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It's tough to be a narrative in the 2012 Belmont Stakes. The sheer din of the Triple Crown tends to drown out most other storylines going into its final race, and this year's, with I'll Have Another a win away from becoming the first horse since Affirmed to win the Triple Crown, is no exception. But if sportswriters were looking for a narrative to hammer into our heads over the next week or so, they could do worse than I'll Have Another's jockey, 25-year-old Mark Gutierrez, whose inexperience has become a bone of contention among horse-racing insiders.

The Daily Racing Form caught up with Steve Cauthen, who piloted Affirmed for his Triple Crown run back in 1978, for a particularly experienced perspective on the matter—Cauthen was all of 18 when he pulled it off, and has nearly tripled his lifespan since, though he had a significantly longer track record than Gutierrez at the time.

For his part, he isn't worried about the current Triple Crown contender's mindset. It's always good to hear a retired athlete do something other than bemoan how things have declined since the good old days.

More 2012 Belmont Stakes coverage handpicked from SB Nation St. Louis:

• Meanwhile, in the present, it seems like horses speak human sports cliche as well as we do.
• For what it's worth, the oddsmakers don't seem too worried about Mario Gutierrez, either.

The St. Louis Rams have a lot of barriers standing between them and contention in 2012—they were among the worst teams in the NFL both on offense and defense, which is a nearly complete list of the things you can be bad at in football, and they've got an entirely new system to teach to a partially new team—but things aren't quite as diffuse as they seem at first. Their offensive woes are about more than just their quarterback, but they'll be dangerous no matter what if they can finally figure out what to do with Sam Bradford.

That is: The Rams' offensive problems aren't Sam Bradford's fault, exclusively, but they are almost all tied to figuring out how to make him more effective going into his third season as their quarterback-of-the-future. So putting Jason Smith and Rodger Saffold on high alert, drafting Brian Quick and Chris Givens and even Isaiah Pead, deciding on Steven Jackson's role as he (hopefully) gets less direct action per game—those are all attempts to treat the various problems that have together made Bradford look marginal at best.

If they've fixed enough of them that the cascading effects of the solutions free even a little of the talent that's been obvious since the Rams drafted him first overall, the situation at the Edward Jones Dome could change in a hurry.

More St. Louis Rams coverage hand-picked from SB Nation St. Louis, where we're still waiting to buy that Sam Bradford shersey.

• Speaking of the situation at the Edward Jones Dome, the chances for public financing of the Rams' stadium proposal seem increasingly dire.
• And speaking of ways to make Sam Bradford look better, it appears that Jeff Fisher's new offense looks a lot like Pat Shurmur's old offense.

For a while, back in January, it looked like the St. Louis Cardinals had already signed Roy Oswalt. For part of one day it seemed like the Cardinals and Oswalt had agreed to a deal that would shunt Jake Westbrook semi-permanently to the bullpen. Then things got unclear, and it seemed like every team was about to make a deal with Oswalt, until he and his agent retreated to try again in June. It looks like that move finally worked out: As anticipated, a contender had an injury to deal with when Neftali Feliz fell out of the Texas Rangers' rotation and they signed Oswalt to a most-of-one-year deal Tuesday.

It's a solid fit—though it has to be a bit odd for both the Rangers and Oswalt, who spurned each other back in January and February after rumors emerged that he would've been consigned to the bullpen on the Rangers' opening day roster.

Then, Roy Oswalt was a veteran among other veterans; yesterday he was the last possible patch on a number of rotations that couldn't afford to lose any air. Well played, Roy-Oswalt's-agent.

I'm all for baseball players acting like something other than cliche-generating automatons, but I'm not sure former Cardinal Chris Perez's "You can't see me" move in the course of his save against the Kansas City Royals—that's a John Cena gesture, in case you don't own his album—quite works for me. For one thing, since becoming the Cleveland Indians' perennially embattled closer he's already reached the upper bound of bearable closer behavior and, while he was at it, talked beanball on Twitter. For another, John Cena? Chris Perez can't invent his own wacky catchphrase/gesture combo?

If he'd just been a little more imaginative I could forgive Perez for all his Kenny Powers mannerisms. But what I think really gets me in a situation like this is simple sabermetric fundamentals. Chris Perez is a closer, and not a great one; when it comes to what makes baseball teams win, he's really not very important. This isn't just a pitcher blatantly showing somebody else up; it's the football equivalent of a pretty-good tight end doing it after he happens to make the game's final catch.

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The Philadelphia Phillies finally got the Roy Halladay injury news—as delayed by Memorial Day—and it's not great: It turns out that the discomfort that caused him to leave Sunday's loss against the St. Louis Cardinals was caused by a strained shoulder, and he could miss up to two months for the resulting rehab. Halladay gave up a grand slam in the first inning of that start, but it wasn't on a bad pitch—a two-seamer low in the zone that hit 92 on the gun.

Of course, he'd put the runners on in the first place. Halladay actually went 1-2-3 in the second inning, but from his pitch selection—he didn't throw a straight fastball to either of the first two batters he faced—a braver man than I could suggest that he already knew something was wrong.

But if you were wondering whether Roy Halladay could retire Adam Wainwright, Rafael Furcal, and Skip Schumaker while dealing with a relatively severe shoulder problem, you finally got your weirdly specific answer.

The Triple Crown is horse racing's crowning public event, but Triple Crown near-misses are its stock-in-trade—since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978 11 horses have come into the crown's final jewel with the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes already won only to fall short for one reason or other. Into the 2012 Belmont Stakes trots I'll Have Another, underdog winner of both earlier races. So: Why is it so difficult to take a Triple Crown bid all the way?

Chris Korman of the Baltimore Sun has some reasons. Chief among them is the race's length; it's 1 1/2 miles, a quarter-mile longer than the Derby and an unfamiliar length for most three-year-old horses. Horse-racing insiders also seem uncomfortable with the idea of I'll Have Another's inexperienced jockey, Mario Guttierez, knowing how to pilot the horse through that unfamiliar terrain in particular.

For all that, the reason it's toughest is that winning any one race is extremely tough; while I'll Have Another's odds aren't any longer for having won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes already, it's hard to believe they give him any forward momentum, either. Particularly because he's a horse.

More 2012 Belmont Stakes news from SB Nation St. Louis:

• No matter who wins, having a Triple Crown contender is beautiful news for NBC's ratings.
• Among his tougher competitors, I'll Have Another will have to deal with Dullahan, who finished third in the Kentucky Derby and is back after skipping the Preakness.

The Philadelphia Phillies got bad Roy Halladay injury news Tuesday—he'll miss up to two months with a strained shoulder, according to Associated Press reports—but not the worst possible news, which has to be small comfort to a Phillies team that's watched every piece of its championship-contending core appear to get old at the same time. If his rotator cuff is really unaffected it appears that Halladay, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, has avoided the kind of structural damage that would put his career into doubt.

Meanwhile, though, the Phillies are without the most obvious option in free agency—Roy Oswalt, who started 23 games for them last season, ended his holdout on the same day Halladay began to be held out by signing with the Texas Rangers. The Phillies hope to get young starter Vance Worley back soon instead. In the meantime, they're now without Halladay, in addition to the already-brutal losses of second baseman Chase Utley and first baseman Ryan Howard, who suffered a major Achilles tendon injury making the last out of the 2011 NLDS.

The Roy Oswalt contract hunt is over, and baseball's last free agent finally has a home: With the Texas Rangers, a team that spurned him by seeming to suggest he'd be bound for the bullpen earlier in the season but now, with Neftali Feliz hurt, suddenly has a perfect spot. T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com reports the deal is worth $5 million and that Oswalt won't pitch until well into June—a little later than he was hoping for going into the season, which began three months after he was supposed to have signed with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Oswalt, 159-93 in a career spent mostly with the Houston Astros, was 9-10 with an ERA of 3.69 in 23 starts as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies' all-star rotation last year. But he's just a season removed from one of the highest strikeout rates of his career, so few would be surprised if he came back looking very strong for the first-place Rangers after his minor-league training sessions are finished.

The Texas Rangers swooping in ends the most recent round of speculation—that Roy Halladay's injury would lead to a Roy Oswalt/Philadelphia Phillies reunion.

Monday night, as it seemed more logical than ever that the Roy Oswalt rumors would culminate in a return to the Philadelphia Phillies, the rumor mill was sent spinning by this tweet from Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports, which suggests that the Los Angeles Dodgers, the toast of the National League so far, have already made the former Houston Astros ace an offer.

The Dodgers have made an offer to Roy Oswalt. Rangers, Oswalt's likely preference, still in mix, among other clubs.

— Tim Brown (@TBrownYahoo) May 29, 2012

It makes sense; they're off to a great start, and with Frank McCourt mostly out of the picture they certainly have money to burn. And with 5-1 Ted Lilly on the disabled list, they also have a spot in the rotation to fill with a veteran. Unfortunately for Dodgers fans, Oswalt's price appears to be unmoved from where it was in the spring, when he drew no satisfactory offers; it's completely possible that the Dodgers made an offer, but it's equally possible that Roy Oswalt might refuse it.

More Roy Oswalt coverage from SB Nation St. Louis, which was fooled with everybody else when it seemed imminent that he'd sign with the Cardinals:

• The recent Roy Halladay injury still makes the Phillies the most plausible choice, but only if Doc's shoulder looks bad upon further examination.
• Roy Oswalt still might want to play for the Cardinals, but the Cardinals don't seem interested. He can thank Lance Lynn for that.

So: Matt Adams can hit for power. As your source for obvious St. Louis Cardinals news and analysis I'd like to suggest that his nine games in a Major League lineup have made it clear that the guy who slugged .541 in 464 Midwest League at-bats, .566 in 463 Texas League at-bats, and .603 in 141 Pacific Coast League at-bats can, has, and will continue to mash a lot of extra-base hits at the Major League level. Better yet: He's hit his first big-league home run, so now my rational side and my irrational side can both enjoy him together.

Tuesday morning he's hitting every bit of .382/.417/.618, with five doubles and a home run in 34 at-bats, so right now it doesn't even matter—as it didn't when he was hitting .340 in AAA Memphis—whether he doesn't walk because he has less plate discipline than the average first-base-bound slugger or just isn't walking because he hasn't needed to yet. He's answered none of the questions we have about him except the most obvious one: Yes, he hits the ball very hard.

Which I'm okay with, right now. With Allen Craig and Matt Carpenter still on the way back and Lance Berkman, after his successful knee surgery, lurking again as this season's primary option at the position, Matt Adams is in a great position; either he'll succeed brilliantly or fail only temporarily.

The Philadelphia Phillies' rotation is in doubt so long as the Roy Halladay injury prognosis is in limbo following his latest bout of shoulder soreness, but there's news, whether good or bad, on the way: the Phillies ace, who left his Sunday loss to the St. Louis Cardinals after two innings, is set to visit a doctor on Tuesday, according to Philly.com.

Halladay, once considered injury-prone, has been remarkably healthy of late; he's thrown at least 30 starts for six consecutive years, and despite some rumors about decreased velocity he remains on pace for a seventh in this, his age-36 season. He's widely considered the best pitcher in baseball, and it would be a major blow for the Phillies if they lost him for an extended period of time.

They should know one way or another Tuesday. Unitl then--and possibly after, if the news is bad--rumors will continue to fly about the Phillies and Roy Oswalt making a remarriage of convenience. Since our Cardinals nearly signed Roy Oswalt five months ago and homered off a possibly dinged-up Roy Halladay a few days ago, we feel personally responsible for most of the current Phillies news cycle.

Going into the 2012 Belmont Stakes I'll Have Another has already shaken his toughest competitor, Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes bridesmaid Bodemeister, but he'll have an old competitor back to challenge him as he goes for the first Triple Crown since 1978 on June 9. Dullahan, who finished third in the Derby before he was held out of the Preakness, is back for more, and early predictions have him behind only I'll Have Another.

Union Rags, who the New York Daily News likes even more than Dullahan, is also considered a strong contender among horses who might play the spoiler role. He was a Derby favorite before a disappointing performance there, and like Dullahan was held out of the Preakness in preparation for this race.

I'll Have Another being the story of this race is simply unavoidable; he's already had an outstanding run, and he's one race from becoming a legend. But as we get closer to the day of the race we're likely to hear more about Dullahan, Union Rags, and the other competitors looking to snatch a piece of that history for their own.

More 2012 Belmont Stakes coverage from SB Nation St. Louis:

• The Triple Crown coverage has been great news for NBC, who looks to benefit handsomely when the ratings come in.
• Things could change before race day, but I'll Have Another will almost certainly remain the favorite.
• I, for one, find it comforting to know that horses speak human sports cliche as well as humans do.

The bad news the St. Louis Cardinals got back in the spring—about Chris Carpenter being out until June, at least—could not, in hindsight, have worked out for them any better: It kept them from wasting Lance Lynn in the bullpen. Lynn, who was solid in an abbreviated bullpen campaign in 2011, was called back to the rotation from whence he'd came and now, through May, leads Major League Baseball with eight wins. And here's the crazy part: His pitching to date hasn't been a fluke, at least not entirely.

This is no Storm Davis 1989 season, at least not entirely; Lynn's eight-strikeout performance on Memorial Day gave him a perfect three-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio, and he's also kept home runs down so far. His ERA—2.54—might be a little lower than those numbers say it should be, but his fielding-independent numbers are all still in the low-3s.

He was sent in to replace Chris Carpenter, but he doesn't quite have Carp's command; what Lance Lynn has done instead is a pretty faithful impression of Adam Wainwright, striking out just under a batter an inning while keeping his walks down at the edges of control-pitcher territory. It's a neat trick, and as long as he can keep doing it the Cardinals will keep him in the rotation.

Lance Lynn's strikeout-to-walk ratio hit three-to-one today, on the nose—60:20—which means that his first two months as a Major League starting pitcher see him leading baseball in wins, striking out 8.5 batters per nine innings, walking fewer than three, and generally doing a laudable, if not quite complete, Adam Wainwright impression. This would be more impressive to us, I think, if we didn't have Wainwright and Chris Carpenter—3.66 K:BB as a Cardinal—and Jaime Garcia—3.12 K:BB, low home run rate last year—doing it all at once.

The NL walk rate for starting pitchers in 2012 is 2.86, and the league K:BB ratio 2.51; in 2004, a fair-enough place to start their current run as the class of the National League and our introduction to Chris Carpenter, those numbers were 3.23 and 2.00. What's been remarkable about the Cardinals' starting pitching in that span is how many of their starter innings have gone toward pitchers above one or both of those numbers.

With the help of the Play Index, here are the starters who've thrown the most innings for the Cardinals since Carp's installation as paragon of the Dave Duncan ideal. (Lance Lynn, having just crossed 60 innings this year, has a ways to go.)

1. Chris Carpenter. (194 GS, 1331 IP; 95-42, 2.00 BB/9, 3.66 K:BB.) Pulling Chris Carpenter out of the junkyard is as important as any move Walt Jocketty made in the course of setting up those MV3 teams, short of drafting Albert Pujols after he finished securing the rights to Chris Duncan, Jimmy Journell, and Josh Pearce. And that's in spite of paying him for three years—2003, 2007, and 2008—in which he pitched a grand total of 21 innings.

Every so often—now, with Derek Lilliquist playing the Tim Cook role, and in the Dave Duncan era proper—we'd get excited over the chance to watch the Duncan Program at work on a pitcher with actual stuff. Usually it worked out somewhere between Kip Wells and Brad Penny.

But it was exciting because we'd watched it happen with Chris Carpenter. I never saw Carp pitch in Toronto, and to be honest I'm glad I didn't; when he arrived in St. Louis with a tailing mid-90s fastball, a cutter, a curveball, and lots of yelling it seemed immediately like the perfect melding of stuff to system. Watching him get thrower-not-pitchered in Toronto would be like watching Adam Dunn try out for the 1905 Tigers.

2. Adam Wainwright. (129 GS, 933 IP; 70-40, 2.57 BB/9, 2.91 K:BB.) Not a surprising No. 2.

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Sunday afternoon, Roy Oswalt rumors took a buyer's-market turn when the various rumor-reporters aggregated then at SI.com seemed to suggest that the contract the veteran pitcher wanted was beyond the budget—or at least the desire—of most of his potential bidders. Sunday night: A possible Roy Halladay injury at Busch Stadium during their 8-3 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals leaves the Philadelphia Phillies with the vague diagnosis of shoulder soreness standing between them and a Roy-sized hole in their starting rotation. Could Oswalt end his strange layoff where it began at the end of last season?

It makes sense at a glance. The Phillies, pinned down in a startlingly solid NL East, already have longtime swingman Kyle Kendrick in the rotation, and getting good news about Vance Worley won't be enough to settle a fanbase if Roy Halladay, perhaps baseball's best pitcher, has to miss any length of time recovering from whatever's caused this soreness.

Enter: Roy Oswalt. If he really wants that rumored $7.5 million I think he's unlikely to get it, but his agent is probably on the line with the Phillies at this very moment.

What looked a little like another Yadier Molina injury at the time turned out to be more exotic—but thankfully, less serious. The St. Louis Cardinals' 8-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies Sunday was all thanks to Yadier Molina's first-inning grand slam, but their star catcher left in the fifth inning after what turned out to be a bout of dehydration. Word after the game was that the move was precautionary; he's unlikely to miss any additional time for it. Which is good news for the Cardinals, since he's off to a scorching start: through two months he's hitting .324/.370/.538, with seven home runs and 28 RBI.

He finished the game 2-2 with the grand slam; his little-used understudy, Tony Cruz, finished the game off 1-2. It won't have much to do with this particular bout of dehydration, but the Cardinals are likely to give Cruz more chances to spell Molina going forward; he's on pace for 145 regular-season games this year, which would be a career high. And since they're on the hook for him through 2017, the Cardinals suddenly have a major incentive to look at what's best for Yadier Molina's career over the long-term.

Lots of things will have to go right for the St. Louis Rams to be good in 2012, but for them to be watchable in 2012 one piece of news is more important than the others—Sam Bradford needs to get into a rapport with second-round draft pick Brian Quick, and the sooner the better. If this long, funny article from Kathleen Nelson is any indication, early returns (and we do have an entire summer to go) are pretty good, so long as Quick remembers to take his headphones off early next time he has a flight to catch.

Having spent most of his time with receivers who were either known for nothing in particular or for their dynamism, incredible potential, and chronic knee injuries—sorry, Danario Alexander—Bradford seems excited about Quick's size and fluidity and fourth-round pick Chris Givens's speed. They're rookies, and neither was a first-rounder; it could be a while before they make this wide receiving corps bearable, if they ever do. But having tools to salivate about at all is a nice change of pace from where we were this time last year.

More St. Louis Rams news and analysis handpicked from SB Nation St. Louis:

• Of course, if you like dynamic wide receivers and passing, the news that the Rams' new offense is Pat Shurmur-like should frighten you at least a little.
• Rumors about another St. Louis Rams rookie's Madden 13 ratings have set the Rams internet abuzz.
• Sam Bradford will need time in the pocket to target Brian Quick and Chris Givens. Unfortunately, Jason Smith has the worst timing ever, according to SB Nation St. Louis's Aaron Hooks.

The possibility of a 2012 Triple Crown in June's Belmont Stakes is great news for I'll Have Another, the horse who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes to set it up, but it's even better news for the human sponsors and broadcasters of the event—USA Today reports on NBC's heightened ratings expectations here, in one of those pieces that seems completely obvious... the moment you read it.

Apparently the Belmont's ratings expectations more than double in years in which a Triple Crown contender emerges from the Preakness, bouncing from four percent to 10% of TV-watching households—which means I'll Have Another's late victory over Bodemeister probably made NBC much richer than all the gamblers at the track who bet on that particular exacta.

As sports programming becomes more important—in the age of watch-later dramas on TiVo and Hulu and Netflix and increasing reality TV competition—that boost could be huge to a struggling network like NBC. Although personally I'm just happy they renewed Parks and Recreation—they should consider this a kind of cosmic thank-you-note for keeping the best sitcom on television around for another year.

More 2012 Belmont Stakes coverage from SB Nation St. Louis:

• It would appear that horse athletes like I'll Have Another have learned to speak human cliche fluently.
• I'll Have Another's Triple Crown odds began the Belmont betting season at 3/2.

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For once, Joe Strauss of the Post-Dispatch—seemingly their designated correspondent for player injuries, locker-room squabbling, Twitter feuds, and bad tidings—had good news to report Sunday morning, writing that Chris Carpenter, the St. Louis Cardinals' longtime ace, would begin throwing soon, with his eye still on a return after the All-Star Break. (Unnamed sources indicate his heart grew three sizes that day, at least until someone asked him about sabermetrics in his next chat session.)

Carpenter's shoulder is apparently sound, but after suffering from a nerve problem that's precluded throwing for months he won't be ready to start at the major-league level until after a round of arm-strengthening that, if Strauss's math is any indication, could take up to two months.

That's a long time to be without a pitcher who led the National League in innings pitched in the regular season and went on to throw 36 innings more in a postseason that solidified his standing as an all-time Cardinals great. In the meantime the Cardinals will likely continue to rely on Lance Lynn, who's emerged as a crucial piece of the rotation in his unintentional return from the bullpen.

The St. Louis Cardinals winning and Adam Wainwright looking great were both huge here in town, but the big national news from Sunday's win is a potential Roy Halladay injury—the Philadelphia Phillies ace left their 8-3 loss after working through a scoreless second inning, with something the Phillies are describing right now as simple shoulder soreness. (Though I'm not sure shoulder soreness is ever simple for a pitcher.) Halladay took the loss, falling to 4-5 on the season after giving up a first-inning grand slam to Yadier Molina.

That record should indicate that it's been a tough season already, as far as Roy Halladay goes—of course, a tough season for Roy Halladay involves a strikeout-to-walk ratio over four instead of over six. A significant amount of missed time for Halladay could make the Phillies the surprise leaders in the upcoming bidding war for a familiar face—Roy Oswalt, who's been connected with the Cardinals all year.

But as the Cardinals get good news about Chris Carpenter, the Philadelphia Phillies are struck by potentially awful news about his NLCS adversary. His less-than-stellar start helped the Cardinals to a crucial win, but no fan of baseball can be happy about the possibility of a Roy Halladay injury.

Yadier Molina's grand slam put the Philadelphia Phillies behind for good, but if this Roy Halladay injury is a serious one the pitches he threw to get out of a scoreless second inning they could prove far more damaging to the Phillies' playoff hopes than that one mistake in the first. Halladay left the Phillies' loss vs. the St. Louis Cardinals with what they later announced to be shoulder soreness, according to Philly.com. The Cardinals went on to put four more runs on relievers Joe Savery and Chad Qualls.

This hasn't quite been a classic Roy Halladay season to date—he's 4-5, with an ERA of 3.98—and some Phillies observers have been worried about what appears to be a slight decline in velocity all season.

Halladay's shoulder will be given the once, twice, or three-times-over over the next few days, as the Philadelphia Phillies scramble to find out what's wrong with their ace and the consensus best-pitcher-in-baseball. For more on their series with the Cardinals, and on Roy Halladay's injury, check out our storystream.

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I mean no disrespect to Kyle Kendrick when I suggest that he is not the member of the Philadelphia Phillies you want to shut you out. The medium-tossing right-hander has bounced around as the Phillies' swingman since a surprising and unrepeatable 10-4 turn as a rookie in 2007, showing off a startlingly low strikeout rate and a propensity toward giving up home runs. That's a bad combination, but it's one none of the St. Louis Cardinals' big bats were able to exploit Saturday; only Tyler Greene, the Cardinals' suddenly exciting second baseman, managed an extra-base hit, lining a late double over third base.

The Cardinals are clearly slumping at this point, but not in the sort of way this kind of performance would suggest; their OPS is actually higher in May than it was in April, and still shockingly high for a full-team performance. What this seems like, Saturday's ugly blip excepted, is just an ugly reminder that baseball is a very frustrating game when your bullpen is performing below replacement level, instead of at its true talent level.

There's a Madden 13 rookie ratings list floating around on the internet, and the rumors portend bad things for the virtual St. Louis Rams' No. 1 draft pick, Michael Brockers—rated 69 as a defensive tackle, according to this roundup on Turf Show Times. I was an NFL 2K guy back in my sports-gaming prime—I stick to platformers and JRPGs now—but I'm willing to get infuriated off the fumes from this fanpost, which is not happy with Dontari Poe's 75 rating by comparison. Brockers's rating is even lower than Ryan Tannehill, who will be lucky to start in 2012.

Brockers, with Chris Long and Robert Quinn, make for potentially one of the best young defensive lines in football, but if you buy these unconfirmed Madden 13 ratings it looks like you'll have to wait until next year for that potential to be reflected in your Madden season. Unless you just edit the ratings yourself, of course, or make your own Michael Brockers, a tradition I have honored in sports videogames going back to NBA Action 95 starring Marv Albert for the Sega Genesis.

The St. Louis Cardinals don't give Yadier Molina a lot of days off, for a starting catcher, and perhaps Saturday was a good example of why—Molina sat and the Cardinals were promptly shut out by Kyle Kendrick and the Philadelphia Phillies, with backup Tony Cruz going 0-3. If Molina's your fantasy baseball catcher, then, expect plenty of time in the lineup until the next rest day; the last game he'd missed before this one was back on May 16.

All in all it's hard being Tony Cruz, who won a hard-fought battle for the backup catcher position in Spring Training and has been rewarded for it with 14 games and 33 plate appearances. All the time off hasn't been good for his numbers—he's just 4-33 with a double, and has yet to appear at third base, his other position, though that may change so long as offense-focused third catcher Steven Hill is on the roster in relief of the injured Allen Craig and Matt Carpenter.

Molina is hitting .316/.363/.513 this year with 13 doubles and six home runs after signing an extension that will keep him in St. Louis through 2017 in the offseason. He's on pace to play a startling 148 games, which will probably come down over the course of the season.

More Cardinals news handpicked from SB Nation St. Louis:

• With all these injuries it's important to get to know your Cardinals call-ups. Meet Steven Hill, the third baseman/catcher the Cardinals brought up when Matt Carpenter and Allen Craig were both struck down.
• Of course, the Cardinals have called up yet another rookie since then. Here's more about Chuckie Fick, the reliever the Cardinals called up after optioning Fernando Salas to AAA Memphis.

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The Arizona Diamondbacks' Miguel Montero contract extension, finalized on Saturday, gives us another example of the apparent rise in catcher value we first saw when the St. Louis Cardinals signed Yadier Molina, 30 in the first year of a deal beginning in 2013, to a five-year contract worth $75 million. This one's five and $60 million for the 28-year-old Montero.

In light of this move the Cardinals' decision to extend Molina makes considerably more sense, at least to me. Montero potentially has less mileage on him than the average 28-year-old starting catcher, but that potential comes with its own risks; thanks mostly to a platoon situation with Chris Snyder earlier in his career he's only played 100 games in a season twice, with last year's 140 a career high by 12 games.

A catcher with Montero's power and his arm is a valuable quantity, and the Diamondbacks' risk here has a significant chance of paying off to their benefit—the Cardinals just happen to have been lucky enough for Molina to develop the power after showing off the defense and the durability for years.