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

now that he's overcome adversity by being sent down to minor leagues by his dipshit mathenager so that old man ellis could suck ass at hitting a baseball for a few weeks while he went on a hot streak in non-major league counting games, i predict that kolten wong is primed for a great career. but he better not have 3 bad games in a row or he's done for!

that was exactly like fantasy baseball, where all you accomplish is missing the upswing in production.

lol wong is sick with stomach flu, won't be available tonight anyway

<3

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/5/15/5717272/sb-nation-reviews-willie-mcgee

great article. god i love willie mcgee.

You may like an athlete because they happen to be very good at what they do. You won't love them for this, though, or at least not without combining it with other variables that make them unique. There were players as good as Willie McGee, but none were as entertaining to watch based strictly on quirk and the apparent misery that every step caused him. That misery was only part of it, though. McGee chose the odd set of options in life in every facet of the game, a switch hitter who looked equally strange from either side of the plate, a superb center fielder prone to rare but grandiose mistakes in the field, and a man who could not take a baseball card portrait without looking like you had just:

a.) bought him the most adorable rabbit in all the world

b.) made it his only and best friend

c.) slaughtered this rabbit in front of his horrified eyes

d.) put a bat in his hand, and pointed him toward the DonRuss artist while tapping at your watch

http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/imported_assets/2198899/86Donrussbaseball-WillieMcGeeDK_medium.jpg

ugh, yesterday was a tough one.

ban matheny.

but garcia seemed like he did relatively well, and if motte can come back and be effective that'll help the bullpen fiasco.

@keithlaw
Matheny's #smrtbaseball move was really egregious: he had a great RHP intentionally walk a hitter with a career .278 OBP vs righties.

E Gattis intentionally walked.
J Schafer walked, F Freeman scored, R Doumit to third, E Gattis to second.
C Martinez relieved T Rosenthal.
M Ellis at second base.
R Doumit scored, E Gattis to third, J Schafer to second on wild pitch by C Martinez.
R Pena walked.
J Heyward grounded out to first.

and as part of that same stupid sequence, double switching out wong for ellis.

it didn't end up mattering, but why??

matheny has some uh limitations and can't manage around his key guys not performing. you can't blame him for Craig and Holliday hitting like crap, or for the bullpen getting wild. Mike doesn't seem to really know what to do to manage around those issues though :/

btw cool strike zone
http://t.co/MViMujQQkk

apparently the gameday strikezone mapper thing was a bit off compared to other mappers. here's brooks baseball's version of the same plate appearance:

http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/imported_assets/2203367/numlocation_php_medium.png

damnit. did you see the one of the called strikes on carpenter? dude has gotten screwed.

https://twitter.com/AugieSports/status/467295904865988608/photo/1

ugh, that's awful. anecdotally it seems like he's been getting repeatedly fucked this season but it's nice to see the data to back it up

St. Louis Cardinals ‏@Cardinals 21m
#STLCards recall OF Shane Robinson and option OF Joey Butler to the @memphisredbirds. @SUGASHANE43 batted .371 (23-for-62) while in Memphis.

fine, i guess

but i really don't understand what the reasoning is. why did robinson go down in the first place? did they actually want to give butler a fair shot or did robinson have to go through some Matheny-endorsed Adversity(tm) so that he could be better? piscotty/taveras/grichuk's playing time in AAA was curtailed while robinson played every day.

i just don't understand what the goal is

man, i love to see them fail to bring in a winner.

Motte looks more like a crazed hillbilly fuck that any player i've ever seen.

i know it's only one game, but the velocity of Jaime's fastball from his last start is encouraging:

http://www.fangraphs.com/fgraphs/8137_P_FT_20140518.png

fastest average velocity he's ever had in a game, and highest peak velocity as well.

oh, oops.

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

bourjos sprints to 1st on a routine bouncer to short, forces a quick throw and error from crawford. bunt and run with a decent bunt from jaime, and then he does this crazy quick slide into 2nd and immediately floats back up to his feet and takes 3rd while they're throwing jaime out at 1st. sheesh, that was beautiful to behold.

oscar time!

YES!!!

i'm trying to lower expectations, especially because if he has 4 bad games in a row matheny will matheny him down to the un-matheny leagues. if he does well, though, i think it sets up a trade of either jon jay or matt adams. i feel bad for jay. he puts up 2-3 WAR for the last few seasons and would be a no doubt starter on almost any MLB team, but could almost be a 5th outfielder on the cards if taveras hits well. i think it makes sense to trade him to a team that will play him every day and hopefully get some good relief help and/or another minor league pitching prospect in return.

in related news "pump up the jam" has been playing on a loop in my head ever since i heard about this

http://cdn3.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1425347/2012-March-24-17-17-5_medium.jpg

(from the infamous moment in spring training 2012 when ricky horton and dan mclaughlin had no idea who taveras was, neither did the production crew, and horton said "'Joe Minor League Guy, No. 91, had a great year last year.")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9pllCxVNI

https://newenthusiast.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ot-2.gif?w=388

haven't read this yet, but hey who doesn't love an oral history

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/oral-history-of-st-louis-cardinals-2009-draft-class-060514

Jack Flaherty ‏@Jack9Flaherty 9h
Truly blessed to have been taken by the Cardinals!! What a day it has been! Looking forward to a bright future ahead! God is good! *emoji praying symbol*

:-/

#IAmSecond

kid goes to the same high school my wife went to.. he was also teammates with giolito and the other guy who went in the first-ish round two years ago.

lol preppies
http://i.imgur.com/gEo2KUb.jpg

lol, i love that picture. is that grichuk popping out of yadi's head, or bourjos? only regulars missing are peralta and craig!

taveras down, making room for adams

makes sense, grichuk has been on a tear
(looooooooooooool)

obv taveras will be back, but it's gotta be super disheartening to work your whole life toward reaching the majors and then be sent back down 10 days later

the move makes sense, at least in mathenyland. OT isn't going to get regular time with Adams back in the mix, not with the current roster and Matheny managing. so it's grichuk who gets chosen/screwed by being left to rot on the bench.

one can imagine creative ways to get OT regular playing time while spelling craig and holliday, and against lefties (adams should sit, craig would play 1B). but matheny can't handle it. i realize the effect of the managerial decisions is minimal, but even given a very low bar, matheny shits the bed. he can't do it.

i have no idea what OT has left to prove in the minors. even in the majors, despite the poor results he has been hitting the ball well. i've watched every at bat since he came up and he's taken better swings than most of the lineup, and certainly grichuk (who i'm rooting for but has looking absolutely awful at the plate).

this sums it up: http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2014/6/12/5804200/the-st-louis-cardinals-should-demote-oscar-taveras

...Taveras’s peripherals reveal a batter who has put good swings on major-league pitching.

Taveras has swung and missed 2.5% of the time by Fangraphs swinging-strike rate (SwStr%). Let me repeat that: Taveras has come up empty on just 2.5% of his swings. At 9.1%, the MLB non-pitcher SwStr% is over triple that of Taveras. Small sample size, sure, but that’s an awful lot of contact.

Speaking of contact, Taveras has done nothing to disprove the scouting reports indicating that he has an innate and elite skill at barreling the baseball. If a baseball is thrown, Taveras can hit it.

MLB non-pitchers have made contact 79.7% of the time this year. Taveras has done so 92.4% of the time. On pitches in the zone, those MLB players who aren’t pitchers have made contact 87.3% of the time. Taveras? 92.5%. Perhaps my favorite Taveras contact stat is the fact that he’s basically equaled his in-zone contact rate on pitches outside the zone: 92.3%. This compared to the MLB non-pitcher out-of-zone contact rate of 65.7%. Yes, it’s a small sample size, but holy shit.

...It’s a question of development. Taveras needs to play daily or something very close to it. With Adams on the DL, Taveras could do that in St. Louis. But with Adams activated, an outfield consisting of Holliday, Craig, Jay, Bourjos, and Grichuk (or Shane Robinson), and Matheny penciling in the lineup, the PAs won’t be plentiful or regular enough for Taveras. Without frequent playing time, it’s difficult to justify having Taveras on the St. Louis 25-man roster from either a development or financial (Super Two arbitration qualification) perspective. Consequently, the Cardinals should demote Taveras upon Adams’s activation.

i think jay or bourjos needs to go. earlier in the season i was thinking adams would be a good candidate, but after he went down on the DL i realized there's no one else who can play 1B except for Craig. Yadi can, but it's a negative to not have him behind the plate (even if it's good for his knees).

but it's gotta be super disheartening to work your whole life toward reaching the majors and then be sent back down 10 days later

totally. but predictable. if he would have hit .300 while he was here, matheny would have kept him. but he did not, so down he goes. matheny also likes to play mind games with him, just like he did/does with wong.

"He has not looked overmatched, but I've seen him when he's right," Matheny said. "There's another gear that we haven't seen since he's been up here this short time. That's not an effort-level gear, it's just a level of locked in. When that hits, it's truly impressive."

Matheny mentioned a couple of "mechanical flaws" in Taveras' swing that the club did not want to address with his plate already full trying to adjust to being in the majors.

"This is a tough place to try and compete and take in all that information at the same time," Matheny said. "You're almost setting them up for failure."

god shut up mike matheny

Carlos Martinez to start tomorrow, with waino's start pushed back to Monday.

Er, I mean waino's next start pushed back to Saturday

be really nice if CarMart shows something today.

and then we'll get Shane Robinson called back up -_-

marco gonzales (1st rounder 2013) is yr texas league pitcher of the week

lefty, great numbers, 22yo

I missed the Taveras demotion, that is nuts

(or the callup was nuts)

nuts, but predictable. they're just trying to limit his service time and it would take an intelligent manager to get Taveras regular playing time with the Bourjos/Jay/Craig situation, and we don't have an intelligent manager. I'd like to see some sort of trade to open up space for him.

al hrabosky can't stop talking about the subject that is on EVERY cardinal fan's mind tonight: will carlos martinez be efficient enough with his pitch count to qualify for a win? because if he doesn't get a win tonight, it means he wasn't good

So I'm guessing he's not an advanced metrics guy either. I get an earful of that shit from Joe Simpson.

That makes me wonder: are there any team broadcasters who are gung-ho advanced metrics guys?

Cubs color man Jim Deshaies is sabermetrics fan, mentions fangraphs pretty frequently, was just talking about Casey McGehee's BABIP and Chris Hatcher's K%-BB%.

*a* sabermetrics fan, obv

plus he just talked about how lineup protection is (mostly) bullshit

does the other cubs broadcaster keep it "balanced" by expressing skepticism about sabermetrics? seems like every time i hear it brought up on tv it's usually apologetic in nature and then the other guy balances it by saying that back in the good ol' days pitch counts were 150+ per game and that was just fine, yeehaw

the other hilariously sad thing about baseball broadcasting is that every team is afraid to hire a woman to do anything except for reporting on player injuries