After seeing the story that Ryan Braun tested positive for PEDs, I got to looking at the baseball-reference.com page for MVP voting, mostly to confirm what I thought I remembered: That Matt Kemp was the runner-up. I ended up leaving that window open and looking at stuff in other tabs, just because I’m a bit of a tab-whore with Google Chrome (often having 4-5 open even when most of them are things I haven’t looked at for hours). When I was closing each tab later, I took one more look at the voting and thought about how ridiculous some of the lower-level votes were, like how Ryan Howard of the 2.7 WAR in 2011 was 10th and how someone cast a vote for Cubs E-6 Starlin Castro.

I was curious how often the sportswriters do a terrible job of voting for players, especially players who have no business being in the t10 for voting overall or those players who end up with 1 or 2 points because the beat writer that somehow got a vote decided to reward the guy who’s had a good year and always gives him a good interview.

I realized that Starlin Castro is a relative stud compared to some of the players that were given votes by random writers, and that on a rare occasion, someone with a huge season (measured by WAR) was rewarded with virtually no MVP votes.

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It seems pretty clear that this team, since the All-Star Break, has simply been a different team than before.  The pitching's seemingly been good the entire time, but the offense actually seems to be producing, mostly because the "black holes" in the lineup seem to be performing a little better.  I'm not the sabermetric expert that many of you are, but I figured I could at least look at the main traditional stats to look at who has been performing better and who hasn't to try to figure out what has changed.

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Since it had so many comments, I'm doing to assume it was a success here.  Of course, I posted it right before going on a 4 day retreat, so I didn't really post much on the thread, but I was looking at it.

First off, the sports winners were the top four seeds, the only close one was Hoosiers/Slapshot, which shocked me.  I figured Natural/Bull Durham would be closer than it was.

Anyway, many of the movies you guys said outside the sports bracket were on one of the other brackets, but I'll give you what's left, and if I have time later this week (probably Wednesday), I'll go ahead and post the original brackets, so you guys can see what the actual bracket itself was.

Anyway, here are the remaining picks:

War/Action movies

8 Braveheart vs. 4 The Matrix

2 Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back vs. 6 Gladiator

Sports

1 Rocky vs. 4 Caddyshack

2 Hoosiers vs. 3 Bull Durham

Comedy

1 Ferris Bueller's Day Off vs. 4 M.P. and the Holy Grail

2 Animal House vs. 3 The Big Lebowski (this one's basically this high because of my personal bias).

Gangster/Drama

1 The Godfather vs. 4 The Usual Suspects

2 Shawshank Redemption vs. 11 American History X

American History X is the lowest seeded movie left.  The only 1 seed out so far is the Lord of the Rings conclusion, Return of the King, which was the #1 seed in the War/Action bracket.  The closest 2nd round matchup was also in War/Action when The Matrix went up against Fight Club (5 seed) and Matrix won by 1 vote.

Another close vote that involves a movie mentioned here was a 1st round matchup between Gladiator and the Dark Knight where I actually had a tie and had to find someone to cast a deciding vote.  The first person I found online to vote that I hadn't already gotten was my cousin who went Gladiator.

Anyway, on Friday, I'll cut off the voting.  Next time I'll post not only the overall winners, but also the VEB vote.

Hey everyone.  I'm undertaking a project with some of my friends to pick what is the Ultimate Guy Movie.  I actually kinda ripped the idea off from the Chicago ESPN station, which is doing this, but I thought it was fun and decided doing it myself.  I considering posting it here to get votes as well, but I figured it was off topic.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought:  "Well, one of the 4 16 movie brackets is a sports movie bracket, so even if it isn't Cardinals baseball relevant, it's still kinda fun."

Anyway, I'm in the 2nd round now, so I'll post the full Sports bracket and then list the choices for the vote now, and if you feel so inclined, you can vote on them.  I'm going to tally up votes for this round sometime in the next couple days.  

Furthermore, I'm taking the VEB vote as a community vote, so this is a collective vote, so a landslide or one movie edging the other out still gets the VEB vote.

1st round matchups: (This voting is already done)

1 Rocky vs. 16 Friday Night Lights

8 Rudy vs. 9 Field of Dreams

5 Rounders vs. 12 Major League

4 Caddyshack vs. 13 The Hustler

3 Bull Durham vs. 14 White Men Can't Jump

6 The Natural vs. 11 Remember the Titans

7 Raging Bull vs. 10 Slapshot

2 Hoosiers vs. 15 The Longest Yard (original one)

The 2nd round matchups (which obviously tells you who won each of the above rounds) are listed below.  These are all open for voting:

1 Rocky vs. 8 Rudy

4 Caddyshack vs. 12 Major League

3 Bull Durham vs. 6 The Natural

2 Hoosiers vs. 10 Slapshot

Three baseball movies left in the fold, with only Field of Dreams losing as far as baseball movies (and that was a very close vote)

Feel free to vote on any or all matchups.  You don't need to vote on all 4 matchups if you don't feel you know enough about one of the films or matchups to vote on it.  I'll announce sports bracket winners later.

Lastly, this will conclude the 2nd round for all brackets, bringing it down to the Sweet 16.  The other brackets are War/Action movies, Comedies, and Gangster/Drama movies.  One last thing you can vote on is if this is too off-topic for VEB or if I should vote all the Sweet 16 Matchups for you guys to vote on.  I don't want to load up the fanposts with stuff that's completely off topic, but if this seems fun to everyone involved here, I'd be happy to post this for you guys to vote on as well.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2009/267698.html

Colby Rasmus comes in at #3, Brett Wallace #40, Chris Perez #91

There's also descriptions (a relevant # for each player) that are kind of interesting, but not a whole lot of analysis really.  More just a random quip about each player that gives you at least an idea of what their best attribute is.

I'm sure this could better fit as a fanshot, but for some reason it wouldn't post (I've never done a fanshot before) and I figured this would actually potentially be a good source of discussion, so I put it here.

Link to Part 1:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/17/726610/curveballs-a-short-story-p

Link to Part 2:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/19/727817/curveballs-a-short-story-p

Link to Part 3:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/21/731291/curveballs-a-short-story-p

I hope these aren't becoming laborious and wasteful, since the last one has 0 comments and recs.  I just assume that maybe people are waiting for the conclusion, like one commentor said.

Anyway, this is the conclusion of "Curveballs"

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Link to Part 1:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/17/726610/curveballs-a-short-story-p

Link to Part 2:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/19/727817/curveballs-a-short-story-p

This takes it up to page 24 out of 29.  Last section will be posted later this week.

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Part two of four of "Curveballs."

For anyone that missed it, part one can be found at:  http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/17/726610/curveballs-a-short-story-p

This part takes the story through approximately page 14 in the double-spaced Word document form of the story, so this serialization of the story should be a total of four parts, and I'll try to continue to post every 2-3 days for the next two parts.

Without going into too much plot discussion so as to reveal a spoiler, this 2nd section is where we see the main issues of the short story reveal themselves.

Anyway, without further delay, here is part two of the story.

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With this being the slow part of the year for baseball and with the lack of topics, I thought it might be fun to give everyone something different to read.

What I'm posting is a short story I wrote about 5 years ago while I was still getting my BA and was taking a creative writing workshop for my minor (creative writing, of course).  Luckily, I had two excellent editors to help me mold this into what I, and they, thought was a pretty good story.  One was my professor, who is at least a casual baseball fan and an expert on the writing side of the situation.  The other was a fellow student in the workshop who incidentally also worked as a high school umpire, which helped tremendously, since I had some issues with rules and with interactions between players and umps that were unrealistic on the high school level that he helped me with.

In Microsoft Word, the story is 29 pages, double-spaced, so I'll post about the story basically as a serialization over the next week or so probably.

Anyway, I'd like to think the story is pretty good.  At least as far as prose goes, it's the thing I ever managed to write.  Despite my opinions of it though, if anyone has critiques of the story, I'm always open to listening to what other people think of it. 

So without further discussion, below is approximately the first 6-7 pages of "Curveballs"

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It's another sad day in sports blogdom.

I've become very attached to reading sports blogs.  I've tried to create my own, but without any significant niche that made mine unique, it kind of went to the wayside, so I appreciate how difficult it is to have a very good sports blog that gets decent readership.  I check in from time to time all over the SBNation network.  I try to check out Future Redbirds from time to time to see the good work they're doing there.  There's the intermittent posts by MLB.com Cardinals writer Matthew Leach that give new insight into what's going on in and around the clubhouse.  But there are only a few blogs that have entered my regular rotation.  I always check VEB, I always check MLBTradeRumors, and I always check Fire Joe Morgan (http://www.firejoemorgan.com -- The link thing seems to be broken right now otherwise I'd link it the right way).

Sadly, they are closing their doors.  If you've never checked them out, it's still worthwhile even though there won't be new posts most likely.  They do an excellent job of ripping apart bad sports journalism.  Many of the articles are very prominent writers who get quite a bit of coverage on a national scale, including an article fairly recently by the LA Times' Bill Plaschke.  Of course, the original purpose was to bring down Joe Morgan, by pointing out how ridiculous and contradictory he really is, and they did an excellent job of keeping up with the regular Joe Morgan chats on ESPN.com, but with the news that Joe Morgan will quite possibly no longer be doing Sunday Night Baseball, and with time constraints taking them away just like they did with lboros, Fire Joe Morgan will be no more.

The writers do acknowledge that there might be an occasional post if they find something really egregious and want to do a post, but those of you who are regular viewers, like myself, will certainly not find the amount of new content going up to be what you're used to.

So, with lboros hanging them up, and now the boys over at FJM ending their shenanigans as well, it's certainly a sad period for blogdom (at least for MY regular viewing of blogdom).

Of course, the plan at this point is always to put enough out there to help the team make a run at the playoffs without actually selling the future, so with that in mind, here's my thoughts on the subject:

While Matt Holliday is certainly the sexiest name we've discussed on this board as of late, I don't think that noticeably improves our team.  Our needs, in this order, are:  bullpen help (especially from the left side), starting pitching, middle infield.

To improve all three, we either need to get incredibly lucky or we'd have to sell most of the farm, which we don't want to do, but I think the first two can be helped without doing too much damage.    The Mariners beat writer for the Seattle Times wrote a blog entry stating which players he expected to see traded and in what order.  The list was this:

1)  Arthur Rhodes

2)  Erik Bedard

3)  Jarrod Washburn

4)  Raul Ibanez

5)  Adrian Beltre

The URL for the full article is:  http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/mariners/2008/07/trade_winds_blowing.html

Now, having said that, with what Seattle gave up for Bedard, I don't think they'd accept any package from us that didn't include Rasmus plus others.  But the other two guys at the top there are both options.

Jarrod Washburn, according to the writer, would pretty much be a salary dump.  Now, his stats look REALLY bad, and early on, he was exactly that.    He currently sits 4-8 with a 4.83 ERA.  However, since May 25th, he has pitched in 9 straight games, going at least 5 innings every time, and over that time, he lowered his ERA from 6.99 to the current 4.83.

Rhodes would be the one that would take a real prospect to get.  I still don't think it would be a king's ransom, by any means, but he would take at least something to get.  He makes league minimum, as his contract was a minor-league contract, and he currently has a very non-Cardinals like 3.06 ERA from the pen, and most importantly, he's a lefty.  I know the whole of the bullpen sucks right now, but I think the biggest need, seeing how Villone and Flores have been, has been the left side of that bullpen.

If the Cardinals could work out a deal to get these two, and the injured players eventually come back, we could see this as our pitching staff:

Starting Rotation:

1. Adam Wainwright
2. Todd Wellemeyer
3. Kyle Lohse
4. Jarrod Washburn
5. Braden Looper
6. (If someone falters) Joel Pineiro/Jaime Garcia

Bullpen

1. Tyler Johnson (L)
2. Arthur Rhodes (L)
3. Ryan Franklin
4. Kyle McClellan
5. Russ Springer
6. Chris Perez
7. Jason Isringhausen

Obviously the bullpen isn't entirely fixed with this move, but this leaves Perez and Izzy as the only guys who should really scare you on the mound.  (Kinda sad that those are the past and potential future closers, isn't it?)

I saw this question on another forum that I look at, and no one had an answer, so I thought I'd pose the question to all of you, since all of you guys have a pretty impressive amount of sports knowledge.

Obviously CC Sabathia this year was NOT selected to the ASG, and for good reason, but let's say hypothetically he was.  Having been selected to the ASG for the AL-affiliated Cleveland Indians and then being traded shortly before the ASG to the NL-affiliated Milwaukee Brewers, what would happen with Sabathia?

He made the team, of course, for his achievements as an Indian, but there's just no way, both for marketing reasons but also because of the "This Time it Counts" idea that they'd let him play in an Indians uniform.

Does he forfeit his right to be an all-star?  Does he go as an additional representative of the Brewers?  Is he considered an active player if he does go?  And if he does, does someone get bounced in order to balance the roster?

My guess is this:  The player would be invited to the ASG, but would not be allowed to play because of the roster issues involved. 

What I ask of you guys is this:  Is there any historical precedent for such a thing?  Surely an All-Star has been traded prior to the ASG at SOME point in the ASG's 79-year history.  I started digging through archives from 1994-2007 and found nothing, but that's certainly far from complete.

If anyone is aware of a historical precedent, please post it here.

Link:  http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bb/5729414.html

In a Houston Chronicle article, apparently some reporter asked Oswalt about the possibility of a trade, since apparently he's coming up on free agency.

Oswalt's comments basically indicated he's happy in Houston, but that if the team asked him about a trade, he's consider waiving his no-trade clause.  Furthermore, while Oswalt himself made no statements concerning who he'd be willing to pitch for and who he wouldn't be, "people close to him say he wouldn't want to pitch in the New York market and that he'd only consider the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves."

First things first.  It's crazy to really think this is going to happen, at least at this point.  We're trying to get younger, we're trying to build for the future, and we're trying to see who's worth keeping around and who's not.  Furthermore, Oswalt is happy and the Astros are certainly far from considering entering selling mode (afterall, we're 20 games into a season after their GM traded for Miguel Tejada).  So, please, by no means consider this post to be a legitimate possibility.

The game I thought I'd play though, is twofold. 

1)  What would you give up to get Roy Oswalt, if we're still in it at the All-Star Break and Houston was willing to trade him?

2)  What contract would you be willing to give Oswalt in order to keep him?  (Because he would most definitely want a contract extension to waive his no-trade clause.)

Assumptions for the game, so we're all on the same page. 

1)  Oswalt will waive his no-trade if given a chance to pitch in St. Louis and given a contract extension he is willing to sign.

2)  Oswalt will be the same guy he's been the last 3 years (2.94, 2.98, 3.18 ERAs from 05-07) and not the current 6.00 ERA guy he is now.

3)  Don't worry about what you think you could get Oswalt for, say what's the most you'd be willing to give up.  Of course, we would all assume you'd start lower, and hope the GM would be silly enough to go for a Brad Thompson for Oswalt trade, straight up, but that's no fun.  Would you give up Rasmus?  Would you give up Garcia?  Perez?  Izturis? (haha).  No dumping players with negative trade value and saying Houston would want them, either, Kennedy and Izturis shouldn't be part of your trade.

Anyway, have at it.  What would you give up?  What would you offer Oswalt in order to get him to waive his no-trade? 

Looking at the conversation about who’s most deserving to be in the rotation between Reyes and Thompson and people citing Thompson’s overall statistics made me wonder if you took out the starts only, would he look like the better option?

Having said this, I don’t know why we can’t have both of them in there, and boot one of the other people (probably Wellemeyer in my mind, deserving of that scorn or not).

Regardless though, in looking at Brad Thompson’s overall stats and his stats as only a starter, it’s very interesting reading.

To start, it’s easy to see Brad Thompson’s success comes from his ability to get ground balls.  When he gets more ground balls, his ERA stays low.  More on this later.  It’s also easy to notice that when Thompson took the starts, he looked even less to strike batters out, striking out just 3.3 batters per 9 innings.

I also split out Thompson’s quality starts vs. his other starts.  In 17 starts in 2007, he had 8 quality starts.  It’s not shocking to think that in quality starts his ERA is very good, while in other starts, it’s pretty bad, but here are the exact numbers:

The interesting things here are that in quality starts, he has a good ERA and a ground ball ratio of over 2. This led me to look at his ERA ONLY in games where he posted that 2/1 ratio, where he is obviously dominant, posting a 2.25 ERA in 6 starts (17 total starts). This is also true of Thompson when he pitched in relief in 2005 and 2006, posting GB/FB ratios of better than 2 both years and posting ERAs of 2.95 and 3.34 those two years.   

Now, this isn’t the only way possible for him to have success.  If you go start-by-start, you see that in late July, he posted back to back quality starts where he didn’t hit that ratio either time, and in fact, on July 22nd, he pitched 6 IP and gave up 2 ER, while getting only 9 ground balls to 8 fly balls, a very un-Thompson-like ratio.  However, looking at this two starts, there is no reason to think that this is anything more than the exception that proves the rule, as he seemingly did nothing else better those two starts to compensate.

The other interesting thing about Thompson can be found on his “Splits” page on ESPN.com:  http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=6264

If you look at his splits, in his first 30 pitches, he tends to give up lower batting averages, but still high OBP.  Later in his pitch counts, he tends to walk fewer, but the OBP stays the same, as he gives up about a .340 batting average from pitches 31-75.  To give comparison, I go to everyone’s favorite whipping boy, Anthony Reyes.  Reyes struggles slightly more than Thompson during his first 30 pitches, but then settles down considerably during pitches 31-75, where Thompson just switches from walks to hits. 

This shows us that Thompson is consistent throughout and we really are getting the real Thompson, whereas Reyes simply needs to get his focus, control, or whatever it is he lacks in his first 30 pitches.  (Of course, a secondary part of this is that he might only get PAST the first 30 pitches when he’s pitching well, but either way, it proves the same point for Reyes—that there is reason to believe he can improve considerably over last year’s numbers, whereas Thompson is likely to stay the same guy).

Reyes’s splits:  http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=6225

I have no hatred of Thompson or problem with him being in the rotation, as his 4.66 ERA starting for league minimum is certainly better than paying Kip Wells several million to pull an ERA of 6.27, but, Thompson’s spot in the rotation ought to be based on two things:  his ability to get ground balls (his key to success, noted long before this post) and the lack of options with more upside, since he is who he is.

As many, if not all of you are aware now, there has been a terrible tragedy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois.  As a current resident and grad assistant at NIU with a wife attending the law school, the last 36 hours have been very stressful.

Natural questions of why the guy did what he did, why he chose the classroom he chose, why those people died and why people like my wife, who was in a building less than a block away, remained pretty much completely safe have been through my head.

However, despite all of that, I can say that with pitchers and catchers reporting I had planned to wear my Cardinals jersey to school today (the teachers at my H.S. typically do a casual Friday thing), and between the fact that it brought up discussions with colleagues and students about sports, the fact that I have spent much of the last 36 hours either watching the news or frequenting websites like Viva El Birdos, Matthew Leach's blog and MLB Trade Rumors, and the optimism of a new baseball season just around the bend, I can say without hesitation that baseball has given me momentary escapes from the continuing coverage that wouldn't be possible in any other way.

I know I'm an unscathed bystander in this horrible tragedy.  I was not directly affected in that no one I know was hurt or killed.  However many other people I know who work in this town were affected directly.  I can't imagine how many of them have retreated to their favorite pastimes, whether it be one of the many Chicago sports teams, such as the Bears, Bulls, Cubs or White Sox, or for many of them the Green Bay Packers or their college teams, including even the teams of Northern Illinois University or the University of Illinois, where the shooter was apparently studying.  

That's the beautiful thing about sports.  Whether we root for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, or the New York Yankees.  Whether we root for the Detroit Red Wings or the Indianapolis Colts.  Whether we root for the UCLA Men's Basketball team or the U of Florida football team.  We don't embrace these players and these teams because it's relevant to our everyday lives.  We embrace them because they AREN'T relevant to our everyday lives.  We embrace them because they help us escape our everyday lives.

So while we may all argue about whether Izturis warrants a roster spot or whether the Glaus for Rolen trade was good or bad for the Cardinals or even LBoros's recent posts about Jocketty's legacy, please join me in taking a step back and just appreciating the fact that we have sports to distract us and entertain us when we want to escape what is often a monotonous, stressful everyday life.

Seeing another bargain pitcher sign a one year deal (Jon Lieber with the Cubs for 3.5M), I thought "Wow! What a good deal, I'd have been stoked if the Cards got Lieber for 3.5M!" and thought to myself about what other signings so far this off season have just been really good signings.

So here's my list of the great signings (no trades, someone else can do that one, or you can just talk about that in the comments).  Order is alphabetically, not based on any type of ranking.  However, I did cut it off at what I thought were the 10 best deals that I remembered or found easily.

Milton Bradley - Rangers - 1yr/5.0M

A VEB favorite.  We all would have loved to see Bradley, even as dysfunctional as he is, to be manning one of the corner outfield spots for 5M a year.  Bradley adds a switch-hitting who had over a .900 OPS in 2007.  He's a very good bat at this stage in his career and in hitter-friendly Texas, he could have another very good year with the bat.  He would make more, but a combination of injuries and personality conflicts have kept him from ever achieving his financial potential.

Michael Barrett - Padres - 1yr/3.5M

Barrett had a crappy year last year, but 3.5M is a good amount to pay him hoping for him to rebound to his career average OPS of .748.  .748 may not sound that great either, and it wouldn't be--if it were coming from a corner outfield position or 1st base.  From the catcher spot, it's pretty solid.

Mike Cameron - Brewers - 1yr/7.0M

This is both a reasonable signing for dollars (afterall, fellow center fielders Rowand and Hunter cashed in for 5 year deals for being only marginally better by most stats) and it helps the Brewers.  They can now move players all around the diamond, putting Hall back into the infield and getting Braun's abysmal glove into left.  Good signing for the Crew.

Matt Clement - Cardinals - 1yr/1.5M

A bargain bin purchase and at 1.5M base, it's a very good deal.  If he ends up sucking, they'll pay him very little.  If he turns out to be better, he'll still end up with a bargain-type deal.  

In my mind, Clement has always been underrated, going back to his time with the Cubs. Prior to his injury-riddled 2007, where he posted an ERA over 6 in about 60 innings, his career high in ERA was 5.14.  In his three years in Chicago, he pitched like #2 guy, posting ERAs of 3.60, 4.11 and 3.68 and averaging over 190 innings over those three years.  

Adam Everett - Twins - 1yr/2.8M

Another name mentioned a lot on VEB.  At first glance, I saw this and thought, "Wow! Another bargain!" but I have to say I'm thinking more and more that this is about what Everett's worth.  He's an excellent glove, but his career high in OPS is .702 and his average is .656.  That's pretty bad.  I'm leaving this on my list just for kicks, but I think I must have only seen games where Everett was good, because I thought he'd be a .700 average OPS kinda guy, and then, with his glove, this deal would be excellent.

Kosuke Fukudome - Cubs - 4yrs/48M

This signing may turn out to suck, but right now, I like it.  I believe there was a posting fee on top of this contract, if I remember, but it's still a good deal.  The Cubs will sell more jerseys in Japan, will probably sell more MLB-TV subscriptions to Japanese fans, and he's a left-handed bat who is supposedly at least decent defensively.  Kosuke could be a great signing.

Jon Lieber - Cubs - 1rs/3.5M

God, I hate putting the Cubs on this list twice (of course, as a Cardinals fan, I've always hated them, but living near Rockford, IL and being exposed to them as much as I am, oh my god are they obnoxious!), however this was a great deal.  Lieber's injury last season was a tendon in one of his legs and was a non-pitching related injury, so he should be fine to go.  If he's league average, the Cubs win big on this deal, and speculation is that it opens up the possibility for the CUbs to trade Marshall in a deal for Brian Roberts, so it could have a domino effect for the Cubs.

Alex Rodriguez - Yankees - 10yrs/275M

The Yankees needed A-Rod and A-Rod needed the Yankees.  They're the only ones who can afford him, but can you argue with what the Yankees are getting?  Probably the overall best player in baseball and at worst, the 2nd best hitter in the game right now (arguably behind our own El Hombre), and he plays a tough position.  In addition, this deal should keep him in Yankee pinstripes long enough for him to not only break Bonds' record (assuming he remains healthy), but for him to break a LOT of records and probably post 800+ homers

Carlos Silva - Mariners - 4yrs/48M

A sinker-baller with a low 4 career ERA in the AL going to Seattle.  With another pitcher friendly park, Silva should continue being a better than league average pitcher.  We all drool over Burnett at 11M a year now, I think Silva could be the same way in a few years.  Oh yeah, he's also only 28 right now, so he's still got a chance to get better.

Josh Towers - Rockies - 1yr/400k

Not a great pitcher by any means.  While his name was mentioned at lot here on VEB, he's actually pretty bad.  A career ERA of 4.96 and last season at 5.38 are not really what you want to add to your rotation.  However, he's only 2 years removed from a 3.71 ERA (in the AL East, no less), and at 400,000 a year, this is a no-risk, high-reward move.  Even if he makes your rotation and sucks, he's the #5 guy, and everyone outside about 4 teams in baseball have crappy #5 starters.  And oh yeah, those 4 teams pay their #5 guys a LOT MORE than 400k a year.

Anyway, there they are, in my opinion.  The 10 best signings so far this season.   Banter away, fellow VEBers :)

Players either let go or traded:

OF  So Taguchi (38)
OF  Preston Wilson (33)
OF  Jim Edmonds (37)
IF  Miguel Cairo (33)
IF  Russell Branyan (32)
SP  Kip Wells (30)
SP  Mike Maroth (30)
C  Gary Bennett (35)
C  Kelly Stinnett (37)

New arrivals:

IF  Cesar Izturis (27)
SP  Matt Clement (33)
OF  Brian Barton  (25)
C  Jason LaRue  (33)

Numbers in parentheses are the players' ages.  I know some of the signings have us scratching our heads and wondering if this "new direction" is lip service or reality.  However, looking at the players on these two lists, it becomes pretty evident that so far Mo has done a good job of getting rid of some of the aging or ineffective players on the roster.

Taguchi's obviously a fan favorite and had a pretty good career as a bench player for us, but he's a 38 year old version of Skip Schumacher.  Should Schumacher/Taguchi be on the roster?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But at least this time, if one of them IS going to be on the roster, it's the one in his mid 20's, not his mid to late-30's.  Wilson is gone, and I can't imagine any one of us is anything but happy with that departure.  Same with Cairo and Branyan.

On the pitchers, neither Maroth nor Wells panned out last year, and while it may be a no-brainer, Mo didn't bring either of those pitchers back either, moving on from mistakes made.  The two catchers, Bennett and Stinnett, both were the no-risk, no-reward type of players that Aaron Miles is, where they're certainly not going to hurt us, but they certainly aren't going to exceed the humble expectations handed to them as bench players.  

Jim Edmonds is the only controversial player to move on from this list, and with the news that he wanted to leave, and with our outfield depth, this isn't necessarily a bad move either.

Now, look at the new guys.  Two guys in their 20s, which if you look at the outgoing list, you notice NONE of those guys are in the 20s.  Even Izturis, who none of us are overly high on, has SOME possibility for actually becoming better.    Of the two older guys, Clement's actually a good investment.  If he sucks, we lose less than 2M and we reject his option moving forward.  If he returns to what he was at his peak, then we have a #2/#3 type pitcher.  

LaRue is a guy we're buying low on.  If he sucks, we basically have this year's version of Bennett or Stinnett, except better defensively.  If he returns anything to his former state, then we have a viable option to fill in 40-50 games without a significant dropoff, giving Yadi more rest and allowing him to be more effective later in the year.

Overall, I know there are moves most of us disagree with, most notably the Aaron Miles resigning, but let's not lose complete sight of the fact that this off-season hasn't been completely horrible yet.

To get a basic idea of what several of the pitchers this year might get, I looked at what the 2006 free agent class pitchers got.

I focused on the pitchers right around the age of Silva and Lohse, so I focused on pitchers from 28-30.

2006

Pitcher - Age - Career ERA+ - Free Agent year ERA+ - Salary/Years

Eaton - 29 - 88 - 90 - 3yrs/24.5M
Marquis - 29 - 96 - 74 - 3yrs/21M
Meche - 29 - 101 - 99 - 5yrs/55M
Padilla - 30 - 101 - 102 - 3yrs/34M
Armas - 29 - 95 - 85 - 1yr/3.5M

And our 2007 Free Agents

Silva - 28 - 102 - 103
Lohse - 29 - 95 - 98
Jennings - 29 - 99 - 68
Kennedy - 29 - 94 - 88

Silva's closest comparison by the stats is Padilla, but Meche is probably a better comparison.  Both Silva and Meche were both considered up and comers.  Figure there's always inflation from year to year, so probably something like 5 years/60 million is a fair expectation.

Lohse is along the same lines but a little less, but he'll probably get 4 or 5 years at around 10-11 a year.

Kennedy's closest comparison by these numbers is Adam Eaton, at 3 years/24.5M.

Jennings might be a relatively cheap investment overall if we could pick him up for what Marquis got.  If you recall, Marquis' contract seemed out of line with what everyone else of his talent got.  In fact, the only thing he did better than Armas was stay on the mound.  I think it's actually a reasonable expectation that Jennings might get a very similar contract to what MArquis got, without any inflation at all.  3 years at 7M per stands as a relatively cheap deal in this market.  

The issue with Jennings of course is whether he's actually healthy or not.  He missed considerable time with tendinitis and pretty much sucked when he came back, posting a career low ERA+ and posting an actual ERA over 6.

My projected guesses on contracts for the almost-30s:

C. Silva - 5 years/60M
K. Lohse - 4 years/45M
J. Kennedy - 3 years/27M
J. Jennings - 3 years/24M or a 1 year contract to rehabilitate his image.

Would you want any of these guys for these prices?  Or any arguments why these numbers might be off considerably?

Many people have brought up the idea that Tony La Russa is against playing young players and that he and Duncan have done a bad job in the way they've handled top talent.  With the focus on the organizational aspects of talent development over the last few months with the hiring of Luhnow and the firing of Jocketty, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at how TLR has handled top prospects and to see if it really does seem to be HIS fault or if he's not being given the young players that have the pedigree to uproot the proven veterans he has obviously favored over the last few years.

To really make this a good cut-off, I've decided to look at the top 50 prospects St. Louis has had over the TLR period, according to Baseball America.

I do want to say that while I obviously have my biases going into doing this, I have NOT looked at the lists nor drawn conclusions prior to making this diary.  

Top 50 Prospects, listed by name, rank(highest rank if multiple years), and year(year of highest rank if multiple years)

Anthony Reyes (41, 2006)
Adam Wainwright (49, 2004)
Blake Hawksworth (47, 2004)
Jimmy Journell (44, 2002)
Bud Smith (39, 2001)
Albert Pujols (42, 2001)
Rick Ankiel (1, 2000)
Chad Hutchinson (42, 1999)
J.D. Drew (1, 1999)
Braden Looper (32, 1997)
Eli Marrero (33, 1998)
Matt Morris (25, 1997)
Alan Benes (6, 1996)

A few of these players can't really be used for the purposes of what I'm doing here.  Blake Hawksworth, who spent this season in AAA and has been progressing through the system at a good pace, hasn't played for TLR ever, so we have to leave him out.  I contend that Hutchinson is in the same camp, since he pitched a total of 4 innings under La Russa, and was never really successful even at the AAA level, posting a 7.9 ERA in 98 innings in 2001, the same year that he pitched in St. Louis.

Braden Looper was basically shipped off before he had any representative number of innings.

Now, let's look at players who were of marginal to good use to the team in some way:

Eli Marrero:  An excellent utility player, although without looking up random sabermetric stats, I'm guessing not really a player who ever had a VORP that is befitting what you'd expect from a #33 prospect.  

Bud Smith:  Had a very good 2001, where he finished 4th in the Rookie of the Year, going 6-3 with a 3.83 ERA.  He following this up with a less than stellar partial season in 2002, before being part of the package that netted St. Louis our current third-baseman, Scott Rolen.  He bounced around Philly's system for a couple years and now seems to be out of baseball.

Alan Benes:  Two very strong seasons.  In 1996, he was in the RoY voting after winning 13 games (Although he did post an unimpressive 4.90 ERA).  The next year, he went 9-9 with a 2.89 ERA.  I believe 1998 was when he was out due to injury and it seems like he never came back effectively from the surgery.  With only 160 innings or so in his last season before his injury, I don't see much that TLR can be blamed for on this one, so we'll call this another neutral case.

Busts:  The following players were basically busts for all purposes under the TLR time period, and TLR actually had a chance to deal with them, so you could make the case it's his fault at least on some level, if not mostly him.

Jimmy Journell:  He didn't spend significant time with TLR, so this one is certainly debatable, but regardless, he did spend several years where he went from AAA to the majors. Since 2005, he's been out of baseball, so this is most definitely a bust, no matter who you blame it on.

Rick Ankiel:  Obviously he's come back as a very good outfielder, but he wasn't the #1 prospect by Baseball America because of his bat.  We don't need to go into the chronicles of Rick's struggles, but he's got to be considered a bust, due to his massive pitching potential and how it all fell apart.

Anthony Reyes:  Obviously his pitching chances aren't over and he could turn it around(although it seems unlikely to happen here in St. Louis), but his massive step backwards this year seems very much caused by the way he's been handled by La Russa and Duncan, so this one I certainly won't argue going right at TLR.

Successes:  These players have been successes(at least, so far) under the La Russa era in St. Louis.

Matt Morris:  3rd in the Cy Young voting in 2001, won a lot of games for St. Louis and was entirely homegrown.  Maybe Morris wasn't the top-tier ace that we all hoped he'd be for a decade, but he's been a very effective starter, an ace a couple years, and could easily be argued as a #2 or #3 starter the rest of his career.

Albert Pujols:  Duh.  I know injuries pushed him into the lineup, but La Russa has found ways to keep other players out of the lineup despite injuries, so if you're going to blame every bust or every mediocre player with no playing time on him, then you have to give him Pujols.

J.D. Drew:  Injuries seemed to derail him every time he was really hot, but this kid showed all the talent to be a top player, and for several years here in St. Louis, he had big years.  Again, like Morris, maybe he didn't turn into the perennial MVP we all saw him being, but he was very very good, and he certainly got plenty of playing time.

Adam Wainwright:  As much as it seems like Anthony Reyes has been mishandled, Wainwright has been handled beautifully.  His year in the 'pen has, if anything, prepared him even more for this year, his first full year as a pitcher.  He was the staff ace, and while maybe that was by default, he has shown the ability to be a future ace or at the very least, #2 pitcher.

Looking at this, you can certainly judge TLR as not being the best as developing top talent, but you certainly can't say he's been as bad as many people have claimed.  The fact of the matter is, you look at the prospects coming up, there haven't been any that have been major league ready outside Wainer and Reyes.

As much as I'd like to see players like Brendan Ryan get playing time, if he doesn't turn into Alex Rodriguez or even Edgar Renteria, or doesn't even get the playing time to TRY to do so, then it's not Tony's fault that Ryan can't put up an OPS of .900 or better in a full season.

Anyway, I'd love to see what other people have to say about this, because obviously there have been lesser-rated prospects, and you could measure this in other ways, but I think this way is at least a good start to judging the La Russa era and his ability to develop top-tier talent.

I was talking with a Cubs friend of mine, and eventually, after the obvious conversation about the Cubs playoff appearance was over, we got into talking about that the Cardinals are seemingly going to spend more money, and he brought up that Aaron Rowand is a guy that he would expect us to go after.

At first, I was taken aback, because I've looked over the Free Agent list several times and that name never caught my eye.  I didn't even realize he was coming up for free agency.  

As we continued talking, it became fairly evident to me that if the Cardinals are really serious about upping the budget and going after a couple real big name players, Aaron Rowand might be one of the prime targets.

First off, think of it this way:  We've got large chunks of money loaded in one outfield spot(Edmonds), 1st and 3rd.  We've got a moderate sum of money invested in 2nd in Kennedy, compounded by the fact that there's no real impact bat out there at 2nd (Luis Castillo would be the biggest name on mlbtraderumors list of FAs).  We've certainly got one other outfield spot locked up in Duncan, should he not be traded.  Ankiel is probably the likely choice for the 3rd spot.  

However, with Ankiel, with a very small playing sample and Edmonds, with an injury history recently, we've got a need for an outfielder.

That gives two potential places to spend money to make an impact.  Shortstop and the outfield spot.

There's no real impact player at short, outside the possibility of A-Rod, and while that would be a fun signing, it would eat up pretty much all the extra budget and wouldn't in any way address the rotation.

That leaves the main place as outfield.  I've looked back to last season's signings to see what an Aaron Rowand type player might fetch on the free market.  To do this, I first looked for all the outfielders that are between 30-33 and signed a contract last season.  

Then, looking at stats, I found two reasonable comparisons:  Gary Matthews, Jr. and J.D. Drew.

Here are their walk-year lines on several key stats:

Rowand:  161GP, 27HR, 89RBI, 6SB, .309BA, 125OPS+
Drew:   146GP, 20HR, 100RBI, 2SB, .283BA, 125OPS+
Matthews:  147GP, 19HR, 79RBI, 10SB, .313BA, 119OPS+

Both of the other players signed 5 year deals, with Drew's being worth 70M and Matthews' being worth 50M.  Rowand seems to be sort of between these players as far as their career lines, their career OPS+ (respectively to how their listed) are 106, 130, 97, but Rowand, of the three going into free agency, was the best.  I'm thinking meeting the two contracts in the middle, assuming no crazy jumps in the market, and going 5 yrs/60M would get him wearing the birds on the bat.

He fits the need for another outfielder, can play center if needed, can provide us with some middle of the lineup protection(wouldn't you feel better about having Edmonds and Rolen in the lineup if they were batting like 6th and 7th?), and is a tough, gritty type of player that always goes over well in St. Louis.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly.  If we're assuming it's about 20M new budget that will be available, this only eats 12M of that away and allows 8M to be thrown at a #3 type starter to help bolster the rotation.

Article Link:  http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/cardinals/story/C867D5E1D90CC85486257366000EA984 ?OpenDocument

Main points of the article:
-12 players account for 83M in salary.
-Season ending figures indicate the Cardinals brought in 102M this year.
-DeWitt is likely to authorize a higher budget this next year, in the range of 105-110M.
-TLR's decision is expected to come after he takes some time in California, but from the way he talks, expect a decision fairly quickly so that the team can move on to its needs by the time Hot Stove really kicks into gear.
-Due to the Carp/Mulder injuries, Duncan is quoted saying "I don't think you can count on either guy until you see them on the field performing as they have in the past," and is saying that the Cardinals need two top-flight pitchers.
-Club officials believe $110M in the budget necessary to retool the team to be successful in '08.
-Anthony Reyes is not expected to be part of the plans for the rotation in 2008.
-Joel Pineiro is expected to be brought back to fill the role of 5th starter.

That should hopefully clear up some of the speculation we all have.

The article also has very telling stats on the right column showing how bad the offense and pitching has been compared to recent seasons, having scored about 80 fewer runs than last season and 150+ less than 2003 and 2004.  We also had a 5.08 ERA for the rotation in only 875 innings.  The highwater mark for our team over the past six years is a 3.61 ERA in 1048 innings in 2005.

This is a pretty brief diary, but basically all I was wondering about is a tool I remember coming across once, probably linked off of this site.

The tool allowed you to plug in players and their numbers and it would tell you (theoretically, of course) how many runs different lineups with those players would score.  

I did several searches from on here to on baseball musings(it seems like it'd be something they'd come up with) to just google.  I couldn't find it.  Maybe I'm calling it the wrong thing.

If anyone around here knows what I'm talking about and has a link, I would greatly appreciate it if it were posted here.

Thanks!

I'm starting a several week long set of posts on my blog and wanted to share the idea with everyone here.  The idea is to create your All NL Central Team.  To try to give this some shape, I've imposed a series of rules.  

The rules:

1. That my "team" is constrained by the average payroll of the NL Central teams. 2007 payrolls can be found here. This limits me to a somewhat frugal $74 million in payroll. This would put my team, should I spend it all, in 18th, between the Twins and A's.
2. For the outfield, any three outfielders can be selected, but one of them must be a center fielder.
3. The bullpen must contain 1 person who is actually a team's designated closer and should also contain at least 1 lefty, preferably 2.
4. Starting position players must be selected at the position they played most during the 2007 series (No putting Berkman back in the outfield, he's a first baseman now).
5. Defense and previous years DO matter, but should be secondary to the current year's offensive stats. So if I say Pujols and Fielder is a push on this year's stats, assuming I can afford Pujols' salary, he would be the one I'd choose.
6. I must fill a standard 25-man roster and every team MUST be represented.
7. Individual player salaries are per ESPN.com. Unlisted salaries will be assumed to be at $400,000, around where many rookies and minor-league deals are valued at.

Obviously I'm putting a lot of thought and blogging into this, but I thought it'd be a fun idea, so if anyone wants to give it a shot, feel free to either give us YOUR All NL Central Team(if you don't follow the above-posted rules, I would suggest you mention that in your post), either here or on my blog.

Link to my blog, with starting rotation nominations already posted, along with my intro post to the idea:

http://midwestsportsfan.blogspot.com

I was able to be at Miller Park for the opening game of this current series.  Just thought I'd throw my impressions of Milwaukee, the park, and the game out there.

1.  The Ambassador Inn or Hotel is a great way to go if you're ever up there for a game.  They have a free shuttle that will take guests anywhere in the downtown.  The Inn is reasonably priced(around $100/night), and the Hotel is the pricier, fancier place across the street.  My wife and I, being young and relatively poor, stayed in the Inn, and found it to be very nice still.
2.  Miller Brewery is a must-see if you're going there.  It's a fun tour, and at the end, you can get three samples of beer.  They have, obviously, all the Miller products, but also Leinenkugel products, which they distribute, as well as a few other types they distribute.  I got myself a Leiny's Summer Shandy, as well as a High Life and a Miller Lite as my three samples.  The Shandy is very good, which what seems to be a twist of lemon in the beer.
3.  It's a beautiful park, and perfect for tailgating.  We didn't tailgate, but the park is just far enough away from everything else in the downtown that there's plenty of parking and from what I've heard, there's even a place to put your hot coals(so you don't set your car on fire when you're done) and a place where you can buy brats out in the parking lot prior to games.
4.  The seats seemed a little narrow compared to Busch, which made it less comfortable that what I remember the two times I've been to the new Busch, however, we were able to get very good seats about midway through the season(section 119, one section over from behind home plate), and compared to St. Louis prices, they are cheaper for the tickets.
5.  Beer prices are roughly the same.  $6.25 for a 12 oz. plastic bottle, $7.25 for the big plastic cup.  The plastic cup wasn't nearly as big as Busch's big beer though, so I think the cost probably is about the same per oz. on large beers at the two parks.
6.  The most interesting thing I found was how cleared out the place was at the end.  The park was nearly full for the beginning of the game, with attendance being over 37,000.  By the end of the game, with the Cardinals being up considerably, I would guess there were maybe 12,000 people left in the park by the last out.  My section, 119, a very good section, probably only had 35% of the seats full by the 9th inning.  Now, they did have ushers at the entrances to the lower decks by the end, so that prevented people from upgrading their $5 Bernie's Terrace seats.  I don't recall that I've ever been to any games in Busch where the Cards were blown out, but I know I've never seen the seats there clear out this much during normal games, win or loss.

I also have this posted on my own blog, but I thought this was interesting and you guys should see this, so I'm posting an abbreviated version here.

My blog's link:  http://midwestsportsfan.blogspot.com/2007/08/kip-wells-inconsistency-and-pacman.html

Using the day-by-day comparison thing off baseball musings that I believe LArry posted awhile back, I looked at the different stretches Kip has gone through, here they are:

His first four starts of the season:  1-3 record, but with a very good 3.12 ERA

His next ten starts(the bad times): 1-8 record, with a horrendous 8.88 ERA

Demotion to bullpen to All-Star break:  1-0 record, with an amazing 1.12 ERA

Since the All-Star break:  2-2 record, another good ERA of 3.48.

The other stats that seem to line up with his success are K/BB and BB/9.  When he doesn't walk very many, he has success.  When he does walk people, he posts an ERA over 8.

An article on the Cardinals site states that TLR believes Maroth was tipping pitches and Maroth and Pujols looked at film together and Pujols saw things that, in his opinion, were tipping off when Maroth was throwing his off-speed stuff.

The article also states that since his first, impressive start with the Cards, where he got a no decision, despite brilliant pitching, his ERA in the NL is over 10.

Now, according to the RotoWorld.com banner on the side for Maroth, apparently the Cardinals are asking him to go to Memphis for the month to work out his problems.  Given this pitch-tipping situation, what would YOU do if you were in the position to make the call?

Article Link - http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070802&content_id=2125156&vkey=news_ stl&fext=.jsp&c_id=stl

According to a Chicago Tribune writer, your D'Backs might be shopping Carlos Quentin for a starting pitcher.

Apparently, according to the article, your GM wants either Garland or Danks, but was scouting Contreras.  So obviously he's looking for a starter for your stretch run, and he seems to prefer someone on the young side, but is willing to look at a proven veteran.

Given all this information, I have a couple trade proposals, and I wonder which of these would be enough, in your expert opinion as D'Backs fans, to entice your GM to pull the trigger, or if none of them are.

Continue reading this post »

Just for the sake of a random trade-talk post I made on BCB's brother blog Viva El Birdos, I was wondering if I could get input from some of you Cubs fans on whether you think this would be a trade your team would likely accept.

I think I have a pretty good guess, personally, since I'm currently transplanted up close to Chicago and hear all the Chicago sports talk, but obviously as a Cardinals fan, I've still got a different bias.

Here's the trade:

St. Louis trades RP Jason Isringhausen to Chicago for OF Jacque Jones, INF Ryan Theriot, and the Cubs choice of one of these three prospects: Sean Gallagher, Scott Moore, Eric Patterson.

Assume the Cardinals would foot the bill for at least the difference in salaries, so that you're not taking on more salary.

Obviously, on our side, we get two prospects in Theriot and whichever of the three the Cubs would choose.

On your side, you get a proven closer with a 1.45 ERA this year to solidify your bullpen, obviously a need with the early year struggles and Dempster's injury, and you get rid of Jacque Jones, who as I know so well from hearing Chicago talk radio, is probably the most hated person in a Cubs uniform this year.

If you're making a run at winning the division this year, this seems like a fairly decent trade to me, but as I said before, obviously I have the bias of being a Cardinals fan.

Would you approve of this trade?  Please tell me why or why not.  

Lastly, if you think this is a bad trade, tell me what you think would be a fair trade and maybe we can banter back and forth about it a little bit.