More 'Roids, and Kennedy shown the door

Ya know, some days you spend watching the second hand sweep the clockface while wondering, 'MAN will this day ever end?', and some days you're up to your waist in activity.

Today is one of the latter days.

Since my last post:

1. A-Roid admitted to using steroids while with the Texas Rangers from 2001-2003, in an interview with Peter Gammons. This was not during the Canseco years (in fact, Jose was out of baseball by then).

2. The Cardinals told Kennedy, "Thanks, but we're better without you. In fact, we're so sure we're better without you, we'll pay you $4 million to NOT be on our squad."

So there will be an open competition for the second base job.

Most observers were pretty down on Kennedy's time in St Louis - good glove, no bat. He did hit better last season, but not like what some projected. Here's what I find interesting:

- LaRussa is being reported as being the major driver in this personnel decision.
- Apparently things between Kennedy and LaRussa were worse than reported or suspected. This partially explains his lack of playing time last year, and why he allowed some frustration to be reported in the media. Also, for a club complaining about not having the money to sign folks like Sheets, being willing to throw $4M out the window with no return on investment just to get rid of this guy is very telling.
- Three members of the 2002 Angels played for LaRussa - Eckstein, Edmonds, and Kennedy. They've each left the team (via free agency, trade, and designation for assignment, respectively) in successive years. In the name of rampant speculation, I wonder if there's an underlying reason for the pattern.

Saved the Season?

I hope everyone's enjoying their 4th of July weekend. Is it too much hyperbole to say yesterday's victory saved the Cardinals season? Probably, but it isn't too much to say it definitely saved their chances of competing for the NL Central title vice just the Wild Card. Especially considering they hadn't won a single game this season when trailing in the ninth.

And it couldn't have come against a better foe.

We all (at least I) knew that Zambrano would shut them down on Friday. He always does these days. But with Lohse going yesterday, I thought the chances were good for a Cardinal victory. It didn't look good when they entered the seventh trailing 2-0 on the FOX ticker.

(Segue: you know what's coming now. Why was I forced to sit through the Yankees/Red Sox yesterday? I live in a National League city. Hey FOX: 90% of the country couldn't give 2 shits about New England sports; in fact, based on the recent success of the Patriots, Red Sox, and now Celtics, we're all pretty much fed up with Boston. As a NL fan, living in a NL city, I demand to watch an NL game if it's an option on Saturdays. Unless it's a West Coast NL team; then any other game will suffice. I'll take Peoria against Gary Indiana in that case.)

But the boys perservered and got 2 to tie. Enter Franklin. Nice outing, Ryan - double, 2-R HR, walk, shower. Most of the air left Busch at that point, I imagine, at least from the red-clad faithful. Enter Ryan Ludwick. Trememdous throw to nail Edmonds. Odd play; it looked like Ludwick double-clutched, and why was Edmonds running while looking at RF? I'm sure the Cubs conspiracy theorists are having a field day with that play today (see?!?!?! Edmonds is STILL a Cardinal!!!).

Great ninth inning rally. I don't need to say anything more. I wish I could have seen it live, though.

Other thoughts:

- I don't understand what all the excitement was on LaRussa's part regarding Edmonds' desire to leave his Cardinal past behind him. Cubs fans hated him for 8 years, and still do to a degree. This hatred is fanned partially by what he did on the field to them as a Cardinal, and partially by the media. Edmonds has endured more than his share of questions about Cardinals/Cubs; I for one agree with him for wanting to move on. I took it, and Edmonds meant it, in no way as a shot at the Cardinals in general or LaRussa in particular. Why Tony interpreted it that way is beyond me. Seems he should use that energy to fix the back of his bullpen vice worrying about some comments a former player made.

- Edmonds getting a standing ovation in his first AB Friday was absolutely the right thing to do. He bled for the Cardinals for 8 years; we would have been wrong to forget that, just because he's a Cub now.

- Kevin Kennedy (studio co-host on FOX Saturday Baseball) is an idiot. Lou Piniella for manager of the year? You got to be kidding me. The Cubs were expected to contend this year. LaRussa is the NL Manager of the Year this season, especially if the Cardinals make the playoffs. Go look for a pre-season prognostication that had the Cardinals above .500, much less in playoff contention this season - you won't find one. Most of the Cardinal blogs had this team as a bad one; I myself didn't think they'd finish better than 78-84. His job this season has been superb. How anyone else can be considered for Manager of the Year honors is extremely short-sighted.

And I say that knowing I'll be accused of homer-ism as this is a Cardinal blog.

Go get today's game, boys - Cubs 1.5 games up with a week to go before the All-Star break will set us up nicely for a hell of a pennant run.

More Pitching Staff Follies

You want a definition for multi-tasking? Here's one:

- Playing with two highly energetic kids under the age of 2
- Watching Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals (why? Because if Detroit wins, they present the Cup)
- Monitoring the Cardinals/Pirates game

The highly energetic (also known as the Not-So-Gentle-Folk, and hereafter dubbed NSGF) refused to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so the multi-tasking continued deep into the night; in fact, my oldest finally gave up and went to bed just before the double minor penalty was called on Detroit in the third OT.

For most of this, the Cardinals led 4-0. At least, that was the score in the second, sixth, and seventh innings. I flip the TV over to ESPN to catch the end of the Yanks/Twins game (Nathan is my fantasy guy, remember), and across the bottom of the screen crawls this score:

Pirates 5, Cardinals 4.

What the hell?

At first, I thought the bullpen blew up again. Then I figure out that Wainwright was saddled with the loss. It looked like he was cruising! So I check the box score on sportsline.com: Wainwright gave up 4 in the seventh and 1 in the eighth. Nuts.

But that's not the disturbing part. Apparently, at least to the wire report sportsline carries, Wainwright tired in the sixth inning, although he worked out of a jam. LaRussa sent him back out there for the seventh, where he gave up double-walk-walk before the game tying Grand Slam. Smells like LaRussa had a gassed bullpen AGAIN.

So let's look at their usage since 5/27 to see who was available:

Perez: 5/28: 1 inning (11 pitches) , 5/29: 2/3 (9). AVAILABLE (and in fact, pitched the ninth last night).
McClellan: 5/29: 1 (10), 5/31: 1 (17), 6/1: 1 1/3 (18). NOT AVAILABLE.
Flores: 5/30: 2/3 (16), 6/1: 1/3 (4). AVAILABLE.
Franklin: 5/29: 1 (10), 5/30: 1/3 (10), 1 (17). AVAILABLE to close only.
Jimenez: 5/31: 3 1/3 (67). NOT AVAILABLE.
Villone: 5/29: 1/3 (8), 5/30: 1/3 (3), 5/31: 1 (34). NOT AVAILABLE.
Springer: 5/30: 1/3 (8), 5/31: 1 (6). AVAILABLE.

Two conclusions here. One: Parisi's clunker on Saturday stressed the bullpen so much that 29% of it wasn't available last night. Two: LaRussa had more options than just Perez available to him last night. This comment is made without a detailed review of where they were in the batting order, what hands the hitters are, relative success levels against the pitchers in his bullpen, but wouldn't you think Flores could have pitched the seventh and Springer the eighth? Or Perez one of those innings and Franklin the ninth? Or something like that?

With the Cubs playing as well as they are (eight in a row now), these Cardinals can't afford to give away games. And LaRussa does have a propensity to stick a little too long with his aces; as I've stated before, he's done it with Carpenter on numerous occasions over the past 3 years.

Frustrating.

POSTSCRIPT: Jimmy E is in town with the Cubs right now. Last night: 2/4, 2 doubles, 2 RBI. He's hitting over .200 (which is awful, but given where he started, is a positive step). He now plays on a team I don't have a lot of love for, but Jim Edmonds remains one of my favorite players, so I'm glad to see him start doing well. Also, there was an interesting interview of him on XX 1090 AM (local radio) this morning; he clearly doesn't like talking about his Padre experience, although he (at least, according to the shock jock Scott on the radio's interpretation which I kind of agree with) took a veiled shot at the San Diego clubhouse with his last comments to the interviewer.

Edmonds released; Izzy struggles

Yesterday the biggest news locally was the release of Jim Edmonds. Normally on the drive home I have the radio tuned to XX 1090, which covers the Padres; they either have Padres pre-game programming on the air or, as has been true over the past week with the Padres on the East Coast, the game in progress. Because the Padres are at home this weekend, they were doing pre-game stuff, so the Edmonds release was a hot topic.

Edmonds was bitten by two things - a slow start to the season (hitting .180), and becoming an unexpected liability in the outfield. As the Padres continued to struggle (losing 18 of their last 22 after last night's 4-2 decision to Colorado), the discussion became more and more animated out here that something needed to be done; and local fans focused on Edmonds.

He's the new guy, he's making a lot of money, and they jumped on him.

For argument's sake, here's what the other Padre regulars are hitting (minimum 81 AB; that's within 10% of Edmonds' total before he was released): Giles .269; Gonzalez .303; Bard .204; Greene .205; Hariston .208; Iguchi .252; Kouzmanoff .279. Edmonds certainly wasn't the only one struggling at the plate. Also, he wasn't the only one kicking the ball around in the outfield; witness Giles' 2 errors in one inning last week in Miami that torpedoed that game for Maddux, as an example.

I think most of us will agree Edmonds hasn't been the same player he was since the concussions he suffered in mid-2006, but I also think he got a raw deal from the Padres. And I'm sad to see him go; I didn't get a chance to see him in person at the ballpark, which I was really looking forward to doing, seeing as St. Louis comes through the week after next.

I doubt Jimmy will latch on somewhere else; he's probably finished as a major leaguer.

**********

Speaking of players who look finished, Izzy blew his fifth save of the year last night against Milwaukee. What makes it even more painful is he had 2 outs when the rally started. Viva El Birdos had a graphic up this week detailing how Izzy's swing and miss percentage is way off this year; if I remember the article correctly, historically he's missed bats at a 11% rate, but this season it's closer to 6%. If he can't throw it by you anymore, given his recent (as in since 2006) trouble getting his curve ball over for strikes on a consistent basis, he's going to have trouble getting guys out.

This is also the third game already this season that the Brewers have rallied to score runs off him; he's lost 2 of those games, and in the third the Cardinals prevailed in extra innings.

Alarms should be going off in the Cardinal front office. They need to take a close look at Izzy and, frankly, Franklin; neither is pitching as effectively as they did last season. We cannot expect the starters to be as good over the whole season as they have been for the first 6 weeks, which means LaRussa needs a reliable option at the back of the game. Yes, Izzy has 11 saves so far, but the recent trend (1 save, 3 blown saves, runs given up in 3 of his last 4 outings) is disturbing to say the least.

I hope their record going into Wednesday's game at Coors wasn't the high water mark for the season; they've lost 3 in a row since, and two of those games they led in the eighth.

Yikes.

Until next time. Links to it from your site are always welcome.