Cardinals news and notes: The weekend's projections and game threads

Today is March 7, and to the shock I would imagine of very few people reading this, it is a rather slow day in baseball history. Not a lot of major acquisitions, much less on-field moments, took place today in history. There are a few notable birthdays, such as Toronto Blue Jays World Series hero Joe Carter, who turns 56, and 2000 NL MVP and noted mustache haver Jeff Kent, who turns 48.

Both Carter and Kent appeared on Hall of Fame ballots five years after their retirements, with the latter remaining at least through 2017. Kent peaked at 16.6% of votes during the last election and seemingly faces an arduous uphill climb to make it into Cooperstown, but at 55.2 Baseball Reference WAR, he would not be the worst Hall of Famer. Not quite a standout among the pack, but of the eight Hall-eligible players who are one win or fewer behind Kent (Robinson Cano is also in this camp, but will almost certainly break from it very soon), four are in the Hall (Billy Herman, Max Carey, Bill Terry, and Cardinals retired number Enos Slaughter).

Carter received 3.8% of the votes in his sole year of eligibility, but despise his unquestionable baseball immortality, his 19.3 WAR probably does not stack up to HOF standards. But, just for fun, here's a look at players who have received Hall of Fame vote(s) since Joe Carter's year of eligibility with fewer or equal career WAR.

Jim Eisenrich, Randy Myers, Juan Samuel, Cecil Fielder, Hal Morris, Walt Weiss, Dante Bichette, Shawon Dunston, Rod Beck, Robb Nen, Eric Karros, David Segui, Eric Young, Vinny Castilla, Sandy Alomar, J.T. Snow, Jacque Jones, Eric Gagne, Armando Benitez, Aaron Boone, Troy Percival.

Also, although he did not receive any votes, Lenny Harris made a Hall of Fame ballot with 2.0 career WAR. For reference, Randal Grichuk has 150 career games and 466 career plate appearances and he has 3.4 career WAR.

Anyway, in case you missed actual, timely baseball content at VEB over the weekend, here's what we had.

VEB community projections

Two new players came up for community projections this weekend: the divisive Matt Adams on Saturday and swingman that I don't think there's a strong consensus community opinion about (?) Tim Cooney on Sunday. I'm sure you know the drill by now: submit your predictions for how well each performs in several key statistics and you will win a wonderful prize in self-satisfaction and a sense of community. What did you expect?

Warning: Checks will not be honored.

Speaking of looking into the crystal ball for the Cardinals, the red baron looked at some players making waves early in Spring Training for the Cardinals, notably Anthony Garcia. Although he probably won't make the big club out of Jupiter and is not a great fit for the currently-constructed club, he has shown promise in case something were to happen to incumbent Cardinals.

Game threads

Although the action on the game threads probably isn't too extensive now that the games have ended, you can take a gander at what you missed by checking the Saturday thread for the tilt against the Marlins and the Sunday thread for the game against the Nationals. Cardinals baseball was discussed intently in early March: for anybody who is new to visiting the site, I can promise that this is a good sign for things to come when the games start to actually count in a month.

Have a wonderful week, VEBers!