"Pujols won't play tonight.  Lopez starts at 1B"


"Cardinals
Schumaker 2b
Lopez 1b
Rasmus cf
Holliday lf
Jay rf
Molina c
Feliz 3b
Wainwright p
Ryan ss"

On about the sixth inning or so, while the Cardinals are being shut out on three hits by Randy Wells, Pujols ought to place a call from the dugout phone to DeWitt's box ... "Sooooo, Bill. When do you want to talk about my contract extension?"

5-1, Wainwright is exploding before our eyes.  I reckon he must be injured.

The Cardinals magic number for being eliminated from the National League Central Division race fell to 12 with the loss. The defeat was their sixth in the last eight games.
--R. Hummel St. Louis Today

81-81 is starting to look good  .

don.rob11 wrote:

Any money left after Albert , and can we use it wisely ?

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_01756180-c024-11df-b45f-0017a4a78c22.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Not without a significant increase in payroll.

If you assume Pujols signs for "only" $25M/year, the Cardinals will have $81M tied up in 6 players (Pujols- $25M, Holliday- $17M, Molina- $5.5M, Carpenter- $15M, Wainwright- $6.5M, Lohse- $12M.  If you include the $6M combined they owe to Franklin ($3.5M) and Schumaker ($2.5M), it's up to $87M for 8 players. 

This year's payroll was $94M.  If they try to keep payroll flat, that means the other 17 players earn only $7M combined or less than $500K each.  That's not happening if they intend to be competitive.

There are a number of pieces they can bring back at or near league minimum who can help this team (Rasmus, Jay, Craig, T. Greene, Garcia, Motte, Boggs, Hawksworth).  Even Ryan and McClellan are due raises since they are arbitration eligible for the first time.

The only chance this team has is to increase payroll to somewhere in the range of $110M.  If they don't, 2011 will just be more of the same.

don.rob11 wrote:

Any money left after Albert , and can we use it wisely ?

It depends on who you believe, DeWitt, or most everyone else.  I fall in with the latter and think the real question is, "how to shake more money out of DeWitt in order to pay for the things we need besides Pujols"

Let's face it, Jocketty and LaRussa were a clever pair who skillfully got DeWitt to agree to large increases in payroll up to our high water mark, around 2007.  Since then, DeWitt has used Mozeliak's newbie status, and erroneous projections about how the economic downturn would hurt the team's bottom line, to strong arm him into accepting the downsizing of our payroll.  How has it worked out in the period 2008-2010???

We needed to be back at our highwater mark, about $103M, this past season, and we need an increase on top of that for next season, maybe another $5M or so, to get us within spitting distance of $110, with the plan to leapfrog that for 2012.  The only thing out there saying the money isn't there is DeWitt, himself, but the books are private, so there's no way for him to verify his claim.

Max wrote:

5-1, Wainwright is exploding before our eyes.  I reckon he must be injured.

That was like watching zombies try to play baseball last night.