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Shane! Shane! Come back!

I didn't see Wellemeyer pitch, because the game started and ended while I was otherwise occupied, but all of a sudden his ERA is within 4.75—well within the lower bound of acceptable performance for our erstwhile flamethrower. Now, after his two May starts, his heretofore way-too-good peripherals have started to look more worrisome as his enormous pile of hits allowed deflates—DIPS may be a great idea at the end of the season, but in the early going it's a little exhausting to follow.

We're still at the point where he might have a good or bad day in any one of the Three True Outcomes and leave the resulting stats so skewered that the Wellemeyer Narrative changes completely.

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So, Shane Robinson—this is two years in a row that he's gotten off to a high-average start, and he's been rewarded, now, with his very own Baseball Reference page, which is a big deal. 

But I agree with Future Redbirds, except inasmuch that I think their comparison to Jarrett Hoffpauir is a little unfair to Hoff, who's walked 253 times and struck out just 197 in his minor league career. Robinson is useful now—he'll play centerfield, he'll give La Russa a pinch bat and glove to use until Ankiel gets back—but right now he's an uncertain fit as even a long-term fifth outfielder.

It takes a lot to hit like Shane Robinson does at AA and AAA in the major leagues—just look at Brian Barton's minor league numbers. If you hit like a fourth outfielder in the minor leagues, you probably can't hit like a fourth outfielder in the bigs. But I'm glad to see a new MLB player get his wings, of course, and there are exceptions to rules like that. So let's see if he can have that BABIP surge in the majors, too. 

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There's more to talk about, but I'd like to get this up before noon. This one always gets me—Cardinals game at 6:00, even though the fact that Cincinnati is in Eastern Standard Time will never stick in my head.