The 2017 Cardinals are America

*reverse oofing noise*

he's almost certain to be depth SP this year anyway, at least until someone else goes down.

"it's crazy how unruly things used to get, it feels like a different world."

I think the Chambliss HR in the Bronx has to be one of the craziest.

this is awesome: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/birdland/goold-wainwright-gives-prospect-sherriff-a-license-to-drive/article_406cb9e5-d0e8-5fa4-86e1-19de631a0f2c.html

(might have been worth pointing out that one of the reasons he didn't have a car was probably that MINOR LEAGUERS DON'T GET PAID FOR SPRING TRAINING but anyway)

http://i.imgur.com/bZtQi8R.png

i love the small angry secondary mouth between his eyebrows.

It appears the right lat muscle soreness Cardinals righty Trevor Rosenthal has been battling will kill his chances of winning a place in the team’s rotation. Moreover, it could stop the ex-closer from beginning the year as a multi-inning fireman, reports Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Rosenthal – now, saying could he get the innings he needs to contribute as a starter or a multiple-inning relief appearance? “I think that is still in question,” said manager Mike Matheny. “It’s very important that at some point this week he gets into a game and we can get that pitch count up.” Regardless of whether Rosenthal is well enough by April to toss multiple innings in an appearance, someone figures to serve as that type of weapon for the Cardinals. General manager John Mozeliak called it “very appealing” to Matheny, and Goold adds that John Gant, Matthew Bowman, Miguel Socolovich, Tyler Lyons and Sam Tuivailala are possibilities to fill that role.

the problem with trying to replicate the andrew miller role is that we don't have anyone approaching andrew miller. Oh is the closest, but he is the closer so he must be used only for 9th inning save opportunities. if we're midseason and matheny is deploying tyler lyons in key high leverage moments and then leaving him in for 3 innings (only taking him out after letting him bunt with 1 out in the inning before, of course), we're in deep shit

also i am really looking forward to DR vs PR tonight (carlos martinez is starting, hopefully yadi is too)

i know i'm falling prey to recency bias because he has been absolutely awful today, but i see wainwright as the 5th best starter in the rotation this year. martinez is clearly better, no need to elaborate. lynn has looked like his old self. wacha has been a pleasant surprise as well. leake will probably keep being average, but that's better than wainwright these days. he made a big deal about his alleged rediscovery of his curveball a few weeks ago, and said that over the offseason he was tossing the ball around with his wife and suddenly realized (after fasting and praying passionately for 40 days and 40 nights) that back during his old tyme excellent curveball days he had employed a ~different grip~. With his redisovery of the blessed grip his curveball would be back to where it once was. the way he talked about was like the prodigal son had returned. he also admitted that he never had a feel for the curveball in 2016.

anyways, it's been painful watching his pitch today, but it's not that much different from watching him pitch last year.

good lord, i typed all that before that grand slam

wainwright:
1.2 innings
4 BB
0 K
10 ER
7 H
1 HR

game score of -8

honestly it looked way worse than that

bengie has some thoughts on the yadi extension:

"It annoys me how the Cardinals have put some distance with him," Bengie said. "He's not asking for seven years or 10 years or $200 million. He's asking for three years, at least, in his hometown, in the place that he's sweat in that jersey so much. He's given his all for that jersey all his career since the Minor Leagues.
"Don't you want to have this kid? This is a leader, man. This is a kid who can help your catchers, take care of your catchers. This is a kid who can take care of the pitching and show them so much. Don't you want to let him finish his career, three more years, and whatever he wants? He just wants to be the best-paid catcher."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWQACEMW0i4

he had me until the last sentence

puuuhscotty. puuuh-scotty. i can't stop saying his name like that, really slow and drawn out, sometimes with a b at the beginning instead of the p

when i was a kid i said it like this too, until i finally realized i was supposed to pronounce it steven spaghetti

punxsutawney, obvs

@LangoschMLB
Matheny hinted that Matt Adams will see his first game action in the outfield later today. Stay tuned.

who said spring training was boring

Matheny's brain

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/4a/6e/ee/4a6eeee98d87505f483e26ca04955064.gif

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--sDpwVVlr--/blrasaynicot8xuf4moo.jpg
and he's still injured from that #Mike

one of the rules of america card nation is that we must have a completely inappropriate person ready to play outfield at any moment. if none can be found, matheny will just find someone on the DL (a Grichuk) who can't throw and force them to play there.

tbf they are not the team that just signed 30-year-old, 250-pound pedro alvarez -- a man who committed 23 errors as a first baseman in 2015 -- with the idea of making him an outfielder

Don't give Matheny ideas! There is a chance he reads ILX

Give Matheny ideas! There is a chance he reads ILX

Has anyone experimented with switching the LF/RF with the batter's handedness, so instead of having a "left fielder" and a "right fielder" you have a "good fielder" and a "bad fielder"?

i'm imagining 2011 lance berkman puking his guts out after running back and forth from LF to RF 3 times in an inning

So Wong couldn't make it to the opener as the everyday 2b... feels familiar?

ugh, really? did they announce it?

in similar news, jeremy hazelbaker, oops, i mean jose martinez, made the club, pham down to the minors.

if that's true about wong, they should trade him. enough fucking around with him. matheny can't handle it, just trade him to a smarter team and at least get something in return

lots of juicy wong drama here:

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/cardinal-beat/wong-would-rather-be-traded-than-platoon-at-second-base/article_9d03dd0f-b604-5be7-8a44-0287814094da.html

as i mentioned above, i think they should trade him, but it's nagl for wong to be complaining about playing time when he's not clearly better than gyorko/garcia.

god, i'm watching the espn feed of the mets/cardinal and there was some really sad commentary on the matt adams in LF experiment. paraphrasing: "the first ball hit to matt adams in LF will be the first ball he ever catches in LF during a game. i asked adams how he was feeling about this game and he said 'eduardo...i'm nervous.'"

we are all nervous. goddammit matheny, every year i think i have prepared myself but you keep innovating

they sent pham down to the minors and go with the hot hand in the immortal jose martinez. granted, pham was having a crappy spring training, but he's a reliable backup in the field and his bat is usually decent. instead we get jose martinez. it's not hard to imagine a scenario where one of the three starting OFs goes down with an injury, martinez sucks ass for 3 weeks, and then magically you have matt adams as your temporary LF for a while. or they send wong out again to give it a shot. there's going to be a lot of adversity this year.

much of Matheny's roster dicking last year was all a cascade effect of when Moss went into a horrible slump but Matheny kept playing him at 1st and would look everywhere else for offense.

I'm pretty sure the recent Wong drama coincided with a 1-0 spring training loss.

His mental process is so obvious and he's usually reacting to his own bad decisions. Like "I should play Wong in LF b/c he needs to get at-bats to get out of his slump!"

brisbee predicts 4th place (although he admits that he's trolling and actually thinks it's 3rd place).

It’s been a bad idea to underestimate the Cardinals for, oh, about 20 years or so. But here’s a partial list of what I’m not buying:

Kolten Wong’s bat
The team finding about 75 homers on the bench again
Mike Leake’s viability in a homer-happy era
Adam Wainwright’s ability to bounce back at 35
Aledmys Diaz being the great hitter he was in the first half, instead of the solid hitter he was when he came back from injury
Lance Lynn returning like nothing happened
Michael Wacha putting his miserable 2016 season entirely behind him
Dexter Fowler repeating his career year

Add it up, and what do you get? I'm predicting a fourth-place finish, but what we'll actually get are 93 wins and Rookie of the Year votes for Harrison Bader. I’m no dummy. I know exactly how this is going to look stupid by August. But when you spend 7,000 words writing predictions, sometimes you just want to watch the world burn. Of all the would-be contenders, though, the Cardinals have the most obvious worst-case scenario, and it doesn’t take a lot of suspension of disbelief to get there.

http://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/st-louis-cardinals

Yadi, 55 millions for 3 year per mlb dot com.

rosenthal says 55-65 million, and that molina will be the highest paid catcher in the game (per bengie and yadi's wishes, it seems), at least per AAV

in cold baseball terms it's probably an overpay, but the cardinals ownership has had a surplus that they keep threatening to spend the last few years, so if this is how they do it, so be it. it would be great to see him close out his career as a cardinal, and hopefully get a chance at one more championship before replacing matheny as manager.

commenter on mlbtraderumors that wrote that lucroy just popped a bottle of champagne otm

twitter is brutal
http://i.imgur.com/7M0ZOhN.jpg

in cold baseball terms i'd say it's a ridiculous overpay, but i think it's cool that they did it

It could have been worse, they could still owe Pujols 150 million.

lol, yeah.

i don't know, i think $55 million for 3 years isn't too bad. $8-9/WAR is the going rate for free agents these days, and three years from now that's likely to be around $11 to 12. So assuming a middle ground of $10 million per WAR, they're asking yadi to generate 5.5 WAR over 3 years. i think he'll do that, or at least come close. the effect on fans and attendance is more limited because most games come close to selling out anyway. people will turn out to see yadi's final days but they were probably going to the game anyway.

America's opening day starting lineup:

CF: Dexter Fowler
SS: Aledmys Diaz
1B: Matt Carpenter
3B: Jhonny Peralta
C: Yadier Molina
RF: Stephen Piscotty
2B: Jedd Gyorko
LF: Randal Grichuk
SP: Carlos Martinez

Wong is probably having feelings right now

Peralta batting cleanup was a possible worst-case scenario for this season, but i didn't think it would happen on opening day. hopefully the guy bounces back this year but...probably not.

plus WAR undervalues catchers, especially their defensive effect of the game.

xpost

yep - i think BP's WARP incorporates some additional defensive catcher value that fangraphs and baseball reference don't use, and it boosts yadi's value quite a bit

Cards fans cheering on Fowler like they just signed Mike Trout.

He seems like a good guy

He's immediately pretty much the most interesting person on the team, apart from Martinez. Nearly everyone else is very, very boring

writing this as oh is coming in

mike matheny. you are dumb. bad process. you are dumb. i hate you.

i don't care if oh gets the double plays and the save next inning, mike matheny is the woist

wainwright threw a 59.4 mph curveball

don't tell carlos beltran

you said it, not me!

i won't be surprised at all if waino needs some sort of surgery within a couple weeks.

lol

it's a shame that mets fans have basically disavowed him. it was a nearly perfect pitch (if perhaps not as good as endy's catch)

Tired of sputtering along, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright moved to re-establish order. On the Cardinals last road trip, they summoned their teammates to The Precinct, a high-end steakhouse.

To appreciate the Cardinals’ recent surge and their newfound belief in each other, it helps to understand what transpired at a former Cincinnati police patrol house on Aug. 3.

That’s the night Molina, Wainwright, Matt Carpenter and a few other veterans dropped the law on their teammates and pulled them into a more united team.

“The message that was given both by me and collectively from everybody was that if we’re going to win this thing we’re going to have to do it together,” Carpenter said. “That’s why you see the new rallying cry that’s happening.”

In case you’re wondering, the Cardinals’ new rally cry is a two-handed gesture. The players execute it in their teammates’ direction after clutch hits and runs. They lift their hands near their heads and then interlock and unlock their fingers as they bring their hands together and squeeze multiple times, symbolizing team unity.

well great, first rule of fight club etc

have to admit that the new rally gesture is possibly better than the last one, though, which i believe was the miming of tit-squeezing

http://deadspin.com/cardinals-rudely-presume-feral-cat-that-ran-on-field-is-1797920735

i know this is coming from a known anti-cardinals publication but jesus fuck i hope this cat is not allowed to be adopted by the fucking cardinals, this is absolutely gross

It is now up to St. Louis Feral Cat Outreach to determine whether living in a ballpark with Mike Matheny as caretaker qualifies as a “happy and healthy life.”

loooooool

St. Louis Cat Nonprofit To Cards: Bullying Us Over Rally Cat Is "Inconsistent With The Cardinals Way"

it's actually consistent with the Cardinal Way. It's in there near the end. They added it in after LaRussa left. I've been trying to tell people about this for years but everyone has blinders on

http://i.imgur.com/QON7ugb.png

Adam Wainwright is on his way back to St. Louis to have his arm examined by Cardinals team physicians, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes. Wainwright allowed five runs in three innings yesterday and has been plagued by persistent pain in his elbow when pitching. MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch notes that Wainwright hasn’t reached 90 mph in either of his past two starts and has yielded nine runs on 15 hits and nine walks with just one strikeout in his past 11 innings (Twitter link). Wainwright recently spent a bit more than two weeks on the disabled list due to a back injury.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIH3g_YU0AAeHje.jpg

timely

America

Jack Flaherty, 21 (Harvard-Westlake HS), tonight becomes youngest starting pitcher to debut for Cardinals since Rick Ankiel in 1999.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) September 1, 2017

now 2 behind the Rockies for WC2

lance lynn is outperforming his FIP at a historical level (ERA of 2.99, FIP of 4.71)

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-cardinals-sabermetrics-analysis/2017/9/7/16248452/cardinals-lance-lynn-earned-run-average-fielding-independent-pitching-luck-peripherals

my condolences to whoever wins the Lance Lynn free agent sweepstakes

(to be clear, i think he'll be a solid #3 in someone's rotation for a few more years at least. but i can also imagine a team overpaying for that shiny sub-3.00 ERA)

pham picked up both his 20th SB and 20th HR today

it's been about a minute since he hit the HR, and somehow the broadcasting team has not made a reference to 20/20 vision. i don't understand why it's taking them so long since they talk about his vision every single game

tommy pham, despite missing the first month because mike matheny thought it was a better move to play matt adams in left field, is 10th in the NL by fWAR. and by fWAR/600, he's second, just ahead of harper and behind only rendon. definitely a bright spot in an otherwise frustrating year

http://mediadownloads.mlb.com/mlbam/2016/06/16/images/mlbf_818435583_th_45.jpg

look you don't know any better, Matheny gets up close views of his players in action, he knows their strengths

Juan Nicasio batted with two runners on in the 9th inning of a pennant race. WITH A 40 MAN ROSTER. https://t.co/edzYDcRjPf

— stlCupofJoe (@stlCupofJoe) September 23, 2017

of course it worked out because the pirates WAIVED A DECENT RELIEVER LEST HE BE CLAIMED BY A DIVISION RIVAL

FOR WHOM THE PHILLIES AT LEAST GOT SOME SHITTY PROSPECT

jfc

man i know Bryant is hot right now but Matheny just IBB'd him to load the bases with 1 out and Rizzo and Zobrist on deck

ha and it paid off of course

bad process / passable results is the matheny way

congrats to the cubs btw

Players with at least 23 HR, 23 SB, .410 OBP since 1987:
Altuve
Trout
TOMMY PHAM
A-Rod
D Wright
Abreu
Chipper
Bagwell
L Walker
Rickey

— viva el birdos (@vivaelbirdos) September 28, 2017

arb eligible at 31, free agency at 34 ;_;

RIP 2017 cardinals, and america

that final play was a perfectly agonizing, fitting end to the season

will they be *spoilers*, like America?

i think they'll be half spoilers. wild (card) prediction: i think they'll take 1 of 3 from the brewers, and the rockies will manage to pick up at least one from the dodgers. even if matheny plays his B squad all weekend, that's still a pretty decent team, capable of winning at least one from the brewers.

"high floor, low ceiling" will be the epitaph of the 2016-17 cardinals

RIP 2017 cardinals, and america

that final play was a perfectly agonizing, fitting end to the season

― Karl Malone, Friday, September 29, 2017 4:15 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's always next year! as a Cubs fan, watching Matheny and the Cards dugout was "good times", i'm sorry to admit...

https://media.giphy.com/media/8TNHNwBEhhc4g/giphy.gif

ICYMI

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2017/9/29/16388812/busch-stadium-cardinals-protest-stockley-verdict

fuck yeah, they're bringing oquendo back to 3rd base coach and giving willie mcgee some sort of job

happy willie mcgee's birthday

https://i.imgur.com/jEG0gNL.jpg

cardinals figurative boner is getting impossibly hard this offseason

Cardinals "Bitter" After Being Turned Down by Giancarlo Stanton

wow guess he wasn't ready for the cardinal way(TM)

https://i.imgur.com/oDYy5Hy.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/H2uBVJo.jpg

luke gregerson, 2 years/$11 million

i think i like this deal? all of his troubles last year seem to come from a huge spike in FB% + HR/FB, plus a jump in BABIP. the rest of his peripherals seem to be in line with the rest of his career, so he seems like a good bounceback guy

I'd think the only thing would be a second year on a reliever at age 33. He was always good with the Padres.

also he can tell the cardinals all of jeff luhnow's secrets

yeah, ideally all relievers could all be signed for a single year given how volatile they are, but that's the risk you run i guess...

encouraging to see that 3 of his HRs last year were of the minute maid bullshit variety (http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2017_6059&type=pitcher) and a 4th wouldn't have been a HR in almost half of MLB stadiums.

cardinals/astros and yankees/marlins should hold a secret-sharing slumber party