KyHen

Extra Innings working yet? :)

Honestly, I would say the former. I can remember him having like two dominant innings to start a game and thinking "wow, maybe he's turning the corner" only to watch everything quickly unravel. And that is consistent with the fact that he seems to be a headcase.

The day game quality does seem lacking. I relaly don't think this a 700K feed... And I don't think Matsuzaka is on ESPN today.

Ryan Theriot had nearly 150 at-bats worth of a .934 OPS. Geez, Cubs catch all the breaks.

DONE DEAL, FOLKS!

He was up in the 9th with the bases loaded, and he gave up a 2-out fly ball that was caught at the top of the wall.

Part-time guys are somewhat misleading though. They can have inflated stats from limited exposure, and from being but into favorable situations when they do get time. I think that is one of La Russa's strengths -- putting players in a positiion to succeed. Ultimately, though, it's their philosiphy. Commit to only proven guys that are sure things (Rolen, Edmonds, Pujols, Carp, etc); don't go after the big fish in free agency. Instead, sign low-risk, high-reward players. Sidney Ponson could very well have been a success last year. He wasn't. He got cut, and made what... $2 million last year? What about Junior Spivey? How did he fare last year? He spent the whole year in AAA. The Cards were on the books for a mere $1.5 million. Both of these signings had upside; neither of them worked out. Because of the way they were structured, they were not damning. The Cards have their fair share of signings that don't work out well. It's just that the signings are low risk, and have very few -- if any -- ramifications down the line if they do not work out well. And pitchers tend to be a different story. I liken a pitcher coming to St. Louis to a running back going to Denver. You're not suprised with a back goes there and has success (nor are you surprised if he struggles when he leaves). I think their traditionally strong defense and Dave Duncan are responsible for pitching success, not luck.

I honestly did not know that. I have operated all of this time thinking that his name was Patella. In my defense though, I don't live in the St. Louis area so I never hear these names out loud. I'll often times glance at a name once, unknowingly pronounce it wrong and stick with that. eg: Bernie Miklasz; for the longest time, I pronounced his name "Mill - az - key." Yes what is? STL free agent position player production being overrated, or the other stuff being attributed to luck? (I'm guessing you're talking about the latter.) I don't really know. He didn't look like himself defensively last year, either. I personally think it's time they cut him and go with Schumaker (and replace J-Rod with Taguchi). Schumaker had a pretty brutal play yesterday too, though.

I do want to say that I think that its absurd to attribute the Cardinals success to "luck." Yes, I agree, Kip Wells probably will have a good season. It's not because of luck, though. The production they get from free agents they sign (particularly position players) is often times greatly exaggerated.

Kip Wells looks pretty good so far. This is a tough lineup.

That surprises me that they didn't take an MRI. Why wouldn't they? I'm surprised they wouldn't be as extremely precatious as possible with their ace. That's exactly what I asked over at GWRB. What is their rationalization? I see absolutely no benefit to not taking an MRI.

What crap ass players? Murton? Soriano? Dlee? Aram? Jones? Barret? Derosa? Honestly, I know you are gonna say Izzy, or Marquis or something like that. But really, how much does 1 or 2 "crap" players hurt us with our team? Guys like Blanco, Izzy, Cedeno, and Marquis. I'm not criticizing our team, I really like our team, but maybe it'll be a reversal of the Cards' fortunes and our "scrubs" will have their career years, like Scott Spiezio, Hector Luna, So Taguchi, and Jeff Suppan have had during their tenures with the Cardinals. To be honest, I think the only guy you can complain about from that list is Spiezio. Neither Luna nor Taguchi really did anything noteworthy (especially when you factor it was playing in limited time [favorable situations]). As for Suppan... well, I would attribute that to Duncan and the defense as opposed to luck.

Joe Buck is talking about it right now. He was talking with Dr. Patella (Cards medical staff member), and they said that based on what they saw they saw it didn't even warrant an MRI. As a precaution, though, they will be skipping his next start while monitoring his recovery.

What? "Major injury?" I know a tweaked elbow does not bode well (not by any stretch of the imagination), but let's not jump to such drastic conclusions here. I'm certainly not happy about the news but we really have no idea how long this is going to keep him out for.

That's certainly good to hear.

Tightness in his elbow. Will miss next start. http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/cardinals/story/21C82B34C715E9B1862572B20076393E?OpenDocument Uh oh.

-- Bob DuPuy, MLB President / COO The self-imposed deadline set by the two sides has reportedly been removed and they continue to talk. Folks, by the looks of it.... we're going to have Extra Innings on cable. That last sentence is just speculation on my part, but like I said earlier: there is no way they would still be talking if things were not close.

what? era+ from '03-'05 123 227 (227???!!!!) 181 227? That's it? Papelbon had an ERA+ of 500 last year. :o

Cable and MLB are still talking. The latest update I heard was that as of 4:25 PM, the two sides were still trying to work out a deal. Anyone else optimistic? The original deadline was Saturday night. You'd think that talks would have broken off by now if they weren't close. I think a deal is imminent, and that they're just working out the last details. But then again, maybe I'm naive. I think we see Extra Innings on cable.

Replace "La Russa" with "Dave Duncan."

These updates are from Biz of Baseball (bizofbaseball.com); I check it a lot so I will continue to post updates on the situation. In any event, we should know what's going to happen soon. I can't believe the season has started and we still don't know if Extra Innings is available or not. If the deal goes down, how long do you think before games will actually be watch-able? I'd imagine it would take them a while to get everything set up. Or maybe they have everything in place already, and are just hoping/waiting for a deal to go down? That sounds like too big of a financial risk, though.

OK, it sounds like they're making progress. The hangup before was cable matching the "80% of households will have The Baseball Channel" quota that DirecTV has in place; Cable has now agreed to this. The sticking point now is ownership over The Baseball Channel. MLB has an 80% share of the channel, and they don't appear to be willing to own anything less than that. DirecTV, if the exclusivity deal were to go down, would own the rest of the 20%. Now Echostar and iN Demand want a cut of that. Instead of giving them part of MLB's 80%, the three (DirecTV, Echostar, iN Demand) would each receive a portion of the 20% that DirecTV would have via an exclusive deal. That, from my understanding, is what they are negotiating over now. Does that make sense? I'm sure I made it a lot more confusing than it had to be.

Strap in, boys, because this is far from over. LET'S GO CABLE! *clap, clap, clap clap clap*

I know it is a long way away, but... isn't it kind of funny how the bad call almost works in his Sampson's favor, now? Now he basically gets to pitch a no-hitter without the pressure. Very little doubt in my mind that this call will be overturned...

Some thoughts on Grudz: I didn't like him much as a hitter. He had a solid average, but really not any patience at the plate. Mark didn't see a pitch he didn't like last year. Now, as far as comparing him to Walker... I'd say that Walker has the edge, but it's closer than people would think. I tend to agree that Grudz is a good to very good defensively player. Now before I comment on his defense more, let me say this: defensive stats are garbage. Period. Range factor is useless because comparing a Cardinal 2B and a Cub 2B is going to be greatly skewed toward the Cardinal, since he's going to have more opportunities playing on a ground ball staff. Defensive metrics only work well in a perfect world, and baseball is far from that. Grudz has a very strong arm and a quick release. There is a reason the Cardinals set their all-time record for double plays in a season last year -- Grudz played a big role in that. He also had plus range and an accurate arm. He wasn't much of a hitter last year (career average OPS, I laugh hysterically whenever I hear someone complain about the Cards finding another 'needle in a haystack' with Grudz), but his defense made him a very valuable piece of the team.