Game 125 Open Thread: August 22, 2005

mulder fogg
14-6, 3.87 6-8, 5.07

bloggers elsewhere in SB Nation are no more impressed with mark mulder than i am. "Despite those fourteen wins," Bucs Dugout writes today, "Mulder is developing into a generic starter, an okay #3 rather than one of the Big Three. He's walking lots of batters now and isn't really striking anyone out anymore or preventing homers." mulder takes an even worse beating at Beyond the Boxscore, where Dan Scotto has posted part 2 of his 2004 cards vs 2005 cards comparison. "If I'm St. Louis," scotto says flatly, "I'm letting Mulder walk after the season and I'm taking the pick."

as a whole, scotto adds, "the Cardinal rotation is substantially better in 2005 than it was in 2004." but he throws in a sizeable caveat: "The new version of the rotation is on pace to save around 33 runs over replacement level, pretty much exclusively because of Chris Carpenter. (emphasis added) If you replace 2005's Carpenter with 2004's, the '04 version of the rotation is slightly better." can that be true? carpenter's a lot better than he was last year, and morris is also much better, while suppan's about the same and mulder is at worst even with woody williams. . . . . which implies that jason marquis must be so much worse this year than last that he negates all the improvement we're seeing in morris. but if that's the case, no worries -- marquis will be dropped from the postseason rotation, leaving the cards with a stronger pitcher in all four rotation slots:

	2005	2004
#1	carpenter	williams
#2	morris 05	morris 04
#3	mulder	suppan
#4	suppan	marquis

while we're on the subject of pitchers, anthony reyes followed up his 15-strikeout performance on august 14 with this unimpressive effort three nights ago:

ip	h	r	er	bb	so
5	5	6	6	2	4

and he took the loss, falling to 7-5. the very next night adam wainwright made his best start in two months -- 7 innings, 3 earned, 12 ks in a loss to iowa.

one other item from memphis: tyler johnson is absolutely blowing `em away. his overall line has one eye-popping stat: 74 strikeouts in 55.2 innings. but here's his line since the all-star break:

ip	h	r	er	bb	so
21.1	16	4	4	4	31

for those of you scoring at home, that's a 1.69 era and 0.94 whip. and check out the k-bb data; phenomenal. this young man throws left-handed; why not call him up now, get him postseason eligible, then evaluate him in september and decide if he can be trusted with a postseason roster spot? the cards did just that with todd worrell in 1985 . . . . more recently the angels did it with k-rod in 2002.

transaction front: McCovey Chronicles obtained this secret recording of trade talk between walt jocketty and brian sabean -- a rare glimpse at the tough bargaining that goes on behind the scenes.