artie_fufkin wrote:

I don't know what you do about bad baserunning since it's the "core guys" who are committing most of the offenses.
I'd like to see them commit to younger guys rather than another edition of Tony's Retread of the Month club. The Memphis Shuffle is infuriating.
After Albert signs a contract that will keep him in St. Louis for the remainder of his career, starting pitching is the key, of course. Wainwright is the only solid right now, and that's assuming his elbow discomfort is nothing more than that. Garcia was great, but can he do it again? Carpenter hasn't had a quality start since Sept. 5. Are we seeing the beginning of the end, or it he just gassed?
And dammit get a real closer who throws harder than 91 mph.

I think you misread the quote.  Mo wants to improve the bad base-running.  That shouldn't be too hard.  Make McGwire the third base coach and put Jose in the first base box.  Use Carpenter as a pinch runner on his days off.  Ask Ryan to learn a new set of signs every day.  Tell Molina if he's going to keep hitting those dinky singles to right field that he's going to have to learn to go first to third more often.

Actually, I wouldn't have thought our bad base-running needed to be improved.  It's about the as bad as any team I've seen in recent years.

Last edited by Mags (9/29/2010 3:37 pm)

if we look back on this season and ask why they collapsed after mid august, i think the answers will turn more and more to the fact that the front office flailed helplessly when it cam to acquiring legitimate available help like oswalt and lee, and wound up trading away an important player, getting what seemed like nothing in return.  it is true that by the end, westbrook, and even suppan, were decent middle of the rotation guys.  but other teams truly improved while we were caught in dewitt's money trap.

Fors nails it.

Oswalt or Lee would've been great...if the Cardinals could hit.

pardon me for yet another , "puh-huh?", but isn't this what you were ridiculing me for suggesting last offseason?

Your argument was that the Cardinals couldn't overtake anyone in the playoffs without adding a new bullpen, two All-Star starting pitchers and more All-Stars on the infield. I think the cost of your dream team would've put the payroll right around a totally realistic $300 million.

The team was ravaged in 2010 because they didn't have any depth. Payroll needs to go up since it's a year later and we've seen what happens when that lack of depth gets exposed.

What are the thoughts on Westbrook coming back? Does a Duncan approval mean a return of TLR?  I think so.

forsberg_us wrote:

But if you'd take a minute to stop patting yourself on the back, maybe you'd see that your proposed solutions may not be the elixar needed to fix what ails this team.

I think you're being unnecessarily harsh.  I'm hardly patting myself on the back.  I was wrong about everything.

I credit that your analysis was better than mine, and I will adjust my thesis statement as follows:

"if we look back on this season and ask why they collapsed after mid august, i think the answers will turn more and more to the fact that the front office flailed helplessly when it cam to acquiring legitimate and wound up trading away an important player, getting what seemed like nothing in return."

Last edited by Max (9/30/2010 5:52 pm)

APRTW wrote:

What are the thoughts on Westbrook coming back? Does a Duncan approval mean a return of TLR?  I think so.

Both the Cards and Westbrook seem interested in a return . But, can we afford him ?




http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_beb29f1b-3276-52a8-b66d-4f8cb8c86243.html

...........and for those concerned about Brad's well-being  : (wink)


http://www.hiphoprx.com/2010/09/27/brad-penny-and-karina-smirnoff-or-dancing-with-the-stars-mike-sorrentino-photos/photo-of-brad-penny-and-karina-smirnoff

Bernie pointed out an interesting stat.  Jay is hitting .236 since the Ludwick trade.

I think there were a number of problems with the 2010 cardinals. I don't pretend to have the answers, but I'll list what went wrong.

This team is fundamentally bad. This is a team that is usually great defensively. They have a lot of guys who can serve the ground balls all day, and that's cool because our D takes care of it. Well, that wasn't the case this year. If the pitcher wasn't on, he got drilled (pretty common here). If he wasn't getting drilled, the defense was. If the defense wasn't getting drilled then we weren't hitting. If we were hitting, the bullpen would give the game away.

All teams go through shit like this, but usually everyone does their job. The sport understands a bad play, bad day, bad week, etc. The problem is we literally managed to play like shit in 1-4 aspects of a baseball game for 2 fucking months.

When Penny and Lohse were healthy (remember way back, and you'll see a few weeks of this), we were nearly untouchable. Our bullpen however got shelled about 25% of the time. That's never an acceptable %. It then went to a point where we were destined to struggle if it wasn't Garcia/Carp/Waino, and that lasted a majority of midseason. Waino had a rough stretch of 5 of 7 starts being shit, and Carpenter seemed to follow with a "gem" of his own.

Bottom line, no team will play up to potential every night, but we need consistency. I think a lot of it was bad luck. We could play that season 9 more times, and I think we're a better team then our record every other year of it.

The bitchfit I have is just that, this was not a bad team. That was evident by how we played when we played a playoff potential opponent.... Somehow this team just never seemed to be able to get-up for the shit teams, and there are a lot more series with shitty teams then there are good ones.

Anyway. The season is over, I'd like Westbrook back, I hope to fucking god we get a decent arm or two for the pen. three would really make me happy. Lock up pujols for a while. Stick Ryan in winter ball until he learns how to fucking hit, make him share a bunk with Tyler Greene and Skip Schumaker and tell them they won't be coming back until they can hit .275+ I understand they are defensive, but when you have a combined average of .240 between SS/2B and Molina's .262 mark with little power and less speed is the 6th most reliable bat among folks with more than 100 games in ..... You're going to have fucking issues.

grr.

How to fix it? No idea. I don't like McGwire as a hitting coach, it seems the whole fucking team can't hit worth a shit now. Fielding hasn't been amazing since Rolen left, but having to stomach flip blowing every other play while hitting .220 was about the most glaring statement about the team this season.

FUCK!!!!!! Going to go cool off.

PS, stop bitching at each other so hard. I like you all and have no desire to watch anyone get pissy and leave.

alz wrote:

I think there were a number of problems with the 2010 cardinals. I don't pretend to have the answers, but I'll list what went wrong.

This team is fundamentally bad. This is a team that is usually great defensively. They have a lot of guys who can serve the ground balls all day, and that's cool because our D takes care of it. Well, that wasn't the case this year...

Bottom line, no team will play up to potential every night, but we need consistency...

Anyway. The season is over, I'd like Westbrook back, I hope to fucking god we get a decent arm or two for the pen. three would really make me happy. Lock up pujols for a while. Stick Ryan in winter ball until he learns how to fucking hit, make him share a bunk with Tyler Greene and Skip Schumaker and tell them they won't be coming back until they can hit .275+ I understand they are defensive, but when you have a combined average of .240 between SS/2B and Molina's .262 mark with little power and less speed is the 6th most reliable bat among folks with more than 100 games in ..... You're going to have fucking issues.

How to fix it? No idea. I don't like McGwire as a hitting coach, it seems the whole fucking team can't hit worth a shit now. Fielding hasn't been amazing since Rolen left, but having to stomach flip blowing every other play while hitting .220 was about the most glaring statement about the team this season...

PS, stop bitching at each other so hard. I like you all and have no desire to watch anyone get pissy and leave.

Excuse me, but I can't take seriously the ravings of someone with "Aaron Miles" under his handle.

Just joking, Alz.  I agree in general with your takes and would add that baserunning, formerly a point of pride for this organization and relentlessly de-emphasized in recent years, really seemed to hit bottom this season.  Is the problem with certain coaches or another symptom of the decline of fundamentals throughout the entire organization?

As far as the infighting - as one who doesn't care enough about any of this stuff to fight over it, I find the occasional spat quite entertaining.  I hope nobody's taking any of it too personally.  But I'd be OK if AP decided to create a "taking it outside" forum where people could work through their issues and I could egg them on  (devious).