The first-ever Viva El Birdos day at the park is this coming Saturday, May 17th, per the overwhelming will of the voting community. The pitching matchup will feature Matt Garza, who's been having serious command issues and gave up a home run to ScoRo in his last start (as of writing, he faces the Yankees tonight), against Ye Olde Makre of Wagonnes, ace of the 2008 Cardinals rotation.

First pitch is at 12:10, the weather is expected to be in the low 70s, perfect ballgame weather.

Alxfritz did all the planning for this, but is internet-deprived this week, so asked me to post the information.

We'll be spread throughout the stadium that day since we all bought our own tickets, but will be meeting up at the Broadway Oyster Bar at 736 South Broadway after the game for good times and baseball talk. (Really tempted to insert a lame "reply to this—in person!" joke here. [And did -- ed.])

If anyone wants to schedule a time for in-game meet-n-greet, feel free. I'll be watching from the Casino Queen Party Porch and probably will take a break to Gate 4 once or twice during the game.

Hope many of you can make it, tickets are still available. If you can only make it to the post-party, feel free to join us there.

There's an article in Editor and Publisher claiming that Barry Bonds' body armor actually gives him  mechanical advantage(s) in addition to the protective function and that his use of the armor is cheating on a scale far worse than Sosa's corked bat (if Sosa ever used it in a game aside from the one where it broke, as he claimed). There's an estimate in the article that the armor has added 75-100 HR to Bonds total that he wouldn't have hit out without the body armor.

For years, sportswriters remarked that his massive "protective" gear - unequaled in all of baseball -- permits Bonds to lean over the plate without fear of being hit by a pitch. Thus situated, Bonds can handle the outside pitch (where most pitchers live) unusually well. This is unfair advantage enough, but no longer controversial. However, it is only one of at least seven (largely unexplored) advantages conferred by the apparatus.
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Bonds has worn some sort of front arm protection since 1992... It seems to have remained relatively the same [ed - since 1996] until—interestingly—2001, the year of his record 73 home runs, when an advanced model appeared made (apparently) of a new material.

The article is written by Michael Witte, a "mechanics consultant to a Major League baseball Team."

Turns out that Michael Witte is a mechanics consultant for our very own beloved Cardinals, whose path to employment by the Cardinals, LLC., is described in this article from the New Yorker a year ago.

Jeff Luhnow, the Cardinals' vice-president of player procurement, admits that Witte at first seemed to have "very little credibility," but he nevertheless put him on the payroll as a consultant.

My two cents: players shouldn't be allowed to wear body armor beyond the little shin guards and Witte probably won't be employed by the Cardinals for much longer.

I contributed a pair of guest posts at Fungoes this week that I thought I'd shamelessly plug over here. Those of you that can't bear to wade through "Fantasyland B.S." won't find this very interesting but someone may this quick study useful.

Part I: Second Half ZiPS
Part II: How Good Must the Pitching Be?

To Summarize:

For the first one, I used the ZiPS in-season projection tool to estimate how much better the offense can be expected to perform after several players badly underproduced in the first half. The conclusion was that Edmonds, Rolen, and Kennedy can be expected to contribute at much better rates going forward, while ZiPS thinks that Duncan is playing over his head. I think ZiPS is underrating Duncan and it remains to be seen whether Rolen's shoulder responds to the cortisone shot, but Edmonds has looked great at times and Kennedy is a better player than he's looked most of the first half. The projections and Pinto's lineup toy gives us an estimate of how many runs the Cardinals can be expected to score per game this season and a total estimate of how many runs we'll score the rest of the year.

In the second post, I took the total run scored estimate down the stretch and plugged it into the Pythagorean expectation formula to get estimates of what rates the pitching and defense would need to hold opposition offenses to in order to reach win-loss targets that would put us in contention for the division lead.

The conclusion there is that the starters would have to pitch over their heads even in the case where the Cubs and Brewers collapse. They'd have to be phenomenal to catch the Brewers if they maintain their current pace and our offense produces as expected.

That's just an objective demonstration of what we already know: the season isn't quite over yet but the Cards will need to play much better the rest of the way to make it to the postseason—and they'll need to do it without Carpenter.

The next week gives us a golden opportunity to make up significant ground in the division. In the immortal words of Fezzik: "I hope we win."

PS: I'll plug Erik's guest post on Cardinal defensive performances while I'm cross-promoting: Whither the Leather.

Jeff Sackmann brought CollegeSplits.com back online in a limited fashion. The front page has links to the situational splits for all the college players drafted on the first day. Here are the pitchers we drafted—a pretty impressive bunch, really.

Clay Mortenson posted a 2.19 G:F this season, a 9.52 K/9, and allowed only 1 homer.

David Kopp: 2.63 G:F ; 7.21 K/9

Jess Todd: 2.00 G:F ; 12.71 K/9

Thomas Eager: 0.95 G:F ; 7.4 K/9

Aside from Eager (who cocked his cap for his team picture), all extreme groundball pitchers who can get the strikeout.

I'll be looking forward to seeing what these guys do against professionals come June 19th.

For those who were wondering, the Yankees took Pat Venditte, Jr. in the 45th round.

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Updated to answer a question Danup poses in the comments regarding the average G/F rates among college pitchers, to contexualize these rates.

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All we have available to answer that question are the figures for the players taken in the first five rounds from CollegeSplits.com. I wrote a script to read all those pitcher pages (those that end with '-p.html'), pull out the GO and AO fields, and crunch the numbers in a few different ways.

These are the results:

Ground outs:  4632

Air Outs:     3555

GO/AO:        1.3029535865

Average:      1.43645033142

Median GO/AO: 1.33333333333 (Brad Mills)

Min GO/AO:    0.612244897959 (Evan Reed)

Max GO/AO:    2.90909090909 (Chris Province)

The 54 pitchers taken in the first five rounds collected 4,362 outs via the groundball and 3,555 in the air. Dividing those totals gives you an average 1.303 GO:AO. Taking the 54 pitchers as individuals in a sorted list, the median pitcher as far as GO:AO had a 1.333 GO:AO, Brad Mills. He was picked in the fourth round out of Arizona by the Diamondbacks. Of the 54 pitchers, the one with the lowest GO:AO (the most extreme flyball pitcher) is Evan Reed, selected by Texas out of Cal Poly, where he closed for our pick, Thomas Eager. A third player (though a non-pitcher) selected from Cal Poly in the first five rounds is Grant Desme, who flies out four times for every three times he grounds out. I can't find (or am too lazy to find) detailed park factor data for Cal Poly, but I'd be unsurprised if they've got a very fast infield and a big outfield or some other combination of features that depresses groundball rates.

The most extreme worm-burner in the first five rounds of the 2007 draft was Chris Province, the closer for Southeastern Louisiana. Province was selected by the Red Sox two picks after we took slugger Kyle Russell. The 1.436 number listed as 'Average' above is just the mean of the 54 players ground-fly ratios.

To answer the question to the best of my ability: for the 54 pitchers in the first five rounds, the average G/F rate is somewhere around 1.3...

The full  list of non-tendered free agents is out. Swipe Brandon Claussen from the Reds—move fast, Walt!

The talk of bringing in Joel Pineiro or even Victor Zambrano is unsettling in the current market. I'm all behind a youth-movement plan this offseason. There's no veteran #2 out there, so we should stock up youthful depth where possible and see if we can strike gold. Or at least shiny pyrite to fill out a trade package late in the season if thing don't pan out.

Below is a pasted in post from my own place about an available starting pitcher who deserves a shot and has the ability to pitch at least as well as some of the veteran names being floated around. (Tomo Ohka, rotator cuff tear and all, is a good pitcher but will no doubt be offered a contract better than the one we're giving Wells.)

I'll be interested to read what the VeB community thinks.

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Compare and contrast:

4.38 ERA - 181.0 IP - 29 GS - 133:53 (2.51) K:BB - 25 HR - 6.61 K/9
4.33 ERA - 135.0 IP - 23 GS - 111:38 (2.92) K:BB - 21 HR - 7.40 K/9

The first line is Adam Wainwright's 2005 adjusted line from Dan Szymborski's MLE spreadsheet for that season. The second one belongs to his teammate, Chris Gissell. Gissell was drafted out of high school by the Cubs and left the organization as a minor league free agent after the 2002 season. He spent the next two years with the Rockies AAA affiliate, finally getting a brief and unsuccessful taste of the bigs late in 2004. He spent the 2005 season with the Cardinals' AAA affiliate. Our rotation that year was ridiculously durable and he was never needed on the major league roster. He pitched very well at the AAA level for the third straight season.

After the 2005 season, he left the US to pitch for the Seibu Lions—Daisuke Matsuzaka's team. His (incomplete) 2006 line with Seibu is here and here:

6-4 - 18 GS - 2 CG - 109.0 IP - 3.96 ERA - 85:30 (2.83) K:BB - 10 HR - 7.02 K/9

I can't find out why he pitched in so few games—I reason he didn't seriously injure himself since he pitched two effective innings in relief of rookie Hironori Matsunaga in the Lions' second game of the playoffs.

Gissell made the equivalent of $427,670 with Seibu last season. He's available and would probably be eager to get a shot at the Cardinals again, now that we've got some rotation spots to fill.  We could do a whole lot worse for a whole lot more.

PECOTA projected him for a 4.57 ERA over 109 IP with 72K:34BB in 2006. Pretty damned accurate projection of his actual performance in the Pacific League. Along with the PECOTA line, Baseball Prospectus 2006 includes this comment on Gissell:

Gissell's not going to be a star, but he's pitched well in some tough parks. He throws strikes, works quickly, fields his position well, and threw 200-plus innings with a 3-1 strikeout-walk ratio in Colorado Springs. Rather than continue taking million dollar chances on the likes of Jose Lima [or $6,000,000 for Joel Pineiro — adds Liam], a club should give Gissell the ball 15 times and see what happens. Sure, he posted an ERA north of 14.00 with the Rockies in a brief stint, but who hasn't? That's like criticizing a Kennedy for being found with alcohol and a dead hooker.

I'll end this note with two things Gissell... First, lboros of VeB conducted an interview with Memphis pitching coach Dyar Miller in 2005 in which Gissell came up:

VEB: Tell me a little bit about Chris Gissell. I know he's having a great year—it seems as if he's right up there with Reyes and Wainwright in terms of how his numbers look—but he's older, been in a few organizations. What kind of pitcher is he? I don't know much about him at all.

MILLER: Well, he was a high school draft, I think by the Cubs. This is his 9th year, I think. And he's still relatively young—26, 27. He's a fastball, slider, curve, changeup guy. You know, he really pitches like I like to teach—pitches off his fastball. He locates his fastball, moves it up and down, in and away. He could pitch a whole game just with his fastball, he's so good with that. In fact, I'm trying to get him to use more breaking stuff. He pitched last night—struck out nine guys in six innings. I think he had a two-hitter or a three-hitter going in six, and then Pickering hit a two-run homer off him. So he gave up three runs in six innings and he got the win last night for us.

What's not to like?

Secondly—and I found this really funny—Chris Gissell's Hudson's Bay High School Class of '96 reunion committee was having a hard time tracking him down. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to get to his 10-year reunion since he was pitching on the same staff as Daisuke frickin' Matsuzaka.

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Chris "The Missile" Gissell. Worth a shot, isn't he? I'd like to see fairly generous guaranteed-money split contracts offered to Chris Gissell, Brian Lawrence, and Brandon Claussen (who'd probably be still on the DL) to compete for those last two rotation spots with our in-house options of Wainwright, Tankersley, and Narveson. That rotation coming out of ST may not look like much but we'd have flexibility and more potential than we'd have with the other options out there.

¡Viva el Movimiento de Juventud!

The qualifying tournament for the 2008 Olympics starts at 8pm tonight with the United States playing the Canadian team (led by Stubby Clapp) in el Estadio Latinoamericano. As of now, the USA Baseball website isn't ready yet, so there probably won't be any live updates from the game tonight.

Baseball America has an article previewing the tournament and gives this probable lineup:

Heath Phillips - P - White Sox
Jarrod Saltalamacchia - C - Braves
Bryan LaHair - 1B - Mariners
Bobby Hill -  2B - Padres
Mike Kinkade - 3B - Marlins
Brandon Wood - SS - Los Angeles Angeles de Anaheim
Chad Allen - LF - Royals
Michael Bourn - CF - Phillies
Billy Butler - RF - Royals

Our own Skip Schumaker is the fourth outfielder on the team. In the exhibition games in Florida leading up to the tournament, Skip went 6-15 (.400) with two walks against one strikeout and was hit by a pitch once. He had one RBI and scored five runs and stole a base.

If you thought a five-game playoff series was a crapshoot, this tournament would truly drive you nuts. We play in Pool A of this regional along with Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. All teams in a pool play each other once and then the top four teams advance to a single elimination round to end up with two teams that qualify for the Olympics in 2008, the last Olympic games where baseball will be played. (Don't get me started on that...) Using this bracketing, the US team failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, so it's an important tournament.

In the other pool, Cuba will have to compete with the likes of Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Panama.

If there's any live coverage of tonight's game that I find, I'll post a link in here.

Amaury Marti made his debut in the Cardinals organization tonight in a 4-2 win by the high A Palm Beach Cardinals. He went 1-3 with a home run and caught all four balls hit to left field for outs.

Recall that he's the 31-year old Cuban defector whom the Cards drafted in the 18th round--a left fielder with pop and experience in international play. Danup has the poop on him. Snicker.

About Amaury, Jeff Luhnow said, "I think he's one of the strongest baseball players I've ever seen. It wouldn't shock me if he started in Double-A."

So, let's get ahead of ourselves:

Poll

When will Amaury Marti join the St. Louis Cardinals?

• Before the All-Star Break
• Before rosters expand
• September
• 2007
• Never

  179 votes | Results