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…
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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…
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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…
As always, in addition to listening here, you can find the episode on Spotify, Radio Public, and Google Podcasts. https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/The-2019-20-Free-Agent-Draft-e8uslt
Per a quick glance at FanGraphs, 379 players participated in a Major League Baseball regular season game for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2010s. Given that the Cardinals were the third-winningest team in the sport over the decade, and by some measures the most successful team in the sport since 2010, it should come…
Twenty-eight teams have been listed and analyzed as candidates for Team of the 2010s. And now, two teams remain (if this is your first time checking out the series, you may want to catch up before you continue forward, though that's really up to you--here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4).…
Six teams remain to be listed in the rankings of the greatest teams of the 2010s, and for the first time, every team listed below is one that I consider to be a legitimate contender for the crown. All have some compelling argument to be the decade's best team, though since there is a Part…
After two days of running through a bunch of teams who, at best, had their moments of glory in the 2010s, Part 3 of The Team of the 2010s Rankings deals with fringe contenders for the crown and teams that, even if they never quite reached the upper echelons of the sport, avoided the devastating…
Yesterday, in Part 1 of the rankings of the greatest baseball franchises of the 2010s, we delved into some pretty spotty franchises, though near the end, we got into franchises that had their moments. And that's largely what Part 2 is as well--franchises that certainly were not the paragon of success in the decade but…
https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/Its-awards-and-hilarious-managerial-hirings-season-e8p6bi As always, you can find the podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Radio Public, and other sources, in addition to being able to listen right here on ess tee el bullpen dot com.
In August, with a month and a half remaining in the MLB regular season and with two and a half months remaining until the final World Series champion of the 2010s was crowned, I decided to publish a list of the greatest teams of the decade so far. And now, my "so far" includes the…
Baseball is, first and foremost, a people-pleasing business. There is no inherent value in the ability to hit a baseball hard or throw a baseball fast; these are skills which are appreciated because they allow people, namely the fans of participating teams, to feel happy. And the Houston Astros have spent the last week making…
Some people don't watch baseball after the St. Louis Cardinals are eliminated from championship contention. That's fine. You're allowed. I am not one of those people, and many of you reading this are not one of those people. But after you spend an entire season being almost singularly devoted to one specific baseball team, it…
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When the St. Louis Cardinals signed Dexter Fowler following a 2016 season which saw the team’s half-decade postseason streak snap, he was supposed to solidify an outfield that was hit or miss for most of the prior year. It didn’t result in the Cardinals making the playoffs. When the Cardinals acquired Marcell Ozuna, he was…
In the National League Division Series, St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Shildt, a manager I generally consider to be above-average and would certainly at the least include on my NL Manager of the Year ballot, made at least one managerial decision that I considered to be indefensibly poor in each game of the series. Here…
Last Friday, St. Louisans were presented with a rare and special opportunity. That night, the St. Louis Cardinals were going to face the Washington Nationals in Game 1 of the 2019 National League Championship Series, in a sporting event that would dominate the national sporting landscape for the night. The downside was that the temperature…
When I was ten years old, I’d take a wiffle ball bat and a tennis ball, use my left hand to toss the tennis ball up in the air, quickly get into a batting stance, and swing. If it went 100 feet and relatively high, it was a home run. That’s what fantasies are for.…
In the wake of the St. Louis Cardinals' offensive explosion in the first inning of Game 5 of the National League Division Series, when the team scored ten runs off the Atlanta Braves, a popular format was pervasive throughout the internet--ranking all of the big moments. It's hardly a new format but it does a…
On Wednesday night, the Washington Nationals won the first playoff series in the history of the franchise, dating back to 1969, when they were the Montreal Expos. Tonight, they will begin their quest for their second series win, this time against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Nationals just upended a 106-win Los Angeles Dodgers team…
https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/The-NLDS-Review-and-NLCS-Preview-e6foee This episode is officially available on Spotify, Radio Public, and through our primary feed at Anchor.fm. We anticipate it will also be available on Google Podcasts shortly and hope to eventually get the show on Apple Podcasts. Just search for "The St. Louis Bullpen Show" and the ramblings of St. Louis Bullpen's Alex…
Last night, the St. Louis Cardinals won the NLDS, and also the sun rose and set. That has become the standard during the division series era. The Cardinals have now won the NLDS eleven times in my lifetime, which probably explains my obnoxiousness on the matter. But I’m greedy and I want more! So let’s…
Nearly a decade after the most famous NLDS Game 5 in St. Louis Cardinals history, the team's 1-0 shutout of the Philadelphia Phillies in 2011, there has been plenty of myth-building to go around. One of those myths is the perception that the two starters that night, Chris Carpenter and Roy Halladay, were comparably dominant…
So, um, that was fun. The rational part of me knew that last night was possible, and maybe even likely. I have the receipts to prove it. But the dumb fan in me couldn't fathom the Cardinals ever winning a game after Sunday night's heartbreak, much less the next game. I fancy myself an analytical person who…
Not unlike Yadier Molina, Brian McCann is going to sneak into Hall of Fame consideration once he retires. I don't think he's going to make it--he has a weaker narrative case than Molina by a fair amount, and this is particularly advantageous when it comes to cases that are less than extremely obvious when looking…
Editor's note: With the use of the "Tomahawk Chop", a popular chant among Atlanta Braves fans, once again a hot button issue in Major League Baseball, I have asked two long-time online opinion columnists, Nathan Eckert and Bob Sheffer, to contribute their takes on the matter.--JF Nathan Eckert I am a lifelong fan of the…
Long-term, I haven't given up on Harrison Bader. Bader is an inner-circle candidate for best defensive center fielder in baseball, and center field is a position where if you're the best fielder at it, you can get away with more than a few shortcomings at the plate. An OPS+ of 80 is considered pretty lackluster…
In the wake of last night’s chaotic mess of a baseball game, culminating in a 7-6 victory for the St. Louis Cardinals over the Atlanta Braves, no player has garnered more attention than Ronald Acuna Jr., the young Braves superstar who managed three hits for seven total bases, an additional walk to lead off the…
The Atlanta Braves, occasionally known as the Atlanta Barves, are a baseball team that has some nice things to them. They are the franchise which saw most of the career of Hank Aaron, one of the most noble and gentlemanly superstars in baseball history. They currently have a mostly likable roster of players with a…
Man, the Major League Baseball playoffs are awesome. The hockey team I've been watching choke every Spring my entire life just won the Stanley Cup four months ago. The title of "greatest sports championship of 2019" is already decided. And yet this doesn't dull my excitement for what's about to happen. It's only been four…
