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5-3, 4.90 |
10-4, 3.72 |
GAME TIME 2:55 CDT
anybody else ready for another 4-day break from baseball?i have nothing to say about last night's game, other than to share this quote from TLR in this morning's post-dispatch. speaking of wells, he said: "What I thought was exciting was that he felt like he had found some keys he could use. That's where it starts." exciting, yes; i could definitely feel the excitement as i read through the game thread this morning. tony added that wells will take his regular turn wednesday vs the marlins. as my friend al yellon likes to say at Bleed Cubbie Blue, discuss amongst yourselves.
the far bigger disappointment from yesterday, obviously, was carpenter's setback. i had been hoping carp would return in time to pitch against the brewers and/or cubs at the end of this month, which might've given the cardinals a bracing, constructive kick in the ass. well, the boot landed at the right latitude --- but in the opposite hemisphere . . . . given that information, i wonder why brad thompson threw in relief last night. won't he have to make a start in the next few days? since getting bombed by the royals on june 12, thompson has made 3 starts and 4 relief appearances --- and during that stretch wells, reyes, and wellemeyer have all been in and out of the rotation too. granted the roster is depleted, but tony's indecisive handling of the pitching staff has made an already volatile situation much, much worse. he can't seem to identify the 5 best guys from among the available arms and stick with them; he keeps changing his mind, then changing it back, then changing it back again. and then he frets that the pitching staff can't establish any consistency . . . .
today's philadelphia starter, cole hamels, is a good example of how to let a young pitcher pitch through his mistakes. hamels was awful when he debuted six weeks into the 2006 season --- in his first 11 starts he went 2-5 with a 5.98 era, averaged 5 innings a start and gave up 10 homers in 55 innings. the league was slugging .484 against him. sound familiar? the phillies' response to this was . . . . nothing. they just let the kid keep pitching --- didn't intervene and change his mechanics or alter his pitch selection or preach to him about "what it takes" to be a big-leaguer. you might have excused them if they had intervened --- hamels had only made 6 starts above class A at that point and had logged a grand total of 201 minor-league innings. he was raw, unseasoned; the phils kept running him out there, let him take his lumps and figure things out for himself. and he did ---- over his last 12 starts of the year he went 7-3 with a 2.70 era. this year he's an all-star.
until this organization learns to practice similar patience with its young starting pitchers, it will continue not to develop any.