A recent article in the New York Times discussed the M's draft history, and I'm just trying to think how much more differently the Mariner's history would have gone if they had drafted their other choice, Mike Harkey. Seriously, without Griffey, 1995 probably doesn't happen,  attendance craps out, and suddenly they're moving to Vancouver in 1998.

Of course, it mentions at the end of the article a certain leftfielder from Texas had a crappy tryout, and was passed over for Ryan Christenson. Check the article to find out who was missed out on, if you want to get depressed.

So, in case you haven't heard, Erik Bedard is officially on the trading block.

I feel that the Cardinals should actively pursue him. Even though he's having a bit of an off year,  his numbers are still very, very good.

Now, what to give up for him. I feel that Chris Duncan would be a good fit for the Mariners; they desperately need power; they're tenth of the fourteen AL teams in homers. Obviously, it's not a straight-up Duncan-for-Bedard trade; who else should we package in?

So, less than a day remains to the deadline of  non-waiver trading, and the Cardinals have done nothing. Not even a "here's our 26-year-old A baller, let's trade for your 24-year-old A baller" trade. (The last transaction involving the Cards and another team was the Maroth deal a month ago.)

Now, in this suckfest of a division, the Cardinals still have a 3% chance of the playoffs. (Hell, a 5-game losing streak by the Cubs could give us a great chance.) They could go for broke and try to milk one last playoff run with Pujols/Edmonds/Rolen.

They could call this season done and trade off the old guys for prospects. Unfortunately, other than Reyes (whose trade value is 0), Izzy (who wants to stay a Cardinal), Juan Enc. (Crappy OFer! Getcha crappy OFer here!) or maybe Looper, we have nothing. We might get a fringe Top 100 prospect like Ubaldo Jimenez or Dellin Betances, if we're lucky.

What to do?

Poll

Like it says above, what to do?

10%

Stand pat! We're fine!

7 votes

9%

ALBERT PUJOLS, COLBY RASMUS, ANTHONY REYES AND CARP FOR FELIX HERNANDEZ, ADAM JONES, ICHIRO AND CLEMENT LOL

6 votes

28%

Become buyers! This division sucks enough to go for it!

19 votes

51%

Become sellers! Our team is a bunch of old fogeys; time to rebuild!

34 votes

66 votes | Poll has closed

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-all-stars-pujolsupset&prov=ap&type=lgns

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Albert Pujols was angry about being left on the All-Star bench and the St. Louis slugger took aim at the National League manager -- who just happened to be Tony La Russa of his own Cardinals.

"It's the All-Star game. He can do what he wants," Pujols said Tuesday night. "He does whatever he wants. If I wasn't expecting to play, I wouldn't have come up here."

Pujols, the NL MVP in 2005 and key to the Cardinals' win in the World Series last year, said La Russa didn't talk to him the entire game.

Today, Rick Ankiel is 3/4 with a double, 2 HRs, and 5 RBI.

Overall, he's hitting .262/.297/.517 with 11 HRs. His crappy April is really pulling him down; in May so far, he's .280.

Yeah, he's not a superstar, but wouldn't you rather have him as the second-to-last or last guy off the bench when your choices are him, Ryan Ludwick, or So Taguchi?

So, Rickey Henderson wants to come back for "one final season" and play in in the majors one last time.

Since our outfield is playing horribly, why not Rickey?

-He'd give us all a reason to keep watching. (Think about it: at one point in the season, our OFs could consist of a 48-year-old HOFer and a converted pitcher.)
-He was average with the glove in '03 and he seems to have kept himself in shape since then
-At this point, a 48-year old with a 70 OPS+ in '03 probably would be our best RFer.
-Think about it; we'd have Rickey Freaking Henderson on our team. That would be cool.

Poll

Rickey?

42%

Yes.

35 votes

57%

No.

48 votes

83 votes | Poll has closed

So, my college has a great lefty by the name of Nick Schmidt. Right now, he's 8-1, with a 2.56 ERA and a 77/34 K/BB ratio. In his career, he's got a 311/123 K/BB ratio. Watching him, he's got a plus fastball and a plus slider (which is really his best pitch).

I don't subscribe to much of anything; can someone tell me where he is expected to go?

Right now, Albert is hitting  .190/.299/.431  with 4 homers and 6 XBH overall. Now, we're all scared out our damn minds right now, but I think I've found his problem:

Luck.

At this point, everything is running against him; according to BPro, the pitchers he's faced have allowed batters to a  .229/.313/.354 line, hitting in general is down all around, as so far this year, the NL is hitting .253/.329/.390, as opposed to last year   when the NL hit .265/.334/.427, so far, he's hit a quarter of his flies as infield popups, and worst of all, his BABIP is in the "sweet mother of god that's terrible" territory of .152. (.290's average.)

He'll be fine.

It's beginning to become very obvious that AP has won more games for us than we can count; there have been many a game where if not for Pujols's heroics, we would have lost.

According to fangraphs.com, Pujols has added an astounding 693% of win percentage.

Now, throwing out the other stats; where would this team be minus Albert?

Nick Schmidt, the University of Arkansas's ace pitcher:

http://www.davevanhorn.com/roster_NickSchmidt.htm

Had a no-hit streak of about 17 or 18 straight innings earlier this year; does anyone see him top 10 in the draft whatever year he's drafted, or it overhyping a college pitcher?

Schmidt finished his freshman campaign with an 8-2 record and a 2.80 ERA in 99.2 innings of work ... the true freshman became one of the most impressive rookie hurlers in the country ... a freshman All-American by Louisville Slugger ... named the SEBaseball.com's Newcomer of the Year in the SEC and a second-team All-SEC performer

I got interested in him when I read an CNNSI article on him: a 7-foot closer for Notre Dame!  

http://und.collegesports.com/sports/m-basebl/mtt/doherty_ryan00.html
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/D/ryan-doherty.shtml

What's his pitch list, and, more importantly, what's in his future? Will he make the majors, proving that height isn't a problem, or will he fizz out in the minors? I know minor-league closers almost always pan out; what's minorleagueball.com think of him?

Compared to '06, next year will be a free-agent cornucopia. As I see it now, our main weaknesses next year will be starting pitching, second base, and corner outfielders.

If St. Louis goes all Toronto next year, we could bring in any of Zito, Kip Wells, Tony Armas Jr., Pettite, Buehrle if the team declines his option (and if they do, I hope he's not just BSing us with the "I want to play for the Cardinals" talk), Ted Lilly, Mark Redman, Vicente Padilla, or Randy Wolf.

Of second, we could take our pick of Luis Castillo, Mark Loretta, Bellhorn, Kent.

Left field: Cliff Floyd or Carlos Lee.

Right field: Jose Guillen or JD Drew.

If we open our moneybooks next year, we could really contend for a title in '07.

I'm thinking Walt Jocketty.

Now,  he's a bit harder, because IMO, his pro and cons are:

Continue reading this post »

So, with Walker retiring, we need a corner OF. Now, everybody's saying that STL should go after Giles; but I think that he'll quickly be priced out of our range.

Continue reading this post »

I'd like to see a crystal ball for Pujols. It seems to be a given that he's going to hit at least 600+ HRs in his career, seeing as that he's only 25 and already has 200 HRs. I also think he could come up with 2500+ hits if he plays to his late 30s.

I'm also wondering if he'll break .400 or hit 60 HRs; he seems to have the ability to do either.

Cleaning out my attic, I found a large box of baseball cards that I haven't found in years.

Among those cards are a few "prospect" and "rookie" cards.

I have found cards of:

Alvin Morman (the front of the card says "Alvin Mormon"; typo card)
Robinson Cancel
George Arias
Chris Holt
John Patterson

Anyone know what happened to these guys; they're all "top prospect" cards, but they're not exactly household names.

They hit their first HRs today. How many career HRs do you see each of them hitting in their career?

I say Rickie hits about 200-250, and Prince hits 400-450.

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As in, how much does it cost? I'd like to try and create one, if it's not too expensive. Hey, I can't let all this baseball knowledge and joy go to waste. :)

Added to fill character limit; I guess I've got a real problem with summing things up too well........................................................

Seeing how Felix Hernandez is just a year younger than me, I got to wondering; is there anybody in the minors (Rookie ball or above) that was born in 1987? I already looked up everyone born in 1987 up to my birthdate, but I can't find anyone. My birthday is in february, though, so that's a lot of unfinished searching. :)