were taken in the top 16 picks.  

 

There has been a lot of casual talk on the board about not picking players who can only play first base because Albert is going to be at that spot for a very long time.  I love Albert, and I hope he finishes the career with the Cardinals, but we need to be looking at first basemen anyway.  8 of the top 13 on the list are first basemen, with the lowest one having an OPS of .928.  If a guy can rake like that we can find a place for him or trade him for quality.

 

I didn’t want to overlook the table setters, so I cross-compared the OPS leaders with the OBP leaders.  There was not a whole lot of difference as only six players made the OBP list that were not on the OPS list.  They were:  Derek Jeter, Ichiro Suzuki, Jason Kendall, Kenny Lofton, Luis Castillo, and Luis Gonzalez.  They don’t really affect the sourcing numbers as they were divided evenly between college pick, high school pick, and amateur free agent.

 

I also did a top five OPS list for each defensive position with the average for the top five listed next to the position designation.  I have included ARod as a shortstop and tried to include players based on where they have played the most games.  I also included six second basemen as Hudson and Giles are nearly even and I am not sure whether Giles is really active or not:

 

First Base         0.997

Pujols               1.045

Helton              1.008

Berkman          0.983

Thomas            0.979

Thome              0.968

 

Left Field          0.941

Bonds              1.051

Ramirez            0.999

Dunn                0.902

Alou                 0.885

Klesko             0.870

 

Right Field        0.919

Guerrero          0.963

Giles                 0.918

Sheffield           0.915

Abreu               0.906

Ordonez           0.894

 

Third Base        0.888

Jones                0.955

Cabrera            0.922

Rolen               0.878

Glaus                0.855

Chavez             0.832

 

Shortstop         0.866

Rodriguez         0.966

Garciaparra      0.889

Jeter                 0.847

Tejada              0.820

Guillen              0.809

 

Center Field     0.864  

Griffey              0.923

Edmonds          0.903

Beltran             0.849

Jones                0.833

Rowand           0.815

 

Catcher            0.836

Piazza               0.922

Posada             0.859

Rodriguez         0.816

Varitek             0.798

Lieberthal         0.783

 

Second Base    0.800

Kent                 0.858

Vidro               0.810

Durham            0.786

Walker             0.783

Giles                 0.782

Hudson            0.781

 

As a final note, the Cardinals have drafted two of the 37 players listed – El Hombre and J.D. Drew.  The Astros have the most players with 4 and the Indians, Mariners, and Yankees each signed three.  Conspicous in their absence are the Cubbies, Giants, and Mets. 

 

I would be interested in your conclusions here.  It seems to be that hitters are easier to project than pitchers with a slight advantage to high school players. However, three of the top four high school players were the first overall draft pick, so obvious talents like Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey, and Chipper Jones probably skew the numbers a bit.

The Cardinals have the 13th overall pick in the MLB draft and have stated they are leaning in the direction of drafting a college pitcher.  Mildly surprising, given the pretty sorry organizational track record of drafting college pitchers in round 1, but given the overall improvement in the last few drafts I am on board with whatever the team wants to do.  Just get us a good pitcher who maybe can be a top half of the rotation starter and maybe throws left-handed.

 

My interest isn’t so much in speculating on who they should take as it is on what strategies seem to offer the best payback.  A very small number of you may recall the discussion last December that tried to analyze where the very best pitchers come from.  I took a look at all active MLB starting pitchers with at least 1000 IPs and an ERA+ of greater than 110.  It turns out that 55% of those pitchers were drafted out of high school, while only 24% were drafted out of college.  The remaining 21% were amateur free agents from various foreign countries. If you want to revisit the post here is the (ugly) link:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2007/12/11/13108/090#1380152

 

 

It seems like if you are going to draft a pitcher in the first round your goal should be to find one who will be a superior starting pitcher or a dominating closer a la Chris Perez (college pitcher taken in the supplemental round).  My previous study, by virtue of the fact that I was looking for guys with long track records of success, seems a bit dated so I decided to review this topic from a different angle. 

 

I have endeavored to get a view of the success of college draftees vs. high schoolers with an eye toward younger pitchers.  So I decided to look at pitchers who should be 22-26 years old and compare their success rates based on whether they went into pro ball out of high school or after the college experience.  I haven’t made an effort to verify the ages of the pitchers in question, but have tracked the high school graduating classes of 2000-2004 (more or less).  My assumption is that 1st round picks from college are generally three years removed from high school.  To that end I have identified all the college pitchers drafted in the top 30 picks in the 2003-2007 drafts and the high schoolers selected and signed from the 2000-2004 drafts.  This allows us to compare essentially the same “crop” of players.

 

I have tried to rate the two populations based on current competitive level.  I have totally arbitrarily assigned a point value of:

 

0                    no longer in professional baseball

1                    A ball

2                    Advanced A ball

3                    AA ball

4                    AAA ball

5                    MLB

 

If a prospect has reached the big leagues, then I have further rated the draft class by the number of MLB wins it has accumulated. 

 

Of the kids that graduated HS in 2004, only one pitcher has reached the big leagues (Phillip Hughes) and he has yet to win a game.  There were nine college pitchers taken in the 2007 draft and 7 HS pitchers taken in the 2004 draft.  The college guys have an average level of 2.22, or slightly above Advanced A ball, while the HS guys have a rating of 3.14 or slightly above AA ball.  The best college prospects are probably David Price of Vanderbilt who has yet to throw a professional inning and either Casey Weathers or Donald Simmons who are both doing well at AA.  The best HS prospects are probably the aforementioned Phillip Hughes and Cincinnati’s Homer Bailey.  Seneca, MOs Scott Elbert would probably get a mention here if not for shoulder surgery.

 

The 2003 high school graduates are far more heavily represented in the college selections from the 2006 draft (12) than the high schoolers who signed in 2003 (3).  The rating system yields a 3.75 total, nearly AAA, for the college kids and a 3.00 for the HS kids.  This is somewhat deceiving as 2 of the 3 HSers drafted, John Danks and Chad Billingsley, have already made it to the big leagues while the other draftee is Jeff Allison.  Allison is trying to make a comeback from drug addiction and become the mound version of Josh Hamilton.  He is currently in the Marlins system in the Florida State League.  Five of the 12 college draftees have made it to MLB and they are Tim Lincecum, Max Scherzer, Andrew Miller, Luke Hochevar, and Ian Kennedy.  Interestingly enough, Danks and Billingsley have won more combined MLB games with 32 compared to the college guys 26. 

 

The 2002 class is very interesting and makes a strong case for drafting the HS pitcher.  The seven kids taken from this class have already amassed 117 MLB victories for a grand total of 18 victories for the nine college pitchers taken in 2005.  The average rating for the college kids is 3.67.  Despite the fact that Chris Gruler (#3 overall) is out of baseball after a series of shoulder problems, the HS class is still rated higher at 3.86.  I would be happy with a rotation of the five high schoolers who have made it to the bigs already:  Zack Greinke, Scott Kazmir, Cole Hamels, Matt Cain, and Adam Loewen.  The stars of the college class are Matt Garza and Mike Pelfrey.

 

The 2001 high school seniors are heavily represented as 8 of them signed out of high school and another 14 signed three years later as college pitchers.  The ratings are pretty equal with the HS kids having a slight edge at 3.38 vs. 3.29 for the college guys.  The HSers were really hurt by Colt Griffin, the first documented 100 mph HS pitcher, having retired from pro ball in 2006.  MLB wins were also pretty equal with 75 for the college draftees and 71 for HS.  Best college pitcher would be Jered Weaver and the best HS pitcher would be Jeremy Bonderman.

 

The 2000 class was pretty much of a bust with four college pitchers and three high school pitchers already out of baseball.  This class has the lowest overall rating of 2.42 for the college guys and 2.63 for the HS kids.  The college kids have the edge in MLB wins with 50 and Chad Cordero has saved 128 MLB games.  Best college pitchers were Cordero and David Aardsma.  Best HS pitchers were Boof Bonser and some guy named Adam Wainwright. 

 

Summary

 

HS Yr	#Signed	% MLB	%MLB	Rating	MLB Wins
2000	8	2	25%	2.63	37
2001	8	2	25%	3.38	71
2002	7	5	71%	3.86	117
2003	3	2	67%	3	32
2004	7	1	14%	3.14	0
	33	12	36%	3.202	257
Coll Yr
2003	7	3	43%	2.42	50
2004	14	3	21%	3.29	75
2005	9	2	22%	3.67	18
2006	12	5	42%	3.75	32
2007	9	0	0%	2.22	0
	51	13	25%	3.07	175

 

Top Five College Picks

 

1.  Tim Lincecum

2.  Justin Verlander

3.  Jered Weaver

4.  Matt Garza

5.  Chad Cordero

 

Honorable Mention

 

1.      Max Scherzer

2.      Ian Kennedy

3.      Luke Hochevar

 

Top Five HS Picks

 

1.  Scott Kazmir

2.  Cole Hammels

3.  Zach Greinke

4.  Adam Wainwright

5.  Chad Billingsley

 

Honorable Mention

1.      Jeremy Bonderman

2.      Matt Cain

3.      Boof Bonser

           

I know this is all pretty small sample size and luck plays a pretty big part in the success of drafting young pitchers whether they be college or high school.  I would be pretty careful about drawing too many conclusions here, but there is one that is pretty safe.  Combined with the earlier study of veteran pitchers, it seems clear that the notion that HS pitchers are more risky than college pitchers is completely unfounded.  The HS pitchers in this sample were more likely to reach the major leagues (36% v. 25%), progressed slightly further through the system (3.2 v. 3.1), and have already won 82 more MLB games than the college pitchers in spite of the fact that there were 51 college pitchers taken in the study period as opposed to only 33 high school pitchers. 

 

As a final note, these data do not include the fact that Clayton Kershaw is already pitching for the Dodgers, while his high school classmates who went on to college won’t be draft eligible until June ’09.

I don’t really know if anyone much cares about this topic, but it is one that I have felt an important one for many years.  Why is it that some guys always seem to be “tough luck” losers in tight games and some guys seem to be the “lucky” beneficiaries of scoring largesse?  I am certain that luck actually does have some role in the phenomenon, much in the same way Mike Shannon always says Bob Gibson was the luckiest pitcher he ever saw.  After all, Gibson always had the good fortune to pitch on the days the other team didn’t score many runs.  Seriously, there is some luck in who the pitcher pitches against, how hot an opposing team is at a given point in time, how hot his team might be and so on.

 

Nevertheless, I have always held the completely unsubstantiated belief that pitchers who held the opponent down early in the game were more likely to get the opportunity to pitch with a big lead.  In general, a pitcher with a lead can be a more confident and aggressive pitcher who should generally perform more effectively.  Conversely, a lineup that is always playing catch up has to battle a more aggressive and confident opposing pitcher. 

 

So, I decided to do another one of my not particularly scientific, sort of small sample size, analyses in the hope of learning a little something and stimulating some discussion.  All I did was look at the 2007 starting rotation, specifically Wainer, Looper, Wells, and Reyes to determine in which part of the game they surrendered the most runs.  Then I looked to see if I could find any correlation with run support.  I thought about including WonderBrad as well, but less than half his appearances were starts and I couldn’t find a way (or at least one not too time consuming) to separate out his data. 

 

I looked at each inning, but the primary determinant I used was how many runs were allowed in the first three innings versus how many runs were allowed in innings four through six.  I must admit that I am using total runs allowed, as the fine statistics at baseball-reference.com only give total runs allowed in the inning-by-inning splits.  What I came up with was pleasing to me as it fit my pre-conceived notions nicely.  It remains to be seen whether that means much, but I will leave it up to the community to argue that point.

 

Here is the data:

 

Pitcher              Run Support                 Runs 1-3          Runs 4-6

Wainer                         4.92                 3.66                 4.17

Looper                         4.79                 4.60                 4.73

Wells                            3.55                 5.01                 7.09

Reyes                           3.32                 7.79                 4.60

 

Let me explains the runs numbers above.  I took the total number of runs allowed in each inning, divided by the number of times that particular pitcher pitched in that inning, and then multiplied the quotient by 9.  The intent is to give it the look and feel of an ERA for familiarity’s sake, but it counts all runs allowed and doesn’t take into account partial innings as that data was not available to me. 

 

It looks like a pretty clear conclusion for this dataset was that there was a strong inverse correlation between runs allowed in innings 1-3 and run support.  I can’t really explain the big delta in run support between Looper and Wells as their numbers are pretty similar.  In fact if you look at Wells numbers through the fourth inning, they are nearly identical to Looper’s.  It might have something to do with Wells runs allowed number in the fifth of 11.88 (the single worst inning of all starters).  Like I said this post is designed to promote discussion, so please feel free to chime in if you have an informed opinion.

 

Interestingly enough, Reyes got a big fat zero for run support in six of his 20 starts (30%) and Wells got a goose egg in four of 26 (16.67%).  Wainer got at least one run to work with in every one of his 32 starts and Looper was only shutout in one of 30. 

 

A final tidbit from looking at this years numbers:  the starters are getting over half a run better support (4.85 v 4.26) and have much, much better numbers over the first three innings.  The 2007 squad had a runs allowed average of 5.01 over the first three innings (or 1.67 per game) while the 2008 squad has allowed an average of 3.50 runs over the first three inning (or 1.17 per game).  The difference is particularly pronounced in the first two innings with the 2007 staff averaging 1.14 runs per game and the 2008 staff at an impeccable .56.

I want to preface this post by saying that Yadi is one of my favorite Cardinals and I am happy to see him doing well this season. I think many posters share my warm feelings for the youngest of the catching Molinas. 

 

However, I like to keep as objective an outlook as possible on my favorite players and I have read some comments recently regarding Yadi’s defensive prowess that made me wonder just how quantifiable that contribution really is.  My intent here is to aggregate some data and draw some conclusions where there seem to be some obvious points.  That being said, my fervent hope is this post will generate some interesting discussion and possibly some additional data. 

 

Most of my concerns around Yadi’s value are based on his bat and his legs.  There seems to be a fairly universal opinion that his defensive contributions at least atone for his lack of offensive production, and many would say his defense far outweighs any offensive shortcomings.  I have always been of the opinion that his defense makes him a valuable player so long as his OPS+ can stay around 85-90 (85 last year and currently 104 for 2008). 

 

I decided to limit my analysis to the results by catcher for the six starting pitchers in 2007 who had 10 or more starts:  Wainwright, Looper, Wells, Reyes, Pineiro, and Colonel Welley.  Both the colonel’s data and Wells include starts as well as relief appearances, but I don’t think any of the others relieved in 2007.  Please correct me if I am wrong. 

 

I only had a limited amount of time to gather data, but I would welcome any additional input on either the current season or Yadi’s entire career.  All data are from baseball-reference.com.  I wish I had some additional information like day v. night, home v. road, opponent, etc., but we will have to make do with the readily available data.

 

To refresh everyone’s memory, the other catchers for 2007 were Gary Bennett and Kelly Stinnett.  I am sorry to bring up the memory of Kelly Stinett, but sometimes we endure painful memories in order to advance our understanding of the game.  I will apologize in advance for HTML ignorance, but hopefully the data will format well enough to be useful.  The opponents’ aggregate hitting line for the three catchers (vs. starters only) for 2007 was:

 

Bennett .270/.324/.414 for an OPS of .737

Molina .267/.333/.435 for an OPS of .768

Stinnett .277/.370/.431 for an OPS of .801

 

I will leave it to the more sophisticated to expound on the statistical significance of the above variation.  Overall, Bennett’s numbers look a little better, but it made me wonder if there was any variation due to the spread of the workload amongst the various starters.  Here is the breakdown by percentage of plate appearances against the given pitcher:

 

Wainer             67% Molina, 33% Bennett

Looper             68% Molina, 25% Bennett, 6% Stinnett

Wells                67% Molina, 15% Bennett, 18% Stinnett

Reyes               51% Molina, 40% Bennett, 9% Stinnett

Pineiro              90% Molina, 0% Bennett, 10% Stinnett

Wellemeyer      27% Molina, 27% Bennett, 46% Stinnett

 

The overall opponents’ aggregate hitting line for the pitchers in question was:

 

 

Wellemeyer      .224/.310/.353/.664

Wainer             .269/.331/.338/.719

Looper             .269/.332/.432/.753

Reyes               .261/.330/.464/.794

Pineiro              .279/.313/.490/.803

Wells                .287/.371/.460/.831

 

Since this is my fanpost, I get to make the somewhat arbitrary determination that OPS is the primary metric to consider.  After all, that is how I evaluate a hitter, so it seems reasonable to use the same metric to evaluate the effectiveness of pitchers.  Had anyone looked at these numbers at the conclusion of last season that would have been astounded at Wellemeyer’s clear superiority over the other starters in this regard.  I know this will be somewhat circular, but let’s take a look at whether the mix of pitchers a particular catcher caught might have some effect on the numbers. 

 

Wellemeyer was by the far the best, but he was caught a disproportionate amount of times by Stinnett and Stinnett had the worst overall numbers.  So let’s use that as one more reason to eliminate Stinnett from the mix.  Incidentally, only one catcher had an opponent’s OPS over .864 and that was Stinett (twice) with an OPS of 1.064 when catching Reyes and a whopping 1.228 when catching Looper.  Now the comparison comes down to Yadi vs. Bennett. 

 

Bennett primarily caught Wainer, Looper, and Reyes with only 112 PAs catching Wells (the worst pitcher) and 72 PAs catching Welley (the best pitcher).  So there doesn’t appear to be any real advantage to Bennett in the assignment of starters.  Yadi primarily caught Wainer, Looper, and Wells, so maybe he gets a little break from having to absorb 501 PAs of the Kipster (by the way has any other MLB team every had both a Kip and a Skip on the same roster?).  Wells did perform marginally better for Bennett with the primary difference being fewer walks – one every 8.5 hitters when Yadi was catching and one every 22.4 hitters when Bennett was behind the plate.

 

When Wainer pitched he seemed to perform pretty consistently irrespective of who was behind the plate.  Looper was very good with Molina behind the plate, .237/.294/.383/.677 and struggled with Bennett at .324/.364/.474/.838.  I sure wish I had the day/night split on Looper by catcher as he was one of the best in MLB in day games.  Iron Bill fared much better with Bennett, .238/.321/.378/.699, than with Yadi at .257/.326/.509/836 with the primary difference being that he was twice as likely to throw a gopher ball with Yadi calling the pitches.  Bennett didn’t catch any of Pineiro’s games and did far better with Wellemeyer.  Bennett’s splits with the Colonel were a stellar .206/.286/.302/.587 compared to .242/.329/.468/.797 with Yadi.  In fairness to Yadi it appears that he mostly caught Welley out of the ‘pen as he only caught 73 PAs in 9 games.

 

It is also interesting to note that starters combined to allow significantly more walks, more HRs and record more strikeouts when Yadi was behind the plate. I don’t know how significant the numbers are, but the biggest difference seems to be in HRs allowed.  When Yadi caught the opposition hit a HR every 35.9 PAs, but only once every 44.6 for Bennett.  This is even more pronounced for all the pitchers not named Wainwright as the Yadi’s number is 29.5 compared to 43 for Bennett. 

 

One final area to address that probably underscores Yadi’s value more than any other measure I could find:  the running game.  As many of you may recall, Bennett was particularly inept at throwing out baserunners and only caught 1 of 19 in this group for a success rate of 5.26% while Yadi gunned down 16 of 32 or 50%.  What does that mean about overall success and, in particular, runs scored?  After all, the only real statistics that matter are wins and losses, so runs allowed trumps all other numbers.  Yadi was pretty superior in this regard as his pitchers allowed .117 runs per plate appearance while Bennett’s pitchers allowed .130 runs per plate appearance.    If you average 40 PAs per game that means a difference of about .5 runs per game, or 4.68 for Yadi and 5.2 for Bennett.

 

In summary, there are a few things you can probably (somewhat tentatively) conclude from all this:  1)  Yadi probably was not any better than Gary Bennett in getting his pitchers to throw strikes, or limit baserunners;  2)  Pitchers not named Wainwright throwing to Yadi were about 50% more likely to give up a home run; 3)  Yadi’s primary defensive skills, at least in comparison to Bennett, seems to be to both record outs and limit bases in the running game.  If you were comparing Yadi to a major league regular who would likely throw out somewhere in the vicinity of 30% of attempted base thieves, then you would expect this advantage to be less.

 

Like I said in the introduction, my primary purpose here is to promote discussion and possibly encourage further study of this topic.  I still love Yadi, but he has to continue to hit well to be a plus player. 

 

It's all over and the Cardinals' prospect-laden lineup has thumped SLU in an exhibition game 14-2.  The game was shortened to five innings as SLU apparently couldn't spare any more pitchers after it took three of them to record three outs in the 10-run fourth.  

Stars of the game were Colby Rasmus, Brian Barton, and Amaury Marti.  Colby reached base all four times and scored four runs.  Maybe this guys could bat leadoff...Barton was 2-2 with a dinger, a walk, and a single, good for two RBI and three runs scored.  Marti was only 1-1 but it was a bomb of a grand slam to center field against a stiff breeze. Bob Ramsey said on the broadcast that if the baseball thing didn't work out for Marti he could play strong safety for the Rams!

Boggs, Mortensen, and Perez pitched.  I didn't hear the first part of the game, but it can't be a good sign for Boggs that he gave up two runs and four hits to the same lineup that Mortensen and Perez no-hit with four Ks.  The broadcasters were very impressed with both Mortensen and Perez as Mortensen surprised with his velocity and Perez was his usual filthy self.  Ramsey, when introducing Perez at 6'4" and 225lbs, wondered what year they last weighed Perez.  

Mark Lamping was on the broadcast and he is so underwhelming.  He mentioned that he though Rasmus, "had a chance to be on the big club someday."  What a revelation!  Ramsey also mentioned that TLR was considered keeping Rasmus on the big club as a part-time player (I am not exactly sure what gnashing your teeth means, but I think I am doing it right now).

I see a lot of speculation here on trading Duncan, but I have a hard time believing that will happen on TLR's watch.  I am curious how many folks really think Duncan would be traded for anything other than a stupid one-sided scenario in our favor.  I think he is probably our best chip, but I am not holding my breath...

Poll

How long will Chris Duncan remain a Cardinal?

• here as long as TLR wears birds on the bat
• gone before the winter meetings
• gone before the start of spring training
• gone before opening day
• gone before July 31st, 2008
• gone before September 1st, 2008

  101 votes | Results