After the Laughter
« Pujols, Pujols, Pujols | Main | Listening to Classic Rock Radio is Bad For You »Buried under the latest greatness from Albert Pujols is the ongoing saga of Juan Encarnacion. I'm still turning over that one in my head, dealing with various statistical paradoxes. Anyway, buried under that, Mark Mulder was maxing out around 83-84 mph on Sunday. His curveball was effective the first time through the lineup (4 K against the first 10 batters he faced) however. Todd Coffey was clocking around 96, so maybe those Busch radar readings are accurate. Can Mulder survive on 68 mph pitches?
Derrick Goold goes into greater detail regarding Mr. Luna. It's a little backwards for a player's rate stats to benefit from less playing time. This is the analogue to the old Earl Weaver model for breaking in starting pitchers.
The Giants' scheduled starters in their upcoming series at Arizona are Jeff Fassero, Matt Morris, Matt Cain and Jamey Wright. I guess Travis Smith and Garrett Stephenson weren't available, and the Giants have to make-do with Cain.
The Cardinals are presently 29th in the majors in OPS with RISP. They've got a .204 BA with RISP and 2 outs. It's not your imagination that the Cardinals are struggling to find a clutch hit. Saturday when Yadier was at the plate with the bases loaded, the tension at Busch was palpable.
Baseball Prospectus has added a wrinkle to its playoff odds page. Now they're using PECOTA as their mean-reversion target. They haven't updated for Sunday's games yet, but either way the Cardinals currently stand around 40%. I'm probably deducting one point for each game where both Taguchi and Schumaker start. With Edmonds ailing that could happen a couple of times in Pittsburgh.
Anthony Reyes had an iffy start yesterday. It's never good to give up 5 runs in 6 innings, but the strikeouts (7) and walks (1) were still decent. Memphis fell to 1-10 in spite of an 5-run 8th to tie the game. Chris Duncan wore the sombrero. I'm starting to wonder if Nick Stavinoha can provide a couple of Jeff Francoeur-type months.
Posted by Rob at April 17, 2006 06:21 AMHey Juan,
Roger Cedeno called. He wants his career back.
Posted by: kyle at April 17, 2006 08:35 AMHey Juan,
Oh, wait, I see you already got the message. Just call him back, okay?
Posted by: Danup at April 17, 2006 11:57 AMI don't know if Kyle did it on purpose, but there's nothing wrong with emulating Albert Pujols.
Posted by: Rob at April 17, 2006 05:50 PMI'm going to stop calling Encarnacion "Instant Breakfast" and start calling him "LOB". The guy is a one-man rally killer. He's got 32 LOB's so far this season. That is a shitload of guys stranded by one player. Today Pat Maholm did the Cards a favor by plunking LOB in the back, thus depriving him of the opportunity to add to his LOB count. While I'm at it, let me give props to Molina, too. He's giving LOB a run for the title of Rally Killer. Nice work leaving the bases loaded (again!), Yadi.
Posted by: tlr at April 17, 2006 07:25 PMI'd LOVE Stavinoha to make his way to the bigs quickly. If he could do a Francoeur he wouldn't be as pretty, but he'll certainly hit for power and something JF doesn't do. Walk.
Posted by: Erik at April 17, 2006 07:43 PMYeah, emulating Albert, that's the ticket. Yeah.
It had nothing to do with this stupid computer not refreshing the page, and making me think that the post didn't go through the first two times.
Okay, I admit it. I'm an idiot. But I can catch a can of corn.
Posted by: Kyle at April 18, 2006 08:07 AMYadi has a couple of late inning clutch hits though - a game winner in Philly and one more in the last homestand that I can't remember the particulars of.
Posted by: Martin at April 18, 2006 08:48 AMRemember where you saw this first. I predict the Tigers will fade in May and look for some starting pitching. Enter one Jason Marquis, emerging talent and dangling trade bait. What do the Tigers have that the Cardinals need? Enter one Placido Polanco, ex-Cardinal favorite, all-around good guy, natural 2B with the ability to play SS and 3B. TLR loved Polanco and but in trade for Scott Rolen, that was a no-brainer. So Polanco plugs into 2B with Miles and/or Luna backing him up. The Cards unload a guy who will undoubtedly command $8-10M/yr on a multi-year deal for a guy who makes $4.6M ($500K less than Marquis this year) and they clear the way for Wainright or Reyes to pitch in the rotation. Why would the Tigers make this trade: desperation. And they have a youngster by the name of Omar Infante who is making minimum wage and has huge upside. Detroit has maxed out its payroll budget and needs to bring a winner soon before the fans turn on the organization.
So then to carry this a bit farther, the Cards sign Carp, Mulder and Suppan to extensions and then let Ponson walk after his one year stint and plug in Wainright or Reyes. Total out-of-pocket $$$ for Walt to do this: about $4-5M more per year. And Cards ownership will approve it, too.
Your thoughts???
Posted by: tlr at April 18, 2006 04:28 PMBad thing about Roto-baseball... everybody thinks their a GM.
Good thing about Roto-baseball... it keeps guys like this busy using their brains for worthless stuff like this rather than evil.
Posted by: kyle at April 18, 2006 05:02 PMThoughts:
1) I don't think Polanco is a significant enough upgrade from the Luna/Miles platoon (especially with Spivey, whose career numbers are slightly better than that of Polanco's, lingering in Memphis) to warrant trading a guy like Marquis for him. Jason's likely to have a breakout year, and to trade him away in May for so little wouldn't be a good move. And Omar Infante is Alfonso Soriano, except not nearly as good. All in all, I'm not sure there's a 2B on the market worth trading Marquis for. Perhaps an outfielder, preferrably a lefty who could hit second, if the whole Tagrodgbieacion thing doesn't work out.
Posted by: MO Boiler at April 18, 2006 05:39 PMActually, I don't waste my time on fantasy baseball. I just follow my Cards. So far this year I see Juan Encarnacion (aka "LOB") as the biggest bust. 2B isn't even the 3rd worst problem at the moment. After LOB, the next most troublesome development is the Cards' pitching. Suppan's been beaten around. Rincon can't get anyone out. Hancock looks so-so. Izzy is still wobbly. And Looper just looks scared and lost. That's what you really look for in a set-up man, isn't it?
Posted by: tlr at April 18, 2006 08:08 PMHow many years does Suppan have left on his contract? And Rincon?
They are obviously suffering from control problems.
Posted by: Daniel at April 18, 2006 09:34 PMSuppan is in his last/option year and Rincon has a 1 year contract, I believe, so both can be cut loose at the end of the year or traded if necessary w/o another team having to pick up a huge payroll load.
Posted by: tlr at April 19, 2006 11:29 AM