Cardinals news and notes: Diaz, Shannon, and Siegrist

This weekend, the Cardinals are playing the Miami Marlins, formerly the Florida Marlins. Unlike most baseball teams, I am older than the Marlins.

I am not old enough to remember baseball before they existed, unlike the Tampa Bay Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks. But, and I do not care nearly enough to try to actually research this, I probably watched or at least tracked a majority of games between the Cardinals and the Marlins in the history of their "rivalry."

"Rivalry", of course, is a very loose term. Just in the time that the Marlins franchise has existed, the Cardinals have faced all but three NL franchises in the playoffs: the Reds, the Rockies, and the Marlins. There is no real contentiousness between the franchises: at least the Reds provide Brandon Phillips pseudo-drama and the Rockies cultivate Rick Ankiel nostalgia (I don't care how gratuitous this is), but the Marlins? Discussion of that time they played a 20 inning game (which, spare me your indignation, is sooooooo boring to watch in the moment)?

Entering this series, the Cardinals played 172 games against the Marlins. They have been very successful, having won 103 games and having lost 69. In their first game, on May 14, 1993, the Cardinals won 7-2. The win went to Bob Tewksbury and the loss went to Chris Hammond. Bernard Gilkey hit a home run for the Cardinals and current Rockies manager Walt Weiss played shortstop for the Marlins.

Also, and I'm not sure what to make of this Miami Marlins Fun Fact, but here it goes: entering today, Giancarlo Stanton and Hanley Ramirez were tied with 26.8 career Wins Above Replacement with the Marlins, tied for the franchise lead. And Giancarlo Stanton is 26 years old. God bless Chuck Finley and Jim Fregosi for holding off Mike Trout for the Angels lead and thus making me not feel that old.

Please check back on my future News and Notes intros for my continued worsening existential crisis regarding baseball players who are younger than I am. But in the meantime, occupy yourself with these baseball stories.

Aledmys Diaz

I wrote about Aledmys Diaz, the sustainability of his excellent first half of 2016, and what moves the Cardinals should make or not make with regard to the future of the shortstop position. Speaking as an incontrovertible coward, I ultimately want them to stand pat and not commit to Diaz nor make a move to improve at the shortstop position going forward or anything of that nature. In the meantime, I hope to continue to enjoy the ride.

Preseason projections then and now

Craig Edwards took a look back at preseason projections about Cardinals starting pitchers and compared them with current results. As it turns out, the VEB community did a decent job, especially compared with some of the other projection systems. So give yourselves pats on the back.

Mike Shannon

Noted Mike Shannon enjoyer Lil Scooter reflected a little bit on her fondness for the Cardinals broadcaster, who turned 77 years old yesterday. Rather than reflecting on some of his weirder calls, this is more of a reflection on his more notable ones.

Kevin Siegrist

After dealing with mono as well as a bunch of sophomoric jokes about how he got the kissing disease, Kevin Siegrist was activated on Friday and Sam Tuivailala was optioned to AAA Memphis.

The Marlins

Craig wrote about how the Cardinals should destroy the Marlins like Giancarlo Stanton destroys batting practice pitching, and when the actual game happened, mister_manager recapped how the Cardinals managed a ton of DINGERS but also managed to lose the game 7-6, despite the fact that they should have destroyed them.

Have a great weekend, VEB. Baseball is back!