The Cardinal Way- Crops, Clydesdales and Championships

[royals19]

You know, there's just something about playing April baseball in the dead of December that makes the sun shine a little brighter and gives you that extra pep in your step. I was rearing and ready to go and get this thing underway.

Fortunately for us, we'd start off the season left coastin' and away from the cold weather of April for about a week. Still, it doesn't make much logistical sense to have us fly all the way from Florida to AZ and then make our way up the coast before flying halfway across the country to St. Louis to open the year... man whatever.

As any team should, we handed the ball to our ace and said "Do work." Essentially handing the ball to the 99 OVR Adam Wainwright should guarantee a win right? Surely we can expect nothing less than a 1 hit shut out while the offense tacks on 10 or so runs.

No, The Show won't have any of that... OK, it will have some of that.



Wainwright destroyed the D-Backs on the mound. An errant run here or there as a result of misjudged balls were the only blemish on his line. As if we didn't already know, Wainwright showed why he's the ace of one of baseball's most talented staffs...

And meanwhile, Jon Jay is showing why he's about to be riding the pine.



In the 8th inning, we replaced Wainwright with Victor Marte to keep from stretching Wainwright out to far early in the year.

Marte allowed a base knock to Adam "Spanky" Eaton. Next pitch was a 98 MPH fastball that Paul Goldschmidt somehow got around on and took it right back up the middle.

No big deal right?

Oh it was a huge deal. Jay, trying to make the play look cool, dives headfirst for a groundall.

What are you doing???

Mike Matheny bowed his head in embarrassment, Adam Wainwright threw a Gatorade cooler and I just sat there shaking my head asking:

Quote:

Message from the editor Who's team are you playing for, man?

The season has barely even started and Jay is already screwing things up in a make or break year... Jacoby Ellsbury is looking better and better my friends...

See it hasn't even been a week and we're already talking about replacing him... dang son!

Oh but wait, that wouldn't be the end of the shenanigans. Heath Bell royally f'd up trying to put everybody away with high heat.



Bell hit two batters and walked another before bringing Carlos Beltran up, and promptly unloaded 98 MPH in his back. Bell would be ejected but Carlos being the stellar player he is, chose not to charge the mound.

The first win of the year and its on a HBP... if this is gonna be the case all year round friends, then we're in for a long, long season.

[royals19]

This can't be life... The St. Louis Cardinals, World Series Champs in 2011 and Central division champs in 2012 start out the year 2-4 before heading home for opening day.

Take a look at how our road trip shaped out:

VS. D-Backs- 1-2
VS. Giants- 1-2

I know it's just the opening days of the season but something is afoot when we go 2-4 against a pair of mediocre teams. Is it time to hit the panic button? Not quite but another pair of bad series could do it.

To open the 2014 season at Busch, we got the rival Cincinnati Reds on tap.



To get things back on track, we had Shelby Miller toeing the rubber today. The kid impressed me in Spring Training and I for one was anxious to see how he would fare in his first big taste of big league action.

For a while, he went toe-toe with Homer Bailey but unfortunately his pitch count got up there in the 5th inning and we reluctantly had to pull him from the game while it was still tied.

But again, we were let down by the bullpen.



It was DatDudeBP... it wasn't Joey Votto... it wasn't Choo... No it was Ryan F'n Ludwick who done us in. After he hit that solo jack into the leftfield seats, it was game over. Just like in AZ, the offense rolled over and died leaving the pitching out to dry.



The starting pitching has been decent, the offense decent but it's the bullpen that's killing us. We try to turn over a late lead or close game to them and they blow it. It's still just the first couple weeks in April but still, we may be forced to dip into our farm system earlier than expected.

[royals19]

So we meet again folks... under nearly the exact same circumstances as last time. I wish I could tell you that our situation changed over the past 5 days but that simply isn't the case.

We've got expectations to meet, media demands, ticket sales... bring the ring home... yada yada...

Same **** different city man.

After leaving amid a score of boos from St. Louis, we fly up to Pittsburgh to begin our annual tour of the East Coast.

Things started out strong for us against Wandy Rodriguez. We batted around in the first inning and forced him to throw 53 pitches while we put on a 6 spot.

Maybe things would shake out today in our favor.

Especially when we've got the pitcher doing crazy stuff on the basepaths.



We tried a good 'ol fashioned bunt and run. Reliever Gerrit Cole fielded the ball on the first base line and tried to tag our pitcher Jaime Garcia out but Garcia was looking for the play and made by far the most athletic move I've ever seen in all my years on the show.

Gerrit Cole missed the tag and then threw the ball into right field.

*Former #1 pick everybody....

One of the other huge moments of the game was back in the first inning where first baseman Matt Adams hit a rocket out over the right center fence... presumably into that river over yonder.



If Adams keep this up, we might start him in right field. Heck we might even start him in center or at shortstop. Anything to get this team back on track. The whole thing about though is the dude needs to get faster... a lot faster.

Now you know it wouldn't be a game if we didn't hand it over to the bullpen to shrink the deficit.



Behind the efforts of the stellar Marlon "Byrdman" Byrd, the Bucs started making a comeback against our lack luster bullpen. Luckily though, it was all for naught as we were able to score more runs than they could muster... effectively giving us the win.

And in no large part to Yank... ahm... Cardinal Right Fielder Carlos Beltran.

[royals19]

After that shoot out in Pttsburgh, we headed over to the other side of the state to get ready to play the thug like Phillies lead by seasoned mob boss Charlie Manuel.

Quote: Originally Posted by Charlie Manuel

See we's gonna put these young whippersnappers in their place tonight.

Tonight, would the bullpen finally NOT let us down? Would we actually continue our offensive roll? Or are we going to let a band of grandpas clean the floor with us?

Stay tuned.



Lance Lynn was dealing tonight and as the game went on, it became apparent that Kyle Kendrick might shut us down... Kyle F'n Kendrick for pete's sake!

Now see how I set this one up?

Pete Kozma, on the verge of losing his job to some AAA no name like Kolten Wong, hits an oppo dinger for his first of the year. Hwhat? You can't just come in here and do work all of a sudden and expect to keep your job. The fans want things, the front office has demands... Put the best team on the field, expectations yada yada yada.

Put Pete did it, look:




So with that tasty little treat take a look at what Lance Lynn was up to real quick:



I thought Lynn had the no-no... That jackwagon Joe West was squeezing him so tightly by the time he gave up the hit that I thought all hope was lost. So Lynn exited with 109 pitches and in came the bullpen... who damn near blew the lead... again.

Despite the near implosion, we held on and our ball club won the game so that's all that matters.

[royals19]

Despite winning the past two USER games, we're playing awful baseball... just awful... Our regulars are on the bench every game it seems like either due to ineffectiveness or just fatigue.

Back in STL, we were struggling to get to the .500 mark. Jake Westbrook was counted on today to turn in a stellar effort against the hyped up Pirates squad.



...And Pittsburgh had his number right out of the gate... I contemplated pulling him at this point but we just couldn't afford to. We're at the point where we can't just be dropping games to save our arms. We need to play every game like its our last.

Westbrook just didn't have his best stuff today. The sinker was off and he couldn't locate the curve.

Westbrook would go on to finish the inning and was going to pitch the 8th until we got Pete Kozma on. At this point, Mike Matheny made the call to Matt Adams to come out.



Up until this point, Liriano had been dealing, almost no hitter worthy. But these was the dagger for him; a 94 MPH fastball right down the kisser to Matt "Big City" Adams. You just can't do that man... you just can't do that. Adams sent that sucker over the right field fence into the upper deck.

We weren't out of the woods yet however. We still had to hand it over to the bullpen. Luckily, they were able to hold the tie this time and in the 12th, Matt Carpenter hit a pinch hit single back up the middle to score the winning run from third.

[royals19]

Willie Singleton sat with John Mozeliak and several other Cardinals officials in a conference room. The rain trickled off the windows as the Cardinals brass brainstormed on ways to fix the roster before things got too out of hand.


John Mozeliak- Look fellas, I hate having these types of discussions so early in the year but I feel like at this point, we really need to figure out how to get this club going.

Just going over the numbers, our BABIP is less than .300 as a team, our hitters are striking out at a nearly 4:1 clip, Runs Created are way down... We need a spark.

Any suggestions?



Mike Matheny- Going off of what John said, we've really struggled in the pen. I need arms out there that I can count on. All I got out there is Choate and Mujica and I can't throw them every game.

Offensive wise, Jay is really struggling... so is Kozma. I'm thinking we bench Jay and use him off the bench, for Kozma, I'm going to bench him and work him in at 3rd, Short and 2nd.

John Mozeliak- So who replaces Jay and Kozma?

Mike Matheny- I'm gonna play Descalso at short and then I need Taveras to play center. Is he ready?



Willie Singleton- No, absolutely not. We can't throw Taveras in this early. He's ironing out some things. offensively. We got some arms ready but that's up to John whether or not he wants to call them up. I like Chambers in center for the short term. He's a gold glove type center fielder with some good wheels, he might spark the top of the lineup.

If your interested at all, we've got Chris Carpenter rehabbing down in AA. We could have him here by the end of the month.

John Mozeliak- Yeah Mike, like Willie said, Taveras isn't coming up just because we're down a few games in May. I do want to check out Carp and see if he can be of use to us. He probably won't be throwing out of the rotation but he could still have an impact in high leverage roles I think.

Willie Singleton- Alright, it's settled then, I'll go down and watch Carp and report back. I really think getting him and then Raffe back is the way we're going to have to go. Not a lot of guys down on the farm are ready for the big leagues just yet.

[royals19]

So that weekend, Willie went down to Springfield... into the depths of the Missouri interior. It was a lot like St. Louis down here... albeit on a smaller scale. The drive down to Springfield brought Willie back to his days as a scout; driving down the backroads of the upper northeast.

Willie pulled up to the stadium, checked in and took his seat behind home plate and pulled out his charts and radar gun.



Huh... 87... 88... 90... 89... 89.

Carpenter clearly wasn't the Carpenter baseball remembered. This Chris Carpenter looked tired and worn out; a shell of the old Carpenter. Yet, he still had the know how and the skill that made him deadly in his hey day.

Willie scribbled down on his notepad:

• Will get stronger once he gets back on his routine.
  
• Not going to throw 250+ innings.
• Could see in a bullpen role- high leverage situations.
• About a month away from returning.
  

After watching Carpenter mow down AA hitters for 3 innings, Carpenter was pulled and Willie left the stadium and made his way to his car and called Mozeliak:

Quote: Originally Posted by Willie

It looks like he's just what we need.

[royals19]

So while we let Carpenter come back from his rehab, we head up to Milwaukee to play what's arguably the most important series of the year.



With the Brew Crew up in first place, it's imperative that we win this series to keep the deficit manageable. A 15 and 15 record to start the year is very... non-Cardinal like. At least half the losses can be blammed on the bullpen but that's another topic for another day.

Today, we saw the emergence of two players:

#1- Adron Chambers


Yeah we finally had to bench Jon Jay... it was starting to get painful watching him whiff every other pitch and hitting slow roller after slow roller to the 3rd baseman.

So as Matheny mentioned, Jay was benched in favor of the uber athletic Adron Chambers. It seems like Chambers is your prototypical center fielder- high average, good fielding skills, little power... We'll probably ride Chambers as long as we can and then we'll probably make another switch.

In today's game, Chambers hit a rocket into the right field seats effectively cementing his spot as our starting center fielder.

#2- Pete Kozma



As mentioned earlier, Pete Kozma was on the chopping block and nearly found himself manning short down in AAA. However, he's taken to the challenge well and he's continuing to find ways to stay in the lineup. Today he went 2-4 with a triple and a double. Despite his current production, it's likely we eventually replace Kozma with someone a little more consistent but for the time being, he's have to do.

On to the game action.

We had Adam Wainwright on the bump today so you know that pretty much guaranteed us a win... even against the first place team. Wainwright today cemented his status after spinning a 75 pitch complete game.




My only complaint is that he allowed 5 hits and had only 1 strikeout but at this point my friends, that's just nitpicking.