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Congratulations to IBoros

Cupids Arrows

Ozzie Smith, crooner.

Includes the tidbit that Ozzies house has a sign that reads: Nobody sees the wizard.

Who are the Padres?

Last night the Padres finally climbed to .500, and in the process clinched the NL West. The Cardinals likely first round opponent leads me to ask the question: Who are the Padres?

(Stats are BA/OPB/SLG (VORP))
Catcher Ramon Hernandez (R)

.292/.323/.456 (24.4) Ramon has been a decent catcher this year, giving them some pop out of the position. Keep in mind that all of these hitting statistics come from an extreme pitchers park. In past years Ramon has had a much better batting eye but this year he's not walking nearly as much as he has in the past. He's making up for it with a career high batting average.

Ramon is not going to take up a ton of time in pitcher preperation meetings.

First Base Mark Loretta

.277/.358/.341 (17.1) Was it only last year that Mark Loretta went nuts on the league? Loretta hits for no power at all but gets on base at a good clip. Another decent player that you wouldn't want to be the cornerstone of your team.

Third Base Joe Randa

.289/.356/.491 (27.8) Randa was a July pickup from the Reds. Those stats are from the Reds, he hasn't been so hot in ~50 at bats for the Padres so far. A good hitter at Reds production levels, we still have yet to see an elite player in the reds lineup.

Shortstop Khalil Green

.253/.300/.438 (21.7) Khalil is 25 and his middle name is Thabit. Not important but worth noting in case we have some heckling opportunities later on. Khalil hits for some power but gets on base at something less than an anemic level.

Left Field Ryan Klesko (L)
.249/.359/.421 (19.9) It seems like Klesko's been around forever, but he's only 34. He's also hitting in the mid 200's with little power. Klesko has been vocal about his dislike for Petco park, but at 34 maybe he's just old? The batting eye is still there and the isolated power clocks in at .172. That falls between the Cardinals First baseman (.273) and their Shortstop (.104). Take that however you will but Klesko is clearly not the offensive force he once was.

Right Field Brian Giles
.304/.427/.489 (66.4) Notice how this line is different than all the other padres lines. Giles is the Padres main man, their elite hitter. They usually stick him in right, but the last week has him in center so I'm betting we'll see him there over the series. Giles power has dropped off since he came to San Diego, but he's still a great hitter.

The Last Three

All three of these players see time in the outfield, with Roberts playing center when Giles doesn't. Nady and Johnson have gone back and forth playing right when Giles is in Center and I'm not sure who Bochy will pick so they're both here.

Dave Roberts
.275/.356/.428 (25.1) It seems like every Padres hitter looks about the exact same: Decent on base, ok power. Roberts is no exception. The problem with these guys is that they're great filler material or roster round out, but theres no core here except Giles.

Xaiver Nady
.263/.323/.445 (14.0) Gets on base less and but hits for more power than Roberts.

Ben Johnson
Johnson was called up on August 30th, making him eligible for the post season roster. He's only seen 66 at bats in the Majors and he's only 24.

His line in those 66 at bats?
.227/.325/.500. I'm not sure you can tell much from that.

And that's the Padres. Underwhelming for sure but with some possible sharp corners to catch: Petco is a pitchers park and it's quite possible that offensivly they're not as bad as they look up there and they have no really terrible players in the starting nine. Given the unpredictable nature of baseball it's possible the Cardinals could lose, but it's not likely.

It's a good break for the Cardinals, who will hopefully not stumble on their good fortune.

End of regular season questions

As the regular season winds down to its final three games (or four for some), I have some questions that I'd like the Birdwatch community to chirp in on:

Will San Diego win 2 or more to avoid being the first sub-.500 division champ? If memory serves, 83-78 is the worst non-strike-season divisional winner W-L record since divisional play began in 1969. If memory does not serve, I'm sure one of you out there can correct me. I say San Diego splits their last 4 and finishes 81-81.

Where is the praise and lauding for the schedule makers, at least for the AL? Yankees/Red Sox, White Sox/Indians, and Angels/A's all in the final week, all having a hand in determining divisional champions! I love this game. :-)

Will the NL East finish with all 5 teams over .500? I say yes, and I think that's more amazing than all 4 NL West teams possibly finishing under .500.

Will a one-game playoff be required in the AL for the wild card? I think it is likely at this point.

Will Dusty Baker be back as manager of the Cubs? I say they let him start 2006 and if it starts like 2005 did, he's gone by June 15th.

Will Ozzie Guillen really retire as manager of the White Sox if they win the World Series? We'll never know.

What is the Cardinals' magic number? 11 postseason victories.

That is all.

TSF

Deep breath

I was in San Diego last week and happened to talk to some guy (literally, some guy on the street walked up to me. Wear your Pujols Jersey/Shirt thing and that stuff happens) about baseball for a while. The gist of the conversation revolved around the various ways the Padres could have a chance, overlaid with more than a little embarrasment. Finaly he out and out said: "I don't want to spend my money on playoff tickets, they're a bad team. They don't deserve to win and they won't".

I think everybody in St. Louis has pretty much reached the same conclusion so we've started looking past the Padres to the next round. And it is not good for the psyche when That team beats you 3-1 a week before the season ends. I'll admit it sends a flutter through my heart when the Stro's win one. I'd like to see them crushed for a little objective proof of the Caridinals brilliance...

But...

One game doesn't encapsulate a season, and if the Cardinals win 15-0 tomorrow it doesn't improve their chances in the playoffs any more than last nights game degraded them. I'd like to see Houston have to sweat the last week of the year, just on general principals but I'm not going to pretend it really matters. And as we approach the post season that's the lesson I'm trying to take with me. The die are cast at this point, we're as good as we're going to be Houston is as good as they're going to be and nothing about the two teams is going to change. And nothing in the next two days is going to tell us anything that the previous seasons worth of games hasn't already told us.

Let's try not to work ourselves into too much of a lather over the next few days, because there's some serious getting worked up to be done in a few weeks. We finally have a chance to end the year of "What happened to the Cardinals" and "I bet you're upset about the Cardinals" and "Are the Cardinals going to choke again this year" and a chance to win one last world series at Busch. To put one more great celebration in that building. Those are two heavy psychic weights on either end of the balance, which leads me to believe that this post season will be an extra tense version of last years nail ripping ordeal.

So ignore the prelims and get ready for the real thing.

Bench Press

Over at VEB we get the lowdown for the post-season bench. Unfortunately that got me thinking about some comedian I heard on "The Tonight Show" many years ago. He pointed out that when you're 7 years old, you realize you were an idiot when you were 5. When you're 11, you realize you were an idiot when you were 7. When you're 16, you realize you were an idiot when you were 11. When you're 21... The punchline was whether 90 year olds think they were idiots when they were 80.

That is, I've spent too much time in the past worrying about the post-season roster. Oh, the back end of the roster in the 2002 post-season, especially the NLCS, was classic for its dreadfulness. Garrett Stephenson, Mike Difelice as the #3 catcher, and an injured Scott Rolen might have been the worst use of rosters spaces 23 through 25 in post-season history. They also were irrelevant. Hit 1 for 1,000 with runners in scoring position and get some untimely bad pitching, and it doesn't matter if you've got the 1961 version of Jerry Lynch on your bench, especially if your manager refuses to pinch hit for your pitcher in a tie game in the 9th. Sure, the #25 spot could matter, but it ranks somewhere below comfortable shoes for Albert Pujols and the appropriate Sleep Numbers for Mark Mulder and Larry Walker.

Maybe my apathy could be shaken if the candidates were more promising, since none of these guys is a perfect fit, as VEB pointed out. It's bad enough that Hector Luna's a lock, in spite of a putrid batting line at AAA that Dan Szymborski and Nate Silver are likely to get backwards when they computes MLEs. I guess you go with John Gall, since if you PH John Mabry or John Rodriguez for the pitcher, some manager's liable to think he wants a lefty facing David Eckstein (based on fluky 2005 splits) and Larry Walker. Of course if the Giants complete their comeback, maybe you go with the one Cardinal outfielder on this page.

Why Rent When You Can Own?

So we get another data point to confirm that momentum really is tomorrow's starting pitcher. Anyway, seeing as the waiting is still the hardest part, to help get you through the day I recommend this Birdhouse interview with Bill DeWitt, the managing general partner of the St. Louis Cardinals. If you're looking for Mr. DeWitt -- the last group of people to be referred to as "Mister" will be baseball owners -- to pull a Steinbrenner and overrule a LaRussa decision with regard to, say, Ray King, you're out of luck though:

My view is - he’s the manager. I’m not going to give him any advice about the game on the field. Whether we have a squeeze play or a hit-and-run in the seventh inning, I’ll talk to him from the standpoint of a fan’s interest. Far be it for me to say, you know, ‘why did you do this or that?’ I mean, he knows what he’s doing and he runs a great game.

For those of us with slightly smaller net worths, my dad passes along this New York Times article (registration required) on the joys of owning a minor league franchise. No word yet from Alan Greenspan about regional bubbles or irrational exuberance for this investment opportunity.

Now that I've posted that, I can expect another thousand 419 spams.

Road Trip

I made it to Wednesday night's game in Cincinnati and it's odd what had the strongest impression me. I suppose I could do that Mr. Spock arched-eyebrow thing at Jason Marquis's performance against the league's leading offense. Put me in the camp that thinks he's a better pitcher than Matt Morris. Was that 86-88 mph pitch a cutter? Yes, I said "Oh, fudge" when Albert Pujols hopped on one leg a couple of times during his 5th inning double. Of course Albert being Albert, he still thought about trying for an extra base when Wily Mo Pena threw the ball to some place that made sense to only Wily Mo. There was Randy Flores making Adam Dunn look foolish, as if to say "What lefty problem?" And finally I could hear the groan of the crowd as Edwin Encarnacion's long flyball came down in the 9th: "Here comes that man again."

My strongest impression, however, happened before the game. Great American Ball Park is a nice, though now overly common, place to see a ball game. I think from the upper decks you can get a good view of the river and John Roebling's practice run for the Brooklyn Bridge. But as I walked to the stadium, I was struck by the ugly vacant lot immediately next to GABP. In fact it was so bad that I have an idea for a new website called uglyvacantlots.com. The lot is concrete infested with two-foot high weeds and the usual trash of paper cups, empty two liter bottles and plastic bags. There were some big puddles left over from Tuesday's rain and some huge concrete barriers just lying around for no reason.

Of course what makes the lot especially sad is that piece of land was once occupied by Riverfront Stadium, home to the Big Red Machine. For various reasons I hated that stadium, but it had the kind of history that's difficult to replace. Couldn't they at least treat it better than that?

I can't think of a clean way to segue to this post on a Red Sox blog, as pointed out by David Pinto:

This season should’ve been one long celebration. Standing ovation after standing ovation at Fenway. It should’ve been about just enjoying the buzz and allowing nothing to take our glow away. Sox fans should’ve enjoyed this season as if they just had the best sex of their lives.

OK, I have a belated segue. Just as the above remarks about Riverfront Stadium are an indirect complaint about the demise of Busch Stadium, I read Sully's comment as an indirect thumbs-up to Cardinals fans. The curtain calls can be awkward and sometimes they seem, well, too self-conscious. However we should be celebrating this team as much as we can because it just doesn't get much better than this.

New BlogToy to test out, guys!

Baseball Library has just come up with a most interesting (and potentially excellent tool) for basebloggers: the BaseballLibrary.com text linker.

Basically, the concept is simple. You enter your text into the box, and then this application searches the Baseball Library website for the ballplayers, teams and dates that you reference, and then generates HTML code for hyperlinks to the Baseball Library pages about those players, teams and dates.. For example, if I enter (and this makes no sense, whatsoever, I know) this into the box:

"Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, Mark McGwire, and Bob Uecker of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals on July 9, 1957"

the linker application comes up with this:

"Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, Mark McGwire, and Bob Uecker of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals on July 9, 1957".

Your output is "configurable"; you can tell the application to link any or all of dates, player names and teams (for teams you have to specify a year as well as a team name; merely "St. Louis", "Cardinals, and even "St. Louis Cardinals" weren't recognized by the application), and you can also specify if you want your links to open in a new window (I elected to use that for the example above). About the only thing you need to add is the "title" attribute to your hyperlink tags if you so desire.

Tres cool.

Durable Goods

OK, just so this post is not a complete stat dump, I'll start with this:

If you don't want read much in the way of stats, then turn away.

Chris Carpenter was pulled after 4 innings and 4 runs. It wasn't a terrible outing, as part of the problem was Carpenter didn't scatter the hits like he normally has this season. But I'm probably not the only one who's a little uneasy with Carpenter's handling at the end of the year, after the 120-pitch outing for his 20th W and the Cardinals' announcement that they don't plan on giving Carpenter extra rest this month, even with the two off-days this week.

The brass has earned the benefit of the doubt however. Specifically in 2004, the Cardinals enjoyed 154 starts from their top five starters. With only 11 games left, five pitchers have accounted for all but two starts this season. So I got to wondering how often do teams get all but, say, 10 of their starts from five pitchers in consecutive seasons (different five in different seasons is OK)? The Lahman Database has these answers. Actually it has too many answers, as my first query dug up some odd stuff. Anyway, here's the list since World War II, with games started by the non-top five.:

 	Year	Team	GS
1	1993	ATL	 6
2	1994	ATL	 2
	1995	ATL	 3
3	2002	ATL	 6
	2003	ATL	 3
4	1969	BAL	 7
5	1970	BAL	 3
6	1971	BAL	 7
7	1972	BAL	 2
8	1973	BAL	 8
9	1974	BAL	10
	1975	BAL	 6
10	1977	BAL	 5
11	1978	BAL	 5
12	1979	BAL	 5
13	1980	BAL	 7
14	1981	BAL	 5
	1982	BAL	 8
15	1970	CHN	10
	1971	CHN	10
16	1950	CIN	10
	1951	CIN	 7
17	1968	HOU	10
	1969	HOU	10
18	1971	LAN	 8
19	1972	LAN	 5
20	1973	LAN	 4
21	1974	LAN	10
22	1975	LAN	 8
23	1976	LAN	 6
	1977	LAN	 4
24	1993	LAN	 2
	1994	LAN	 1
25	1971	NYA	 4
	1972	NYA	10
26	1980	OAK	 3
	1981	OAK	 6
27	1989	OAK	 7
	1990	OAK	 3

The list is dominated by the Earl Weaver Orioles (so that's why they always talk about his method of breaking-in pitchers) and the 70's Dodgers. The last time the Cardinals had back-to-back seasons accomplishing this feat, they were known as the Browns. In fact 1985 and 2000 are the only other seasons in the last hundred years where the Cardinals got fewer than ten starts from their contingency plans. Dave Duncan, who by the way caught for those Orioles for a couple of years, has earned some leeway here. Of course, the worst season was 1998, when the Cardinals had 63 games from their non-top five.

Just Bad Matt

As the Cardinals plan their postseason pitching rotation, three of the four pieces seem to be in place, as Chris Carpenter, Mark Mulder and Jeff Suppan have all pitched very well in the second half and seem capable of providing the two things you need from your postseason starters: innings and effectiveness.

It’s that last spot that is causing consternation among Cardinal followers: Morris or Marquis?

Inspired by yesterday’s outing, and trying to remember the last time Matt Morris gave his team seven good innings (it was a little more than three weeks---or five starts---ago, against the Pirates on Aug. 25), I was perusing his game logs and found that despite his 10-1 record through July 4, he’s only had one stretch all year, covering eight starts in June and July, in which he’s consistently combined innings and effectiveness.

Without that stretch, Morris has actually been less effective in 2005 than the sore-armed slinger of 2004 who needed shoulder surgery immediately after the season:

         Year  GS   IP     H   R  ER    K  BB  HR  HR/9   K/9  RA/9   ERA  WHIP   H/9  BB/9
         2004  32  202   205 116 106  131  56  35  1.56  5.84  5.17  4.72  1.29  9.13  2.50
6/6-7/18 2005   8   53    49  17  14   31   7   2  0.33  5.26  2.89  2.37  1.06  8.32  1.19
 Rest of 2005  20  124.2 146  76  67   76  31  16  1.16  5.49  5.49  4.83  1.37 10.54  1.80

Now I don’t want to be accused of “cherry-picking” here; any season can be examined by removing hot or cold chunks to make it appear drastically better or worse than it actually was (e.g. “...if you take away his four worst games, he actually has a 3.53 era!”).

But in examining the numbers above, we’re talking about approximately 50 total weeks of pitching in 2004 and 2005, and isolating one 8-start stretch that seems completely at odds with the totals accrued in the other 52 starts. For a magical stretch this summer Morris’s unusually low walk and hit rates combined with a ridiculously low home-run rate to produce an ERA that was just half of what he’s put up during the rest of the past two seasons. Put this 8-start period in context, however, and it’s clear that Morris has pretty much sucked for two years.

And going into October, it would seem like a good thing to have starters who are not only on a roll, but also who aren’t likely to put you in a hole. Over the past 60 days, here’s how the starters have fared in not only pitching well (I’ll use the “quality start” definition of at least 6 ip and no more than 3 runs allowed), but also in NOT pitching badly (I’ll use a minimum of 5 runs allowed as a “bad start”):

            Total   Good   Bad
Carpenter     11     9     0
Mulder        10     7     1
Suppan        12     6     0
Marquis       11     5     5
Morris        11     2     4

It’s nice to see that the top three have had one bad (5+ run) start between them in the last two or so months. And while Marquis’s 5 “bad” starts have to make you nervous, two positives are that he’s also thrown well frequently, and he’s thrown well recently: 5 earned runs allowed in his last four starts, covering 32 innings.

When you take sentiment out of the equation, and all the attendant intangibles like veteran presence, etc., it’s hard to make any kind of case for Morris to be in the postseason rotation. He’s been the one pitcher least likely, by far, to throw a decent game, something you can’t afford to indulge in during the must-win atmosphere of October.

It is interesting to recall Morris’s lone 9-inning complete game of the season: back on June 6, “Good” Matt threw 9 against the World Champion Red Sox, allowing one run on four hits—by far his best game of the season. Will he get another chance to throw a similar game against them in October?

Not With A Bang

It's complicated, but with the game called, the Cardinals just clinched a share of the NL Central division. While I couldn't see it, evidently they did it while literally nobody was on the field. I know we've been killing time since July just waiting for the post-season to get here, and, yes, Tony LaRussa will claim that we should wait until the title is undisputed, but is a more anti-climactic end to the pennant race possible?

Comparisons

Recently Al Hrabosky and Dan McLaughlin discussed how the 2005 Cardinals compared to the 2004 Cardinals, and one of them said that the 2005 squad is better. Apparently they meant that the 2005 team is better situated for the post-season due to the improved starting pitching (it's a pay column, but the table in the preview gets the point across that effectively the Cardinals replaced their 2004 #5 starter with a Cy Young-caliber pitcher). Rather than address the fixation on pitching, especially starting pitching, with regards to post-season predictions, let's look at some basic statistical comps between the 2004 and 2005 teams.

I do mean basic. No fancy Pythagoreans today. You know the story of the 2004 team: slow start, then John Mabry joins the roster in late May, team absolutely blitzes the rest of baseball, then treats September like spring training. The 2005 team on the other hand seems to win 60% of their games every week. There's something to that:

                                2004   2005 
Memorial Day to Labor Day       66-22  56-33       
Other                           39-35  37-21

So the Cardinals were on a 120-win pace last summer and mediocre othewise. This year they've had a steady, pleasant 100-win pace. More comprehensively:

                                2004   2005 
April                           12-11  15- 7
May                             15-12  18-11
June                            19- 9  16-11
July                            20- 5  17- 9
August                          21- 7  19-11
September                       16-12   8- 5
October                          2- 1

A season with three months with single-digit losses versus a season with a low-month winning percentage of .593. Either one's pretty good. If the Cardinals played on the Eastern seaboard, we'd have a fancy name for 2004's summer, maybe "The Beautiful Summer" or some similar purple prose. This year we had "The Summer of Bunts". The Cardinals played like Mozart during the middle of the last season; if you didn't enjoy watching them, then I'd suggest counseling. This year they're more... industrious.

Here's a different angle, the Cardinals series results:

                                2004   2005 
0-3                                3      0
1-1	                           1      3
1-2	                           9      7
1-3	                           1      2
2-0	                           2      2
2-1	                          17     17
2-2	                           3      5
3-0	                          12      7
3-1	                           2      4
4-0	                           1      0
4-1	                           1      0

Yeah, that captures the difference between 2004 and 2005. The Cardinals haven't been blowing other teams off the field like they did in 2004, but they haven't been swept yet this year either (ugh, that means the last they were swept was...). I don't know how unusual that is, and now I'm sure this means the Cubs will pull it off as the baseball gods strike me down for my hubris. At least I've found a team goal worthing cheering for though.

September 1964

Clay Davenport escaped whatever dungeon the evil Joe Sheehan keeps him locked in just long enough to write an article on how the post-season odds progressed at the end of the 1964 season. It's a pay article, but basically Davenport did the same thing he's been doing for much of this season. As late as 9/23/64 the Cards had almost no chance at winning the pennant. Then they went on an 8-game winning streak while the Phillies kept losing, shooting the Cards' odds all the way to 80%. Of course the Cardinals then dropped two games just to make it interesting.

It's tempting to compare the 1964 Phils to Danny Graves, but their collapse evidently isn't that far off the beaten path. The Phils maxed out at 96%, which means that once every 25 races or so somebody should blow something similar. Consider that there are 8 races per year now, or maybe it's 6, and we should get the "moved to the Philippines and were renamed the Manilla Folders" joke at least once every five years.

Freedbird

Apparently John Gall's been spending time as a WW2 medic. The homer last night had to feel good, but someone might want to tell Hector Luna he's supposed to take his time getting to the batter's box when the Busch faithful are trying to give a curtain call.

Whatcha doin' tonight? Nothing... Just Staying Here at 1st Base

Jason Stark, via his Useless Information Department, points out an interesting fact about Cardinal Catchers in this week's edition.

In case you hadn't picked up on this, nobody ever steals a base against the Cardinals anymore. They allowed just 26 stolen bases in their first 138 games -- which, as loyal reader Jason Pritchett reports, would put them on a pace to permit only 31 steals all year. According to Elias, only one National League team in the division-play era ever allowed fewer than 35 stolen bases in a full season. And that was Bench's 1972 Reds, also with 31.

What could have been

The Entire ALCS on DVD.

I would have bought the entire NLCS/Worlds series if it would have gone the other way. And I'd have watched it.

I was looking for the link to this: MLB Podcast feeds. They've got daily game summary's that run about 15 minutes each. Great for the morning commute.

El Tortugo

Yesterday's 3-run blast provided Albert Pujols with his first 3-RBI game since June 25---a stretch of 62 games for Albert without driving in more than a pair---and just his fifth such game all season.

Which makes it kind of remarkable that Albert is second in the league in RBI given that he hasn't been driving in runs in bunches. The league leader, Andruw Jones, has driven in 3 or more runs in a game 15 times, and has five games of four or more, including a season high of five twice. Pu hasn't driven in more than four runs in a game this year.

Contrast that with Derek Lee, who drove in five in a game twice in the season's first two weeks. Lee has seven games of four or more RBI, but he falls far short of Albert in a telling category: number of games with at least one RBI. DLee has driven in a run in 49 games, while Albert has driven in a run in 64 games. But Andruw Jones---who leads Pujols in RBI 112 to 103---bests them all, driving in a run in 69 games.

Albert's lack of a ridiculous sustained tear this year---or, even, one huge game---has fed the perception expressed here and elsewhere that he's been a little "off" in '05, despite the fact that he's second in the league in OPS, average and RBI and third in homers. Like the tortoise, Albert just keeps creeping along at his own pace, and while others' bursts may catapult them into the limelight from time time during the season, when all is said and done, it'll be Albert and his huge numbers there at the end, carrying his team into to the postseason.

Wake Me When September Ends

According to BPro, the Cardinals have a 100% chance of making it to the post-season. No rounding, fully 100%.

Not quite as exciting as actually clinching, I suppose.

The Candidate

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Carpenter did it again. And LaRussa turned up the contrast with Clemens +100 by letting Carpenter go the distance. And Carpenter showed his mean streak by yelling at Ausmus, the ondeck hitter, in the 9th when Everett tried to get hit by a rogue curveball. At this point the only thing between Carpenter and the Cy Young is the lack of A Story -- maybe he should pretend he spent 2003 stocking shelves at an Iowa Costco -- and honestly I can't care about the writers' decision when it comes down to that.

The story for the BBWAA is here. Bill Pulsipher struck out 15 and walked none at AAA last night and, yes, he beat Donovan Osborne. Maybe I spoke too soon when I stated King was a lock for the post-season roster. Pulsipher is a lefty and a veteran and, er, OK, there's no way he gets the spot over King, but it was a neat capper to Pulsipher's season. That is not a perfect stat line for AAA and I'm sure Pulshipher had a higher aim in mind back in February. Realistically his comeback was, in PECOTA terms, a 90th percentile season though.

Mind Games Forever

The article at MLB.com called last night's game an epic struggle. While I suppose that's correct, the problem is that for the Cardinals it was something akin to a spring training game. A win certainly was preferable to a loss, but I spent the night looking for positives and negatives.

On the positive side:

+ Edmonds had a couple of homers and a (cheap) double.
+ Mulder pitched like an ace. All he gave up last night were a couple of walks and a couple of weak singles. This is just huge. If that had been a post-season game, Mulder probably pitches a 1-2-3 9th.
+ Molina homered. Having a catcher who can hit a little feels like cheating.
+ Eldred really battled for two innings. I don't remember Gibson's last stand, so I'm guessing that's what it looked like.
+ The Cardinals had yet another successful sacrifice squeeze, this one from Rodriguez to score Pujols, who had led off the 10th with a double.
+ Um, Isringhausen got two innings of work to prepare for potential post-season outings.

The negatives:

- Isringhausen was horrible in those two innings. Ensberg knew his 9th inning homer was gone as soon as it left the bat. Ausmus homered? The Brad Ausmus? Ugh.
- Walker left the game early with neck problems. They could time that last cortisone shot perfectly and he still might not hold up for the entire post-season. Unless they have neck replacement surgery, Walker won't be back next season.
- Grudzielanek had an awful game at the plate and in the field.
- Angel Hernandez has no business umpiring at the major league level. I won't be happy if he's in a post-season series.
- Rodriguez lost a ball as it was coming off the left field wall. Although left field at Minute Maid is an adventure, I suspect he just doesn't have the visual acuity to track flyballs. On a related note, Oquendo didn't send Rodriguez home on Molina's single to left in the 6th even with a recently converted 2B in the outfield and Mulder on deck.
- And finally, Ray King blew another one-out lefty appearance. This one's the most interesting to me due to LaRussa's bizarre decision in the bottom of the 13th to intentionally walk Vizcaino, the Jose Vizcaino with his career 666 OPS. Oh, and first base was already occupied, so the double play had been in order and you had the sinkerballer Tavarez on the hill. Why the heck do you walk Vizcaino to load the bases so you can bring in King?

I want to cut King some slack, as his father has terminal cancer. He has struggled though and there have to be concerns about what he'll do in October. Hitters have figured out that if they wait long enough, then King will serve them up something good. The next option for one of the lefty spots -- I think it's safe to say LaRussa will have two lefties in the pen -- is the recently called-up Tyler Johnson, whose history of control problems is staggering. The rookie won't be on the post-season roster, so at some point in time the Cardinals will sink or swin with King.

That mean fixing Ray King is a priority, begetting another opportunity to see Tony LaRussa's problem-solving skills in action. The walk to Vizcaino to load the bases wasn't about win probabilities and was entirely about putting King in a very difficult situation. It didn't work last night, or at least the results were unacceptable last night, and the final outcome is reminiscent of what LaRussa did with Marquis in San Diego. The psychological element -- loosely, confidence -- is very important to LaRussa, and while it seems odd to put a struggling player in a position where failure is likely, I don't have 2200 managerial wins at the major league level. It's still hard to see this ending happily.