After the Cardinals’ victory over the Nationals in which Albert Pujols jacked his 14th home run of April, I flipped around the channels and saw some pretty awful crap on the boob tube. I watched some of the NFL draft which was incredibly boring, punctuated by bursts of offensiveness. When a team would draft a college player, the room would erupt with catcalls. Who the heck is doing that? The only thing I can guess is that it’s all the other players who hadn’t been drafted yet and their families. Whatever it is, it’s a shameful practice that the NFL would be wise to end. Even worse was a show on MTV called My Super Sweet 16 about privileged fifteen-year-old divas-in-training who get a camera crew to follow them around for the run-up to their elaborate sixteenth birthday parties. Two minutes was as long as I could last. Naturally, the show has a message board where vapid pre-teen girls can argue with freshman women’s studies majors about the merits of their favorite television show. What do these kids do when they grow up? It’s hard for me to understand why anyone would let their kids blow cash and throw tantrums like they do on that show, much less how any parents would appear on television enabling it.

All on TV isn’t terrible though. This Visa Check Card commercial is mighty amusing. I like how the dude in the commercial sets aside his checkbook and takes a sip of coffee after presumably spending a day or two drawing all the pictures for that checkbook/flipbook. You’d think he’d be a little more satisfied with his work, ya know.

In gardening news, I gave up on the prospects of my purple fountain grass coming back this season. Turns out that it’s well known that the plant doesn’t survive frosts. I’m gonna look into replacing it with either Calamagrostis or Molinia, both of which should survive Illinois winters. It’s supposed to rain a bunch tomorrow, but hopefully there’ll be enough clear sky for me to chop down a female Tree of Heaven a.k.a. Stinking Sumac that shot up in my backyard last year. Swinging an axe should get me warmed up for my second softball game tomorrow night if the weather allows it to be played.

Gall is on the roster, but not in the lineup tonight. His roster spot is cleared by Ricardo Rincon, who’ll be “resting a sore arm” on the DL after going unused since his mop-up outing on April 18th. This means the Cardinals are carrying 11 pitchers, and only one lefty in the ‘pen, albeit a reliable, durable, and very well rested lefty in Randy Flores. That Tony La Russa is one crafty devil. And he sure don’t have no respect for the left-handed veteran relief pitchers.

Tonight’s lineup is sure to make some fans happy… Encarnacion’s out, John Rodriguez is in. (Encarnacion wasI’m glad to see Aaron Miles and Skip Schumaker back in the lineup, although some fans are sure to bitch about it. Miles is 2-5 against gNat righthander Tony Armas Jr., who’ll be pitching tonight. Here it is:

Eckstein    SS
Miles       2B
Pujols      1B
Edmonds     CF
Spiezio     3B
Rodriguez   LF
Molina       C
Schumaker   RF
Marquis      P

I’m pulling for Schumaker big time tonight. He hasn’t gotten on base since April 16th and hasn’t hit since April 12th.

Sidney Ponson takes the mound tonight against the Washington Nationals to open up a 4-game series. He’s got an opportunity to gain a little bit of ground against Jamey Wright in the fifth-pitcher comparison that I’ve been following here in this corner of the web. (Season comparison here.) Wright’s fourth start came on Tuesday, as the Giants are rolling five starters on equal rest, a good game in a losing effort. He pitched 8 innings, striking out four and walking none. Uncharacteristically, he gave up two home runs–one in the seventh that barely cleared the wall and a two run blast the next inning that landed in McCovey cove. I watched most of the game and saw a surprising statistic–Jamey Wright leads all active pitchers in pickoffs. Felipe Alou left him in an inning too long, Wright left the game after his eight innings having thrown 108 pitches.

Ponson will have his work cut out for him, though. The Nationals lineup has a .301/.337/.432 line against him. The gNats to watch out for would be Royce Clayton, Nick Johnson, and Jose Vidro. They send Mike O’Connor to the mound to make his major league debut. He played college ball for GW from 1998-2002 and pitched last season in the Nationals’ high-A affiliate, owning the league with a 48:158 BB-K ratio. He didn’t attend his organization’s big league Spring Training camp, but made the jump from high-A to AAA in minor league camp. In AAA so far, he’s not experienced much trouble, giving up 5 ER in 18.2 IP with 8 walks, 20 Ks, and one homer allowed. He didn’t make it onto John Sickels’ list of the Nationals top twenty prospects.

Updated: The Nationals Farm Authority posted a profile on Mike O’Connor and the dude sounds like the Cardinals nemesis–the soft-tossin’ rookie lefthander. I heard that John Sickels‘ 2006 book is sold out, so it shouldn’t be a problem to re-post his entry on O’Connor here (copied from NFA’s post):

A year ago at this time, he was a junkball lefty with good control and a decent-but-not-awesome track record in Class A. Now, he’s a junkball lefty with good control with another decent year, a little better than what he’s done before. Problem now is that he is 25, and has yet to face AA hitters. His K/BB and K/IP are reasonably good, but there’s no way to know how/if this will hold up. A lot of scouts are skeptical, but O’Conner has done enough to deserve a look.

Eeek!

It’s a slow baseball day–only two national league games are to be played. If the Cards win today, we’ll pull even with Cincinnati a half game behind Houston. The ‘Stros and Reds have a three game series this weekend, so the Cardinals are poised to assume the top position in the NL Central this weekend.

Have I lost my mind because Kansas Joe’s and Memphis Minnie’s recording of “When the Levee Breaks” reminds me of Canned Heat’s “Goin’ up the Country?” There’s an mp3 version of When the Levee Breaks available here along with a lot of other great songs. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the song took the unexpected turn:

If it keeps on rainin’, the levee’s gonna break
If it keeps on rainin’ the levee’s gonna break
and we can jump in the water–stay drunk all the time.

It’s crazy enough that it just might work.

Something surprising to learn is that Canned Heat is in the midst of a European tour right now. They’ll be playing in Iowa next month. In September, they’re in Steelville, MO where I’ve gone camping every summer for many years. Apparently National Geographic wrote a snarky article about the town a while back, prompting this rebuttal.

Just got sent a clip from Bobovski that had me rolling in gales of laughter.

Behold!

A chimpanzee demonstrating some karate moves. Dig that horse kick.

Due to bronchitis, Scott Rolen is being scratched tonight and Spiezio will get the start at third. Via tonight’s gameday are the lineups:

Eckstein    SS
Luna        2B
Pujols      1B
Edmonds     CF
Encarnacion RF
Spiezio     3B
Bennett      C
Taguchi     LF
Suppan       P

It’s mildly surprising that Luna didn’t slide over to third and Miles wasn’t sent in as a lefty bat at second. Spiezio looked good at third in his first start there a few weeks ago and will bat left with more powah than Miles. I like the lineup, Luna batting second is a good experiment–he’s 1-4 with a double from that spot so far this season. Taguchi did a great job last night as the 8th man getting on in front of the pitcher. Hopefully Suppan turns it around tonight and gets back to his usual form.

In a feeble attempt to avoid boring everyone, I’ll refrain from blathering on about baseball today. I added a bunch of stuff to a long post last night included a ‘guess the leadoff man when Eckstein’s resting’ game.

So instead of baseball stuff, just a bunch of links and wisecracks, a bloggified rip-off of Thomas Sowell’s now-rare Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene columns. Sowell’s now got a snappy, minimalist webpage. His essay About Writing is a nice read.

On with it:

I’d always wondered what the Wichita State Shockers’ mascot would look like, at least ever since I sat bolt-upright in my chair and declared, “Hostile and Abusive!” Their fans have a little more fun with the name than the athletic department may be happy with. (Background here, although I warn you not to explore that website too much.)

Debuting this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival is the United 93 film. Having heard good things about it, I expect it to be the first movie I’ve seen in a theater since Return of the King or that last Star Wars movie, whichever came out later…

Another film that’ll come out sometime in the near future is Andy Garcia’s The Lost City. I didn’t even know Garcia was from Cuba. Lots of good stuff at that link.

Here’s a story with a picture gallery about the evolution of Netflix’ DVD packaging. A lot of the details of their packaging is trade-secret, so some of it doesn’t make sense. C-Bot rented Voices from Iraq for me, and I was surprised how little structure there was to the return envelope.

Jim Treacher knows women… Er… You know I’m only teasing. I love you gals out there–always have.

I’d just tear down the place and start over.

Make this article your homepage at work.

I don’t expect this tongue-based interface would be well-received in the military, especially since this one sounds a lot easier to get used to and should be adaptable to all the same work.

That’s enough for now. More later.

The lineup I’d predicted for tonight was a ways off… They’re posted at Viva el Birdos and there are some surprises in there:

Eckstein    SS
Edmonds     CF
Pujols      1B
Rolen       3B
Encarnacion RF
Molina       C
Luna        2B
Taguchi     LF
C. Carpenter P

Looks like La Russa’s going with the Mike Shannon school on small-sample size statistics. Sure, Hector Luna is 0-13 against Oliver Perez for his career… Just means he’s due. Miles went up against him in the first Pittsburgh series 0-1 lifetime and had a 2-4 day with a double. Edmonds in the two-spot is something many Cardinals fans have been calling for going back to last season at the latest. On paper, Jimmy Ballgame’s a perfect second hitter: grounds into few double plays, high OBP, high slugging. In practice, he had a .250/.349/.508 line there last season–far better than what we’ve had so far this season at that spot in the order, but well below his typical numbers when batting fourth or fifth. Since Edmonds has returned as a starter after getting a cortisone shot in his shoulder, he’s gone 3-11 on a walk, a double, and two home runs to put up a .273/.364/.909 line. He’ll get plenty of at-bats today against a fly-ball pitcher, so should get a chance to continue rolling. Game’s just started. Carpenter’s got an 11-inning streak of shutout innings on the line. He hit the leadoff man on a 1-2 count. Jack Wilson flied out to center. Jason Bay grounds into a force at second. Bay gets picked off stealing second and Carp’s streak extends to 12 innings. Thirteen pitches and he gets to take a seat.

Bottom 1st: Eckstein aggressively leads off with a single on the first pitch. Edmonds grounds into a 3-6 doubleplay. Pujols steps up and jacks an 0-1 pitch low and away down the line for his twelfth home run. Rolen grounds the first pitch to short to end the inning. Too bad Jimmy Ballgame hadn’t just struck out. Cards up 1-0.

Bottom 2nd: Carpenter pitched his thirteenth scoreless inning in the top of the inning. Just when the event fans were sucking in lungfulls of boo-gas, Encarnacion disappoints them with a bloop single to shallow center. Molina walks without seeing a strike to put two men on with no outs for Luna, who’s due. Hector singles, scoring the speedy Encarnacion and advancing Molina to second. Taguchi steps up to the plate, takes a strike, a ball near his right foot, and slaps a bloop single to right, scoring Molina and advancing Luna to third with one out. Carpenter strikes out looking at the 1-2 pitch (looks like a ball to me) after fouling a few off. Eckstein comes in and lays down a successful suicide squeeze bunt on a 1-2 count to score Luna from third, barely making it to first after bunting it down the first-base line. Perez pretty much falls off the mound towards the third base line after his delivery, so Eckstein made it pretty darn close. (On replay, he was safe by a few wees.) Edmonds comes in and flies out to shallow left, swinging away at the first pitch.

Postgame: Got to working and stopped with the liveblog, but that was quite a game. Carpenter had a rough fourth inning, giving up 2 runs before pitching himself out of a bases loaded jam. He wasn’t at his best today: 6IP 8H 2R 1BB 3K. The bullpen was solid for the fifth game in a row, with Wainwright pitching a perfect inning with two strikeouts. I was impressed enough to rewind the inning and watch it twice. Dude’s a hell of a pitcher–attacks up and down in the zone before chucking Uncle Charlie to get batters swinging defensively at a ball in the dirt. Josh Hancock pitched the last two scoreless innings, allowing two hits and plunking Craig Wilson with his second pitch of the game. Stars of the game would have to be Hector Luna and So Taguchi. Hector was due to hit Perez and went 2-4 with 2 RBI and a run scored; So was due to hit anybody and went 3-4 with 2 RBI to raise his batting average 46 points. Edmonds went 0-3 with a walk while batting second tonight. Says Tony La Russa: “It’s just a one-day thing. He won’t be there tomorrow.”

Might as well make it a tradition… Facing Victor Santos {vs. roster, last game} tomorrow, here’s the lineup prediction, straight out of my kiester:

Miles       2B
Luna        SS
Pujols      1B
Edmonds     CF
Rolen       3B
Rodriguez   LF
Bennett      C
Schumaker   RF
Suppan       P

I’m guessing La Russa goes with a scrub heavily left-handed lineup. Taguchi and Encarnacion both had good games tonight, but they’ll get the day off. Eckstein gets his first day off–as much to test Luna as the backup shortstop as to give Eckstein some rest. More importantly, giving Eckstein a day off in this lineup guess gives us an excuse to BS about which player we’d most like as the leadoff man when Eck’s out of the lineup. Miles has done it before, and has been batting like a lead-off man in the eighth spot, getting on base ahead of the pitcher at a solid clip (.423). Luna’s hitting with authority lately and has better speed than Rodriguez so he’s more likely to run out double plays in front of Pujols. Schumaker’s got leadoff experience, so he plays the Aaron Miles/So Taguchi role of secondary leadoff hitter batting eighth ahead of the pitcher.

Of course, Suppan might need a bit more offensive help than this experimental lineup could provide.

Update 3:35pm-Wednesday: Tony La Russa reads H…L! “La Russa said [Luna] could start again tonight, but perhaps not at second.” That’s raised a few eyebrows at today’s VeB thread, along the lines of: if Luna’s outfield defense is good enough to start in left for the Cardinals, surely John Gall’s must be. Eminently reasonable, that thinking. I think Luna starting at short might end up happening tonight. I’d prefer the all lefty outfield of JohnnyRocket-JimmyBallgame-SkipToMySchumaker to one with Spiezio in left and Rodriguez in right.

I think I’m gonna puke…

Thanks a lot, Redbirdbrain.

Later: Jeff points out that this one is good for a tasteless laugh.

Our first softball game was tonight. I doubled in my first at-bat, flew out to right in the second–a baserunner scored on a throwing error after advancing from second to third. My third at-bat was absolutely terrible. With two outs and runners on first and second, I had a brainfart and took a swing at the first pitch even though it was well over my head, bouncing it to short to end the inning. Amazingly stupid. I caught an easy pop-up at third but missed three grounders to my right there. One of ‘em I should have had, another was hit hard and right down the line, and the other I chased down but didn’t put on the tag… Pretty lousy game for my part, but the rest of the team did well enough that we only lost 18-15. Great pitching by Bobo. Unfortunately, one of our players hurt her ankle in a collision at home. She tagged out the runner but had to leave the game to get some ice on it.

Cards start a three-game series against the Pirates tomorrow, sending Chris Carpenter up to face Oliver Perez. It’s likely with that matchup that we’ll get better pitching than we did the last time the Cardinals faced Perez. Here’s the lineup we’ll probably trot out there barring bad shrimp:

Eckstein    SS
Encarnacion RF
Pujols      1B
Edmonds     CF
Rolen       3B
Rodriguez   LF
Molina       C
Miles       2B
Carpenter    P

Maybe Enc and Rodriguez will be swapped in the order. Miles should get a few at-bats from the right side against Perez, against whom he went 2-4 with a double in the first meeting.

In ex-Cardinals news, Matt Morris plunked two batters in the first inning against the Rockies before being ejected, along with the manager and pitching coach. Later in the game, Ray King was ejected for throwing at Omar Vizquel.

I left this as a comment at Redbird Ramblings but figured I’d cross-post it here since there’s a lot of stuff in it. All the PCL rankings I mention come from some spreadsheets I made from the official Minor Leage Baseball website as of Saturday night (when I should have been doing something more fun or useful):

I don’t think Spivey’s going to be coming up unless someone gets injured. The Miles/Luna platoon is doing just fine for now, and I don’t expect it to drop off any, and Spivey’s batting in the notoriously hitter-friendly PCL isn’t exactly sparkling. He won’t be able to translate his walk-rate to the NL, and the hitting component of his high OBP is bad even for AAA second basemen. (He’s 23rd among the 30 PCL second basemen, 25th in slugging. Bo Hart is literally hitting with more power than Spivey: they both have three doubles, and Hart hit them in less than half the ABs as Spivey; Bo Hart is not better than Miles or Luna, and Spivey is even worse.

As for John Gall, he ranks 12th in OPS of the 52 PCL outfielders with 30 or more at-bats. He’s truly tearing the cover off the ball down there. Put that into this perspective: the sixth best hitting outfield in the PCL so far this season is Mike Restovich who the Cubs added to their roster while Lee is healing, and he’s looked so far in his career like a decent fourth or fifth outfielder. Skip Schumaker’s been hitting the ball hard–just right at people–so I wouldn’t say that he’s fizzled. Skip might be better off playing everyday in Memphis, though, and Gall’s in his last option year, so now’s the time to see what he can do.

I saw something else out there that’s pretty good. I’d thought that Derek Lee’s hand/wrist injury would be difficult to come back from–that it would alter his swing and lead to difficulty down the road. Turns out the opposite is the case according to this piece and that he’ll come back “better, without the loss of grip strength.” Note to yourself: that article was written by a Cubs fan.

This is this funniest thing I’ve ever read on the intarwebs.

Thanks be to Baseball Crank for pointing it out.

Update: Similar stuff here; and reminds us of the Schuppco incidents.

One more update: While driving around Chicago with my old friend Nick a while back, I remarked on all the crazy (to me) intersections in that town. Six-way stops are not uncommon–common, in fact. He turned to me and said something like, “Dude, you should see it in Wrigleyville… They’ve got eight-way stops. Your directions will read like, ‘go four blocks and make an up at Waveland.’”

Apparently, Brooklyn’s got at least one intersection with a ‘down’. Looks like a tough turn to make. (I know, I know… I should leave to jokes to the professionals.)

On the way home from the office just now, I was listening to the second game of Illinois’ double-header against Iowa. Doing the play-by-play, Dave Loane related the incredible story that Iowa’s pitcher, Chris Zinn, had his apartment destroyed by a tornado recently and that more amazingly, the same thing had happened to him while at his previous school. Eric Loy came back with, “I don’t wanna be his roommate!”

Something funny that I wanted to pass on: I’d read of a t-shirt somewhere–thought it was Cardinals Diaspora, but couldn’t find it there just now–that had a pretty witty slogan on it. This is pretty close, although I think the Red Sox outfield is plenty solid without Damon.

I hurt my throwing arm a bit at softball practice last night. The same thing happened last year, sort of a tennis elbow-type thing. It felt fine after an hour or so, but then it started hurting again today while taking swings in the cages. Think I’ll pick up some sort of wrap for it before our first game tomorrow as a short term fix. As a long term fix, I’m gonna have to exercise more to get my arm strength up. And one of my teammates pointed out that I’m not using my body enough when I throw and have been whipping the ball almost with arm alone. There’s something to work on in the game tomorrow.

The Cards won their second of third game against the Cubs today behind a shaky yet effective start by Sidney Ponson. The bullpen was inspiring. Wainwright came in to pitch a 1-2-3 (FB,>|,>|)* inning, Looper pitched two perfect innings, and Izzy got the save–allowing one baserunner on an error. Here’s the line for Ponson’s third start as compared to Jamey Wright’s:

Ponson: 5.0 IP 6 H 1 ER 4 BB 0 K
Wright: 6.2 IP 4 H 2 ER 5 BB 2 K

Jamey Wright’s walks should concern Giants fans, although four of them were in the first two innings and he settled down after that. Also something that should mildly concern Giants fans: he’s thrown at least 100 pitches in each of his first three starts. This is a pitcher who hasn’t thrown more than 200 innings but once in his career–back in 1998–so a bit of caution might be warranted. Through three starts though, he’s been a better pitcher than Sidney Ponson for somewhere between one-half to one-fifth of the pay depending on how many starts Ponson makes this season.

I’ve been thinking that Rick Ankiel would be passing through waivers for the past few days. MLB rules bar anyone affiliated with a team from talking to the press or public about any players’ waiver status, so there’s been no news on it. He was eligible to come off the DL last Monday with Larry Bigbie, so I’d expected he’d have popped up on Springfield’s roster yesterday at the latest, and he didn’t–which led me to fear that someone had put in a claim for him that would have to be worked out over the weekend. It turns out that the situation is much worse: he may need season ending knee surgery. Or that could simply be an overblown story planted to help him pass successfully through waivers. It would surprise me if someone claimed him since if he were ready to play outfield at the MLB level the Cardinals would be putting him in St. Louis’ left field instead of Springfield’s or Davenport’s. Also mentioned in that article is John Gall’s first home run of the season, a grand slam in Friday’s game.

Houston’s up 1-0 now over the Pirates in the bottom of the fourth with a one run lead behind a rookie pitcher. Did I leave any prepositions out of that sentence?

* That >| is supposed to be a backwards K. I couldn’t find a character entity for it.

Aside from Ronny Cedeno’s diving snag of a line drive to end the game, the last few innings of tonight’s Cubs at Dodgers game was some of the worst baseball I’ve seen in a long time. The worst of it (even worse than watching a Dodgers pitcher misplay the same groundball over and over again) was when Rafael Furcal collided with Derrek Lee at first base when Eyre glove-flipped a bunted ball over Lee’s head. It was a hard collision and Lee came up holding his wrist. I sincerely hope he’s OK and his initial diagnosis of a wrist sprain is not more of the worn-thin Cubs BS medical spin.

I’ve got this game DVR’ing at home and was planning on avoiding anything that might give away how it goes. That was a pipe-dream. I’ll just have to watch the highlights tonight, as I’m listening to the gameday audio at work. Jimmy Ballgame already went yard, showing that his shoulder injury is (fingers crossed) healed.

La Russa did something interesting today, moving Encarnacion into left field and John Rodriguez into right. Usually you put your best arm in right, since the throw from right field to third is about as far as anyone’ll ever need to throw. You’d have to be a slow, slow batter to get thrown out at first from left field, although I’m sure it’s happened before. Encarnacion has a strong arm, much better than Rodriguez’ and by my eye third among outfielders currently on the roster. It’s a strange move to move a player all the way across the outfield after seeing balls jump off the bats from a certain angle for most of their career. Turns out that PNC park simply has strange dimensions, with an enormous left field. I suppose they correctly figure Encarnacion has a better chance at gunning down runners at second from deep left than Rodriguez would, and Rodriguez is going to have to rely on a cutoff man no matter what.

Whoa! David Eckstein homered! Can’t wait to watch this game when I get home!

That’ll be fairly late tonight. My softball team has out third practice (and hopefully our first with all team members there) at 5:30 today. If I can improve from last week’s practice as much as I did last week from the week before, I should do all right tonight. Something kind of funny is that our team’s name is roughly synonymous with Cheaters and we’ve only got two women on a co-ed team. If you think that’s cheating, you’re a sexist-big-bastard. And ugly.

On a worthless-pitcher-split note: Jeff Suppan was a “road warrior” in 2004 with an ERA 1.20 lower on the road than at home and a 10-1 road record against 6-8 at home. There’s no reason to think that there’s anything to it–Busch stadium circa 2004 wasn’t any sort of hitter’s park. So far in this very young season, Suppan has pitched very well at home and gotten crushed on the road to the tune of a 15.43 ERA after tonight’s two inning, eight run shelling.

It looks like Memphis is going to win their second game of the season tonight. The first and second hitters for Memphis are Spivey and Bigbie, with Larry making his second start of his rehabilitation/Spring-Training-do-over. On Monday night, he struck out in all his three plate appearances. Tuesday night, Larry went 0-3 with a walk, a run scored, and a strikeout. He’s got a lot of road to cover in the next 18 days. It’s tempting to suggest John Gall, who’s hitting well for Memphis so far, might be a better outfielding option right now than Skip Schumaker, who’s slumping at the plate with the Big Club. Bernie Miklasz is probably making that suggestion with his call to “Free John Gall” line in his Bernie’s Bits columns. I’m without a strong opinion on this one. Skip hasn’t been striking out much and has been hitting the ball well–he simply ain’t hittin’ ‘em where they ain’t. John Gall, on the other hand, worked hard last year and in the offseason to learn to defend the outfield. He hit about as well as any of the outfield candidates in Spring ball and he’s hit great since the AAA season started, although without any homers. I think it’s unlikely that Gall would be brought up for the two weeks or so that Bigbie’s got for his rehab and then sent back down, though. There is a crazy option available… This fellow’s got to pass through waivers soon. Adding him to the roster and assigning Skip to AAA would be a very bad idea. The outfield in Memphis is crowded enough already, and the only options for R.A. would be to hit so well that he’d take away John Rodriguez’ spot on the bench, something exceedingly unlikely given that he’s been on the shelf for a while after missing most of Spring Training. Alternatively, he’d have to look foolish at the plate in order to clear waivers. It’s better to just try to sneak him through, and I imagine that process has already started. With the way the Cardinals left field is looking right now, it’s doubtful anyone would claim an outfielder we’re sending down to AA.

Come to think of it, the best situation might be that someone does claim him, and we work out a trade for him and a few other of our players who, for whatever reason, don’t appear to have a future in this organization.

We’ll find out what’ll happen in the next two or three days, as he must have come off the DL yesterday or today.

Albert Pujols has homered in his last four plate appearances. That’s unreal. I don’t expect he’ll see too many pitches in the zone the rest of the evening. So Taguchi had reached batting second and Marquis pitched a scoreless first, so the Cards are up 2-0 in the second. Luna’s starting at second against the lefty Pirate pitcher, Skip Schumaker’s in left and the Gooch is in center. Jim Edmonds is expected to rest his shoulder until this weekend’s series against Chicago, although Dan Maclaughlin just said that he’s available to pinch-hit today. Looks like Encarnacion’s finally coming around at the plate; hopefully Skip breaks out of his one-for-fourteen slump today, too. If John Gall goes yard at some point to add to his impressive numbers so far in AAA, he just might take away Skip’s roster spot while Bigbie rehabs. Shucks… Pujols’ home-run streak just ended with a double in the top of the third. Rolen’s walked into the open first base. Encarnacion comes up with 2 outs and two men on here and slaps a liner into Jeremy Burnitz’ glove in deep right field to end the inning.

I started mowing my lawn when I got home from work today. Unfortunately, I need to take apart and clean my carburetor so the engine stops running after fifteen minutes or so. I think it’s sat long enough for me to go out there and finish up the job for the next fifteen minutes. And by the miracle of DVR, I won’t miss a play.

Postgame: The lawnmower wouldn’t start up this time so I bit the bullet and disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the carburetor. Ran beautifully after that. The game was quite a nailbiter… Jason Isringhausen pitched a solid ninth, giving up a tough double to a good hitter in Jack Wilson before getting the save with two strikeouts and a grounder. Skip went 0-4 to take his batting slump to 1-18 and five hitless games. I saw his last at-bat after mowing the lawn and saw he’d been robbed by Jason Bay. Dan Maclaughlin called that the second ball he’d hit real well that didn’t drop for him. Going back through the DVR of the game, I see that the other hard-hit ball was a liner to second in the fourth with Luna on second. He also advanced Luna on an interesting play in the sixth. Showing bunt with Luna on first and Marquis on deck, Schu gets ahead with a 2-0 count. He couldn’t figure out Oquendo’s signs and the hit and run was on. He made contact, bouncing a grounder that the second baseman had some trouble handling. He was out, and Luna advanced–later stealing third during Marquis’ at-bat. Unfortunately, Marquis failed to sacrifice Luna home, striking out on a 1-2 count on a pitch low and away. Not a terrible game out of Skip for having so little to show for it. In the end, the Birds win 2-1… For the second day in a row, Pujols carries the team to victory in dramatic fashion. (Correction: Pujols AND Marquis for the second game in a row…)

A friend sent me a link to this recipe for Easter Turducken this morning.

It turns out that this gal is a friend of a friend.

We had a tornado warning again last night, nowhere near as bad as the last one. My magnolia tree blossomed and had all the flowers blown off last night in the wind and rain. I’m gonna take off work Thursday to do some gardening and will take some pictures.

I wrote an enormous post earlier today that was lost due to windows crashing my browser. It picked up on a surprising comment that Rick Horton had made during today’s 9-3 win over the Reds. He compared Skip Schumaker to the Brian Giles that he knew as a minor league ballplayer–Horton said he thought Skip’s ceiling is that high and many in the Cards organization see superstar potential in him. This surprised even me, who’s been a big fan of Schumaker for a long time, but mostly because of his defensive skill. Comparing their minor league careers, Schumaker struck out a lot more than Giles did, and Skip played college ball for two years, but in Skip’s second season against AA pitching, he put up Giles-esque numbers: .316/.389/.419 for Skip vs. .327/.410/.438 for Giles in his second AA season. Skip transitioned to AAA pitching better last season than he had to AA pitching, although the PCL is a hitters’ league, which may have assisted him. Putting his ceiling anywhere near Brian Giles is very, very exciting though. That’s about the gist from that lost post. There was also some a comparison of Ponson’s second start for the Cardinals vs. Jamey Wright’s second start for the Giants (Wright tossed a gem, Ponson was good enough… Season comparison here). Also, I tempered my low opinion of former Illini Scott Spiezio, who jacked a first-pitch, two-run homer as a pinch hitter today. Finally, I noted that the roster game is getting tough. John Gall is hitting beautifully (16-40, same as Michel Hernandez) and Brian Falkenborg and Brad Voyles are both pitching incredibly. Too bad the team is 0-8… Bigbie should be up in twenty days, and it’ll be between Skip and John Rodriguez who gets sent down. Tough call, especially considering how crowded the outfield in Memphis is. It’d be nice if we could swing a trade to move some of these guys out while fortifying the starting pitching down there. You’d think that a package of John Gall, Junior Spivey, and John Rodriguez for Renyel Pinto and Ben Julianel might pique the Marlins’ interest.

Completely unrelated, but I finally mastered a recipe for fried rice or similar sorts of dishes. There are two ingredients that need to be included aside from the obvious: sake (substitute vodka) and butter. I cooked some shrimp tonight and they turned out absolutely perfect. Chop up a bit more garlic than you’d expect you’d need and let it pickle in some vodka and teriyaki sauce. By the time that mixture gets down to room temperature (about the time it takes for rice to cook), the garlic will be soft. Stir-fry that sauce with your meat and some butter, tossing in some sesame seeds, and you’ll have an outstanding meal.