Carpenter's rib to play second base - 2013 St. Louis Redbirds

‏@JoeStrauss
Matheny acknowledges Furcal won't be available for early Grapefruit League play. Won't commit to when SS becomes available.

And we're off!

check out the dope jersey i got my bro
http://i46.tinypic.com/8x94j7.jpg

fresh

so glad you started this thread! i've been wanting to all week but i can never think of a good title.

once again, another season where the middle IF is really disappointing. i know it was kind of unrealistic, but it would have been so awesome to pick up elvis this offseason.

it'll be interesting to see who wins the 5th rotation spot in spring training. why do i get the sinking feeling it's somehow going to be joe kelly?

http://cdn2.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1446873/YfFa2_medium.jpg

it seems like it's going to be tough to compete with the reds this year, too :-/

willie jersey is awesome

Of all the players on this list, Kolten Wong probably comes with the most modest skill set. The 22-year-old Hawaiian hit a solid but unspectacular .287/.348/.405 in his first go-round at Double-A last season and doesn't project as a major power threat. He's here because the Cardinals' incumbent second baseman, Daniel Descalso, has shown very little value in the first 300-plus games of his career, hitting just .245/.318/.337, with below-average defense according to advanced metrics. In fact, it's entirely possible the Cardinals have a different double-play combination altogether sometime this summer, given Descalso's limited ability and Rafael Furcal's combination of age and injuries.

several other cardinals on that list too

so sweet (pun intended) that there are 4 cardinals on that list of 16

somewhere in like the last 2 months Wong got moved to 2014, wha happen? maybe if he rips up triple a for a couple months.

apparently Mo revealed today he offered 18 over 2 to Scutaro. even had Holiday text him (lol).

hope the battle for 5th SP goes:

Miller - 5th starter
Rosenthal - bullpen flamethrower, designated 'we need a K now' guy.
Kelly - spot starter, long man.

This day 60 yrs ago, August A. Busch convinces the Board of Directors of AnheuserBusch to purchase the Cardinals for $3.75 million

after an hour of going back and forth about whether or not to subscribe to mlb.tv, i decided to bite the bullet because i'm jonesing for baseball and i want to watch some spring training games. after submitting my payment information i was informed that they kindly re-upped my subscription from last year and charged me for it, months ago. thanks mlb.tv!

anyway, i've got the cards/mets game on in my iphone right now. i hadn't really seen wacha pitch until now! there's a lot of hype about him (not really in the cards - no pun intended - for this year probably, but soooooooon_romney.jpg), but he really does look good! small sample size, and it's spring training obv, but he just kind of quietly mowed through the mets order in 3 innings. his delivery looks great, his fastball pops.

really really sick of having to watch adron chambers and shane robinson, though. they are so fucking boring, no upside

Wacha footage from today:

http://vine.co/v/bXZg7I3w1dT

grand slam by oscar taveras. :)

R.I.P. furcal

How can you find Shane Robinson boring?! His head is so tiny! I welcome his at-bats just to giggle about the ratio of head to batting helmet.

klaw: The Cards' options at shortstop right now are Ryan Jackson and a bunch of guys who can't play short.

somehow this is going to turn into pete kozma playing ss until july, i can tell. sigh. kozma and descalso, our unstoppable middle infield

well, i guess it could be worse.

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/819980/theriot_roll_rofl.gif

Derrick Goold ‏@dgoold
#Cardinals shortstop Rafael Furcal will have Tommy John surgery to repair torn ligament. Recovery could be eight months.#stlcards

with the way he throws, there's no chance 8 months happens imo

when does his contract run out anyway? end of 2013? end of 2014?

sigh. i can't BELIEVE i have to watch pete fucking kozma again all year

Wacha sent to minor league camp. He definitely needs some time in the minors, just to work his arm strength up, but holy shit, he's promising. tiny sample size, etc etc, but still.

For the 3 readers of this thread: who should get the 5th rotation spot? Kelly or Miller? (Rosenthal's already been designated for the bullpen, apparently)

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/18/pete-kozma-is-the-cardinals-starting-shortstop

facepalm

fangraph's positional power rankings for SS

cardinals: DEAD LAST

MOZELIAK pleeeeeeeease

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/2013-positional-power-rankings-shortstop/

lol u behind the pirates:

Barmes is gifted in the field, and that’s the reason he stays in the lineup, but you wonder how much more he might’ve been able to accomplish had he not elected to play all the time with a partially broken bat. You can use another bat, Clint Barmes. Some bats aren’t broken and terrible. For the record, this is a substantial projected wOBA bounceback. Last year was really bad.

Derrick Goold
‏@dgoold
Ronny Cedeno says the #cardinals told him they were "going in a different direction." Adams the obvious choice to make bench now.

now dump wigginton!

^^

Ronny Cedeno says the #cardinals told him they were "going in a different direction."

lol, this is basically "it's not you, it's me"

chone figgins is available . . .

Marlins cut him?

yup

hidden in the middle of this article about how the cardinals players and staff are trying to groom taveras:

But the process is more about veterans helping kids to perpetuate the organizational legacy of winning. Chris Carpenter did it for Adam Wainwright and Jaime Garcia, Skip Schumaker helped Descalso at second base, and now Beltran, Molina and Jay have teamed up to shorten the learning curve for Taveras.

?!?!?!

Reporters in Ft. Myers told that Shelby Miller has earned the fifth spot in the #STLCards rotation.

pretty much all Mo's little filler moves look terrible at this point. cedeno, wigginton, & choate have been like their worst players in spring. god bless the #1 farm system I guess.

the accumulation of seemingly minor injuries sorta making me nervous: freese's back, beltran's toe, motte's elbow. if freese were to miss significant time, that leaves an infield of Carpenter, Kozma and Descalso. giant sadface. a beltran injury could be weathered halfway decently (either with craig in the OF and adams at 1B or an early Taveras call-up).

there's also lynn, who just doesn't seem right. lol small spring training sample size, but i've watched him 3 times this month and he's seemed off every single time.

by this point, most teams have long since sent down their real prospects and are playing either a real starting lineup (braves) or a lineup of triple-a vets (mets, although it's much the same thing). it's partly because their prospects are *ready* but it's cool to see adams and taveras etc. still playing -- taveras had four hits today and adams had three rbis.

it's pretty impressive that st. louis has been a routine playoff team for years but still can bring guys like this along. lol pirates and a lot of other teams.

also taveras is 20 ffs

yeah, i'm getting a really good vibe from him. his greatness seems so inevitable!

@closernews Jason Motte has officially been placed on the DL, Wade Boggs more than likely first in line for saves

http://i.imgur.com/M4trpbul.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/I904x2J.jpg

that's bullshit carlos rules

he rules but dude cannot play RF right now

even when healthy, he's lost a step, but with his bum toe he can barely move out there

uh

http://deadspin.com/nice-going-boyfriend-perfect-gentleman-runs-away-fr-467037244

my ex would have at least tried to catch it, jeez

on Holliday's HR

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20081

lotsa free baseball tonight

RIP Yadi

fine, go crazy

You just got DESTROYED!!

FINE i said

no save for you mujica

the sleeper has awakened

oh my

the "penis" is "fully erect"

if you know what i mean

i turned off the game in disgust last night after the 8th inning, with the cardinals down 3-2, and blowing yet another opportunity to tie it up. looks like they pulled it off in 14!

kind of sad/amazing stat, though: now the cardinals are 2-37 in games in which they're losing after the 7th inning. if i remember the stat correctly. i think the announcers mentioned that the pirates had won 7 or 8 games in the same situation.

The typical team is much closer to the Cardinals... 0-40 after 8 til last night. (Which points to why the save is a junk stat.)

You leave Lee Smith out of this, he was a legend.

How are you looking up the cardinals' record after 8 innings, by the way? I'd love to compare it to other teams.

Go to any team page on Baseball Reference and click on "Scoring"--you can get inning-by-inning W-L records according to ahead/behind/tied.

The Blue Jays, for instance (sorry if this ends up a mess):

 	Ahead 	Tied 	Behind
Inning 	W 	L 	% 	W 	L 	% 	W 	L 	%
1 	0 	0 		54 	65 	0.454 	0 	0 	
2 	21 	8 	0.724 	28 	35 	0.444 	5 	22 	0.185
3 	29 	8 	0.784 	16 	17 	0.485 	9 	40 	0.184
4 	33 	9 	0.786 	11 	13 	0.458 	10 	43 	0.189
5 	34 	7 	0.829 	9 	10 	0.474 	11 	48 	0.186
6 	35 	7 	0.833 	10 	10 	0.500 	9 	48 	0.158
7 	37 	7 	0.841 	8 	8 	0.500 	9 	50 	0.153
8 	39 	2 	0.951 	9 	12 	0.429 	6 	51 	0.105
9 	41 	1 	0.976 	9 	9 	0.500 	4 	55 	0.068

thanks!

lotta swings and misses for wacha

Wong was called up, Chambers sent down. Since Freese is a righty and Wong is a lefty, they'll probably be platooning them by shifting Carpenter between 2B and 3B, with Wong or Freese benched, depending on the day.

it'll be nice to inject some speed into the lineup, gotta say (wong had 20 steals in 21 attempts in about 100 games at AAA this year)

the cardinal way

Yeeeeess!!!!

That felt like one of the first defining 2013 moments, right there. Ugh ugh ugh yes

I might've seen it if MLB.tv didn't decide to buffer for 10 minutes. What an amazing product.

also, man, do I hate the Cardinals.

Neyer addresses ZS's bete noire

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/8/28/4668264/stlouis-cardinals-shortstops-pete-kozma-daniel-descalso

walp, we acquired a john axford for some reason

it's going to be awesome watching him walk about 4 or 5 guys per 9IP

ugh, kozma

fangraphs has a list of the top 50 shortstops by wOBA, using ZIPS rest of season projections (which go ahead and project the last few weeks of the 2013 season's stats). where could pete kozma be???

#50, of course. 0.259 wOBA. .221/.278/.308 .585 OPS

pete fucking kozma man, pete kozma.

man, the way Siegrist paints those corners is just brutal

Craig in a boot for at least a few days w/ sprain

he's no matt adams anyway

adams will be a nice sub for the next week or two - hopefully craig won't be out much longer. my dream offseason scenario is that adams + one of the several outstanding young arms are traded to the AL for an actual shortstop.

slippery rock ftw

i wonder if we could somehow trade for an actual tv crew as well

Matt Carpenter is a really good hitter. I don't really see any flaws in his hitting game. I'm not sure other than just brute force on his hands, I don't know how you really plan for anything other than hoping he hits the ball at someone.

wainwright now second all-time for strikeouts as a cardinal with 1,096 -- only 2,021 behind bob gibson

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/9/10/4713908/best-run-organization-baseball-stlouis-cardinals

Kind of hard to argue with the Cardinals scouting this year, criminy they have pulled up some good talent this year to their big club.

10 playoff appearances since 2000 *yawn* matheny is a terrible idiot manager who is 27 games above .500.

if he wouldn't have bunted so much, we would be 30 games above .500!

this year's team is kind of odd, though. sad to say but i can see them just falling apart in the division series, no matter which opponent it is. somehow the relief pitching has turned into a reliable plus point, but the offense and starting pitching seem to be feast or famine this year. that's weird to say about the offense, which has scored more runs than any other NL team by far, so maybe that's just my anecdotal memory tricking me.

maybe matheny can just ask all the players to strike out on purpose until there are two outs in every inning. then swing away!

without craig - hard to see them going anywhere. but playoffs are weird, people like pete kozma get big hits so who knows.

one win (or a pirates loss) away from the division championship! feels kind of strange that the cardinals haven't won the division since 2009! i guess the teams of the last few years have felt more dominant than they actually were. not only did they win the WS in 2011 and make it to the LCS in 2012, but the run differentials/pythagorean record the past few years have always suggested that they should have been winning more games than they actually did.

also, an interesting tidbit:

I've been watching these lines converge all season, and I can finally report the weirdest stat of the year for me: Trevor Rosenthal has been worth more by fWAR in the bullpen (2.1) than Shelby Miller has in the rotation (2.0). That's pretty amazing.

http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2013/9/26/4772456/cardinals-on-the-verge-of-a-central-takedown

heard a stat that the only post-2000 playoff missing teams both had more wins then the '06 WS winner team. wonder if they'll give waino another start for the sake of best record/avoid dodgers.

yeah, i'm not sure how i feel about all of that. if the cardinals did get the best record, then they'd play either the reds or the pirates. between the two i'd much rather face the reds! in fact i'd rather play the braves or the dodgers than the bucs, too.

at least, in the scenario that the cards have the best record and the pirates win the wild card, they would only have to deal with liriano once in the division series, since he's very likely to start the wild card game.

uh, oscar taveras just changed agents...again.

Taveras has now changed agencies a remarkable four times since January and, strangely, is back with Roman for the third time in 2013 alone. Taveras left MDR for Plummer back in January but switched back less than a month later. He remained with MDR through mid-August when he joined Greg Genske's Legacy Agency.

maybe he gets bored being hurt all the time

so if the cardinals can win today (or if the braves lose) they'll get home field advantage throughout the playoffs (until the WS). so today's game is actually...important?

but we're starting westbrook so that the cardinal fans can pay tribute to one of the best ever groundball specialist inning-eaters who never struck out anyone and always managed to leave the game in the 6th inning after giving up 4-5 runs?

and holliday is probably going to sit. to rest up due to his recent injuries? no, it's because his average crossed into .300 after yesterday's game.

Matt Holliday hit a two-run first-inning homer, his 22nd, pushing his average to .300 for the first time all season. He drew a walk in the third inning and was replaced by Shane Robinson with his average still intact.

Holliday has rebounded from batting .268 in the first half to hit .344 with eight homers and 45 RBIs since coming off the disabled list on July 27. It's possible the Cardinals will sit Holliday for Sunday's series finale so the left fielder can hold on to his .300 average, a decision Matheny said would be made on Sunday.

"He's worked real hard to get there," Matheny said. "That probably means more to us than it does to him, but he also understands that we're acknowledging what he's been able to do."

chris carpenter has retired

Do you post as Z S on Fangraphs, Z S? If so I agree with you 100%.