As a fan of the late St. Louis Rams, I am used to being wildly disappointed at noon on the first NFL Sunday of the year, and thus am ready to hate what I see at Comerica Park this afternoon. Here are the lineups, which for some reason include Yairo Munoz playing center field. https://twitter.com/Cardinals/status/1038811799209082880…
9/8 Recap: Tough Pill to Swallow
Pregame: The Brewers keep winning and the Cardinals are trying to keep up in the wild card race. The Dodgers and Diamondbacks are right on their heels. I'm eager to see a victory after a tough loss last night. The Tigers are celebrating their 1968 World Series title over the Cardinals by wearing throwback uniforms,…
Why number 62 mattered
In spite of the last six weeks, there still stands a decent chance that the Cardinals won’t make the postseason this year. That would mean three straight seasons without the playoffs, the first time that’s happened in these parts since 1997 to 1999. Those were some mediocre years. Those teams averaged 79 wins per season,…
A musical look at the Detroit Tigers–a series preview
This weekend, the St. Louis Cardinals will play three games against the Detroit Tigers, a team they have not played since 2015, when the Tigers won two of three games at Busch Stadium. I attended the Saturday and Sunday games. In one of the games, the Tigers needed extra innings for Peak David Price to…
Giving and accepting blame for MLB’s service time problem
Entering the 2018 season, third baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays system was among the top prospects in baseball. He was considered a future superstar, having torn the cover off the ball in 2017 while splitting time between A and high-A ball. But MLB Opening Day 2018 was less than two weeks…
Cardinals create one-series winning streak with 7-6 victory over Nationals
The St. Louis Cardinals entered tonight's game against the Washington Nationals with a one-series losing streak that they hoped to reverse by defeating a Nationals team running out the clock on the Bryce Harper era. Here were the lineups. https://twitter.com/Cardinals/status/1037437751208144897 https://twitter.com/Nationals/status/1037419763302064130 While one could easily have made the case that the Cardinals lineup did not…
Examining the Risks of the Mike Shildt Hire
I’ll be honest: when the St. Louis Cardinals named Mike Shildt interim manager following Mike Matheny’s firing in July, I didn’t really give much thought to the long-term implications of the move. I figured that Shildt would get the team to the end of the season with no playoffs, Bill DeWitt would thank him for…
9/4/18 Recap: Cardinals hit Five Home Runs, Beat Nationals 11-8
Fresh off two of their most frustrating losses of the year, the St. Louis Cardinals needed to get back on track tonight in game two of their series with the Washington Nationals. It took a little longer than this blogger would've liked, but tonight went a lot better than the last few games, as the…
Belated Recap 9/3/18: Walks, Bryce Harper conspire to ruin perfectly acceptable ballgame
As my mom always says, better late than never... After stumbling to drop the last two games of our homestand, losing our third consecutive series against the Reds and our first overall series since July, the Cardinals needed to get off on the right foot in Washington, D.C. against the formerly formidable Nationals. The pitching…
Adam Wainwright deserves a chance to start
The idea that a baseball player is entitled to anything beyond the salary which he has been promised from a baseball team has never been a notion that made much sense to me. And I say this as somebody who is generally fiercely pro-labor: when Adam Wainwright signed his current five-year, $97.5 million contract which…