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Vahe Gregorian wrote an interesting story about leo lyons over at stltoday.com. more or less its says that we should plan on seeing more "good leo" this year.

Obviously I remain skeptical but i can't help but get excited about a full season of our offense running through "good leo." imo, lyons and carroll would be the best front court in the big 12, and top ten in the nation. that might be a little overly optimistic (ok, maybe a lot) but i honestly believe the potential is there for leo to be a top 10 player.

mike anderson evens goes as far to say that he is considering making leo the captain of this squad citing that "they look up to him." to me this seems like a huge point in mike anderson's tenure. on one hand, if leo becomes the leader and role model we would all like him to be that sets a great standard for this year's draft class who obviously are the future.

however, if leo goes back to his old ways of pouting and being a malcontent in general it could act as a cancer for years to come. if anderson gives him the "captain" title then he is telling the young kids that leo exhibits the traits that anderson is looking for. lets hope the traits that anderson is seeing are real and persistent both on and off the court.

what does everyone think? am i putting a little too much emphasis on this possible decision by anderson?

My interest in this first sparked when during the thread today lboros opined that 09 might not be a competitive year either.  Then some asked the question if not 09, then when?  I have a theory that the answer to that question is "not anytime soon."  Hang in there with me, i'm not trying to be pessimistic.

What I'm saying is that I don't think winning is going to be the number 1 goal for the next couple of years.  I think the re-signing of Albert is the club's #1 goal, winning will be icing (especially since we won the title in 06).

During tonight's game Dan and Al started talking about A-Rod's contract and how its not likely that the Cards will sign Albert to a contract of that size when the time comes.  However, we all know the kind of backlash there will be if Albert leaves after 2011.

It got me thinking, is that DeWitt's plan all along?  I started looking into some of our contracts and low and behold every long term contract we have as of right now expires after 2011, same as Albert's.  Carp's, Wainwright's, and Yadi's contracts all expire then. Coincidence?  Maybe.  I guess we will see this off season based on the lengths of the contracts that are offered to free agents.

I'm starting to think that the "building from the inside" philosophy is an attempt to have good, cost-controlled players at a majority of the positions so that we can pay our first baseman $30-$35 mil a year.

We are already looking at Rasmus in CF, Wallace at 3B (hopefully), Kozma at SS, Niko at 2B, and Anderson at C as the core of your 2011 team.  We also should have more players to fill out RF and CF.

If they are paying those 5 position players close to league minimum they should definitely have the payroll to make a run at Albert.  They can also try to use that as leverage for Albert to take a lesser contract.  As in, if you take less money we can afford to sign your teammates.

I mean, if we are talking about A-Rod's contract being the starting point, we could be looking at a contract of 11 years, $350 million.  For a mid-market team you almost have to be paying the majority of your team league minimum to afford that.

Again, i still think the club will want to win but my suspicion is that they won't bring on players/contracts that hinder their chance of re-signing Albert.  Hopefully our young kids will play well enough till then so that we have a happy medium between trying to win now and signing Albert.

Saturday's beat down courtesy of K-State got me thinking about how different this season might have been if Grimes hadn't defended his cousin's honor and pummeled someone with a shotgun.

particularly because of the way k-state and most teams with halfway decent big men are able to basically just keep tipping the ball at the rim tills it goes it despite our futile efforts.

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Tim Tebow - Lost (To unranked Michigan)
Colt Brennan - Lost (Badly)
Darren McFadden - Lost (Badly)
Chase Daniel - That's a winner!

He might not have had the best game but when the defense you are facing rushes 2 and 3 and drops 8 and 9 you're up against it.  Didn't matter though, they still came out with the win.  He still made some pretty big plays on long yardage downs only to have a couple brought back by bad calls and bad penalties.

i started this as a comment in the hot stove diary but when it started to get over two paragraphs i decided to just make it a diary.  i don't want this to be a 4-seam/2-seam diary or a reyes has lost his stuff thread.

i want to take a look at reyes perception and see if the that is close or far from the truth.

First off, reyes value to the organization. a lot of people seem to think that the cardinals are under the impression that reyes can't help this team.  in particular tony. i think people are confusing tony's dislike of reyes/ryan/drew/etc because of their abilities.  as smart as tony is you cannot tell me he thinks that those kids can't play.  i have always interpreted tony's  actions toward the youngin's as a general dislike for young cocky kids.  he feels that they should have to earn a place at the table.  you can't tell me that in your profession if a young cocky kid came into your office you would greet him with open arms and give him every advantage you could.  no, you would make them earn a spot in the office.  that is the same way Tony thinks right or wrong as it may be.  i bet tony loved that reyes got knocked down a peg or two and now wants to build him back up.

going from memory, in the interviews with Tony after Reyes starts he was pretty defensive of Reyes most of the time.  he would say things like "reyes deserved better than that" when speaking of the run support.  he would say things about reyes pitching well.  he was more critical of the offense then he was reyes.

i would say that the number one reason for reyes' horrible year was the offense!  if he gets 4.68 runs a game in support (as wainer did) he is 5-2 at the end of may.  that is astronomically better than 0-8.  then for the year he is 13-7.  before that last game at phillie he had a 5.69 era.  a pitcher that's 13-6 with a 5.69 era...  that's our bread and butter.  we lived off those kinds of pitchers.  suppan, marqus, mulder...  looper was 12-12 last year with a 4.94 era getting over 5 runs of support a game.  he is guaranteed a spot and thought to have had a decent yeat around here.  if reyes gets those same 5 runs he is 17-1.  now obviously that's a little far fetched.  when was the last time you saw a pitcher with a 6.04 ear go 17-1.  but i think it shows how much the offense hurt reyes last year (he got 3.1 runs in support btw - last for pitchers with over 100 innings).

we all talk about the biggest problem he has is giving up the one big inning.  can't that be fixed?  can't you gameplan with him better so he has more success in those situations?  wouldn't 13-7 be a phenomenal year for his first year?  there is a good pitcher there to build on i believe.

PS - llboros, if you feel this diary is redudant feel free to hide it.

Pretty good article summing up our situation.

http://www.stltoday.com/blogs/sports-bird-land/2007/11/shortstop-carousel-spins-again/

After reading i'm starting to think that signing Eckstein  wouldn't be too bad of an idea.  If Izturis and Uribe are the two other choices then i link i'll take eck.  The zone rating is what kid of caught my eye.  I thought Uribe was pretty good defensively but his zone rating is comparable to eck's.

I know we've all heard about him wanting a lugo type deal but if Tampa and STL are the only two bidding he is not going to get that.  But stay with me here...

I think we could probably meet in the middle with him on a two year deal with a option for a third (if it even takes that).  I know many of us are opposed to having him for more than one year but what is wrong with us moving him to 2B after this next year?  it seems like many contending teams are wanting him to do just that.  so, we use him at short one more year while ryan develops and then move him to 2B when kennedy is gone.  are there many 2B free agents coming about in 2008?  i guess the one question would be money.  the cards have been pretty adamant about giving 4 mil or less to the 2B position (or at least jock was).

Thoughts?

so espn is reporting that helton was willing to come to st.louis if a trade happened.  however, the cards reportedly had no interest.

now obviously we don't need help at first and helton would be an awfully expensive bench player.

but what about OF?

anybody else think helton could play the outfield?  hehe.  it looks like he played 15 games as an outfielder in 1997 and thats about it.  i mean, he can't be much worse than dunc right?

plus we have a good trading record with the rocks and they apparently are looking for bullpen help which we have plenty off.

i don't know, it just got me thinking that helton sure would be a nice bat in our line-up, lefty too.  albert and helton hitting 3-4, wow....

i wouldn't look forward to the helton/hagin drama after those comments he made however...

Hopefully its his loyalty and feeling of things left undone that's getting him to come back and not the lucrative contract we might have offered him...

I'd imagine that the rangers probably offered the best contract since they have money to burn.  As long as we don't overpay him i'd like to see him come back.

then we could use narve/loop/thompson/4-man til mid-season when mulder comes back.

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20061129&content_id=1747774&vkey=hotstove 2006&fext=.jsp

apparently he's making his decision very soon, maybe tonight.

i thought the bit about the d-backs policy against incentive laden deals was interesting.  i have to think this means they would have to make their contract worth as much as one with incentives might be worth total from another team in order to be competitive.  that means the contract will probably guarantee him more money making it much more enticing.

does anyone know of a list of free agents who were arbitration elgible and did not get it offered to them (i guess the deadline isn't until december 1st but you get the idea).  i thought i read something about walt reminding people not to forget about those players and i wanted to check and see what's available.   most of the free agent trackers i've seen don't have that listed nor do they even mention it so i'm not sure if those type of players were left off or included without detail.  for example, i didn't see taguchi anywhere but whether that's because he isn't worth a spot on some of those lists or is it because he's arbitration eligible?

After the angels signed gary matthews it would seem that chone figgins is expendable.  I'm not exactly sure what kind of money he's getting but anyone else think we should try and get this guy?  He had a relitively down year last year so his value isn't quite as much as should be.  This guy can play 2b and some lf which is a perfect fit for the cards.  Plus he could hit in the 2 spot and he brings a ton of speed.