Cardinals news and notes: Gyorko, Reyes, Freese

The Pirates extended David Freese yesterday for two more years with a club option for 2019. This is good news for anyone who has enjoyed watching his at-bats this year in St. Louis as we’ll get to see him even more often. Maybe by the time he received his ninth standing ovation from the Busch crowd it seemed like a bit of overkill but I’m fine with these extending into perpetuity.

I wrote last March how Freese helped change the narrative for the post-2000 Cardinals and in a few throw-away lines mentioned that his heroics helped Tony La Russa’s legacy as well:

If the Cardinals had lost Game 6 not even Tony La Russa's light would shine as bright. He'd still be in the Hall of Fame, he'd still be known as an innovative manager, but the last significant image of him would be Game 5's dreadful bullpen phone-gate. (I can't imagine watching that game again - what a nightmare that was.) But because of Freese he got to go out on the highest of notes with a solid 3-3 record in the World Series for his storied career which will look much better in history books than 2-4. La Russa should have ensured that the Diamondbacks signed Freese for $20 million this offseason just to show his gratitude.

Now that La Russa is struggling (to put it kindly) in his second year as Chief Baseball Officer for the Arizona Diamondbacks, he should be even more grateful for Freese. Bullpen phone-gate coupled with this mess in Arizona would be a tough reputation to shed without that final World Series in ‘11. (Although to be fair, TLR has his faults but being overly concerned with his legacy doesn’t seem like one of them.)

Anyway, what’s important is Freese will continue to make regular appearances in St. Louis for the next few years. Now somehow, some way let’s get Albert Pujols back in town in the near-distant future.

Here’s what you missed yesterday at VEB:

Jedd Gyorko

It’s 2016 and I find myself a big Jedd Gyorko fan. Huh.

Alex Reyes

Thanks, Joe!

Even if you don’t have time to read this entire post (although you should), just spend a minute or two gazing at the GIFs of Reyes’s pitching sequences. They’re wonderful.

Down on the farm

Here’s the weekly farm report from Josey Curtis featuring a guest spot from one Lance Lynn.

Uniform bracket

Lil Scooter’s birds on the bat bracket marches on with a battle of 1995 vs. 1909. The year of 1995 has the great Ray Lankford while 1909 has stuff that happened a very long time ago. So long ago that 106 different World Series titles have been awarded since 1909 to 21 different franchises. Congratulations to all those lucky teams!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.