nl cy to be announced today. cy trivia: we all know that bob gibson is the only cardinal pitcher to win a cy young award. however, 6 other redbird hurlers have received at least 1 first-place vote on a cy young ballot. name the pitchers and the corresponding years.
i'll post the answers this afternoon after they hand out the award.
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i'm taking a break from roster permutatin' today; paying work and such beckons. but here's good reading elsewhere:
dan fox has an interesting article up at hardball times today inspired by la russa and his index cards. "When LaRussa looks at his index cards, how does he know whether the 6-for-26 performance of Aramis Ramirez against Chris Carpenter over the past three seasons is simply Carpenter getting a little lucky against a good hitter or whether Ramirez really has trouble picking up Carpenter's sinker?" the answer: la russa probably doesn't know. i'll be referring back to this one next time tony walks the winning run into scoring position in order to "play the matchups" . . . .
in the other feature at hardball times today, studes refers to brian giles as "a high risk/high reward kind of guy, the J.D. Drew of this year's free agent season." he also thinks somebody might offer as much as $15 mill a year for three years; can't see that. . . . at baseball analysts, rich and bryan end their free-agent forecasting chat with this: "Have a good life, Larry Walker. Welcome, Brian Giles. The type of guy LaRussa and the fans in St. Louis will love."
surely if the yankees can contemplate raffurcal as a centerfielder, the cards might envision him as a left-fielder in the brock/lonnie smith mold, no? neither one's gonna happen (ie, neither yanks cf nor stl lf), just sayin' . . . . . diaspora is also musing about furcal, also fonzie soriano and even nomah. . . . . .
cardnilly hands out final report cards to the starting pitchers. he's got jason marquis down as the franchise's answer to sonny corleone (and i guess that casts phil cuzzi as carlo rizzi). mark mulder grades out as jamie lee curtis in halloween: smart, pretty, and well-behaved but can't get a date and seems to have knives pointed at him . . .
fungoes catalogs larry walker's aches and pains and offers a couple of int'sting notes about the new retiree: 1) he ended his career with an OBP of .400 on the nose, good for 58th place on the all-time list; and 2) his 3d most similar player as listed at baseball ref'nce is joey dimaggio. which means the 05 cards had two dimaggio approximations in the lineup (the D is pujols' #1 most similar) . . . . . . for another catalog of miseries, check out baseball prospectus' chicago cub postmortem. and to just feel plain miserable, check out the pictures (spread over the last two or three days' posts) of busch stadium's wounds at I Bleed Cardinal Red.
finally: happy birthday dear belly.