The Cardinals' bats did their best to make the bullpen irrelevant in today's game. After a pair of singles and a walk, Yadier Molina launched a Roy Halladay fastball into the stands in the first inning for a grand slam. Halladay would exit the game in the third inning due to reported shoulder soreness. Yadier Molina would also exit early after showing signs of dehydration.

Meanwhile, Adam Wainwright put up 6 dominant innings allowing just 1 run. Wainwright succeeded in large part by keeping the ball on the ground with a fastball, curveball combination that had 10 of 13 outs on balls in play on the ground.

The Cardinals offense would continue to produce throughout the game. In the 5th inning, Carlos Beltran launched his 15th home run. That's good for a three way tie for second in home runs in MLB with the White Sox's Adam Dunn and the Blue Jay's Edwin Encarnacion. It remains 5 home runs behind league leader Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers.

For the human interest story highlight from today's game comes Matt Adams first major league home run. The owner of the Double A Springfield Cardinals single season home run record hit his first home run in the 6th inning against reliever Chad Qualls. The St. Louis crowd would reward Adams with a standing ovation and a curtain call.

The bullpen was largely a non-issue with Marc Rzepcazynski throwing a 1 strikeout perfect 7th inning. Following that Victor Marte struggled a bit to get through the 8th inning aided by some additional stellar glovework from Rafael Furcal. Newcomer Chuckie Fick was unable to close out the 9th with a 6 run lead necessitating Mitchell Boggs to enter and record the last out of the game and give the Cardinals a 8-3 win avoiding the sweep.

The Cardinals play the Atlanta Braves tomorrow at 12:10 CDT.

There seems to be some generalized angst about the bullpen as of late. Losing a string of one run games, some in extra innings, will do that to you, I suppose. The Fernando Salas for Chuckie Fick swap seems to contain elements of that angst given that Salas continued to have strong strikeout rates, though he'd been struggling with control.

In the month of May, the Cardinals have lost 14 games. Of those, 8 have been lost by either 1 run or 2 runs. Generally speaking, these types of 1 run games even out over time. With considerations for home field advantage and a team's true talent, there's nothing particularly predictive or telling about ball clubs that lose games by just a couple runs.

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On offense, your most precious possessions are your 27 outs.

- Earl Weaver *

The Cardinals went to extra innings on Friday night in what would eventually be a loss after 12 innings. In the 10th, the Braves brought in Livian Hernandez to start the inning. Carlos Beltran led off the inning with a double to right field. Allen Craig was walked to fill first base and set up the double play. After the intentional walk, Yadier Molina came to the plate.

Molina proceeded to sacrifice bunt toward third base. Was this a justifiable call statistically?

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That's Beltran's 11th and 12th homeruns of the early season hit in his 3rd multi-homerun game.

The Cardinals bullpen has been quite good this year. They are in the top half of MLB in terms of ERA and #7 if you evaluate them on their peripherals with FIP. The other notable item in relation to the bullpen is that they haven't really been stressed to date. They rank 5th in innings pitched with just 80.2 innings to date. The Cardinals starters are doing their part to make sure that the relievers aren't over-taxed.

Mitchell Boggs seems to have taken the biggest leap forward going from useful reliever to legitimate relief ace. Jason Motte has continued to be a steady hand at the back end of the pen with a double digit strikeout rate. Both have featured excellent control. Add to that a somewhat wild but still effective Fernando Salas and left hander Marc Rzepczynski who is sporting a 4:1 K:BB ratio and Mike Matheny has four relievers to rely on in high leverage situations.

While Kyle McClellan and Victor Marte haven't been elite in terms of performance, they've been acceptable middle relievers. Both had mediocre strikeout rates and good walk rates. Marte has been bit by some untimely homeruns.

And then there is J.C. Romero with a 10.50 ERA in 6 innings on the back of 2 homeruns. He's the one guy who seems, to me, like he's pitched worse than his peripherals would suggest.

To date, Matheny has done well at picking his relievers. The leverage index for relievers (a measure of how critical of a situation they are entering when called upon) adheres loosely with the above statistics. Motte, Boggs, Salas and Rzepczynski are all being called upon in the more critical situations. Victor Marte is the backup plan while McClellan and Romero appear to be the clear mop-up guys.

Now, if we can just get Matheny to stop calling for the bunt. . .

If there's a take away story to the start of 2012, besides the fact that the Cardinals are really good, it almost has to be one about depth. When the top player on the team (arguably in baseball) leaves via free agency, one would expect the team to falter. When one of your high inning, high production starting pitchers goes down with an unexpected injury, one would expect the team to falter. The Cardinals entered the season as a slightly older team with high-injury concerns and yet, they've performed well beyond expectations.

That's mostly because of their depth. Moving Lance Berkman to first base was intended to mitigate the loss of Albert Pujols. Lance Lynn's shift to the rotation has certainly mitigated the loss of Chris Carpenter. Heck, even our depth has depth. When Berkman went down due to a leg injury, Allen Craig was on the disabled list due to his own knee surgery in the offseason. No big deal, Matt Carpenter steps in and plays above average baseball. The dynamic right now is interesting and impressive given how well covered the Cardinals are to cope with injury.

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A quick guide to why the Blues lost game 2 and who you should hate on the LA Kings:

1. They took out one of the Blues best players in Game 1. In game 1, the Kings #74, Dwight King, put defenseman Alex Pietrangelo into the boards in the second period knocking him out for the better part of Game 1 and all of Game 2. He received just a 2 minute minor for the offense. Pietragelo was one of the top offensive players during the regular season with 51 points (12 goals & 39 assists). Shortly into the first period of Game 2, King and BJ Crombeen, one of the Blues brawlers, went at it to settle the score. King promptly kicked Crombeen's butt.
2. They took out Jamie Langenbrunner in Game 2. Second verse, same as the first. Langenbrunner is a long time vet having played in the NHL since 1994 and was a part of multiple Olympic teams for the United States. All of the mythical arguments for veteran-ness you hear in baseball, you'll hear about in hockey too. If you like those arguments in baseball, you'll probably like them in hockey. From a pure talent/on-the-ice perspective, Langenbrunner is an important piece for the Blues offense in terms of line depth.
3. Dustin Penner is a thug. I don't begrudge the Kings their thug -- though they seem to have several more than the Blues - but Penner is on a special level right now. He's huge, coming in at 6'4" 245, and he was clearly in the heads of the Blues during Game 2.
4. Dustin Brown has come alive in the playoffs. Brown leads the team in goals and assists during the playoffs. He's been a part of most, if not all, the Kings short handed goals this post-season. He's on another level right now and the Blues failed to shut him down in Game 2 when he had 3 assists.
5. Jonathan Quick. The Kings goalie, Quick, is playing great hockey right now. I always hate the other teams goalies when they are playing well. He is also kind of an asshole taking some cheap shots at the Blues in Game 2 when the opportunity presented itself.

LA is a physical team. They don't just take the occasional opportunity to hit you, they take every occasion to hit you -- warranted or not, legal or not. They put the hurt on the Blues in the first period of Game 2 and the Blues struggled to cope with it. The Blues have several key skill players who aren't necessarily heavy hitters -- Andy MacDonald and David Perron being noteworthy examples -- and this can leave them vulnerable to teams that play physically smothering hockey. The Blues also look mentally inconsistent at times with some truly awful defensive plays -- the loss of Jaroslav Halak to Barrett Jackman and Carlos Colaiacovo's turnover for the second goal in this series stick out.

The Blues need to find a way to deal with the physicality of the Kings and keep the mental lapses to a minimum. They aren't out of this yet but they've dug themselves a fine hole. Tonight's game is the first step to getting out of that hole.

(I look forward to the SEO hits the title of this piece brings.)

Thus far into the season, the Cardinals have allowed the 51 runs behind only Washington. They have scored 111 runs behind the Rangers, Red Sox and Yankees. Clearly the Cardinals are not only a good team but well rounded one based on early season returns. As is the tradition of internet prognosticators everywhere, however, there is one position that the Cardinals clearly need to improve, right?

With the trio of Daniel Descalso, Tyler Greene and now Skip Schumaker at second base, the Cardinals have continued their time honored tradition of punting that position. Descalso can't hit. Tyler Greene is all unfulfilled potential and Skip Schumaker is the Emperor with no glove even though managers keep swearing to us that he's wearing a glove. (He's wearing a new glove, the best glove ever.)

Despite the ineptness that many of us, myself included, perceive the second baseman to exude, they have been uninspiring in their adequacy.

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The Cardinals downed the Pirates to take two out of three games during this series. A key part to the Cardinals' early season start has been the hot bat of Rafael Furcal who went 3-for-4 with a double and a stolen base in today's action. The oft injured Furcal is currently sporting a near .400 OBP and a near .500 SLG. While it's unreasonable to expect him to continue hitting in this fashion, Furcal's presence has been a notable difference from previous iterations of Cardinals shortstops having a much more balanced offensive and defensive profile.

Kyle Lohse had a strong outing pitching 7 shutout innings before allowing a run to start the 8th. Lohse featured superb command in the game not walking a single batter and throwing 69 of his 97 pitches for strikes. Mitchell Boggs would relieve Lohse in the 8th and induce a double play to end the inning. Boggs has yet to walk a batter through 9 innings this year.

The 11-5 Cardinals will take on the 4-11 Cubs in Chicago Monday night at 7:05pm.

One injury related note is that Jon Jay is headed back to St. Louis for further tests to determine the full extent of his shoulder injury. Despite initial reports that there was no structural damage to the shoulder, Jay continued to experience soreness during practice. Shane Robinson got the start in CF for Sunday's win over the Pirates and Skip Schumaker made a pinch hit appearance scoring the Cardinals 5th run.

The Cardinals were blanked by the Pirates yesterday in a thoroughly underwhelming affair. Jake Westbrook was effective for 6.2 innings striking out 6. It's at least mildly encouraging to see more strikeouts from Westbrook, whose K/9 continues to dip into dangerously career lows. Westbrook was undone by two players in yesterday game: the speedy Andrew McCutchen who scored both runs and the struggling Pedro Alvarez who collected both RBI.

As Westbrook continues his Best Shape of His Life (R) comeback tour, replete with major weight loss, the Pirates toted out an unexpected starter for yesterday's game. Kevin Correia, the thoroughly mediocre right hander, was replaced by A.J. Burnett who had been expected to make a rehab start in the minors. With 4 mph on his fastball relative to Correia, the former Yankee made the Cardinals look off balance, holding them to a mere 3 hits.

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Sticks and pucks. Hockey is here.

Here be hockey.

Perhaps this morning's article would have been more apt if it had been about Matt Carpenter. With a 5 RBI, 4 hit day, Carpenter powered the Cardinals offense to a high scoring afternoon 10-3 win over the Chicago Cubs.

Lauded for his impressive plate approach and high OBP in the minors, Matt Carpenter has hit like a radically different player flashing more power than expected. Today's affair included a home run to centerfield in the 5th inning and a triple to left center in the 7th inning.

The other story of the offense was Yadier Molina who jacked his 3rd home run of the season in a surprisingly fast start to the season.

Jake Westbrook was strong for the Cardinals going 7 innings and recording 13 of 15 outs on balls in play via his groundball.

The Cardinals scraped out a 6-0 lead after three innings and the Cubs failed to threaten the entire game. It was a solid win for the Cardinals who started the day without their regular first baseman, third baseman or centerfielder. They improve to 7-3 on the season.

St. Louis has Monday off and will take on the Reds at home on Tuesday. Game time is 7:15pm CDT. The St. Louis Blues play tomorrow night in San Jose with the series tied 1-1. Game time is 9pm CDT.

Lance Lynn was drafted in 2008 in the 1st supplemental round. At the time of the draft, you would hear comments about how "polished" Lynn was or how he would be able to "move quickly" through the system. Often, and this was the case with Lynn, lines like that are code for a lack of pure stuff. When Lynn was drafted, his average fastball was closer to 90mph than it was to 95mph. He lacked the definitive secondary pitch that could put away batters and instead focused on a variety of pitches and mixing a curveball, slider and changeup to keep batters off balance.

This narrative followed him throughout his minor league career and it was not an incorrect narrative. In 2009, I watched Lynn's start in Memphis. At that time I noted:

After watching the video, I came away a little disappointed. There’s nothing in his repertoire that stands out as a swing and miss offering. The fastballs are a tick above average. The breaking ball is an above average pitch and the changeup is a functional average third pitch. He’s got different looks to him and what he throws and he’ll need that to survive because the raw stuff was very underwhelming.

Throughout 2009, there wasn't a lot of evidence that Lynn was pitching in any exceptional fashion. He had a good year at Springfield, where he pitched the vast majority of his innings, with a 3.47 FIP but it was largely due to an aberrant low home run rate. His strikeout rate was thoroughly underwhelming (< 7K/9IP) and his command was unexceptional (3.63BB/9IP). 2010 featured a similar start but something changed.

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Lance Lynn came up big for the Cardinals as a lineup lacking the normal firepower put the hurt on Brewers pitcher Randy Wolf. Lynn allowed just 2 hits through 6.2 innings. With a fastball that topped out at 95 mph, Lynn punched out 8 Brewers and had more groundouts (5) than air outs (3). Lynn threw 100 pitches relying heavily on his fastball (62%) relative to his breaking balls (33%) and his changeup (5%). Due in part to the pickoff of Ryan Braun from first, Lynn faced just 2 batters more than the minimum during his time in the game.

Carlos Beltran led the way for the Cardinals offense hitting his second home run of the year in the 7th inning as part of a 3-for-5 afternoon. With 14 hits on the day, the Cardinals put the ball in play often and with authority. In addition to Beltran's 7th inning dinger, Shane Robinson contributed a home run in the 9th -- the first of his major league career.

The lopsided score belies the relatively close nature of the game as the Cardinals scored 6 in the 7th, 8th and 9th to put the game out of reach. Neither Mitchell Boggs nor Jason Motte could escape their innings unscathed but the Cardinals offense ensured that it wasn't of consequence.

The Cardinals are now 3-1 and head to Cincinnati for a 6:10pm game where Jake Westbrook will take on 2-1 Reds.

Hey Fangraphs,

Can we talk for a second? No, I'm not breaking up with you. I just need to have a talk about some things. You're still my favorite stat site around. The blend of pitch f/x data with key advanced statistics is presented wonderfully on each player's page. It's easily accessible (even if the cursor doesn't originate in the 'Player Search' bar like it should when I load the page) and surprisingly not overwhelming. And you are even adding new features -- I love that!

But, we need to talk about something. Namely, those blocks of text that appear on your homepage. I don't know if you call them stories or posts or columns but ... listen ... I don't know how to say this any other way so I'm just going to come out and say it. They make you seem really dumb.

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I had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Goldstein at the beginning of the week. We talked at length about the Baseball Prospectus 2012 Annual, the Cardinals and, of course, the minor league system. Below the jump is our conversation.

You'll also find my review of the Annual (disclosure: I was provided a free copy for the purposes of this review) along with some of my more general thoughts on Baseball Prospectus. This review was not provided to Kevin Goldstein or Baseball Prospectus prior to its posting. Please insert any further legalese that you would like right here to indicate that I'm reviewing this of my own volition and Kevin Goldstein did not have a gun to my head or to the head of any of my favorite prospects.

While I hope you'll read and enjoy all of what you find below, the short version of my review is this: Though initially skeptical of the Annual, I find myself recommending it for it's easy, engaging writing about the other 29 MLB teams. Cardinals fans should not buy this to be better informed Cardinals fans. They should buy it to be better informed baseball fans.

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When I read the news yesterday that Ryan Madson was out for the season due to an elbow injury, my initial thought was that it was a damaging blow to the Reds. Five seconds later, I reminded myself that a loss like this is far from crucial. At least on paper.

Just a few months ago when Walt Jocketty signed Madson to a 1 year $8.5M deal, I argued that it was an overpay. Relievers are inherently volatile quantities on year to year basis. They are arguably the least predictable sub-population within MLB. But more importantly, they aren't racking up many innings. We'll never know whether the Reds did their due diligence on the medical work -- this feels reminiscent of a late tenure Jocketty move though, right? -- but they are without Madson moving forward and, perhaps more importantly, without the $8.5M they signed him for.

If you were worried about the Reds as serious 2012 competitors for the Cardinals, you still should be.

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I suppose you could argue that anyone who is on a baseball blog daily (or writes for two blogs year round) doesn't really ever take time off from baseball and in some ways you'd be right. Every spring training, however, I remember that the season doesn't really start off with a bang or the emotional highs and lows of September and October. It's a steady process; a pressure that builds as the regular season approaches. Each year I have to emerge from a sense of hibernation to re-engage with baseball.

Usually we meet each other half way. Tony LaRussa says something dumb about a player early on in spring training or raises my blood pressure by shifting Skip Schumaker to shortstop. Tony was always good for things like that -- there's nothing quite like a proper villain to move the dial. This year, with it's lack of controversy and relatively set roster, feels different. It feels more subdued and the players seem, in whatever feeling you can glean from newspaper stories, to be a bit more relaxed and jovial. That's probably biased reading on my part but I'd almost rather it wasn't. I need the villainy in my baseball. Alas, it isn't there right now. Anyone know when the Brewers come into town?

So with the lack of a good villain, I asked myself what players I find most intriguing. I came up with three names, three players to follow this spring, to get myself ready for Opening Day.

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Word comes from the Post-Dispatch that Chris Carpenter will be alright in as much that a "bulging cervical disc" is a promising diagnosis. After Carpenter experienced radiating pain down both arms, Cardinal Nation immediately grew angsty about the projected Opening Day starter given how Spring Training began in 2011. It was around one year ago that the Adam Wainwright left Florida to return to St. Louis after experiencing a "significant injury". That turned out to be a blown elbow ligament requiring Tommy John Surgery. While not a death knell for a pitcher's career any longer, it was a damaging blow to a team before the season had even begun.

While Cardinals' fans had been fretting about Albert Pujols contract situation, the unthinkable happened: Adam Wainwright went down for the entire season.

This is that story.

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Earlier this week on Future Redbirds, I went back through the VEB archives and tried to weave the tale of Adam Ottavino in real time. It reminded me that one of the reasons I enjoy VEB now is that there is over half a decade of history stored here. Thoughts, posts, comments -- all stored from the moment events took place and recorded in the annals of SBN.

This past week we learned that new Pirate, AJ Burnett, broke his face on a bunt attempt during practice. He'll be out for 2-3 months and require surgery to correct the orbital fracture. What some of you may not remember is that VEB was watching AJ Burnett back in 2005 before he went to the Blue Jays on a 5Y/$55M deal. An Arkansas native who was rumored to want to play for the Cardinals, AJ Burnett was the earliest of sagas to play out on VEB. The signing was painfully close. Agonizingly close. VEB threads thrived to the tune of dozens of comments when thinking about it.

VEB and AJ Burnett have a history.

This is that story.

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