artie_fufkin wrote:

And I see Carpenter drew a nice walk.

Fouler seems to be in midseason form

APIAD wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

And I see Carpenter drew a nice walk.

Fouler seems to be in midseason form

He's hitting .125. He'll pick it up to at least .150 by the end of the spring.
 

For those of you who aren't recording or watching today's game, the Cardinals are leading the Yankees, 8-3, in the seventh. Gant gave up a 3-run homer in the second inning but since then he, Connor Jones and a bunch of guys I've never heard of have held the Yankees scoreless. O'Neill and DeJong have homered. Carpenter didn't make the trip across the state to Tampa, so Wong is batting leadoff and has two hits and scored a run. Bader and DeJong have stolen bases. Amazing how much more production you get when your MVP Candidate isn't clogging the bases.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (3/06/2019 4:08 pm)

Langosch predicts the Opening Day roster:

https://www.mlb.com/cardinals/news/cardinals-opening-day-roster-projection

I think we should start a pool - Guess which date Wainwright will go on the 60-day DL with "right shoulder inflammation" or "right elbow soreness." 
I'll take May 23.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (3/07/2019 3:01 pm)

Molina expected to catch tomorrow's game.

Ozuna expected to play LF by early next week

Martinez still at least a week away from throwing.

"I was going to take May 22 but I guess that furs has got that covered.  I'll go for May 24, which happens to be the birthday of many great Americans and Queen Victoria."

Fors is disqualified because he picked a range and not a date. 
And, geez, I never knew Queen Victoria was American.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"I was going to take May 22 but I guess that furs has got that covered.  I'll go for May 24, which happens to be the birthday of many great Americans and Queen Victoria."

Fors is disqualified because he picked a range and not a date. 
And, geez, I never knew Queen Victoria was American.

"many great Americans AND Queen Victoria," not "many great Americans INCLUDING Queen Victoria."

Now that you've ruled fors ineligible, I'll go with Ken Boyer's birthday, the 20th (I think).

Looks like Hudson had a strong outing.  He would actually be my first choice to get the 5th spot in the rotation but there are reasons the team will probably go with Gant.
 

Bob just returned from spending a week in Jupiter. His report (99% of which comes from Chad)

- Starting with Mags’ observation, Gant is likely to get the 5th spot in the rotation, but if Chad had his way it would be Hudson

- Unless the team can make some trades, they will come north with a team that includes players inferior to those who go to Memphis. It’s unlikely they’re going to outright release anyone to whom they’re paying big money or the players who are out of options. That means Cecil, Shreve and Mayer’s almost certainly make the team.

- Flaherty is the real deal. He’s got some Chris Carpenter attitude.

- M. Carpenter has been working with the new hitting coach on taking pitches to LF with 2 strikes. This was apparently his decision. Chad sees a different attitude with Carpenter. chqd thinks he’s going to have a big season.

- Hicks will likely be the opening day closer. Martinez May take over the role, and it seems unlikely he starts this season.

- Miller doesn’t have the same velocity he had 2 years ago, but his breaking stuff is filthy. He’s a little in his own head because of the lost velocity, but his stuff is more than good enough to have a really good year.

- O’Neill should be the starting RF. He’ll probably start the season in Memphis. He’s been working really hard to cut down the strikeouts and his power is legit. He could hit 30-40 HR in the big leagues if they’d give him the at bats. But they won’t give him the at bats because they owe Fowler too much money.

- Goldschmidt is exactly what the team needed and has been lacking. They need to pay up and keep him around for the next 5-6 years.

Mags wrote:

I see where O'Neil has had 4 plate appearances in the second game without striking out even once.

He did this at the request of the grounds crew, which was concerned he was wearing out a path between the dugout and the batter's box.

Good stuff fors.  I like that it was in a nice list instead of the Post Dispatch quick hits format that flips to a new screen any time i touch the screen. 

I dont agree with taking a lesser team north but it usually isnt as huge of deal as it seems.  Youth suffers from overexposure anyway.  I do hope the club adapts quickly with costly players cant hack it.

I wonder if tyler webb will get much action this year.  28, lefthanded, outperformed his metrics in 2018 and pitching well this spring.

I wonder what the team is going to do with Ravello?  He is too good to spend the entire season in AAA as Goldschmidt’s emergency back-up.

Couple good stories from his trip.

Bob’s first full day down there was last Sunday. Later that night, I received a text telling me he was able to watch some of Dabo Swinney’s speech to the team, he had met Swinney, he sat 2 rows from Swinney during the game. I probably got 5-10 texts about Swinney.

Then, at the end of the conversation, I get a line text, “I also met Lou Brock today.”

The perspective of a 19 year old college football player. Dabo Swinney is the coolest thing ever. Lou Brock was an afterthought.

On Tuesday, the team was on the gulf-side playing Philadelphia. Chad stayed back and did video from the Phillies TV feed. Bob was in the video room when Ryan Ludwick and Isringhausen walk in. Chad introduces them to Bob. After a couple of minutes, it dawns on one of them that Bob had met both when he was 7 and, after a little digging into my Facebook page, they find the photos from that day. After a good laugh, Ludwick and Izzy invite Bob to get out of the video room and join them as they wandered around the complex hanging out and talking to the minor leaguers.

It was a pretty good trip.