The best analysis of the new MLB CBA I’ve read so far is this piece by Ryan Mock.

If anyone’s interested.

The player rankings to determine Type A or Type B free agents is available here, by the way. (Tip of the hat to Mikeoat at VeB for the link.)

Biz of Baseball has a daily-updated list of player who have filed for free agency.

Before continuing, please treat yourself to an Elisabeth Shue fix:

Great stuff, that.

I don’t have anything to add to the excellent post-series writeups that you’ll find written by Brian Gunn or Matt Phillips, except for a few comments about Jeff Weaver. He pitched beautifully in Game 5. I like his sidearm delivery that he mixes in and noticed that he picked up a new pitch. Late in the season, Adam Wainwright suddenly began featuring a fastball with late tailing movement towards the right side of the plate that he began using as an inside pitch to left-handed hitters. For the first time this season, Weaver started throwing the same pitch in Game 5 to great effect. I can only guess that Carpenter is teaching this pitch to his teammates, much like DK57 taught his curveball to Matt Morris years ago. Good on him. In any case, this championship season goes down among the most enjoyable experiences of my life. My new desktop wallpaper.

Now comes the offseason, when I’ll be blogging about hockey and college basketball most of the time, with hot stove baseball commentary sprinkled in. Plus the occasional personal note for family and friends. Writing about baseball during the offseason may be even more fun for me than during the season—speculation on the possible is sometimes more interesting than analysis of the accomplished.

Let’s jump right into the hot stove season, taking as our starting point Rich Lederer’s roster analysis and Nate Silver’s shopping guide. Lederer enumerates the players from the playoff roster we have signed to long-term contracts and which are under club control:

Under Contract
Albert Pujols 1B – Scott Rolen 3B – Jason Isringhausen RHRP – Chris Carpenter RHSP – Juan Encarnacion RF – Braden Looper RHRP – David Eckstein SS – Ricardo Rincon LHRP

Under Club Control
So Taguchi OF – Yadier Molina C – Adam Wainwright RHR/SP – Anthony Reyes RHSP – Chris Duncan COF – Aaron Miles UIF – John Rodriguez COF – Randy Flores LHRP – Josh Hancock RHRP – Tyler Johnson LHRP – Josh Kinney RHRP – Brad Thompson RHRP

So let’s slot these players into an ideal 25-man roster and see where we need to fill holes…

Pitching Rotation
1 Chris Carpenter
2 Anthony Reyes
3 ?
4 ?
5 ?

Starting Lineup
C  Yadier Molina
1B Albert Pujols
2B ?
3B Scott Rolen
SS David Eckstein
LF Chris Duncan
CF ?
RF Juan Encarnacion

Bench
C    ?
UIF Aaron Miles
UIF ?
OF   John Rodriguez
OF   So Taguchi
OF   Skip Schumaker

Bullpen
RH-Long   Josh Hancock
RH-Long   Brad Thompson
RH-Setup  Braden Looper
RH-Setup  Josh Kinney
RH-Closer Adam Wainwright
LH-Long   Tyler Johnson
LH-Setup  Ricardo Rincon
LH-Setup  Randy Flores
DL
Jason Isringhausen

I count three starting pitchers, a second baseman, a backup catcher, and another utility infielder who can play the corners and ideally in the outfield that are needed. Look again, though. I don’t expect Isringhausen to be ready when the season opens, but expect him to be ready to go a month or so into the season, when he can ease himself back into the closing role at which point Wainwright can move to the rotation, where he should be more valuable. So we really need to add two starting pitchers and make sure we have a replacement-level sixth starter with minor-league options available. I’m thinking Chris Narveson, who I’d really like to see promoted to the Cardinal bullpen at some point in the season.

But first, let’s get the easy ones out of the way. The Cardinals will be making a choice on whether to pick up Jim Edmonds’ $10 million option to play centerfield in 2007 or to pay him $3 million to leave. Edmonds will be having shoulder surgery this offseason, similar to the one he had in the 03-04 offseason. He came back from that surgery to have his career-best season. Picking up the option—paying Jimmy Ballgame $7 million to play centerfield for the Cardinals—is an absolute no-brainer. Fortunately, the Cardinals brass are reported to be taking the wisest path available: declining the option and signing him to a two-year extension. Either way, I expect Edmonds to be back in the outfield for at least 2007, so that roster spot can be declared filled.

Gary “Snow Cones” Bennett has filed for free agency and I don’t expect he’ll be back. He was a decent backup—an immense improvement over Einar Diaz—I even heard that he contributed to the pitching approach the Cardinals used to such great effect against the Tigers in the world series. There’s no real need to have a wizened backup catcher now that Molina is firmly established, defensively at least, as a veteran major league catcher. The ideal Cardinal backup would be out of the Eli Marrero mold: decent hitting, solid fielder, some speed, and versatile enough to use in the outfield and at first. Incidentally, Eli himself was DFA’d by the Mets on August 10th, a month after he’d been traded for Kazuo Matsui. He doesn’t consider himself to be a catcher anymore. We’ve got such a type in the organization already (although he’s liable to leave in minor league free agency) by the name of Mike Rose, a switch hitting catcher at Memphis who hit 15 home runs for Memphis in 271 at-bats while stealing 2 bases and spending quite a few games in the outfield. Of course, he was removed from the 40-man roster during the postseason, so the Cardinals don’t seem to think he’s going to stick at the MLB level. The other in-house options are Michel Hernandez, who’s hit for a decent average at the AAA level and is reputed to be a good defensive catcher; and Brian Esposito, who I know next to nothing about, except that he’s not a great hitter, can play first base, and filled in for Hernandez when he spent an extended period this year on the DL. Although not cut from the same cloth as an Eli Marrero, I wouldn’t mind at all seeing Todd Greene signed if it comes at a similar salary as his 2006 $700,000 to compete with Hernandez or Rose for that backup spot.

Back to starting pitching…

It’s my feeling, backed up somewhat by Bernie Micklasz, that Mark Mulder is thinking of spending one more year in St. Louis to recover from his surgery and to “show them [the fans of St. Louis] the real Mulder.” (Mark’s words) I’d be super happy with an incentive-laden contract much like Matt Morris signed in 2005 that ultimately paid him somewhere in the 8.5 m$ range. If he’s ready and up to full strength by opening day, so much the better… That could take care of one of the starting pitching spots. If Jeff Weaver will sign a reasonable contract with the Cardinals, I’d love to have him back to continue improving under the guidance of Dave Duncan. Suppan’s earned his payday, and I’d be amazed if he came back.

An intriguing reclamation project would be Carlos Silva, whose fate with the Twins will be decided by Wednesday. If his knee is healthy, I think he could be a good LAIM for the Cardinals. He’s a groundball pitcher who’s suffered in front of a bad defensive team. His home run rates have soared over the past three years, but his control looks good and don’t expect he’ll command all that much if he hits the market with his consistently weak peripherals and bad 2006 overall numbers.

[Updated 7:23 10/31: No dice on Silva. The Twins wisely picked up his option.]

I’d be very happy to see the Cardinals work out a trade for Jake Westbrook, who the Indians beat writer speculates could be traded for a package of good, veteran relief pitching—ideally with a good 2nd baseman thrown in. If some package including Looper and Rincon plus cash would be enough to get a year of Jake Westbrook at $6.1 million, I’d be pleased.

A rotation of Carpenter, Weaver, Mulder, Westbrook, and Reyes looks better to me than any we’ve had in recent memory, but a lot of things would have to go right for that to come together. Youneverknow, though. We just won the world series, after all.

The tough spot to fill is 2nd base. There aren’t many players available of significant value. Adam Kennedy, Ronnie Belliard, and Ray Durham are the big names. Ray Durham would be an excellent addition, especially against the lefties that vexed us so this season, but he’ll cost far more than the Cardinals would be willing to pay a 2nd baseman. Likely the same will hold of the other two listed there. A very risky move would be to pick up Eric Rodland from the Angels organization in the Rule 5 draft. The Angels may not be able (of even willing) to protect him this year since their 40-man roster already has 38 players on it and Rodland probably isn’t one of their most highly regarded prospects. I bet lone MiLB 30-30 man Terry Evans makes their 40-man, though. Rodland’s a 4-year college player, so he’s 26 already and looks to have made good adjustments this season, walking more times than he was struck out for the first time since leaving college and showed improvement in his power numbers. For what it’s worth, according to Dan Szymborkski’s preliminary MLEs, his AA line for 2006 translates to a .244/.321/.326 with 16 doubles, a triple, and 4 home runs. It’d be a big risk and would lead to a lot of at-bats by Aaron Miles, but we’re going to need to find a long-term solution at 2nd at some point. He’d be better than Bo Hart, Derek Wathan, Junior Spivey, or anyone else currently in our system (except for Aaron Miles).

[Updated 5:15 10/31: In the event that the Astros fail to protect him, picking up Brooks Conrad in the Rule V draft could be a really bright idea. He's a switch-hitting 2-sacker that tore the cover off the ball in his second turn at AAA. His 2006 MLE line was .244/.304/.470 (.267/.334/.534 unadjusted). He hit 15(!) triples and 24 home runs while stealing 15 bases. (Nice article about him here.) He did put up an ugly 54:135 BB:K ratio though. Either player would be an exciting gamble and add a fun dimension to the 2007 season. Conrad's got better power, looks like he's done proving himself at AAA, and—anecdotally from that article—is a play-a-hard-nine type of guy. He's blocked by Biggio and Burke at 2nd. Rodland's got better plate discipline than Conrad's shown at any level, but lacks power against lefties (hitting left-handed himself) and has yet to sniff AAA. ]

Those are some thoughts I had on the 2007 roster. They ran a bit longer than I’d intended. Now we’ll have to wait and see what sorts of bunnies Walt Jocketty manages to pull out of his hat in the next few weeks and months. And of course, I’d be interested to see what kinds of comments you folks may leave who actually read through that whole thing.

One more note… Juan Encarnacion was notably absent from the Cardinals World Series parade and Tony La Russa didn’t know why: “La Russa theorized Encarnacion was missing ‘probably because he didn’t play much’ in the Series’ final four games.” I’ve defended him all year (after getting over my initial shock and irritation at the terms of his contract), but won’t bother making an attempt here except to say that he may have a better excuse than that. I sure hope so. He looked happy enough in the team picture. I wouldn’t mind re-signing Larry Bigbie and giving him a chance to show what he can do in right field.

After dealing with a heavy work schedule and trying to stay on top of classwork, there hasn’t been much time to devote to the blog this week—this amazing, shocking week. The Cardinals are up 3-1 over the Tigers and have a chance to win it all tonight with Jeff Weaver taking the mound against Justin Verlander. Ideally, things will go better tonight that they did in Game 5 of the 1968 World Series, when Mickey Lolich pitched a 3-run complete game to beat El Birdos 5-3. Verlander hasn’t pitched a gamescore higher than 43 this postseason. Weaver has pitched very well, but hasn’t had much to show for it since he’s matched up with the opponent’s ace in his last three games.

I think the Cardinals very well may sew up their first World Series championship since 1982 tonight, but if they do lose Game 5 like the 1968 team did and have to face Kenny Rogers tomorrow, I won’t be worried. The photographic evidence and the other questions raised are sufficient to convince me, at least, that Rogers has been flouting the fact that he’s pitching with pinetar on his fingertips and palm for at least one game in the regular season and the entire postseason. I think La Russa was very, very smart to not make a big scene about it during Game 2. Here’s why: tonight’s first base coach will be Tim McClelland. If the Cardinals should lose tonight, Tim will be behind home plate for Game 6 when Rogers pitches again after the tarnish will have had five full days to set in. McClelland’s the umpire you want behind home plate in a situation where Rogers comes out with foreign substances on his hat or in his glove.

But let’s not allow it to come to that, eh?

Go Cards!

This post is titled after the tune Popeye sings to himself as he mosies along in the old cartoon, much like my daily stats did until today:

Deadspin.com linked to Monday’s post, bringing a welcome flood of traffic. Unfortunately, most didn’t get the joke. Someone even called me a retard! Suckers.

So anyways, my beloved Redbirds are up 2-1 in the 2006 World Series after Chris Carpenter pitched a gem last night, allowing merely 3 hits over 8 scoreless innings. I watched the game at Desafinado’s CD release party, watching the band during the commercial breaks, and talking to the other baseball fans in attendance. Great show. Great game. Only better place to have seen it, I imagine, is where Jeff was at. Looks like Section 331, Row 9, Seat 13… Life’s good, in spite of the alleged mental retardation.

It’s raining in St. Louis, but all indications are that tonight’s game will be played. FOX was scheduled to have World Series coverage starting at 7, but had on the truly awful War at Home instead. I’ve got the first four episodes of Lost DVR’d and the fifth will be recorded tonight. I’m thinking now’s as good a time as any to watch those until the game starts.

That and I’ll be studying up on filters and room acoustics before hitting the sheets before a long day ahead tomorrow.

The notes to rule 1.04 in the official rules of Major League Baseball states, CLEAR AS FRICKIN’ DAY:

(a) Any Playing Field constructed by a professional club after June 1, 1958, shall provide a minimum distance of 325 feet from home base to the nearest fence, stand or other obstruction on the right and left field foul lines, and a minimum distance of 400 feet to the center field fence. (b) No existing playing field shall be remodeled after June 1, 1958, in such manner as to reduce the distance from home base to the foul poles and to the center field fence below the minimum specified in paragraph (a) above.

And yet… AND YET:

AT&T Park in San Francisco was built for the 2000 season, a shade under 42 years after June 1, 1958, and look at their right field foul line! A measley 309 feet!

NOTE: If all games played at AT&T Park were forfeited due to this BLATANT CHEATING, the Cards would end up with an 84-77 record, while the Astros would have been at 84-78. So we still won the division, fair and square. So take your talk of backing into the division and stuff it in your ears! The Dodgers, meanwhile, would have finished up 90-72, second in the West behind the juggernaut 93-69 Padres.

Clarification of the obvious: This post was written to satirize the over-the-top, after-the-fact calls for justice by certain Cardinal fans in message boards and such for the game 2 pinetar thing. I’m no fan of gimmicky dimensions but understand the San Francisco real estate market well enough to know how much that extra 16 feet would cost. C’mon folks… If you think anybody would seriously suggest the Giants should have to forfeit all their home games for the past six seasons—or that I’m the first person to point out that the Giants play on a silly field—you’ve got to get your BS detector retuned. I used all-caps and everything!

Check out the newest Cardinal blog:

When you talk about tenacity, this team probably exemplifies that word. They’ve been knocked down, left in the street dying, and instead of somebody running them over, a guy in a taxi picks them up, and the next thing you know, they’re in a limousine and they’re playing here in Detroit.

That’s fantastic.

The last time the Cardinals played in a game 1 of the world series, I kept a liveblog of it that attracted the attention of some amicable Red Sox fans and syntactically challenged Portuguese blog-spammers. Only two years ago, there was no Viva el Birdos back then where a fan with an internet connection and a case of beer could share his joy and frustration with similarly hooked-up fans—there was barely even a curveblog at the time. (We did have Redbird Nation, though.) Segments of Cardinal Nation were spoiled and petulant much of the season and shamefully asinine in the postseason. This may be the last world series berth our beloved Redbirds earn in a long time—it’d be nice if we could win or lose gracefully as a fanbase. Like Scott, I’ve never had anything against the Tigers and liked them a great deal this season. They’ve got exciting young pitching, class acts like Craig Monroe and Placido Polanco, and an outstanding, professional manager in Jim Leyland. My town has a slew of AL central fans, mostly White Sox but some Tigers fans—and they’re all knowledgeable baseball fans. I had a conversation with one of ‘em during one of the darker times in the Cardinals season about how the best baseball in the country is still being played in the Central divisions, and that the world series would likely be played between the Cards or ‘Stros and the White Sox or the Tigers.

The 2004 World Series was a terrible experience. The Cardinals had a truly great team and were in the Series for the first time since 1987—but they didn’t show up and were swept in an ugly four games with even uglier off-field antics. (Last paragraph, a little more here.)

This year was different, though. I liked the team that came out of Spring Training… I was the only fan that I know of who was pulling for Aaron Miles to make the team and after the initial shock of the contract terms, didn’t hate the Encarnacion signing. It was a team put together by a gambler, not many sure-things there. Sidney Ponson didn’t work out (literally, ha) and Miles ended up being the utility infielder that I thought he’d be, although behind late-acquisition Ronnie Belliard instead of injury-recovered Junior Spivey. The season was rough and the team looked terrible at times, though mostly due to injured pitchers pitching injured. The NLCS went on a game too many so we can’t use our best pitchers best, but that game 7 was memorable enough to make it worthwhile. (I was watching it at a Cubs bar, and they were rooting hard for the Mets, especially in the ninth with the bags juiced and Beltran up. Wainer’s 3-pitch strikeout changed their tune to a chant of “Let’s go Tigers!” I’m glad to be a baseball fan as much as a Cardinal fan.)

Enough rambling: I expect to see a better World Series than in 2004, not because the 2006 Cardinals are better than the 2004 Cardinals or the 2006 Tigers are worse than the 2004 Red Sox—I’d disagree with both claims—but these teams are both loose. The Red Sox had the weight of curse and destiny on their side—the whole baseball universe—Tom Hanks included, Cardinal Nation excepted—was rooting for them. The Cardinals haven’t won since 1982, the Tigers since 1984. The Cardinals are the worst regular-season team to make the WS since the 1973 Mets, the Tigers were swept at the hands of the lowly Royals in their last series of the regular season to lose their division title to the Minnesota Twins. The conventional wisdom is that this will be a legendarily dull and unwatchable world series between two teams that don’t deserve to be there, unlike in 2004 when it was the accursed team of destiny against the Best (regular season) Team in Baseball. The only interest casual and “expert” fans have this year is how badly Ozzie Guillen’s “man’s league” that Phil Rogers notes is “smart enough to have the designated hitter” will stomp the timid and weak Senior Circuit squad from Cowtown, non-coastal USA.

My gut says it’ll be a great series, worthy of both franchises and their fans—and genuine fans of the game—to hell with the rest who’ve moved on to screaming at laundry in football games. Play loose and have fun, boys. Play a hard nine—and do your best to grab the a World Series game tonight for the first time in two years.

C-Rae and I met up for the Fighting Illini hockey game last night against Liberty University. The Illini entered the game undefeated at 6-0 and Liberty brought a 6-1 record. The Liberty Flames are a very big and talented team with a phenomenal goaltender named Mike Binnie. The Illini were outplayed by the Flames for the first two periods and probably would have lost the game had Liberty not gotten themselves into 58 minutes worth of minutes in the box. Illinois scored three goals in the third period, the second of which came off a beautifully subtle lean-deke by Jordon Pringle. The wheels kinda fell off the cart for Liberty after the Illini took the lead on that goal and ended up with two of their players, including Steve Jensen, one of their best defensemen, being sent off the ice early—the first for throwing his stick into the penalty box in frustration and the second for committing the cardinal sin of pushing a referee. The refs were calling a tight game—I wouldn’t have called a lot of the penalties but didn’t think they were unfairly favoring the home team.

The breakdown by Liberty may have had something to do with the Harassin’ Illini, our notoriously raucous hockey fanbase. One of the visiting player’s family showed up to support him with signs (“We ♥ U, Brian”) that led to merciless taunting. C-Rae and I joked about making signs for tonight’s game saying things like “long time” to crudely alter their message. I imagine he’ll probably ask them to leave the signs at the hotel tonight… They’re a very good team, though, and could hand Illinois their first loss tonight now that they’ve been exposed to the hostile atmosphere and if they can play with more discipline. Too bad I already have plans on top of plans for tonight.

The boxscore is here.

The Illinois football team just lost a close game to Penn State. They led 9-3 at the half and were down by five within the two minute warning. The Nittany Lions sacked Juice Williams in the endzone on a 4th-and-15 to go up 19-12 and the ensuing on-side kick was returned for a touchdown. Still impressive to hang with such a powerhouse like that. That’s three straight losses where Illinois was in it to the end.

Good to see the Michigan State Spartans eke out a late win against Northwestern just now, too. As unsportsmanlike as we Illini Hockey fans are, at least we contain it to a club sport.

Can you believe it? Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS was easily the best baseball game that I’ve seen all year and has to rank in the top five all-time that I’ve watched. Matt Leach says it’s the best 9-inning game he’s ever attended.

Pip has the finest recap likely to be written.

If you didn’t see the game, you missed something truly special. I’m in horrific pain today (still, now) after the punishment my innards took last night. Good think Josh Kinney didn’t pitch—I don’t think my liver could have handled a few Kosh Jinneys on top of all the other beverages consumed.

This video of the postgame celebration is thoroughly amusing. Thanks, C-Bot!

In closing, this commercial cracks me up.

The Cardinals have their best shot to clinch a world series berth tonight with Chris Carpenter taking the mound against John Maine. Carp had his worst career postseason start in Game 2, after being (wisely) moved up in the rotation on account of the rain delay. My suspicion is that moving him up screwed with his ritual a bit and cost him focus and control of Uncle Chuck. He’s had his usual four off-days this time around and flew to New York yesterday before Game 5, so I’m expecting the usual dominating Chris Carpenter to show up and show the Mets fans what we’ve been so excited about all season long.

I’ll be watching the game at Bentley’s Pub in Champaign along with C-Rae. There’s an Irish band that plays there on Wednesdays, so I usually go to listen to them then throw some darts. This time I’ll just have four things to do. I’ll be the dashing, handsome cat in a powder blue commemorative ’82 World Championship t-shirt.

Seriously… What planet did these national writers at MLB.com just return from? In an article about the Cardinals bullpen, Mark Newman writes: “It is almost four months to the night that the Cardinals had purchased [Josh Kinney's] contract from the River City Rascals, an independent Frontier League team in the area that supplies alternative ‘bonus baseball’ for local fans.” Yes, yes, and we’ve also got a team in Sauget—they sell a double chili cheeseburger with two krispy kreme donuts for buns. But the story about Kinney is way off and anyone who knows anything about baseball would know where to look it up. Kinney pitched three games for River City in 2001, not four months ago. He’s steadily worked his way up through the system over the past six seasons. Newman, learn from a master and do just a bit of research before trying to write cute.

Speaking of Josh Kinney. I invented a shot last night called the Kosh Jinney composed of gin, grenadine, and 7-Up. Tastes a little like cherry 7-up mixed with gasoline and lawn clippings. My softball pitcher and I did a shot after his 1.1 IP, 3K hold last night.

And Newman, since when is Jose Valentin a right-handed batter? He switch hits and batted lefty against Wainwright in the 8th.

Just thought I’d brag that I liked the guy early in the season. Real early in the season: May 31st.

If you haven’t already seen it, Cardinals Diaspora has a page dedicated to Kinney. His mom and other family members dropped comments in there earlier in the season. Josh Kinney is a hell of a pitcher and a hell of a guy, from all reports.

I’d be happy to hear of Mike Matheny taking him out hunting this winter. Maybe with John Mabry and Cal Eldred.

We silly, superstitious Cardinals fans (mostly just the dudes) are growing playoff beards to give our team a bit of good luck, hockey style. I usually shave twice a day, once in the morning and again before I hit the town in the evening—the last time I shaved was the evening of October fourth, so I’ve got just under two weeks’ growth going on.

And here it is, a picture of me blinding myself with my camera:

I’m still seeing spots. Will try to get a better picture taken at work tomorrow, smiling about tonight’s win.

Update: Chris gave away the easter egg in the background a bit too quickly. Nice to see both Jeff and Dave on that page showing off their playoff beards, though. Dave was showing off a tag from a long-distance run. Mine’s cooler, but wasn’t earned by me.

And very happy that it was. I needed a day off. The team could probably use one, too. What follows is a bunch of links and unrelated statements of the obvious slapped together in one fantastic post.

I only watched the last quarter of the MNF game, but what a heckuva quarter of football. Brian Urlacher, if you didn’t already know, is quite the beast.

Some of these jokes are funny.

Is it really that inconvenient to wash a bowl? You’ve got to wash the griddle anyways.

Tomorrow’s game 1 rematch between Tom Glavine and Jeff Weaver, both on full rest now that tonight’s game was rained out, is a game the Cardinals really should win. It would put the Redbirds up 3-2 and give us 2 wins in our 3 home games of the series. It would get the Cards-can’t-hit-the-lefties monkey off Cardinal Nation’s collective back. Most importantly, it would put us in a position where we’d need to win one of the next two games with Chris Carpenter and Jeff Suppan pitching. Carp should be well rested and ready to rock after throwing only 92 pitches on Friday the 13th. Ideally, JeffWea can continue his run of excellent October pitching and the Cards offense puts up a pile of runs to make up for Sunday night’s ass-whooping. Here’s the lineup I’d like to see pile up those runs:

Eckstein SS
Belliard 2B
Pujols 1B
Edmonds CF
Rolen 3B
Molina C
Encarnacion RF
Taguchi LF
Weaver P

Belliard and Molina have been hitting consistently in this series, so they should both be moved up in the lineups. We haven’t been getting enough production of any sort out of the #2 spot, so might as well try Belliard there, even though he put up a goose egg in Glavine’s game 1 start. I’ve never liked Molina batting in front of the pitcher in any case and had been thinking that the 8 spot might be a good place for Encarnacion to hit, since he’s got speed and hasn’t added much value elsewhere. Taguchi’s been nothing short of spectacular for the Cardinals this series and has earned a start—it makes all the sense in the world to bat him there instead. I’d tell Rolen that we really love ya man, but tonight you’re gonna have to take good at-bats and drive runs in when the opportunities present themselves—or else Spiezio starts at third in Game 6 against John Maine again. Spezio looked bad enough in left Sunday night that I’d avoid starting him out of the infield the rest of the series. Tomorrow’s game would be a great time for David Eckstein to significantly improve his .172/.294/.276 line so far this postseason. I’d consider giving Miles a shot at short, but Eck’s defense has been so good and could end up being a difference-maker in this game. I wouldn’t be unhappy to see Miles replace Eckstein if those runs get piled up early, though. Nor would it displease me to see Spiezio replace Pujols in the same situation, for disturbing reasons Bernie Micklasz gives here along with La Russa’s planned game 5 lineup.

Check out some of the referenda on the ballot I’ll be filling out next month. A clever get-out-the-vote effort by the local Green and Socialist parties, I have to admit.

It’s nice that everytime I check, Amaury Marti has hit another home run in the Arizona Fall League. He, Brenden Ryan, and Nick Stavinoha are all tearing the cover off the ball down there, with Marti leading the league in long balls. Here’s hoping he has a huge first half at Memphis and a bigger second half in St. Louis. It’d be nice if he could manage a walk every now and again, though. Terry Evans, the minor leaguer who came out of nowhere to put up the only 30-30 season in the minors last year and was traded to Anaheim for JeffWea, continues to put up good numbers, as well. (He’s playing for the Scottsdale Scorpions.)

Ugly loss tonight. The good news is that, as bad as it was, none of the pitchers who we have relied on so heavily this postseason—Adam Wainwright, Josh Kinney, Tyler Johnson, or Randy Flores—had to throw 20 or more pitches tonight. As much criticism as La Russa’s already gotten for bullpen management tonight, give him credit for not burning up those arms for tomorrow’s game 5—the last home game of the series. Braden Looper deserves some props, too, for pitching the last three innings and giving up only one run in the process.

Weather looks bad tomorrow, so all the considerations about tomorrow’s short-rest games for Glavine and Weaver may have been in vain.

I’m confident the Cardinals will still prove to be the better of the two teams. Tonight’s game was a let-down, but looking forward to seeing whether JeffWea’s outstanding run of pitching can continue.

I plugged the head-to-head numbers for the lineup against Oliver Perez into David Pinto’s lineup toy (the link will take you to the result page) and we score 5.373 runs per game using this (expected) lineup:

Eckstein
Spiezio
Pujols
Encarnacion
Rolen
Edmonds
Belliard
Molina
Reyes

The optimal lineup according to the toy with those skewed numbers scores 6.369 runs per game.

Using that lineup and their 2006 Cardinals stats vs. lefthanded pitching, we score only 3.771 with the optimal lineup expected to produce 4.060 runs.

For completion, the Mets lineup would be expected to score 5.253 runs per game using their lineup from last night and their 2006 splits vs. righthanded pitching.

Let’s hope Oliver Perez shows up instead of a generic lefthander.

First, Eric Gordon finally announced that he’s withdrawing his verbal commitment to Illinois so that he can play for the Indiana Hoosiers next year. It’s an understandable decision, really. He’s only going to be playing college ball for a year and it sounds like going to Illinois would have put his family in a pretty uncomfortable spot with the riled-up Hoosier boosters. It hurts the Illinois program quite a bit, though… Both since recruiting had been done under the assumption that EJ would be on the team and it gives fuel to the Weber critics who say he can’t recruit—who knows what that sort of reputation does to his ability to recruit. A self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak.

Then, Illinois loses to the MAC Ohio University Bobcats on Saturday night in what sounds like a truly awful game. It’s the third game in the last three weeks that’s been decided with a last minute field goal—the last two have been scored against the Illini. The team is now 2-5 when they would be 4-3 with merely mediocre play from their special teams units.

Just now, the Lambs lost to the Seahawks on a long field goal as the clock ran out. Pisser. Cards in 2 1/2 hours, though. Things will be bright and shiny then.

I have no idea how tonight’s game will play out. I expect Anthony Reyes to be very sharp based on his history of pitching on extra, extra rest. Oliver Perez is the very definition of an enigma, though. It could be an intense pitching duel based on the way both teams’ batters have looked over the past six or seven innings. It could be a shootout. Hate to sound like Joe Morgan but this game could go either way or another. I’m expecting and looking forward to a well-pitched game, though.

Speaking of well-pitched games, today’s entry by Derrick Goold at Bird Land considers re-signing Jeff Suppan to a new contract. I’d be happy with that, for sure, but don’t think the Cardinals will be able to compete with the offers his agent hears from other teams around the league. Especially if he has a game that huge in the next round (should Reyes and JeffWea put us there).

JeffWea, by the way, is historically the Cardinals’ best pitcher against the Tigers, a .242/.281/.408 line over 120 AB. Marquis is actually better: .275/.373/.314 over 51 AB—probably the only roster in baseball not to have homered off him. Our best pitcher against the Tigers this season was Sidney Ponson, who had a 7 1/3 IP, 2ER night in his third to last game wearing the Birds on the Bat.

Bernie Micklasz of the STL Post-Dispatch is a respected sportswriter and has good contacts within our beloved Cardinals organization. He’s also overly prone to panic as he’s a natural football fan, where each game is 1/16th of your season and it’s good and proper to get worked up over the outcome; whereas a baseball game is slightly less than 1/160th of the season—getting your panties in a bunch over a game or even a series is unseemly.

In spite of his tendencies to climb out on the ledge and his strange, conspiratorial columns about the Cardinals’ ownership group, Bernie’s a valuable resource and it’s worth knowing what he’s got to say. Unfortunately, the best place to get that information is his Bernie’s Pressbox forum. It’s a terrible place, full of whiners and crazy people. But I’ve got a solution! What if you could read all of Bernie’s posts to the Pressbox without having to wade through the pools of shit flooding the place. It’s the next best thing to him actually, you know, just maintaining a blog like every other good sports writer.

It’s not pretty, but I hacked up a little form to query the P-D forums for just that. It seems that the search script only handles POST queries properly, otherwise I could encode this into a simple link, but go ahead and give it a whirl. Go to this page and click through by pressing the button.

I’m so fired up for tonight’s game. I can’t contain myself. I just gotta do something. Just gotta…

Run a spreadsheet…

So I was thinking that Reyes will be pitching for the first time in a while and thought I’d go ahead and see how he’d done in similar situations. I wgot his gamelog and threw out any starts that had come within a week of another of his MLB starts, then plugged the remainder into a spreadsheet. That left the eight games in this here table:

The Cardinals are 4-4 in games started by Reyes after not having pitched (a MLB)* game in over a week. In those games, he’s put up these rates

ERA= 2.90 BB/9= 1.93 K/9= 9.24 K:BB= 4.4 GB:FB= 0.877

Do you feel encouraged? If so, great! The sample sizes are too small to make any conclusions, but we do know that Reyes has pitched some of his best games on extra rest. Tony La Russa’s a genius for benching him so often to our great frustration all year. Now he’s experienced at pitching cold.

* He pitched in the minors most of those times, and I didn’t check to see whether he’d pitched a AAA game within a week of the MLB start noted. Also, I wanted to put that parenthetical comment in there to illustrate that you can coerce a strategy for abbreviation expansion if you want, in some cases. I imagine most people, whether they wanted to or not, read “MLB” as the EXPN “Major League Baseball” instead of the LSEQ “Em Ell Bee.” The LSEQ expansion could have been coerced by using “an” instead of “a”, eh? This game really needs to start!

Let’s open with a prayer, Psalms 24:3…

Yea, though I walk to first in the valley of the shadow of La Guardia, I will fear not Glavine; Pujols’ bat and Dunc’s staff—they comfort me.

I try to be funny sometimes, yes.

The weather calls for light rain and 10-20 mph winds out to left field. This spells bad news for Weaver if any of those FPS left-handers has any opposite field power to speak of. The rotation is expected to be [Weaver, Suppan, Carpenter, Reyes, Weaver, Suppan, Carpenter] except in case of a rainout in one of these next two games, in which case Carpenter and Suppan would be switched in order. If our bats are mighty tonight and Weaver avoids a big inning, we could steal game 1. I didn’t expect that to happen in the NLDS and am merely hopeful that we do it again this round. Winning game 1 would put the Cardinals at a huge advantage, of course. The home field advantage would be neutralized completely, with three of the next four games in Busch Stadium. That’s not supposed to happen, though, so if the Cardinals fail to beat the Mets tonight, if Weaver gives up a boatload of runs, or if the Cardinals are befuddled by Glavine’s pitches, don’t panic—no time to go wobbly. The series is winnable, and a world series berth is in reach. If tonight goes badly, we’d still have a chance in game 2 to set the same advantageous conditions as if we’d won game 1.

But in case of a win tonight, don’t expect me to be in good shape tomorrow morning.

The Cardinals website hasn’t posted the NLCS roster yet, but word has it that Reyes is being swapped with Marquis. I wonder how Jason will take that news. Probably not very well.