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

6 games under their expected record in both 2013 and 2012. last year they were expected to win 103!

i think you rc? a few years tho, and last year they had the RISP thing (rip allen craig)

Yeah, that's definitely true. The hitting with RISP was out of control last year

anyway it's fine, i'm just lashing out in bitterness

Got curious to see how long Stan Musial played with the 60s Cards like Bob Gibson, Curt Flood & Tim McCarver and found this box score. This is Stan Musial's last game. It's a definite changing of the guard as you have rookie Pete Rose in the lineup for the Reds along with Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. It was a matchup of a couple of the best starting pitchers in the NL at that time with Jim Maloney going for the Reds against Gibson. Looking it up, Maloney beat Gibson in the first game the Reds played against the Cards back in April. Musial got a couple hits and was lifted, probably leaving with a hit and maybe that RBI earlier in the game. This is definitely a changing of the guard moment when you look at the players in the scoreboard, considering how many of those players dominated the rest of the 60s and early 70s.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN196309290.shtml

see also october 1964

The closest awards-vote after tonight might be runner-up in the NL Cy Young. Wainwright and Cueto are extremely close, and would both take the award most any other year.

I'm sad Zimmerman will get ignored, once again because of wins and era.

Ditto Hamels, because of wins.

good

runnersup only counts in Miss America

I brought it up because this would be Wainwright's third time finishing second, with a third-place finish on top of that. He's becoming this generation's Juan Marichal to Kershaw's Koufax. (Koufax's Cys were all unanimous, but I imagine Marichal would have finished second at least twice with an expanded ballot; he was 72-27, with an ERA around 2.25, the three years Koufax won.)

Arrieta triple plates two!

lol the old IBB isn't working out to well for Matheny this week

*too

earlier tim mccarver got really amazed at the phrase 'come into his own'. he said something like

'this guy is...well, it's an odd thing to say, i guess, but he's really coming into his own this year. that's such a weird thing to say...must be 100 years old, or older. it doesn't make any sense!! but nevertheless he has really come into his own this year...'

deshaies and the other dude are pretty good, you should switch imo

yeah len and jim are my second fave broadcasters now, stat friendly, goofy without being too corny, nice guys, think unwritten rules are dumb, etc

yikes. wacha does not have his stuff. get the bullpen going right NOW matheny

clearly alan trammell, who has already been fired, is mustering these d-bags to greater things

truuumbo

starters should be interesting

1. wainwright
2. lynn
3. miller?
4. wacha/lackey/wainwright?

i thought we'd all agreed that shelby miller doesn't pitch in october

yeah, the rotation is a mess. wainwright and lynn, pray for rain...in'

i thought miller was doing much better in the second half, but really he just had a good September . still, i think he has to be part of the mix.

between lackey and wacha at #4, i'd rather see wacha combined with a very short leash, larussa 2011 style.

lackey will probably get the nod for #4 though, or even #3 because of his veteran grittiness.

matt carpenter is the cardinals' finalist for the hank aaron award, recognizing the most outstanding offensive performer

which doesn't seem quite right

Must be a positional thing, or Holliday needs a new agent

time to get fired up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9bfBJG_OCE

lackey 3, miller 4, wacha in pen

Lackey for the first home game (most likely a must win after Kershaw and greinke, although I guess every game is a must win in a 5-game series) seems like a mistake.

Yeah that part is odd/wrong. If you need to fire Waino again in 4, rather have him replace Lackey. Wacha in pen is right call. Bullpen needs it. Neshek looks burnt lately.

intersting: http://www.hardballtimes.com/staggered-rotations-and-postseason-win-probabilities

The Art of Mathenaging

...Matheny is by all accounts a nice man, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the speed and madness of the postseason is too much for him. If you'll excuse an extension of the driving metaphor, he manages like someone used to cruising around a small rural town suddenly being thrust onto a heavily trafficked freeway during rush hour. He speeds up at the wrong times, he slams on his brakes for no reason, he'll panic and swerve from one lane to another, and then he'll slow down to a crawl just to make it look like he's calm now… it got a little crazy there, but it's all under control. When you're behind someone like this in traffic, you make sure you're as far away from him as possible and take pity on the poor souls in his car. I joked yesterday that you can actually hear him blinking, but seriously, with those dugout microphones, I really think you can.

Matheny is a frustrating regular season tactician as well, but his primary skills as a manager are ideally suited for a long season. He looks like a leader, with that jaw and that unfocused "determination," and his players love him because he was so recently one of them and therefore understands how to keep them happy. All the little things he does during the regular season, they all even out: The game doesn't move too fast on him in the regular season because it never moves too fast in the regular season. You don't have to blink too hard over 162 games. The Cardinals have made the NLCS all three years Matheny has been manager, and while he's not personally responsible, he never completely lost control of a season the way some managers have, and he deserves credit for that.

But when every single game means everything, Matheny couldn't adjust. We've seen this with other managers this postseason -- the most egregious offender had been Ned Yost, until he, sort of amazingly, suddenly started adjusting -- but Matheny may have cost his team the most. The problem with Matheny is that the trick he uses in the regular season -- putting players in predictable roles since players like their routine -- doesn't work in the postseason because you actually have to manage to win in the postseason. Matheny has generally been considered a strong manager throughout baseball because his teams have had so much regular-season success. But I suspect, after the last two days, that honeymoon is over.

...fter the game, Matheny's explanation of why he brought Wacha in made no sense. I don't mean that his explanation was faulty, or I disagree with it. I mean it makes no sense.

'I put him in a tough spot. But you [saw] the first couple pitches come out of [his] hand and I think everybody in the baseball world asked why we had been waiting so long to let this kid throw. Just a tough spot for him to be in and not the spot we want him to be in but we'll put him out there again in a similar situation.'

Lots to unpack there, but that answer is really how Matheny has managed every postseason: He goes one direction, retreats, goes another, changes course again, and then, after this confusion has ended in failure, insists that if the same thing happened again, he'd do the same thing … even if he still can't quite explain what that thing is.

the scary part is that his Wacha answer is just completely wrong. A 96 mph fastball that you can't locate doesn't impress the baseball world.

Dewitt and Mo are very strong with handling the big picture so there's reason to still be optimistic for the redbirds. Mmmmaybe they'll gut Matheny's staff and force some smarter baseball minds in there to challenge him/overrule him/lock him in a closet.

ugh, but they also extended him through 2017 after the 2013 postseason, and this was after watching him operate for 2 years.

i have zero confidence in his ability to juggle taveras and grichuk. it's really sad because taveras and carlos martinez are my two favorite cardinals, and they couldn't be in worse hands. martinez will hopefully get his chance to be a part of the rotation next year, but taveras probably needs to be traded to a team that knows how to play him.

...Center fielder Peter Bourjos, also eligible for arbitration for a second time in his career, had played into a late-game or part-time role during the season and wasn’t sure what that meant for his future.

The season “was up and down,” Bourjos said. “And that kind of went with the playing time, too. Inconsistent playing time, inconsistent results — that’s how it goes sometimes. If there’s an opportunity out there, I’d like to play every day.”

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/descalso-bourjos-wonder-if-they-ll-be-back-with-cards/article_1e09d594-92a9-5e5b-997d-7155fda75839.html

i didn't realize he was only under contract for this season. for some reason i thought he was cost-controlled for a few more years or something, but maybe i confused his contract with grichuk's.

either way, i don't blame him for wanting to gtfo of mathenyland. i suppose it's way to early to talk about the offseason, but it should be an interesting one for the cardinals. the OF alone presents some tough decisions. jay is up for arbitration, and is likely to get in the $6-7 million range. bourjos' contract is up. then there's matt holliday in LF with taveras and grichuk in RF.

it seems they need to make a choice between jay and bourjos. i'm not sure what to make of bourjos. he hit close to average in the second half (96 wRC+) but was rewarded by matheny with half as many PAs compared to the first half (74 wRC+). even with his shitty hitting in the first half and sub-.300 OBP for the season, his good fielding helped him to reach about 1.5 WAR in only 119 games/294 PAs. but i don't see a full-time role for him in 2015 - the best he could hope for is jay being traded away and entering a platoon with grichuk - and judging by his quote above he seems like he'd be pretty disgruntled. for good reason - as a full-time CF his floor is probably 2 WAR and it's not hard to imagine him getting back to 4 WAR again.

but if they go with jay, then it's easy to imagine a kind of living hell watching matheny juggle grichuk and taveras again all year. i can just imagine it now, all the games with jay starting in CF and grichuk in RF, the 7th innings where grichuk shifts over to CF as a defense improvement and taveras comes in for 2 innings and a pinch-hit appearance. it's nauseating to even think about. but it wouldn't be wise of mozeliak to force matheny's hand by trading away too many OFs, because it makes sense to have depth with an aging matt holliday in LF.

then with the rotation, i'm assuming the first four are wainwright/lynn/wacha/miller, but there's another dilemma with carlos martinez and john lackey (if they decide to pick him up for an option year, which seems like something they'll do). again, it makes sense to have the depth, and again, it's frustrating to watch one of the most talented young pitchers in baseball get used as a 7th inning setup man until someone else gets injured in the rotation.

PS the cubs are probably going to win the division in 2016, and i'm worried they might do it as early as 2015, depending on the hot stove this offseason. :-/

or is matheny's best friend and soulmate marco gonzalez a dark horse candidate to make the rotation?

if they're not going to play taveras full-time then he shouldn't be in the majors. he was awful in st. louis this year, but his ceiling is still a lot higher than grichuk's, and he's only 22.

jay put up offensive numbers almost identical to carpenter's this year, and totally worth $6-7m. obviously he's not the fielder that bourjos is, but the latter has really only ever had one good year, and that was a while ago now. and it would seem that with a strong pitching staff, holliday and yadi in decline, and peralta unlikely to match his awesome 2014 season, the cardinals could use jay's offense more than bourjos' defense.

kinda funny that jay was hit nearly as many times as he walked this year, tho.

lackey has intimated that he'd retire rather than play for $500k, and tbh i think the cards have better options anyway.

mozeliak and matheny held a press conference the other day that went from meh to bleh to agonizing.

meh - jay will be the starting outfielder. i like jon jay. i feel bad for bourjos. i do think he's a wasted asset, and one of the few sources for speed on the slow-ass cardinals. every year i think jay's bubble is going to burst because his BABIP is always through the roof, but...he does his thing year after year.

bleh - taveras will compete for RF with grichuk and piscotty, "with 2014 performance, completion of offseason goals and Spring Training all factoring into the decision." bleh because yes, grichuk performed better than taveras in the MLB in 2014, but it's clear that taveras has the higher ceiling:

http://i.imgur.com/YLjDhUx.jpg

it's way too easy to see grichuk opening the season as the starting RF and matheny sticking with him half the season, with taveras getting a start every 6 games and only starting 3 games in a row when he gets a "hot hand". bleh.

agonizing - carlos martinez is the 8th inning guy in 2015. he's not in the rotation plans. at all. in the event of injury to wainwright/lynn/lackey/miller/wacha, marco gonzalez would most likely be the next guy in the rotation. fuck. FUCK. another lost season for carlos martinez. i don't understand.

go 6 man rotation. Need to lighten up on Wacha and Waino. Give Martinez as much of a look as you would Justin freakin Masterson.

awful part is going to be Spring Training when Martinez outpitches everyone AGAIN and gets put in the bullpen.

offense is really still missing 2012 Allen Craig :(

I would love a 6-man rotation, and it makes total sense with this group. Unfortunately I don't think it a 6-man rotation is listed as an option in the 1979 edition of How to Manage a Team that Matheny consults, so I can't see it as a possibility.

Oh wait, he's obsessed with really defined setup and closer roles, so I guess he's moved on to the 1993 edition

maybe send him a Stengel bio for the holidays

Oscar Taveras (Pinch Hitter, USA)
Am I in StL next season or do they trade me? Should they trade me?

Klaw (2:04 PM)
I thought the trade of Allen Craig was designed to force Matheny to play Taveras, but in the NLCS it seemed like Mozeliak was backing up his manager's decision not to play the better player (especially with a RHP on the mound for SF). So I don't think they should trade him, but now I'm wondering if they will trade him because they think he's not fully committed to keeping himself in playing shape.

tbf i don't see how taveras was the better player during the nlcs -- he was -1.3 war in 80 regular-season games, after all. he just has more potential

'minor' elbow surgery for waino

https://sports.vice.com/article/mike-matheny-little-league-and-baseball-fundamentalism

the "co-author" of the upcoming Matheny book is the guy who co-wrote the Left Behind series.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/10/oscar-taveras-dies-in-car-accident.html

holy shit

that is really awful and sad

fuck