Go Cards Go!
[EDIT: Some rain delay programming--
The P-D has celebrated a good start to the season with an explanatory piece re: Franklin's sudden onset unhittability. Franklin Time's two-piece explanation:
- New pitch! (Cutter edition)
- Role definition! (Not looking over my shoulder edition.)
Good luck with that last one, Ryan--there are two guys with high-90s fastballs and built-in closer tics right behind you. As for the first one, Fangraphs agrees--he's hardly thrown the slider once all year, and he's thrown the cutter just as often as he used to throw the slider. Looks to be a nasty one, too--it comes in at nearly the exact speed as his fastball. It's nice to be able to check up on the classic New Pitch excuse with hard data, and it's nicer still to be able to confirm it. I can buy Franklin's control returning to where it was in 2007 when he's more or less stopped throwing the slider, a difficult pitch to keep in the zone and an odd fit for a guy who can't strike anybody out.
The UCB recently did a set of cross-blog debates, covering most of the questions surrounding the Cardinals over the next year. For what it's worth, my answers would be No, No, No, Not Yet, and No, respectively, and not just because I'm an intrinsically negative guy.
In FA pitcher news, there but for the grace of God go we--it looks like Oliver Perez is either unhealthy or unhinged, this after accepting a big contract to return to the Mets. I was really high on a possible Perez contract this offseason. Now I am glad that I can't just go into Baseball Mogul Commish Mode and make the deal myself in real life.
Hope that's enough to tide you over in this would-be overflow thread. Regular programming will return tomorrow morning. -danup]