Two Birds, One Bat - your 2014 St. Louis Cardinals

http://i.imgur.com/nOYY58j.png

#tbt

xpost yep, NYC for me. starting late july/early august

also wow, a 2-hit complete game shutout! and nearly a 1-hitter, until 2 outs in the 9th. nice!

that's cool (the first part)

Cool I'm sitting in front of a group of obnoxiously loud cardinal fans who hate everyone who isn't a WASP!

Icing on the cake, the loudest one thinks our 3rd basemen is named Shane Robinson

The @Cardinals face Bartolo Colon on Thursday. The first time they did that the starting OFs: McGee, Lankford and Gant via @vivaelbirdos

:O

Jenifer Langosch ‏@LangoschMLB 8m
Oscar Taveras out of Memphis' game today after twisting left ankle running out of batters box Mon. Absence is precautionary; he's day-to-day

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

looks like david freese passed his glass ankles on to the next generation before he left

http://37.media.tumblr.com/6ce55064ca95fd248f56fdbaf5a761ee/tumblr_n4ihfdgEM51rrjuxno1_400.gif

everyone expected the cardinals hitting w/ RISP to fall off dramatically this year, but i was really hoping that their hitting with no runners on with regress toward the mean as well. it's frustrating to watch a team with the second best ERA in the majors hit like this. it's not a disaster, they're still splitting or winning series, and it's a long road trip, but they should be outpacing the brewers right now.

cardinals getting dominated by the immortal bartolo colon, whose "sneakyfast" pitching is "lulling them to sleep"

jfc this team is frustrating this year

why is daniel descalso in the major leagues? why is he batting 6th?

isn't it enough that pete kozma is in triple-a? jeez

it's not! because greg garcia is also in triple-a and he makes way more sense than descalso.

also, sadly, i would rather have kozma as peralta's backup than daniel descalso.

i think last season's not entirely terrible first half for descalso was a mirage that's still fooling the cards a bit.

yeah - there's also some speculation that they're not treating the $1.3 million that they gave him for arbitration in the offseason as the sunk cost that it is

btw i have found slashfic involving Matheny and all of his pitching staff if anyone wants the link

!
i would link a link, for archival purposes

the karl malone cardinals hall of fame would be a very different experience

where da bats

― bnw, Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:46 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--upYBH8-i--/c_fit,fl_progressive,w_636/bkgsz1lyzms6q0cda186.gif

high Colonic

i understand why they're using jon jay recently, but bourjos really doesn't seem like he got a fair shot. i guess whoever designed for the team thought the same:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmKACMLCQAIWpyU.jpg

not just design -- bourjos is on the official ballot and jay is not

wow, didn't realize that. i wonder how they decide that? also, i understand that the all-star game is just a popularity contest and has little to do with the skill of the players, but it's so bogus to start voting for it less than a month into the season.

*challenging opinions* i know

Candidates for the ballot are submitted by the club and limited to one per position, including three outfielders.

a tough call sometimes, especially in platoon situations. four-time all-star carl crawford didn't make the dodgers' ballot.

8 runs scored over the last 6 games.

after 2 hours of additional research, i have determined that the cardinals have scored 15 runs over the last 9 games.

murderer's row at 6, 7, and 8 in the lineup today:

craig .174
peralta .175
descalco .111

prediction: bourjos and wong aren't ever going to get in a groove if they're playing every third day

hope u feel better now

peralta had a good game, but like an asshole father who is secretly disappointed at a child's A- score on a test that wasn't actually that hard, i will need more positive results

Wong, Robinson down. Grichuk, Garcia up. Odd. What's it going to take to pry Descalso off Matheny?

i'm all about sending robinson down or just trading him away. he makes no sense as a 4th outfielder. it'll be cool if Grichuk keeps up his hot streak, but i'd expect him to just resume his 25% strikeout rate and suck. craig will bounce back soon, i think, and taveras or piscotty should make it up later this season, so talent is no problem in the OF.

wong, though. goddamn matheny. wong must have rubbed him the wrong way early on or something. i mean, read this shit:

"He hasn’t had a whole lot of struggle throughout his career," Matheny said this weekend. "You’ve got to figure out how to get through it.

"Without question, he’s going to be his own toughest evaluator. But he’s getting better at that, by the way. He’s better now than he was in spring training. He might be faking part of that. Good for him. That’s part of the process, too.

"When he’s that hard on himself, it makes it more difficult to get through these tough runs."

"Everything’s there. It’s a matter of him believing it."

i like garcia, but he should have traded places with descalso, not wong. and i can see Jedi Knight Matheny starting descalso over garcia, too.

also, even on an old guys talking baseball who only care about Wins and RBIs level:

.225/.276/.268
.100/.240/.100
.100/.156/.167

those are all barf, but the top one is wong.

lol wong and garcia were college teammates

'headscratching move'

I don't know the specifics, but a lot of times it might be some other player is 'out of options'.

hope you all caught Tim McCarver sitting in for a few innings on the telecast last night

i hope ZS didn't watch.

the bunting, my god, the bunting

sliding headfirst is AN EPIDEMIC

(well maybe, but it's def stupid)

"I'm not one to lecture younger players [more than anybody else]..."

xposts

i listened to tim mccarver, and also stayed up late to watch the cardinals get there asses handed to them. insult to injury.

speaking of, tim mccarver just said "well ah never really understood the term "foreign substance" - pine tar is a domestic product, you can get it in this country"

<3 willie to cards hof <3

Adam Wainwright has given up 11 runs on the year and 9 of them have been to the Cubs.

from BP chat --

Bill (New Mexico): What's your take on the Kolten Wong demotion? People seem to be reading between the lines on that one to an extent that seems excessive to me, but what do I know?

Jeff Moore: I was surprised, as were most people. It's early to give up on a player with his track record. The Cardinals are panicking a little, it seems. There's no upside to playing Mark Ellis. The hope is that Wong goes down, has some success in Triple-A (which he is), feels good about himself and comes back up and plays like they expect. It's not a bad idea and it might just work. I was just surprised. Doesn't seem like something the Cardinals would do.

<3 willie to cards hof <3

Coveted this card, not one of Topps' best:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e4Mg3vc6zTo/TsxH8c5hWfI/AAAAAAAAAOY/LxGmoR5RRds/s400/49.jpg

majestic imo

Joe Sheehan also sees panic

The ’13 team won 97 games and reached the World Series in no small part because they had one of the greatest clutch seasons in recorded history, batting .330/.402/.463 with RISP. No other NL team batted higher than .271 in those situations! It was a clearly unsustainable performance that, nevertheless, helped power a divisional title.

The 2014 team has seen the flip side of that. After last night, it’s batting .227/.295/.341 with RISP. Allen Craig, clutch monster, is hitting .200 in the split, while new pickup Jhonny Peralta is at .115. These numbers don’t mean any more than the 2013 ones do, of course; batting with runners in scoring position isn’t a skill over and above “batting”, but when a team is hitting .330 with runners in scoring position, the narrative becomes that they’re the exception. The 2013 Cardinals were not; the performance was valuable, but it didn’t reflect any breaking of the code any more than the 2012 Orioles or 2007 Diamondbacks did.

What is frustrating is the Cardinals’ seeming inability to process this.... [They] have acted, to start 2014, as if everyone’s job is on the line. The amount of base-level panic driving wholly indefensible personnel management calls into question everything I said a year ago about Mike Matheny’s growth as a manager.

http://www.gammonsdaily.com/sheehan-mike-mathenys-terrible-choices/