Performing the Triple Lindy or doing in front of a full crowd at a college diving meet?

Cardinals in five.

John Hadley, who I’m told does the Cardinals postgame show on FSMW, wrote an argument making a case for Marquis to start game 4. He starts off making an honest matchup-based argument for Marquis:

Yes, Carlos Delgado devoured Marquis in their last go-around, and Paul LoDuca has reached based 50 percent of his at-bats against Marquis… however look at the other end of the spectrum.

Carlos Beltran is hitting .143 vs. Marquis. Endy Chavez (.182) and David Wright (.214) have struggled against Marquis with Jose Reyes holding his own batting .278 against Marquis.

This is all true and reasonable. Reyes hasn’t faced the Mets, though, so there’s no way to argue that Marquis would be better than Reyes using matchup history. Reyes pitched slightly better to left-handed batters than Marquis did: .278/.338/.493 to .288/.362/.499 for all of 2006.

Hadley then makes a cherry-picked argument in Marquis’ favor, looking at their last 13 games. Over that span, Reyes has a has a 6.27 ERA and has given up an eye-poppingly horrific 2.24 HR/9 compared with Marquis’ 6.12 ERA and (very bad) 1.53 HR/9. (He ignores Reyes’ 8.2 K/9 vs. Marquis 4.7 K/9.) Hadley chose the 13-game cutoff carefully, since, as you can see in the links to Pinto’s useful day-by-day database, Marquis’ thirteenth to last start was an 8 IP shutout performance. Compare their last 12 starts and Marquis’ numbers change to a 6.99 ERA with 1.75 HR/9 while Reyes’ go to 6.02 ERA and 1.95 HR/9. If you wanted to play Hadley’s game and cherry-pick your own numbers, just run a comparison of their last 15 games to include Reyes’ CG 1-Run outing against the White Sox and Marquis’ 12 ER game against Atlanta. (I was there. It was hideous.) Then Reyes has a 5.52 ERA vs. Marquis’ 6.72 ERA. Two can play this game, Hadley.

Pip pointed out today that Marquis actually, shockingly has pitched best among Cardinal starters in their careers against the Mets using Tangotiger’s FIP measure, and that he’s pitched reasonably well in Shea stadium. Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan must have their Sabermetrical hats on, since they supposedly [according to reports from the goofballs that hang out at Bernie's Pressbox (please BM, give it up and start a straight blog)] aim to pitch Marquis in Game 2 at Shea in the event Weaver wins game 1, else Reyes in game 4. For that to be the actual plan, the Cardinals would have to carry both Marquis and Reyes on the NLCS roster, so a legitimate bullpen arm would have to be left off to allow that stunt.

I’d go with Reyes. He’ll be here next year. Marquis won’t. And I think it could be a fantastic game 4 matchup between Reyes and Perez.

The Cardinals put together a fantastic series against the San Diego Padres and beat the best pitching staff in the NL in four games. The St. Louis bullpen in particular—dubbed the Bullpen Brats at VeB—pitched exceptionally well in their 13 1/3 scoreless innings despite inheriting 7 baserunners from the starters. If our bullpen can continue pitching shutdown innings like that, the Cardinals have a good shot this postseason. A damned good shot. Great to see youngsters like TJ, Josh Kinney, and Adam Wainwright have this kind of success on such a huge stage.

The NLCS starts on Wednesday night, with Jeff Weaver starting game 1 in New York against Tom Glavine. Looking at Glavine’s stats against the Cards (linked there by his name), it appears that Belliard’s offensive contributions may continue and it would be slick if we could get Scott Rolen healthy again for the NLCS. There’s discussion at Bird Land about how the Cardinals may best leverage their advantages vis-a-vis our own starting rotation. I think Jeff Weaver pitched well enough in the Division Series to earn the start in Game 1 with plenty of rest. He’ll have to pitch very carefully to Carlos Delgado this time around, though—last time he faced the Mets, Delgado drove in five runs on two homers against Snappah. Shea’s a fairly big stadium, with a .902/.881 park factor for runs scored and homers, two things Jeff will have to keep the Mets from doing. The same goes for the pitcher I’d start in Game 2, Anthony Reyes. He’d match up well against all their lefties and switch hitters with his nasty changeup. I’ve been secretly hoping that the Cardinals brain trust kept Reyes off the LDS roster to rest up and study tape of the Mets batters. It would be a bold move. That would set up the homestand in the NLCS for Carpenter and Suppan (and their sparkling home statistics) against the weak underbelly* of the Mets rotation to either even up or win the series after game four at home, depending on whether Weaver or Reyes could steal a game in Flushing, NY. Beating the Mets in five would not be out of the question.

Just as an aside, isn’t Jill Wagner, the young woman from the Lincoln-Mercury commercials, a beauty? From her webpage, I find out that she enjoys stationary target and skeept shooting. A woman of my sort, for certain. She may have surpassed Danica in my ultimate dream-girl contest.

Some more things to consider:

Cardinal fans are hoping to sign a big-time pitcher for the next season: the two hotshot free agents are Jason Schmidt and Barry Zito. Although he’s a long shot to sign over the Mets, Mariners, or Yankees, the Cardinals would be wise to make a big investment in Daisuke Matsuzaka. Awesome video here. Speculation runs that he may command a contract comparable or even greater than Zito or Schmidt. Of the three, I’d prefer to have Matsuzaka pitching behind Carpenter.

The playoff beard is coming in nicely.

I’m still buried at work. Buried badly. It’s making me grouchy.

*: Not that I’m discounting what Oliver Perez could do to the Cardinals lineup. I’ve long been hoping the Cardinals could swing a trade for that particularly talented, yet infuriatingly inconsistent, lefthanded pitcher.

Jeff has a post up that’s so funny it brought tears to my eyes.

Those first two Cardinals vs. Padres games were gorgeous baseball games. Especially yesterday’s game, seeing Weaver pitch so solidly for us. I can’t wait for tomorrow, when I’ll be simultaneously watching the Cardinals vs. Padres game three in St. Louis and the Illinois vs. Indiana game here in Champaign (our homecoming game).

The Cardinals clinched yesterday in less than perfect fashion and the word out there will be that they “backed into the playoffs.” You can’t back in if you don’t need to play all your games, though, and we had a 161-game regular season in 2006. We are the team entering the playoffs with the worst record of 83-78, a far worse record than I had expected to start out the season. Our first series will be against San Diego, where we’ll open play at 3pm on Tuesday afternoon. I’m planning on working 7 until 3 that day, so should be seated comfortably on my sofa with laptop and game on TV fired up for first pitch.

I was able to attend game 161 on Saturday, a 3-2 win over San Diego. I had a late start leaving Champaign, though, and the game time was moved back to 12:25. A very late start, I left CU around 11, listening to the improbable Illini vs. Michigan State. The score was 10-3 when I lost reception and I remarked that they had played well enough already that they had a lot to be proud of, regardless of the ultimate outcome. The Cardinals game was about to start then, and I switched to KTRS to listen to the pregame show. Big congratulations are in order to the Fighting Illini football team. (Also to Illini Hockey, who won their first two games of the season. [I was there for the first two periods of game 1.]) Listening to the Cardinals game wasn’t so terrible. It was a pitching duel with Soup-can holding his own against Ben Sheets. When I pulled off the exit ramp for the stadium, Soup had just collected his second hit against Sheets and Moonman said something like, “He’s got the chicken stock in the pot and he’s adding the vegetables.” Dude’s hilarious. I was sitting in my seats an inning before the Brewers scored two—and was thrilled to see Spiezio hit the bases clearing triple that essentially secured the Cardinals their postseason berth. Scott was at the game, too, and so was Alex. An excellent win.

I’m pleased that La Russa kept Carp out of today’s game, but irritated that he went with Reyes over Narveson for the start. I’d have liked to see Narvie get more action, since we may need three lefties in the pen this postseason, and he’d be a good choice for a long-reliever against the Mets or Dodgers should we make the NLCS.

Making the playoffs calls for a new round of roster prognostication, my favorite topic to post about during Spring Training. Here’s the NLDS roster that I’d use, starting with the no-brainers:

Starting Rotation
Carpenter – Suppan – Weaver

Starters
C  Yadier Molina
1B Albert Pujols
2B Ronnie “Jabba” Belliard
3B Scott Rolen
SS David Eckstein
LF Chris Duncan
CF Jim Edmonds
RF Juan Encarnacion

Perhaps going with Weaver over Reyes may not be a no-brainer. Both Reyes (in limited exposure) and Weaver have handled the Padres lineup fairly well in the past. I’m with Leach, and would start Weaver in Game 2 in San Diego and go with Soup, who hasn’t pitched well against the Friars, in Game 3 back in the Lou. [Update: According to BM, La Russa plans to start Weaver in game 2.] Some people might disagree with Encarnacion in right over Preston Wilson, but I’d rather have P-Dub up in a crucial pinch-hitting situation than Enc.

The bench and bullpen aren’t nearly so cut and dry. The Cardinals playoff roster will have 14 position players and 11 pitchers, so there’s room for 8 men in the ‘pen and six ridin’ the pine. Here are the six I’d take on the bench.

Bench
LF-3B-1B-2B Scott “Chin Troll” Spiezio (S)
C-1B Gary “Sno Cones” Bennett (R)
OF Preston “P-Dub” Wilson (R)
LF-RF John Rodriguez (L)
SS-2B Jose Vizcaino (S) Miscounted!
SS-2B Aaron Miles (S)
OF So Taguchi (R)

Speezer and Bennett are no-brainers, obviously. Wilson brings some pop and versatility in the outfield. So Taguchi, Aaron Miles, and Vizcaino have all hit the Padres well, notably their set-up men, and Aaron Miles has gotten hits off of Trevor Hoffman 3 times in 8 tries. I was rather stunned to see how well Vizcaino has performed since joining the Cardinals. Since being picked up on August 23^rd, he’s gone .348/.375/.609 in 23 at-bats. Over that span, Miles has gone .266/.298/.347 in 124 AB. I’d take ‘em both. Can’t mind having three switch hitters on the bench, either.

Bullpen
Adam Wainwright (R)
Braden Looper (R)
Josh Hancock (R)
Anthony Reyes (R)
Randy Flores (L)
Tyler Johnson (L)
Josh Kinney (R)
Chris Narveson (L)

Brad Thompson hasn’t pitched well against the Padres for his career. Jason Marquis is completely useless against them, and has done nothing to indicate he could be effective pitching in any role for the Cardinals in a playoff game. I sincerely hope suspect he’s stepped on a field in a Cardinal uniform for the last time already. Josh Kinney has been rock solid for the Cardinals in every opportunity we’ve given him. He’s kept the Padres hitless, striking out 3 in 6 AB. I’m inclined to think that carrying three lefthanders would be a good idea, especially one who has the ability to get out righthanded batters. I don’t expect that La Russa will take Narvie. But he should.

This week’s gonna be hell on wheels for me.