dalgreen

I'm rooting for the Astros tonight. Tonight could be one of the best sports nights in my life. The Astros could eliminate the Cardinals and the Colts could humiliate the Rams on MNF tonight. It's a shame that the Blues are the only team in St. Louis I can really stomach.

I actually like Shannon. He's funny and compared to some of the other goofs who call Cardinal games (on tv and radio), he's good. He is to Card fans what Santo is to Cub fans. Anyway, he's a former Cardinal player who had to end his career early due to some illness/disease. He's been a broadcaster for the Cardinals for more than thirty seasons.

Getting mad at the ump for Edmonds getting tossed is rather silly. First, it was just a 3-2 count, I might be on Edmonds' side if he had been rung up. Who knows the next pitch he might've jerked out of the park or walked. Plain stupid to get tossed on a 3-2 pitch. Second, even if you insist on pinning a big part of the loss on the ump, who do you blame for the top of the ninth inning with runners at the corners and no outs and no runs? Regarding the last out of the game, if you have to watch several replays in order to see if a runner is out/safe, then you can't blame the ump who only has one look at it and not replay after replay. This isn't similar to the Denkinger call in 1985 where a replay wasn't even needed to know he blew it. Here are some more excuses why the Cards are down 3-1: Houston's pitching, Houston's pitching, Houston's pitching. You should be glad the Cards didn't lose 4 games to none. Game 1, Carpenter didn't look dominating, he was in trouble a few times yet always seemed to get the double play ball when he needed it. Credit him for that. So, I think Houston's pitching deserves a lot of credit.

Phil Garner is no better manager now than when he was in Detroit. Terry Francona is no better now than when he was in Philly. Joe Torre is no better than when he was in Atlanta, NY Mets and with the Cardinals. Players make the managers look good or bad, and their performance on the field can even compensate for poor in-game strategy and decision.

I don't understand this "fluke" thing. They had the best record in the AL and a couple games short of having the best record in baseball. Their "slump" over the last six weeks was more of Cleveland going crazy than the White Sox actually slumping. Had the Indians not gone 17-2 over that 19 game stretch, but instead gone 14-5 (still a great stretch) nobody would have talked about a Sox collapse. Yeah, I'm jealous and a bit bitter, but gosh give credit to the Sox organization. Only one team from the AL can play in the World Series and this year it's them. Can you look at them as a possible dynasty? Probably not, but this year---after 162 games and two rounds of the playoffs--- is not a fluke.

As a Cub fan living in St. Louis and having grown up in Central Illinois, I have been and will be rooting for the Astros in the NLCS. At least from what I read in the Houston Chronicle and from what I read some fans say after last year's NLCS, they were able to admit they lost to the better team. If the Cards lose the NLCS, fans and STL media will blame it on umpires and injuries; conveniently forgetting the fact that the Astros have had the best record in baseball since June 1, the Cards have been horrible with RISP, and the Astros bullpen completely shutting down baseball's best offense. I hope the series is over tonight.

Pitching, defense, capitalizing when given four or five outs and actually getting hits with RISP is a stupid brand of baseball?

If no moves are made I'd call it, "Hook, Line and Stinker."

I think most everyone is saying 2005 was a failure because of a bad team with bad luck, to me, in that order. What's wrong with that? At least for me, I do think even with the injuries to Nomar, Walker and ARam, if Wood and Prior had been healthy all year we would've made the playoffs. Do I, or would I, ever plan on them having a full healthy season? No way. As many said prior to the 2005 season, if the Cubs could have everything go right, they should be in the playoffs. Very little went right, therefore they're watching the playoffs like we are. I don't think anyone is saying it was only bad luck that we didn't make the playoffs. Wood and ARam getting hurt is no longer bad luck but pretty much the expected. So I really don't see how anyone (other than maybe Hendry) could just sit on their hands this offseason.

It's just that we (or I) keep hearing the same crap every postseason. The "best fans in baseball" should've realized that a STL/San Diego series wouldn't be a draw on a national basis, just like a STL/Arizona wasn't. Records have nothing to do with it. Then it's the old, "I can't believe SportsCenter only spent one-minute on the Cardinals clinching the division. Well, make the division race interesting and quit winning it in July and then you might get more of a story. So that you won't be shocked. If it ends up a Cardinal/White Sox World Series, be prepared to have the story center around whether the White Sox will break the long drought. That will be the story. If the Cardinals win, it won't be about the Cardinals winning. It will be about the White Sox still waiting for a championship. If the White Sox win, it will be about Chicago having a World Series Champion for the first time since 1917 or 1918, I forget. Just predicting what will happen to lessen the blow a bit.

They had a legitimate complaint in only that a lot of STL sports fans think the world is out to get them. It was on a Saturday night for pete's sake. It wasn't a Tuesday or Wednesday night 10 pm start. Were some Cardinal fans complaining that the Padres had a 10 am PT start for game one? Were they complaining that the Angels/Yankees ALDS (game 2) had a 10 pm ET start? I've lived here for 10 years and don't understand why STL fans can't understand that STL is not a large television market and that's what dictates who plays at what times --- not best records. STL, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, KC, Milwaukee are like cities when you talk about television markets. And all of them would get the worst time slot if you had a NY team, LA team or a Chicago team (especially the Cubs) playing. I think that most Cardinal fans understand that. I heard very little complaining, actually. Here's an article that addresses that: Media Views: Cards fans show they'll put up with late games By Dan Caesar ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 10/11/2005 New York isn't the only city that never sleeps. Put St. Louis in that category, at least when major sporting events involving the local teams are taking place after the clock strikes midnight. Late Night With The Cardinals, their 7-4 victory over San Diego that ended in the wee hours Sunday (St. Louis time), generated the biggest Redbirds TV rating of the season. The game, in which the Cards won their first-round series, was simulcast on KPLR (Channel 11) and cable's ESPN, and Nielsen Media Research says the telecasts were seen in 26.5 percent of homes with a TV in the market. That surpasses the previous Cards high, a 24.1 rating, for Game 2 of the series. The game began shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday and drew a 15 rating on KPLR and an 11.2 figure on ESPN. Another impressive figure from Nielsen: 48 percent of TV sets that were on while the game was being played were tuned to the contest. "Nothing should surprise me about Cardinal fans watching Cardinal baseball anymore, but yeah, I was pleasantly surprised that that many people were up," KPLR general manager Bill Lanesey said.Advertisement From 1:15-1:30 a.m., when the contest ended and postgame coverage aired, the rating was 20. And the rating for the final hour of game coverage was 23.3. But the late-night crowd has tuned in in droves for key St. Louis sporting events in recent years. To wit: In 2002 the Cardinals' playoff opener, in Phoenix, didn't begin until after 10 p.m. (St. Louis time) on a weeknight. But it generated a higher rating (18.8) than any Cards game to that point of the season despite not ending until nearly 1 a.m. The Blues beat Phoenix in Game 7 of a playoff series in 1999, a contest that didn't end until about 1:15 a.m. in St. Louis. But it drew the best hockey rating of that season to that point - 13.2. And in 2003, the Blues' season ended with a 4-1 loss to Vancouver in a playoff game that didn't end until after midnight. But it pulled the top local hockey rating (8.2) of that season. Well if you listened to sports radio here (I try and do very little of) and some of the tv sportscasters and some of my friends and co-workers you would know where I'm coming from. In fact, the Post-Dispatch put in some quote by Selig after the NLDS game in 2002 after the D-backs/Cards game that started at 10:00 pm CT playing it as if he just now said it. I think it was in last Thursday's paper. I think your statement would've been supported more if Caesar had have interviewed some fans, too.

I completely agree with you. Even during the brief times when they were healthy, they didn't play very well. Never did they look like a potentially great team, let alone one capable of winning 90 games. If Wood and Prior had each made 28 starts (big laugh I know), how many wins would you say the Cubs could've had?

Nothing against you dal or anyone but I don't think the Cubs make the playoffs even if everyone was healthy. For two years injuries have been a convienient excuse for Hendry and crew. It is BS and smelly BS at that. Every team has injuries. But more to the point, the injuries the Cubs suffered were very predictable (aside from Prior). Even so, the everyday line up this club fielded was not good enough to consistently score runs. That is why we saw the prolonged loosing streaks. In another thread I did some calculations and in loosing streaks of over three games the Cubs scored @ 2.5 runs/game. That isn't going to win a lot of ball games. And this is while Neifi and Lee were having career years. I think MacPhail, Hendry, Dusty, and a number of writiers and fans agree with your position. I however, do not. This Cub team was very medicore comming out of ST and they played that way the entire year. It is a shame b/c I think they will not change the formula one bit and produce similar results next year. I hope I'm wrong, of course. I don't pretend to give Hendry or Baker or MacPhail a free pass. I have pretty routinely stated that I think taking a chance that everyone, especially those with histories of injuries, would be healthy was plain stupid. I do believe that we could've easily been 10-12 games better if everyone were healthy, particularly Wood and Prior. There were plenty of games where the game was over in the third inning simply because some starters didn't give keep us in the game. Then you add to the bullpen problems (some of it thanks to the manager)..... But I've already said Hendry better be looking into getting a solid utility guy because you should already assume ARam missing 20-25 games next season. I hated the construction of the team coming out of spring training. And I and others said everything would have to go right for the Cubs to make the playoffs, for starters no injuries.

Yeah, but when would those 60 runs have scored? Spread out over the season or bunched over 10 -15 games? I agree with you that I believe we make the playoffs if everyone had been healthy. Heck, I still think we would've made the playoffs had Wood and Prior been healthy even without Nomar and ARam. I think people can talk about lineups or whatever but the pitching cost us more games than the lineups... even as bad as the lineups were.

They had a legitimate complaint in only that a lot of STL sports fans think the world is out to get them. It was on a Saturday night for pete's sake. It wasn't a Tuesday or Wednesday night 10 pm start. Were some Cardinal fans complaining that the Padres had a 10 am PT start for game one? Were they complaining that the Angels/Yankees ALDS (game 2) had a 10 pm ET start? I've lived here for 10 years and don't understand why STL fans can't understand that STL is not a large television market and that's what dictates who plays at what times --- not best records. STL, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, KC, Milwaukee are like cities when you talk about television markets. And all of them would get the worst time slot if you had a NY team, LA team or a Chicago team (especially the Cubs) playing.

I'm curious just how many games poor lineups cost us in relation to our poor pitching. I think our bad pitching this season gets lost with the bad offense. Baseball people are always talking about records in one-run games. But I'd be interested to know our record in three, four, and five run games. I believe we had a losing record in two-run games. So, we know the lineups made out have been horrendous, but did the lack of pitching make the lineups look worse?

You forgot about the time Cub fan gave a standing ovation to someone everyone pretty much suspects and by at least one person's account injected steroids. Yet Cub fan then roundly booed their relief pitcher for giving up a two runs in a meaningless game all on the same night.

Tomorrow's editorial: Cubs were actually good last year. You are all mistaken. Keep buying tickets After a bit of reflection, I don't think the Cubs were really as bad as their 79-83 record would have many believe. Going by straight run differential the Cubs should have finished 80-82. OK, no big difference there. However, going by their component offensive stats this team should have scored many more runs than it did... to the tune of about 767 as opposed to the 703 runs they actually plated. Using that as the differential, it could be argued that this team played like it should have won 87 games, not 79. No improvement over the past couple of years, but not a huge dropoff, either. The question is who can we blame for the team falling 60+ runs short of its expected offensive output? I'm not sure the coaching staff and/or management can take a lot of that blame. Most of that difference is probably due to (a lack of) situational hitting, something that doesn't seem to follow much a of predictable pattern. I'm not saying that Dusty/Hendry shouldn't be criticized for some of their decisions, just that the 2005 Cubs team they assembled probably wasn't as bad as its record indicated. I don't disagree with that. Had Wood and Prior each been able to make at least 26-28 starts, I honestly don't see why the Cubs couldn't have won 90 games at the very least. That's where my problem with Hendry comes in. You can no longer take a chance on guys with histories of injuries being 95-100% healthy all season. I hope he's learned this when he has to sign a utility infielder (a good one) because you pretty much have to assume that Aramis Ramirez may miss 20-25 games next season due to some injury and you better have quality starters available in case Wood and Prior miss starts. The way this team was assembled was that everything would have to go right in order for the season to be a success, and once we began the season without Prior and Wood that was pretty much the beginning of the end. Back to the coaches, I still think coaches get too much credit and too much blame. To me, the players make the coaches/managers look good. Has Phil Garner all of a sudden gotten to be a better manager since moving to Houston? Did Terry Francona suddenly get better after moving to Boston? Did Jim Leyland all of a sudden get bad in Colorado after Pittsburgh and Florida? I think it all begins with getting good players.

Hatred by some. Healthy respect for most. Same is true for me and the Astros. I agree, Cubs/Cards 'hatred' is mostly a myth. There are some bitter fans on both sides but mostly it is a healthy, friendly rivalry. I would rather have the Cards win than the Astros or the Sox because a) their fans aren't obnoxious and b) they're probably the best team remaining and they deserve to win. The Cardinal fans aren't obnoxious? You must have never been to St. Louis before. They are some of the most arrogant and obnoxious fans that I've met. Of course I say that respectfully. The one time I was in STL, it was the airport. A couple of stereotypical 30 somethings stood near me in the bar watching a game. They were the most condescending A's I've ever heard. You should've heard a bunch of the fans (especially those that only come out for postseason) griping about the 10 pm CT start on Saturday. They really think the world is out to get St. Louis. Never mind the fact that the Yankees had a 10 pm ET game two ALDS against the Angels and the Padres had a 10 am PT game in game one of the NLDS. I will put up my obnoxious Cardinal fan against obnoxious White Sox fan and obnoxious Yankee fan any day.

By the way, I was upset to see the Yankees lose last night. If the Cards have to be in the World Series, I wanted them playing the Yankees so the whole world could see all the hypocrites booing Giambi, but giving McGwire a standing ovation.

Hatred by some. Healthy respect for most. Same is true for me and the Astros. I agree, Cubs/Cards 'hatred' is mostly a myth. There are some bitter fans on both sides but mostly it is a healthy, friendly rivalry. I would rather have the Cards win than the Astros or the Sox because a) their fans aren't obnoxious and b) they're probably the best team remaining and they deserve to win. The Cardinal fans aren't obnoxious? You must have never been to St. Louis before. They are some of the most arrogant and obnoxious fans that I've met. Of course I say that respectfully.

I just want to give a history lesson to everyone "surprised" that the coaches, GM/ manager will be back, possibly with the GM and manager given extensions. Ed Lynch, one of the most horrendous GM's in Cub history (and there have been some bad ones) wasn't fired by MacPhail. He had to resign not once, but twice before MacPhail accepted it. And from the quotes I remember from MacPhail at the time, he had no intentions of firing Lynch when Lynch resigned. So, why should anyone be surprised that the coaches will be back, the manager will be back and the GM will be back? If the coaches are Baker's "boys" then Baker is Hendry's "boy". And as long as MacPhail keeps Hendry, everyone else is pretty safe.... as long as their mistakes aren't as painfully obvious to fans like Wendell Kim's blunders.

Again, my criticism isn't with our arms, but our lack of young, good position players. The thing that bothers me is that our philosophy gets too hung up on tools. Going after guys with tools isn't bad if you can develop their tools, which I think we've done a bad job of. I forgot, who did we trade Hinske for?

If anything, I think this is a testament to how well Jim Hendry and scouting recognize talent in a young player. Most people saw Murton as an after-thought in the Nomar deal, yet somehow he's managed to blossom into one of the best young players with the Cubs today. Want more examples? The Kyle Farnsworth deal got the Cubs one decent reliever with a nice upside (Novoa), a third baseman who broke out this year (Moore), and an intriguing young guy down in Low A (Flowers). Shipping Matt Lawton to the Yankees got the Cubs a guy who has one of the best GB/FB ratios in the system (Berg). I could also point to the Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee trades as an example of seeing a young player with a lot of talent. So, to put this into perspective, I do think this organization has people in it who are able to spot these players. When it comes to homegrown players, I think a combination of things have to be taken into account: 1) Injuries are always crippling. They have caused major setbacks for the following players, among others: Chad Blasko, Billy Petrick, JK Ryu, Angel Guzman, Nic Jackson, Mark Reed, Brandon Sing, Sean Marshall, Aaron Krawiec, Bobby Brownlie, and Luke Hagerty. These guys would be so much more highly regarded if they were healthy. Unfortunately, these things happen in all systems. It's just been rather bad for the Cubs recently, from what I have seen. 2) The visa crackdown. This one especially hurt last year, as memory serves me. Now that things have finally been worked out, the Cubs can finally bring over a lot of the guys they've been trying to get in through the Dominican Republic, among other places. 3) I have to wonder how the Cubs psychologically evaluate players. Given the struggles of some of their guys as they approach the higher levels of the systems, I'm curious as to whether it's because of the nature of baseball or if it's something in some guy's heads. I don't know how the Cubs do things at this level, so I'd like to hear an answer as to what they do. 4) You have to admit, the farm system has churned out some really good pitching. We've seen these guys produce really well (Wood, Prior, Zambrano) at various times and levels. Other guys have the potential to become effective in the near future (Hill, Wellemeyer, Wuertz, Leicester, Mitre, Ohman) in various capacities and have produced in the major leagues. Yes, I know it's trendy to trash these guys for whatever reason, but the bottom line remains that they are young players with a heck of a lot more upside than most other pitching prospects out there. Once the Cubs get a manager who's willing to actually coach and who actually knows how to use a bullpen, I think we'll be looking at our farm system with much better eyes. You will never hear me be overly critical of our young homegrown arms, but position players, you bet and I've been critical now for a couple seasons. In your list of injured players, most of them are pitchers. My comment goes towards our lack of producing good position players and keeping them. Regarding Lee, I'm a big fan of his but this time last year I don't think there were many people using him as a testament to Hendry's and others' abilities to scout young talent. Perhaps someone can pull up that thread that Goony (I think) started listing who our starting eight would be if the players had to stay with their original team.

Did Dunn ever play at Texas or was he offered a scholarship and chose baseball over football? I don't remember. But Helton did play at Tennessee.