obviously baseball has a blackeye that will seemingly never go away.  virtually everyone involved seems to bear some of the blame.  selig, the owners, gms, managers, and scouts all had a very good idea about what was going on . . . all of them turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the situation.  even players who weren't using (such as the much recently championed mike greenwell who was robbed of the mvp by canseco), could have spoken up and exposed a terrible situation.  they did not.  no one spoke up--at least did not speak up loudly enough until some of the juicers exposed themselves--caminitti, canseco, & so on.  as more information comes to light and names are exposed, people like tejada, petitte, & arod are having to face the music.  that is great--i hope all those names come to light. 

i have a plan for teams to fix this problem.  i realize that bud selig has the spine of a chocolate eclair and will never  step up but individual teams could.  tlr has championed "zero tolerance"  imagine if an owner stipulated that he would not pay or sign any player that was a user . . . and imagine in an owner stepped up and said that any contracts signed with his team would have clauses that stated that a contract would be void if a player used.  since mlb won't do this, is it possible that there is one courageous owner out there--one owner with a spine . . . yeah, doubt it

Yesterday, the Cardinals had another opportunity to sweep an opponent . . . and once again, they failed.  They have 9 chances to sweep another team in a 3 or 4 game set ( I didn't look at the 2 game sets).  In those 9 chances, they have capitalized with a victory only twice . . . sweeping Washington early in the season and sweeping San Diego to open the 2nd half.  The seven other times, the Cards have come up short.  I wondered if there was a specific part of the team that was to blame . . . bullpen?  offense?  starting pitching?  management?

After checking, it became clear that the losses were a team effort--all parts of the team contributed to the inability to sweep.

April 4-6  (W 3-0) Lohse pitches 7 innings gives up no runs and the Cards sweep the Nats..

April 15-17  (L5-3 in 10) Lohse starts and pitches well (7 ip 2 er) but wunderbrad gives up a dinger to Fielder in the 10th--a heartbreaker.   Blame the bullpen but also the offense--3 runs aren't enough.

May 23-25  (L 4-3) Wellemeyer goes 6 and gives 3 ER but the Cardinals offense can plate only 3 against the Dodgers.  I would lay the blame on the offense here . . .

June 3-5  (L 10-9) The last game of a DH in Washington--Parisi starts and gets rocked--4 innings and 8 runs.  The offense comes back but the bullpen can't hold the lead.  The bullpen gets some blame but also the manager--TLR blew through 5 relievers in 3 innings in the first game.   

June 10-12 (L 6-2) Jo-El pitches 5 innings and gives 2 but the offense can't figure Arroyo out--can't sweep Cincy

June 20-22 (L 5-3 in 13) In the best game of the year, Jo-El pitches again and goes 7 innings while giving 2 runs.  Parisi gives up a dinger to Youkilis.  A sweep of the Bo Sox would have been nice . . . blame who--I would say upper management.  By this point in the season, it is clear that the bullpen is becoming a problem and nothing is/was done to fix it. 

July 17-20 (W 9-5)  The Miles granny game . . . Jaime Garcia goes 5 innings and gives up 3 runs . . . the offense wins the game.

July 28-31 (L 9-4) Jo-El again . . . Pineiro gives up a lead or a tie 3 times in six innings as he allofws 6 runs.  The disheartened offense quits scoring.  Starting pitching gets the blame for this one.

August 8-7 (L 4-1) Lohse gives 4 runs in  innings but the offense can't figure out the rookie Kershaw. 

So . . . imo, the offense gets full or partial blame 4 times, the pen twice, the starters once, and management twice. 

Just as an interesting add on, the Cubs have had 11 chances to sweep 3-4 game sets and have capitalized 6 times--going 6-5 in sweep opportunities.  The Beermakers have had the chance to sweep 13 times and have done so 7 times--going 7-6 in sweep opportunities. 

Call it what you will, the Cards main competition keeps its foot on the opponents throat when it has the chance--but the Cards don't seem to have that killer instinct. 

they have been attempting to quantify grit--something that has been discussed a VEB . . . check out this post and the ones it links to . . .

http://www.brewcrewball.com/2008/7/17/573908/quantifying-grit-brewers-k

after reading these excellent posts on an overlooked statistical category, i decided to check on the person who (over at vivaelbirdos) defines grit--just to see how he stacked up to the the brewers "mr. grit" so i took a look at aaron miles. after the exit of eckstein, miles has become the cards gritty player--he even has the facial hair. i crunched the numbers and followed the formula to the best of my ability and came up with a secondbasemen for the KUG all stars. miles came in with a KUG of 32.135. his GRIT+ was 73. plus, he is short!

Apparently, the Brewers have acquired CC Sabathia . . . which raises a few questions.  Does this make the Brewers better than the Cubs?  If I have to root for someone other than the Cards to win the Central, I would definitely pick the Brewers.  Additionally, and more importantly, does this acquistion spell the end of the line for this Cards team?  When you team CC with Sheets, you get (potentially) the best tandem in the league.  Should the Cards send up the white flag and trade some overachievers?  Luddy?  Welley? Lohse? 

The Cards and Cubs will be entering this weekend series far closer in the standings than anyone expected them to be.  While most prognosticators believed the Cubs would play at this level, few but the most addicted to Cardinal Kool Aid would have believed that the Cards would set a franchise record for wins in April.  It seems that there would be a variety of ways to compare the teams.  Given that the Cardinals have such a favorable/weak early schedule with a lot of home games, I thought that perhaps that was the reason why the Cards were doing so well--and maybe it is.  But when looking at the Cubs schedule, it seems like they have a weak schedule too with a lot of home games--not as weak as the Cards but not super tough either. 

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