The first game of the year is in the books and even though it doesn't count it is nice to look at a boxscore again.

Pujols and Molina both hit three run jacks. Spviey went 0-2 with a walk, Spivey is an interesting case because not only is he a DBacks middle infield refugee (see Womack, Tony) he had one monster year that lurks in the background of any discussion about his prospects.

Let's play a game and see if you can figure out which year was the big one:

Walk Rate:

2001  .096

2002  .088

2003  .071

2004  .087

2005 (mw)   .072

2005 (nat)   .109

Can you tell from that? How about looking at the percentage of at bats that ended as strikeouts:

2001  29%

2002  19%

2003  26%

2004  21%

2005 (mw)   31%

2005 (nat)   34%

Now I bet you can figure out where the career year was.

2002: .389/.476/.301.

Spivey never repeated that, managing only .359/.421/.272 in 2004 that's even close. Spivey's year in 2002 was a fluke because he didn't strike out nearly as much. The Cardinals emphasis on contact hitting might help him (and I've heard him referenced as a contact hitter a few times by the Cardinals so maybe they're pushing him in this direction), but I'm not holding my breath. His walk rate is decent enough that if he were to manage a decent batting average he would be a nice second baseman, but history says it's not likely.