KyHen

Your completely missing the grand irony here. All of those things that you mention have happened, and yet the Cardinals sit 2.5 games out of first place in mid to late August You are drastically over-simplifying my rant.

I just can't believe how lucky the Cards are, though. Everything they do turns to gold. Let's take a look: - They sign a trash-heap starter and he turns into gold. Kip Wells: 6-13, 82 ERA+ - They let their overpriced free agents walk and a prospect comes out of the woodwork and dominates: Anthony Reyes: 2-11, 78 ERA+ Meanwhile, Jason Marquis -- fresh of a league-worst ERA in 2006 -- posts a 107 ERA+ for their rival ballclub; to put that in perspective, a 107 ERA+ is higher than any starter currently on the staff. - Despite never starting a game in his major league career, a career reliever makes the transition and turns into an ace: Braden Looper: 10-9, 84 ERA+ - In the tradition of Tony Womack and Mark Grudzielanek, yet another free agent second basemen comes in and has a career year: Adam Kennedy: .219 / .282 / .290* Of players with at least 250 plate appearances this year (there are 257 of them), that OPS is second worst in all of major league baseball (second to Nick Punto). - After hitting rock bottom and being released by his former club, Chris Carpenter turns in yet another Cy-Young caliber season Chris Carpenter: 1 start in 2007 - Walt Jocketty fleeces another GM in yet another lopsided trade Mark Mulder: 0 starts in 2007 Dan Haren: 13-4, league-leading 171 ERA+ Being completely objective here, I think calling the Cardinals "lucky" is flat-out absurd. Its borderline delusional. Unless, of course, low-risk, high-reward, non-crippling deals are considered lucky. If they are, then make room on the bandwagon for me. Did they forget to sprinkle the 'magic pixie dusty' on Junior Spivey last year? Why didn't it work on Sidney Ponson? Did using too much on Adam Kennedy injure him? Kip Wells must have not taken the right dosage. Baseball players are humans. Going to a new environment can and sometimes does make a difference. Having a new pitching coach and a new approach can lead to different results. Playing under a manager that meticulously studies the game and places you into favorable situations in an effort to optimize your success is a good thing -- honest! But hey, let's ignore that all of this happened. Lets factor out all of the intangible stuff. Luck is a convenient, quick and easy alibi. And look: I understand that you can make cases like this against all organizations. I'm not seeing they've seen more than their fair share of bad luck or anything of that nature. All I'm saying is that oh-so-often selective amnesia rears its ugly head.

That would be bad simply because in the long run, your inferior hitters are going to get more plate appearances than your good hitters But the argument is "LINE UP ORDER DOESN'T MATTER IT'S BEEN PROVEN" because the hitters will produce somewhere else in the line up. I know it's bad but some people are to stubborn to admit it. I think apples and oranges are being argued here. I think the point you're trying to make is that, regardless of where a player bats, he's going to be the same player. In other words, "protection" -- the idea that hitters will pound a #2 hitter fastballs in close counts to avoid seeing him get on in front of the big boppers -- is really a myth. The way you're coming off, though, is that regardless of what lineup you churn out there, the team is going to be equally proficient in every case. The former is debatable -- I don't think it's true. The latter, in my opinion, is just flat-out nonsense. Because players lower in the order don't get as many at-bats as players high in the order, you will suffer if your best hitters are down in the order.

It's been "proved?" If it hasn't been tested in a real-world environment I'd really like to know how it has true. Maybe you can say it's a theoretical fact, but you can't really go beyond that.

Injured or not he will destroy St. Louis in the upcoming series. I cannot remember for the life of me one bad start he's made against the Cards.

Without question 21 strikeouts; we've seen 20 strikeouts four times in history. Granted, four home run games are a lot more common than 20 strikeout games (15 : 4), but lets face it... if a guy has hit four homers in a game, do you really expect him to get pitched to in his fifth at-bat? Maybe the opposing manager would do it out of respect of him challenging a record, but I find that pretty unlikely. If a pitcher is on (see: Wood, Kerry -- 1998), there's no way around it. He's going to come right at you and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no taking him out of the game like you can a hitter. While both are obviously unbelievably unlikely, I think a 21-strikeout game will occur first, and I think by a fairly wide margin.

Ankiel with a 3-run home run in the 8th! Go Rick!

Dunn puts the game away in Philly.

He entered June of 2006 with 7 HR's and a .938 OPS!

Man, I was so optimistic coming into the season. He has really, really struggled so far.

Wickman? Sexson? Suppan? That's laughable. You never hear anything about any of those guys.

Didn't they actually cut salary this year? New stadium, WS windfall, and yet they don't add salary. Agree. I think they should have invested $28 million in a Jason Marquis-caliber player, or riddled themselves with an albatross of a contract (see: Carlos Lee). Just because you have money doesn't mean you should spend it...at least when it means grossly overpaying for overrated players.

I agree with this. The Delgado ball was not all that well-hit, and Theriot didn't have that far to range. It may have been tough to turn two, but I don't think there's any excuse for that ball leaving the infield. It was more Theriot's fault that it was Eyre's..

Well, there's a cause for concern with his poor walk rate so far: his BABIP at this point (.379) is a lot higher than it should be, if you use his LD% as a reference (17.2%). As a result, his batting average is going to regress back to his career average, which is going to result in his OBP taking a pretty big hit. If, hypothetically, he average drops back to his .281 career average, his OBP would drop to .335. Pierre put up a .333 OBP last year. Soriano would still be an improvement, obviously, because he has significantly more power, but... Soriano is such a unique case because of his speed and his very effectiveness base stealing rate. I personally think those things are wasted lower in the order (though I know many would agree with that). In my opinion its a catch-22 with a guy like him: utilize his speed by batting him in the order, but suffer from a low OBP guy that high OR maximize his power production by hitting him lower in the order, but losing out on the benefits of his speed in the process.

Furcal did it against the Cardinals not too long ago... it was the year that Pujols had like that 30-game hitting streak or whatever...

You have a right to an opinion but it sounds like you're saying, "if he was drinking and driving he had it coming." That's how your post comes off to me. You have to know he was sober before you feel bad?

When reading that, I don't want to make any early assumptions but...... How the hell do you die from rear ending someone? Unless it's some kind of gruesome Final Destination type thing. What? It said it was on the highway. Think of how fast he would have been going.

ESPN Insider is like a glorified, payed-subscription version of Pro Sports Daily.

I really, really think that Taguchi was safe at second on that bases-loaded groundout to Theriot. But hey, bad calls happen so I'm not going to pin the loss on that. I'm basing this on about the 10 times I replayed it with my DVR; but hey, maybe I'm just biased and somehow convinced myself he was. Anyway, even though St. Louis lost, I thought this was an awesome, awesome game. I love Cubs-Cards baseball! I echo the thoughts of the Cubs chances of a sweep looking good.

God, Cubs are so lucky. They make a deal for Michael Barrett and he suddenly turns into a middle-of-the-order Silver Slugger. Geez, does everything they touch turn to gold? I always liken pitchers in St. Louis to running backs in Denver. It's their system. It's their defense and their pitching coach. It's not luck. It's way too early to take Looper's numbers seriously, though. Through 7 starts (and one relief appearance) last year, Sidney Ponson had a 2.93 ERA. Ponson's peripherals weren't nearly as good as Loopers at this point. Looper isn't great but as long as he doesn't wear down I think he'll be Suppan 2.0. Yeah, I agree completely. I'm just saying five starts is a very small sample size.

God, Cubs are so lucky. They make a deal for Michael Barrett and he suddenly turns into a middle-of-the-order Silver Slugger. Geez, does everything they touch turn to gold? I always liken pitchers in St. Louis to running backs in Denver. It's their system. It's their defense and their pitching coach. It's not luck. It's way too early to take Looper's numbers seriously, though. Through 7 starts (and one relief appearance) last year, Sidney Ponson had a 2.93 ERA.

-- Yahoo But then again, he was scheduled to make his next start until he had a flare-up the day or two before his start. Until he has a problem-free start (eg: doesn't have to skip the start thereafter), I'm not banking on anything.

It's four starts. I was definitely in the "Astros made a horrible deal" camp, but it's way, way, way too early to examine the deal.

Cards' line this year: .229 AVG / .302 OBP / .334 SLG / .636 OPS Neifi Perez's career line: .268 AVG / .298 OBP / .376 SLG / .674 OPS

Sportsline's take on the game: http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/3235/goofgb9.jpg