SB Nation User Blog: the red baron

Game 80 Open Thread

the red baron — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:20:13 -0000

Matt Cain Wainwright

Awesome Awesomer

It seems the haikus

Have lost their power of win

But I still like them

Look... We Need to Talk

the red baron — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:20:06 -0000

More photos » by Jeff Roberson - AP

I feel much the same, Chris. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

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Mornin', y'all.

Wasn't that just an awful game last night? I didn't watch it; rather, I did something I haven't done in just about forever: I actually sat and listened to the entire game on the radio. Now, lest you think I was doing this as some sort of exercise in getting back to the roots of the sport, let me dispel that notion posthaste. I did it because I am currently recovering from a rather nasty bout of the consumption (my mother suggests it may, in fact, simply be a touch of the flu, but I disagree, and the staff here at the sanitarium has been most supportive), and was unable to do anything but lie in bed last night. Rather than turn on the television, I simply shut off all the lights in the house and tuned the radio to whatever station it is the Cardinals are on now. (I also watched the last few episodes of Cowboy Bebop on my laptop as well, but that sort of destroys the picture I'm trying to create here, so just ignore it.)

Funny thing is, I've often complained about the awful media coverage we regularly receive in this town, but I was shocked to hear just how truly pitiful KTRS really is. Not once did they manage to come back from break before at least one pitch was thrown. Mike Shannon seems to have gotten exponentially more senile since I last really listened to a ballgame. Worst of all, though, were the promos I was forced to listen to between innings. When Frank O. Pinion's show sounds like the most intelligent program being advertised, you begin to realise just how low humanity can truly sink. It is, to be completely honest with you, appalling. (And if you happen to be a Frank O. Pinion fan, um, well, never mind. I can't think of a nice, or even decent, way of ending that sentence. Sorry.)

Phew. Sorry, everyone. Just had to get that off my chest.

Anyhow, a while back, just after the season began, I took one Wednesday and just opened up the floor to everyone, and we had a nice conversation. It was a bit of work for me to keep up with, but I thought it was also a lot of fun. Well, seeing as how I have a couple free hours this morning, I still feel like hell, and don't have anything at all nice to say about last night's game, why don't we try that again?

Ask whatever you like, baseball related or not, and I'll do my best to at least make something up if I don't have an actual answer. I've got until about 11:30 or so, plenty of time to generate some conversation. (Or cowversation, for one of our more notable posters.) We can talk about the draft, my love for Ski soda in the glass bottles, or how much I miss my old neighbour who used to raise chickens and always brought me the best eggs man has ever known. (Unwashed, too, so they didn't have to be refrigerated.)

Daniel Barenboim on the stereo, soothing my troubled soul with Beethoven's "Pathetique". Let's have a chat, shall we?

Game 73 Overflow

the red baron — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:07:14 -0000

Preprogrammed for your enjoyment.

Game 73 Open Thread- 24th June, 2009

the red baron — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:00:22 -0000

TPFKAPK Nieve

I can feel something

But what it is I'm unsure

Is it momentum?

In addition to our standard nightly haiku, I also bring you a response to my morning query of a proper bit of poetry for Pineiro, courtesy of reader Phredbird:

The cardinal pitcher named Jo-El

Is not a guy you would know well

But when he faces a Met

You know how to bet

And Card fans smile like it’s No-el!

Borne Back Ceaselessly Into the Past

the red baron — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:16:16 -0000

More photos » by Frank Franklin II - AP

The question must be asked: Could Joel Pineiro throw a sinker so good that not even Joel Pineiro could put it into the gap? (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

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Okay, so who had a two-hit shutout in the pool? No one? Really? Huh, that's weird. You would think that someone would have predicted a pitcher of Jo-El's obvious brilliance to shut down the Metropolitans quite roundly.

Personally, I now find myself in the odd position of rooting for the Mets to win their division. Why, you ask? Because if the Cardinals were to meet the Mets in the playoffs, there's no way the Cards could possibly lose. All they would have to do is throw Jo-El in every game, and we would have a nice, clean sweep. Unfortunately, I have yet to come up with a good rhyme for Pineiro, thus I cannot offer you anything as charming as Spahn and Sain and pray for rain. Maybe Joel Joel and hope like hell?

So as I was doing my standard postgame research, reading the various blogs and news stories and all the myriad sources of Cardinalia, I happened upon this little gem over at Gateway Redbirds:

Name	K/9	BB/	HR/9
Joel Pineiro	4.2	1.2	0.2
Christy Mathewson	4.7	1.6	0.2

Rather eerie, isn't it? A poster by the name of Haltz, who also occasionally pops by here, is responsible for this info, and it got me to thinking. Thus, with a firm assist given to Haltz, I present to you Joel Pineiro: Jazz Age Superstar.

Name	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	H/9
Joel Pineiro, 2009	4.2	1.2	0.2	9.4
Cy Young	3.5	1.5	0.2	8.7
Pete Alexander	3.8	1.6	0.3	8.4
Kid Nichols	3.3	2.3	0.3	8.7
Old Hoss Radbourn	3.6	1.7	0.2	8.6
Eddie Plank	4.5	2.1	0.1	7.9
Mickey Welch	3.5	2.4	0.2	8.6
Pud Galvin	2.7	1.1	0.2	9.6

So, what can we glean from this table? Well, first off, Joel has essentially transformed himself into a Hall of Famer from the Dead Ball Era. Secondly, very few of these pitchers actually fit into the Jazz Age, but the phrase Jazz Age Superstar just sounds really cool, and my Gatsby line doesn't work if I try to modify it for the period of time from 1895-1915. So there.

Honestly, I have no idea if this tells us anything real or useful, but I think it's interesting, at the very least, that each time we watch Joel take the mound this season, we're essentially seeing pitching much the same way as it was in the earliest days of the game. Very few strikeouts, very few walks, and very, very few home runs.

And really, last night's game against the Metropolitans of New York was exactly the sort of contest one might expect to see in the aughts. The Mets seemed to swing at nearly everything, putting the ball into play constantly early in the count. Let's face it, no matter how efficient a pitcher is working on a given night, he has to have some help from the opposing batters to go nine in 100 pitches. (Hopefully, the Cardinals were taking notes on exactly how not to go about scoring runs.) Watching last night's game, it felt as if it should all be at that faster rate of speed that early film always recorded things at, along with a soundtrack by way of Scott Joplin.

There is one other thing we can pretty solidly deduce from looking at these numbers, and it's not nearly so good a news as the other stuff. The most similar number throughout all those stat lines is the HR/9 number. Of course, one would expect that from most of those players; after all, they are Hall of Famers from an era in which home runs were extremely scarce top to bottom most years. The problem, of course, is that Joel Pineiro is not a Hall of Famer, and when the Cardinal travel to Pittsburgh, they aren't playing in Forbes Field and it's 457' power alley to left-center.

What I'm saying is that as well as Joel is pitching this year, and he has been brilliant at times, a huge portion of his success has been predicated on his ability to avoid the long ball. And in this current era of baseball, he simply isn't going to be able to sustain that indefinitely. It actually dovetails somewhat with what I was talking about last week, when we were discussing possible stresses on a pitcher. (By the way, I've taken all of the ideas and concepts discussed under advisement, and will do a bit more work with that whole thing when I have some extra time.) Pitchers nowadays have to concentrate so much harder on every single pitch, in large part because any hitter can hit the ball out of the park at pretty much any time. You can't simply work at a lower intensity until a couple of runners get on; if you try, you'll likely end up taking an early shower.

For now, though, I'm just going to enjoy possibly the most unexpected development of all in this bizarre, completely unexpected season: Joel Pineiro is a really good pitcher right now. A really good pitcher from before the advent of radio, yes, but a really good pitcher nonetheless.

And now for the Baron's playlist for this week. The other day, I was digging around in my attic, cleaning out a couple of old totes of stuff I've had hanging around for more years than I care to count. At the bottom of one of the totes full of stuff that had actually followed me from my parents' house (and I haven't lived at home for about nine years now), I found an old cassette tape. On it was an installment of Les Aran's New Music Sunday from sometime in early 1998. My girlfriend from our senior year of high school taped it for me (in fact, it was the same girl I wrote about back at Christmas time), and I had been dragging it behind me ever since.

Anyhow, I drug out my old tape deck, hooked it up, and popped in the tape, and was immediately shocked by just how good everything on it seemed. I suppose that's one of the easiest ways you can tell just how fucking old you're getting, whenever all the old stuff feels better to you than the new stuff, and far better than it ever was to begin with.

Bentley Rhythm Ace- Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out

Fatboy Slim- Going Out of my Head

Roni Size- It's Jazzy

Pulp- Like a Friend

Game 66 Open Thread- 17th June, 2009

the red baron — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:18:03 -0000

E. Jackson The Colonel

The Tigers' attack

No match for our birds of prey

Dirt can't save you now

Brainstorm, starring Christopher Walken and the Cast of VEB

the red baron — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:19:59 -0000

ca·thar·sis
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈthär-səs\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ca·thar·ses \-ˌsēz\
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek katharsis, from kathairein to cleanse, purge, from katharos
Date: circa 1775

Is the offense fixed? Well, probably not, no. We saw some signs of life in the Florida series as well, only to watch the team crash right back down to earth against the Indians. What's the old saying about blind squirrels and all?

Still, it was certainly rejuvenating to watch the Cards whale away on Verlander last night, who must by now have nightmares featuring beautiful, naked women who turn into Fredbird mid coitus. He's been one of the best pitchers in all of baseball for most of the season, with only his first couple outings of the year negatively impacting his overall numbers. And it didn't appear as if he were badly off last night; on the contrary, Verlander's stuff was popping in there with remarkable life, and his command was pretty solid. No, the Cardinals just flat out beat Justin Verlander last night. The plate appearances were just what most of us have been clamouring for the past month or so; Yadier Molina's at-bat in the first inning was a thing of beauty. Yadi fouled off pitch after pitch that he couldn't handle, until he finally got just enough wood on one to drop a hit into right field. It was the sort of at-bat we haven't seen too very much of, the sort of at-bat that would have looked eerily at home in October of 2006, rather than June of 2009. Same pitcher, same result, drastically different circumstances.

But honestly, I'm not here to talk about the offense this morning. You'd think I would take advantage of the first really good game the hitters have had for a while and just ride that wave, but I can't. There's something else that's been on my mind, and I would like it if you could all help me out.

See, right now, there's this outstanding article over at SI.com, written jointly by Joe Posnanski and Bill James, and it regards pitch counts. More specifically, it regards Nolan Ryan's crusade to try and destroy the modern notion of pitch counts and the way they are used.

The current gospel in baseball, of course, is the 100 pitch threshold; when we see a manager consistently let his pitchers throw more than that, we immediately get up in arms about it. We joke about Dusty Baker, and how his pitchers will all have their shoulders explode after about two years of his routine abuse. We here at VEB have ourselves fretted over the high pitch counts that Tony La Russa has occasionally allowed Adam Wainwright to rack up at various times.

The Nolan Ryan article has crystallised something that I've been turning over in my mind for a very long time now, an idea I have about pitchers and why they break down. I've written here and elsewhere that I, in fact, agree with Ryan, in that there's really very little logical cause for pitchers to be on such strict pitch limits, particularly since it doesn't seem to be lowering the rate of injuries very much, if at all.

I think there are several reasons for the continued prevalence of arm injuries; kids don't throw nearly enough, but pitch far too much, the effects of excessive weight lifting, more breaking balls, awful mechanics being taught to young pitchers (Tom House, I'm looking at you), and a different culture in baseball that encourages working the count more are all likely culprits to my mind. That, however, is a conversation for another day.

This is what I'm looking to do; the point of all my pointless rambling. Most, if not all of us, have read the excellent articles from the past over at Baseball Prospectus and elsewhere about what the effects of overwork can be. BP of course has the Pitcher Abuse Points system. There's the Verducci Rule. Will Carroll routinely writes very solid work on the subject. The problem, of course, is that we're still not really sure exactly what causes pitchers to get hurt.

We've all heard a lot of old baseball men, men who have seen arms come and go for years on end, talk about how it isn't the number of pitches, it's the number of jams. And personally, I happen to agree with that train of thought. Simple logic dictates to us that not all innings are created equally, and neither are all pitches.

Back in the early days of baseball, pitchers routinely racked up huge pitch counts, the type of counts that would get contemporary managers fired in a week or two. Part of the reason they were able to do so, I believe, has to do with the parks they played in, as well as the type of hitters they were facing. Pitchers didn't have to max out on every single delivery then, as hitters weren't nearly as capable of hurting you with any one swing of the bat as they are today. Modern ballparks are smaller, and modern hitters are much stronger, making the longball a constant threat. When the center field fence was 455 foot away, you could toss a high fastball in there without a ton on it, confident in the knowledge that a ball hit to the outfield was just going to die in someone's glove.

This, then, is my hypothesis: the number of pitches thrown is less important than the amount of stress a pitcher is put under during the game. I believe that an inning in which a pitcher throws 30 pitches and struggles to get out of a jam is much, much more taxing that an inning in which he throws 15 pitches and sets down the opposition in order. Now, I'm sure that doesn't exactly seem like an earth-shattering revelation, by any means, but here's the rub: simply taking the two pitch counts, you would think that the 30 pitch inning would be twice as taxing as the easy 15 pitch one. I don't think it's that simple. I believe that 30 pitch inning is several times more tiring, and is less a function of the number of pitches than it is the stress the pitcher undergoes in getting out of the jam.

So what I'm looking for is a system to quantify the actual amount of work that a pitcher is doing. I think that we can come up with a numerical system to track exactly how stressful a given outing is. Now, please note, I'm not looking to make any sort of correlation here with injury probablity; there are so many other factors that go into whether or not a pitcher can stay healthy, including his level of conditioning, heredity, and mechanics, that I wouldn't presume to be able to draw any direct conclusions.

No, all I'm looking to do is come up with a measure of how hard any outing is for a pitcher. I'm working off of these assumptions:

Throwing a large number of pitches in one inning is much more stressful than a similar number spread out.
Throwing with men on base is more stressful than throwing with bases empty.
Pitching with men in scoring position is even more stressful.
Breaking balls are more stressful than fastballs and changeups.
Easy innings are less taxing in general, and allow a pitcher to get into a rhythm.

Now, if anyone has any issues with any of those assumptions, feel free to say so. I feel like those are fairly solid ideas, but I'm certainly willing to hear any objections.

What I'm looking for is a numerical system to quantify all these factors. Currently, I'm thinking of basing it on a simple point system, and then add in multipliers based on the level of stress that a given situation entails. Something like:

One point for every pitch thrown.
Add one point for every breaking ball. (i.e. fastballs/ changeups are one, sliders/ curves are two)
Any pitch thrown from the stretch is doubled.
Pitches thrown with men in scoring position are tripled in point value.
Every pitch thrown beyond a certain count in an inning is again doubled, in addition to any other modifiers.

I'm considering some other modifiers as well. I'm wondering if a large number of pitches to a single batter should count as more stressful; those ten or eleven pitch at-bats feel tough and stressful to us, I'm sure, but I wonder if they have any sort of effect on a pitcher?

Something else I'm wondering: should easy innings actually help bring the count down? Obviously, an easy inning is going to count as less work anyhow, but does having a couple of quick 1-2-3 frames in a row allow a pitcher to relax, get in a groove, and actually help him go deeper into a game? For instance, if a pitcher throws an easy, six-pitch inning worth nine points, given that it falls below a certain threshold (whatever that threshold might be), could we halve that value, or does that not make any sense?

Basically, what I'm looking for from everyone here is a big brainstorming session. As I said before, I'm not trying to base this system on anything concrete, or establish a value that becomes damaging. What I want is to be able to add up everything a pitcher did on a given night and have some idea of just how hard he actually worked. What I need is for this very knowledgeable community to help me flesh out some ideas as to other ways I might handle it. In the end, I would like to get some sort of community approved numerical system put together, strictly to get an idea of the workload a pitcher may be asked to shoulder in a particular game.

I realise this whole thing is relatively arbitrary, and I honestly have no idea how useful it's going to be, but I've had the idea in my mind for quite some time, and I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks about it. Hell, it may even be that someone somewhere else has already undertaken this sort of an experiment before, and I'm just not aware of it yet. If so, just ignore everything I said and talk about how awesome it was to put up eleven on El Tigres.

And lastly, with apologies for my forgetfulness the last couple of weeks, I give you the Baron's Playlist for this week:

"I Wanna Kill"- Crocodiles- Okay, so yeah, it sounds like a Jesus and Mary Chain song. If you ask me, the world would be a much better place if more things did.

"Holocaust"- This Mortal Coil- It's really sad to me that This Mortal Coil has been almost entirely forgotten, outside of a very specific segment of the population that no one really listens to anyway. Intensely sad? Absolutely. But this may also just be one of the two or three greatest songs recorded in the entire decade of the 80s.

"Grace Kelly Blues"- Eels- Your crystal ball, you keep it hid.

"On My Block"- Scarface- What rap should be, and can be at its best.

Have a lovely day, everyone.

Game 60 Open Thread- 10th June, 2009

the red baron — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:43:51 -0000

Wainwright Volstad

A downward spiral

This collapse needs to be stopped

We need A.D.A.M. now

Drafting a Masterpiece

the red baron — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:59:56 -0000

More photos » by Lynne Sladky - AP

24 days ago: Florida Marlins' Jeremy Hermida watches his walk-off home run in the ninth inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Land Shark Stadium in Miami on Tuesday, June 9, 2009. The Marlins won 4-3. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

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Well, the game didn't go so well last night, but I'm much more optimistic about the draft.

I've already committed my thoughts on the walkoff that Motte gave up to paper(well, technically, to bandwidth), this morning, so I'm not going to rehash that whole deal. The offense continues to struggle, but I was actually encouraged by what I saw from them last night. This wasn't getting shut down by a career minor leaguer; Josh Johnson is a hell of a pitcher, and the Cards put quite a few runners on base against him. Then again, my cautious optimism should probably also come with a qualifier, as they were unable to put the knockout punch on Johnson early, and there were still several innings in there that if you went to get a beer at the wrong moment, you likely thought the Marlins were being allowed to bat twice in a row. So baby steps, I suppose.

I do, however, have quite a bit to say about the draft, and what the direction the Cardinals took may mean in the long run. I shall attempt to keep it brief, as the draft starts back up in a little over an hour, but we all know that brevity is not my strong suit. We'll see how it goes, I suppose.

First off, I have to tell you, I think the prime time draft thing was a complete and utter disaster. What am I basing this on? Honestly, very little, as I haven't seen any sort of ratings numbers or anything, but last year, I switched with lb so that I could have draft day, and ended up with a double header and the draft all on the same day. I feel tethered to my computer now, but nothing like that particular afternoon. Still, even with not one, but two Cardinal games on that same day, the morning thread had over a hundred comments, and the draft thread after the Cards took Wallace at 13 had almost 300. (By the way, I had completely forgotten that last year's draft fell squarely in the middle of what I like to refer to as VEB's "David Bowie period.")

Last night's draft thread, on the other hand, garnered a measly 62 comments. First off, I'm curious if any of you have any insight; was the draft coverage here not as good this year, was it because several other places were doing live draft things, or what? Largely, though, I think the evening time slot is just terrible for the draft. I don't know why I think that, only that I do.

Onward to the actual picks themselves: first off, let me tell you how excited I am that the Cards took Shelby Miller. Was he my first choice? No, nor was he my second choice, honestly. I was on the badwagons of Chad James, the high school lefty who went one spot ahead of the Cardinals to the Marlins (Couple more days like yesterday, and I could really start to dislike the Marlins), and Matt Hobgood, who went off the board way earlier than I expected, to the Orioles at #5. But frankly, the main reason I wasn't all over Miller was because I didn't think there was any possible way he reached the Cardinals' drafting spot. Miller was the second highest rated high school righty, right after Jake Turner, and I hadn't heard constant talk of signability with Miller, so I believed he would be gone several spots before the Cardinals.

Funny thing is, when Miller was there, I barely even noticed. I was still upset by the Marlins/ James fiasco, and was loudly cursing the people of Florida with all the wrath I could conjure up- and trust me, it's a pretty shocking amount. I was certain that, with Purke and Matzek and Turner and Wheeler and James all gone, the Cards were going to end up with, oh, say, Rex Brothers, and I was prepared to be pissed. No offense to Mr. Brothers, who is a lovely human being and a hell of a dancer, I'm sure, but I see him as a reliever down the road, and just not the sort of game-changing talent I was hoping for.

But then- wonder of wonders!- the Cardinals called out the name of the other wunderkind, the one I had completely forgotten about, and I completely forgot how angry I was supposed to be.

So, what's so great about this guy? (As I am so fond of asking)

Miller has probably the most electric arm in the draft, outside of that Strasburg kid.

What Miller brings to the table for the Cardinals is that classic, front-end starter stuff, something this system has been badly lacking for quite some time. I like the term smoke artist, personally; just has a nice ring to it, you know? His fastball is clocked consistently in the 93-94 range, and has been as high as 98. He pairs the heater with a curve that is wicked nasty at times, though it isn't at all consistent at this point. You want a comp? Easy. Kerry Wood. Tall, thin, with off the charts stuff. Can you tell I really like this kid?

There are some issues, of course, as Miller's command isn't a strength (also sort of Wood-like, no?), and he doesn't have a changeup to speak of at this point. Of course, the lack of a changeup isn't really all that surprising; very few high schoolers in general have much of a change of pace anyway. It is the kind of thing you want to keep an eye one, though.

The other thing I love about Miller, after reading Rick Hummel's piece on the Cards' first day draft picks, is his attitude. Some might complain about him being overly cocky, or perhaps even arrogant, but I like that. At eighteen years old, how many of us were anything but convinced of our own invincibility? And pardon my french, but I like a little bit of Fuck You in my pitchers. It's the reason I love it when Motte throws a fastball and follows it off the mound, snatching the ball out of the air when the catcher throws it back to him. Miller is eager to get into pro ball, eager to start moving up the ranks, and eager to start blowing hitters away. Cocky? Absolutely. But as a Cardinal phenom righty from an earlier age once said, "It ain't bragging if you can do it."

There's some video of Miller over at the MLB draft page, but not nearly enough for me to make any real call on his mechanics. I like what I see of his tempo, and his arm action looks good from that short little clip, but it isn't nearly enough to draw real conclusions. So, I won't.

Even more exciting than who Miller is, though, is what Miller represents. In spite of how irritating I found Strauss' recent piece about the scouting department, there were some accurate criticisms contained therein. The Cardinals, in recent years, have shied away from just these sorts of picks, and the results are pretty easy to see. There are plenty of Lance Lynn type starters in the system, guys who are very good bets to contribute, but aren't going to sit on top of a rotation. Shelby Miller is that monster talent that so many of us (myself included), have been stumping for the Cardinals to take. Luhnow himself, when asked about the surprising direction in the first round, had this to say:

"I felt like this was a year we could take some younger kids and some higher risks and ... let our system and our own people do what they do best, which is to take raw material that has a really high upside and turn it into a finished product."

That's just the sort of philosophy the Cards need to take at this point, I think. They've built up some real depth at several positions, and the impact of a single miss at this point isn't going to make or break the system. When Luhnow began running the draft, that wasn't the case at all.

So what do I think about the other two picks the Cards made last night? Well, I'm certainly not as excited about them as I am Miller, but each has something to offer, I think. Robert Stock, the catcher out of USC, may have the most intriguing background of any player in the draft this year; he was essentially Bryce Harper before Bryce Harper was Bryce Harper. Stock left high school early to attend USC, only to find college pitching harder to eat up. He's a catcher, he hits from the left side, has outstanding athleticism, can hit 95 off the mound, and already has three years of college under his belt at age 19. What's not to like?

Apparently, the Cardinals are going to give Stock the chance to catch first, and convert him to pitching full time only if it looks like he isn't going to cut it with the bat. To me, that's probably the best approach they can take: as a pitcher, he would have a great arm and a solid breaking ball, but as a catcher, he offers a package that you rarely see behind the plate. Much like Blake Murphy from last year's draft, Stock could easily be described as a five-tool catcher, a phrase that, to be honest, barely exists in the English language.

Bottom line on Stock, I'm not sure this was the best player available when the Cardinals picked, but I have to give them points for the outside the box nature of the pick. This one has the potential to pay off in a big, big way, or be just another failed experiment.

As for Joe Kelly, I really like him, though he isn't a slam dunk, by any means. His numbers are ugly, and he's always been more hittable than someone who throws as hard as he does should be, but there's no question about the kind of talent he has. He throws just as hard, if not harder, than what Miller does, and has a breaking ball that rates a plus as well. He even has a nice little changeup, though in what little game footage I've been able to dig up, I've only seen about two of them. I profiled Kelly briefly a couple of weeks ago, and thought he would make a good 2nd round selection, as the Cardinals have had success drafting hard throwing college relievers. To get him in the 3rd is just a bonus.

Draft is getting ready to start up again, so I'm going to cut this short, but so far, I have to say I really, really like what the Cardinals have done. They brought in some huge upside with both Miller and Stock, and a pitcher in Kelly who, depending on what they want to do, could either start or relieve. (For the moment, it looks like they're wanting him to start, but I still see him as a 'pen arm in the long run. Just my opinion, though.)

I'll try to keep this updated as more picks come in.

And with their fourth round pick, the Cards take Scott Bittle, he of the freak cutter. Good pick here, though this is an awful lot of pitchers. Still, I'm beginning to look mighty smart on this draft. (Read what I wrote under Craig Fritsch)

A previous report on Bittle.

Fifth round: Cards take Ryan Jackson, shortstop out of Miami. Good pick, as he was thought to go in the 2nd or 3rd round by most sources.

My thoughts on Jackson

Virgil Hill is the sixth rounder, out of Los Angeles Mission College. I know absolutely nothing about this guy; I'll see what I can dig up.

Alright, Virgil Hill is a center fielder with a power/ speed combo, who put up some monster numbers for a small school. He was selected by the Athletics last year in the 32nd round. Good, good upside pick here. Sort of like a small school version of the Reds' Drew Stubbs, if you ask me.

Seventh round- Cards take Kyle Conley, a senior right fielder out of the U of Washington. Blech. He's a big, lumbering guy with a lot of power, but big holes in his swing and little speed. Will likely move to left or first base down the line. Awesome. We just drafted a right-handed Chris Duncan. I say again, blech.

Eighth round- Jason Stidham, SS, Florida State University Got to say, I'm surprised he has time to play baseball in between making all those Transporter movies.

Tampa Bay just took my boy Brett Nommensen at the end of the eighth round. I'm going to go crawl into a bottle of scotch.

Ninth round- Nick McCully, RHP, Coastal Carolina U Alright, enough with the college righties already! Maybe a nice high school third baseman, break up the monotony a little?

Tenth round- Cards take Hector Hernandez, a LHP out of the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy. A high school lefty? That will break up the monotony quite nicely, thank you very much.

Eleventh round- Allen Ahmady, 1B, Fresno State. Tremendous on base skills and ability to hit for average, but less pop than you typically look for in a first baseman. I like the kid, saw him in one of the regional rounds. A little undersized- 5'11", 195.

Round 12- Patrick Daugherty, LHP, Pearl River community college.

Round 13- Matt Carpenter, 3B, Texas Christian University

And that's it for me for right now, everybody. I'll try to update this some more this evening, after the rest of the picks are in, but I've got stuff I have to do now. Take care.

Poll

So, how do you think the Cardinals did on Day One?

WHOOOOOO!!!

424 votes

Don't like the picks.

18 votes

Doesn't matter; they won't pony up and sign these guys anyway.

115 votes

557 votes | Poll has closed

The Good Luck, Turn It Around Overflow Thread

the red baron — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:53:06 -0000

See that title, Cardinals? Do you?! Do you see it?!