cardinals win a laugher over the astros, 14-2

very brief summary - lance lynn pitched well, and the offense just exploded with all the runs.

if you were going to give this gratis horse a dental exam, you might note that, while lynn struck out ELEVEN, he only went 6 innings. but he was solid all-around, with 2 walks, six hits, allowing only 2 runs. sanchez, salas, and freeman pitched three uneventful innings in relief. fernando salas gave up a double in his return from memphis and a little hard contact to boot. he did get a strike out, though. sanchez managed a K as well in a perfect inning. it's far too early to say anything much, but i am happy that in recent games his walks have been less frequent.

on the offensive side, david freese hit two home runs, including a grand slam. beltran had a solo homer. even shane robinson hit a cheapy dinger into the crawford boxes. craig had three hits and a walk. holliday also got on base four times, with two hits and two walks; molina walked three times and got a single. the astros, as you can see, were pretty prone to giving up walks, allowing 10 total, to go with 16 hits. you don't win a lot of games allowing 26 baserunners.

the latest word on jaime garcia is that the club does not believe surgery is on the table and that either dickson or kelly is likely to be called up to take garcia's spot. the area of concern appears to be jaime's shoulder, although they've thrown in his elbow and hip as areas of concern, in case the whole left side of his body has to be amputated.

also, we have already signed one of our draftees, patrick wisdom. expect a lot of quick signs; the conservative approach of the cardinals, and of MLB clubs generally, looks like it probably required every club to get a pretty good sense of what sum any player drafted in the early rounds would sign for prior to drafting that player. with that on the table, there's no real reason to postpone formalizing the earlier agreement. the good news is that we can look for a lot of draftees to join the short-season clubs as soon as they open, and for the highly-polished players (ramsey, wacha) to join full-season clubs shortly.