The 2017 Cardinals are America

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

schwarber and rizzo, both lefties, coming up, so he brings in the right-haned Oh to get a 5-out save. and never even had a second guy WARMING UP! nope, why would you warm up a lefty and a righty at the same time? no reason to do that. especially on opening day, when no one is tired...at all.

the rain begins

Matheny's thinking process vindicated, back to America.

And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free

GET SOMEONE WARMING UP

Too late.

Oh just threw his 31st pitch.
Matheny just NOW had Brett Cecil get loose

fuck

fire matheny.

you know the stupid asshole in the stands who yell "BALK!" whenever they see the weird fake pickoff move to 1B before throwing to 3B, and then loudly explain to everyone what a balk is, even though it wasn't a balk?

i would take that stupid asshole over matheny any day of the week

mike matheny is america

what a fucking dumbass

xpost lol

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