I was born five and a half years after Keith Hernandez’s tenure with the St. Louis Cardinals came to an end. I was far too young to have watched Keith Hernandez finishing out his career with the New York Mets and Cleveland Indians. All I have is the historical record of who Keith Hernandez was.…
Asking who the greatest St. Louis Cardinal is at a given moment can be a bit of a tricky question because, honestly, it's hard to weigh the factors to call somebody the greatest. But I want to try it anyway. One easy solution would be to look at the team's leader in Wins Above Replacement…
My favorite part of watching football is when the quarterback throws a ball in a spot where only the receiver can catch it and the receiver defies what we think we know about acrobatics to complete the reception. My least favorite part of watching football is the unavoidable fact that the sport is destroying its…
That ESPN’s documentary series The Last Dance, a ten-part recollection of the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, has become a worldwide phenomenon is a perfect storm of events. We are in the middle of an international pandemic that has stopped all sports dead in their tracks, it is largely the story of possibly the most popular athlete in…
Willie McGee was my fisrt least favorite baseball player. Yes, I am aware that Willie McGee is, for a certain generation of St. Louis Cardinals fans, a beloved figure. I am aware that, while we as a collective fan base generally overrate McGee, he had a few very good seasons with the Cardinals, including his…
Before I dig deeper into this post, regarding rumors first circulated by Marly Rivera of ESPN.com that St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina is open to playing for a new team in 2021 if he is not able to agree to terms on a new contract with the only team on which he has played…
The vast majority of St. Louis Cardinals players have been people born and raised in the United States, because the vast majority of all MLB players have been born and raised in the United States. But the demographics of the sport have become increasingly diverse over the years, which is great not only if you…
It would be difficult to refer to John Mozeliak's tenure at the head of the St. Louis Cardinals' front office as anything but a resounding success. His teams have made the postseason in seven of twelve seasons and won a World Series, appearing in another. The Cardinals have never had a losing season during his…
Like millions of other sports-starved people, I eagerly anticipated the first two episodes of The Last Dance, ESPN's ten-part documentary mini-series about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls. Naturally, most of the show's focus is on the team's greatest superstar, Michael Jordan. The first two episodes, which debuted to huge ratings on Sunday night, were generally strong. So…
A popular story, repeated throughout the years involving countless different players to a point where I've chosen to not believe any of them actually happened, goes something along these lines: a newspaper reporter tracks down a legendary former player and asks him, "How do you think you'd fare if you were playing baseball today?" The…
If you haven't read the first two parts of this series, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. I have assembled thirty of the greatest baseball teams imaginable. I have set ground rules and parameters for these teams and my wildest fantasies about allowing the greats of multiple generations to square off…
If you haven't read the first part of this series, you can read it here. These thirty super-teams were assembled under the language of Wins Above Replacement. To repeat phrasing I’ve used before, WAR is an imperfect stat, but its greatest strengths are that it is intuitive and it is comprehensive. If you showed the…
If you ask somebody with only a very peripheral level of knowledge about Major League Baseball which franchise's greatest players would create the best all-time team, most would say the New York Yankees. If you asked a casual fan the same question, most would say the New York Yankees. Most of you are probably saying…
In a game show format that many people are saying resembles that of the popular syndicated television show Jeopardy!, John and Turp are joined by NBC Sports writer Drew Silva and Viva El Birdos writer Gabe Simonds, with Turp jumping in as contestant and John serving as host. https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/This---is---St--Louis-Cardinals-Popular-Game-Show-ecc0no As always, check out the podcast…
Last week, apropos of very little, I wrote about the greatest players at each major professional baseball stadium in St. Louis. The next day, I decided to take my extremely cool, not at all nerdy curiosity a level further and figure out the best player at every MLB stadium. I didn't dig quite as deep…
Some of the younger readers of this website have only known professional baseball in St. Louis at one stadium. I’ve seen it at two. Some of you have seen it at three. There are some living people who have seen and remember baseball at four, but anything beyond that goes past living memory of St.…
As a person who devotes large amount of my time to writing about baseball on the internet, the whole "social distancing" thing that we are expected to (and should) do to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus probably comes a bit easier to me than it does to most, but it is still a…
Baseball isn’t going to start on time. It probably isn’t going to start until decently after “on time”. At this point, I think we’re probably more likely to have Major League Baseball not play in 2020 than we are to have it play in May. This isn’t pure fatalism, and to be clear, I do think there…
I can’t come up with a good rationalization for this. To put the well-being of players and fans at risk is a callous, irresponsible approach. Serious measures should be taken to combat Coronavirus, and the scientific consensus indicates that large public events such as sporting events should be delayed. All of the talk over the…
With Saturday's bizarre news that semi-veteran St. Louis Cardinals utility bench player Yairo Munoz has left the Cardinals organization, the Cardinals find themselves with an open roster spot on the team's MLB bench. Munoz wasn't simply a Spring Training invite--he is a man who spent nearly the entire 2018 and 2019 seasons on the Cardinals…
Dylan Carlson has been obliterating baseballs in Spring Training as a non-roster invite for the St. Louis Cardinals, and that's awesome. But there is a part of me that gives pause to the acclaimed prospect not because I don't think he's going to be good, but because I'm not sure that he's going to be that good.…
Should Jack Flaherty start the first game of the next season for the Cardinals?
In sharp contrast to the last few off-seasons, Major League Baseball free agency largely resolved itself rather quickly during the 2019-20 iteration. Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, and Anthony Rendon were off the market by early December, and each had a pretty penny to show for it. For the health of baseball, particularly for those of…
John and Turp discuss the Cardinals' signing of infielder Brad Miller, whether the Cardinals should have topped the Dodgers' offer for Mookie Betts (17:55), which Negro Leagues player would translate the best to the modern day St. Louis Cardinals (33:00), and participate in a game of Cardinals and Oscar trivia (51:44). Remember to check out…
Note: This post was written under the assumption that Mookie Betts was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Last night, Jon Heyman reported that the Boston Red Sox are trying to reconfigure the trade. Because I don't like the idea of letting 2,000+ words go to complete waste, this post is going to assume the…
Having problems with listening on the website? Check us out on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and/or Radio Public. https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/There-are-no-more-outfielders--only-DHs-eai37u
Speaking as somebody born after the heyday of the "Whiteyball" era of St. Louis Cardinals baseball, the high-flying Cardinals teams of yesteryear have long been a source both of fascination and mild annoyance for me. On one hand, discourse about the team brings out some of my "Ok Boomer"-iest tendencies. In the build-up to last…
On Sunday morning, I weighed writing something about the Cardinals. By Sunday afternoon, nothing concerning the Cardinals seemed to matter. There really is no precedent for the horrible tragedy of the death of Kobe Bryant, 41, in a helicopter crash on Sunday that also took the lives of eight others, including his 13 year-old daughter…
Two wildly different players were voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday—Derek Jeter, the near-unanimous, first-ballot shortstop who captained the New York Yankees to five World Series championships, and Larry Walker, who barely made it to Cooperstown on his tenth and final ballot fifteen years after his final MLB season. Jeter was easily…
In many ways, Matt Carpenter embodies everything that the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans want to believe about themselves. He is a late bloomer, a mid-round draft pick as a college senior who scrapped his way to the Majors despite the long odds he faced. Carpenter was in AAA at the start of his…
As always, listen to the podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Radio Public. https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/Baseball-insanity-and-Cooperstown-ea81j0
An unfortunate byproduct of baseball's lack of especially prohibitive team salary controls is that fans can only act as armchair GMs to so much of an extent. Take the St. Louis Blues--Taylor Hall, a recent recipient of the NHL's Hart Trophy as the league's Most Valuable Player, will be a free agent at the end…
https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/The-St--Louis-Bullpen-Show-The-Matt-Liberatore-and-Nolan-Arenado-Show-ea3e2l Remember to listen to the podcast here, or on Spotify, Radio Public, or Google Podcasts.
I don't know anything about prospects. I am a complete idiot regarding prospects. There are like a dozen prospects I know about in all of baseball that aren't St. Louis Cardinals prospects. Matt Liberatore is one of them. Well, was one of them. This afternoon, news broke that the Cardinals had acquired the former Tampa…
In 2014, shortly after finishing their fifth consecutive losing season, the Miami Marlins signed their franchise player, right fielder Giancarlo Stanton, to the most lucrative contract in professional sports history, a 13-year, $325 million agreement characterized by backloaded money and a player opt-out following the 2020 season. The sheer dollar amount in conjunction with the…
2018 was a mediocre year for my sporting interests. The St. Louis Cardinals finished on a relatively high note, including a memorable surge for August and Matt Carpenter, but ultimately, they still missed the postseason for the third consecutive season. My college basketball allegiance, the Missouri Tigers, made the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball tournament…
https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/The-St--Louis-Bullpen-Show-The-Best-of-St--Louis-sports-in-the-2010s-Draft-e9opc8 You can listen to Mike Bauer, John Fleming, Alex Turpin, and Josh Matejka rank their favorite St. Louis sports moments of the decade above, or check out the podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Radio Public.
An inherent problem with being an armchair MLB general manager is that the sport doesn’t have a hard salary cap, and thus the smart move if your sole motivation is winning is to just sign everybody. If you are a fan and thus have no connection with the actual front office, you don’t have to…
On Friday, I introduced the All-MLB batters of the 2010s. Today, it's time for the pitchers. You should know the drill by now. Starting rotation 1. Clayton Kershaw One of the best ways to evaluate a baseball player is not how well he plays at his best, but at how well he plays at his…
On Monday, I posted an NL Central All-Decade team, which is inherently arbitrary and pointless and rewards players for spending time in the MLB division which generally spends the second-least in the sport on player salaries. I had fun, and I hope you did, but it was inherently an exercise in provincialism. Here's the real…
Some people like end-of-decade lists. Some people hate them, or argue that ACTUALLY the decade began in 2011 because there was no Year Zero (you know, before written history--this is why we frequently declare things like that the 1970 Baltimore Orioles were the best baseball team of the 1960s and that Goodfellas was the greatest film of…
On Wednesday I posted Part 1, numbers 6 through 10, of what I believe are the ten greatest Ozzie Smith baseball cards of all-time. The wordy intro was a nostalgic trip you're probably familiar with, that collecting baseball cards was once an almost rite of passage for any adolescent discovering the sport itself, only to…
"I was there when it was fun; I was there when it all collapsed." - Me Ozzie Smith will turn 65 at the end of this month which means he has not played professional baseball for a very long time. It's not easy, I suppose, watching your first sports hero grow old because there stands…
In just under a week, a panel will decide the four teams that will participate in the creatively-titled College Football Playoff. Will the committee tasked with doing so pick the correct teams? Subjective, but they'll probably come pretty close. Is there anything stopping them from making hilariously bad picks for the sake of hilarity? Nope!…
When evaluating which free agents would be good fits for various teams, arguably the most important factor to consider is team need. More depth is always good, sure, but a great free agent fit is one where the team has a hole in their lineup, rotation, or bullpen, and a free agent provides such an…
In both the 2017-18 and 2018-19 off-seasons, the marquee move for the St. Louis Cardinals followed a familiar pattern--the Cardinals acquired a premium, middle-of-the-order offensive threat with dwindling remaining years of club control in exchange for a handful of decent, already MLB-caliber young players and prospects. In December 2017, the Cardinals traded four prospects, two…
One of my favorite and least favorite pastimes of the free agent hot stove season is yelling about how to spend somebody else’s money. On one hand, it is fun to dream of what new players the St. Louis Cardinals could sign, and I prefer being able to preserve these fantasies to, say, the artificially…
Adam Wainwright was not the best pitcher available this off-season. Gerrit Cole or Stephen Strasburg was/were (and is/are). Either would be a valuable addition to the St. Louis Cardinals, but not uniquely so. Gerrit Cole has built a growing legacy with the Houston Astros and would remain a valuable member of the team’s World Series-contending…
