2012 Cardinals Season Thread

[milladrive]

A new baseball season always makes me happy. Feel free to discuss the 2012 Cardinals season here.

[dominik]

sad that a moderator has to open the reigning WS champions thread...

[Matthew C.]

I was feeling really good about this team until Carpenters tri-anual mega-injury. The offense is very deep (especially when Craig gets back), the bullpen is stocked with young, live arms, and the team's defense should improve over last years by a large margin. Of course it seems like every position player on the team is injury-prone, so things could turn around in a hurry.

The starting rotation is not very good. People around here keep talking about the "depth" of the staff, but I do not see it. We have on great pitcher, who will be lucky to go over 200 IP. Garcia is no #2 pitcher and Loshe is no #3 pitcher. Westbrook is no #4 pitcher. I fail too see the hype surrounding Lynn, and why he is the reason why Oswalt for $6 million is such a terrible investment. People talk about Miller, but he is a big unknown and may not be ready to start this year. If Carp can come back in timely fashion, the rotation is strong. If not, I expect a lot of high-scoring games.

I think they will contend for the NLC division and maybe for the second WC spot.

[Blackout]

you cards fans need to start posting more

[Bulldog19]

We don't need to post about every win. Cardinals fans have an expectation to win a lot of games every year. Unlike other teams in our division, we expect to win every year and not once every 15 years...

[pikesteve22]

The starting rotation is not very good. People around here keep talking about the "depth" of the staff, but I do not see it. We have on great pitcher, who will be lucky to go over 200 IP. Garcia is no #2 pitcher and Loshe is no #3 pitcher. Westbrook is no #4 pitcher. I fail too see the hype surrounding Lynn, and why he is the reason why Oswalt for $6 million is such a terrible investment. People talk about Miller, but he is a big unknown and may not be ready to start this year. If Carp can come back in timely fashion, the rotation is strong. If not, I expect a lot of high-scoring games.

I think they will contend for the NLC division and maybe for the second WC spot.

I gotta disagree with you on the rotation. Garcia definitely has the stuff to be a number 2 if he can learn to control his composure. Lohse has been a plus pitcher for the Cardinals when he's been healthy, and obviously Wednesday was a terrific outing for him. If Westbrook can keep the ball down, as he seemed to be doing during the spring, he's a sold wormburner, and if he can keep the weight he lost off this season, I could see getting a solid 190 innings from him.

Lynn's a question mark, but at some point you have to give them a chance. He was solid in relief last season, and he did decently in spring training this year.

I'm curious if we'll see Rosenthal in the majors before we see Miller. Rosenthal by all accounts had a better spring training, hence his jump from Low A to AA. Miller, on the other hand, came in too lean for the coaches' liking and never really found his groove in his limited appearances.

The opening line for Cardinals wins this year is 84.5, and I'd take the over even with Carpenter's absence.

[Blackout]

no replies in 15 days????

[Matthew C.]

Well, so far so good, I guess.

The good news is: we are 11-5 with zero pitches from Carp, 3 poor starts from Waino, a very poor beginning of the season from Holliday, and a rash of DL stints already, including Berkman, Craig, Jay, Linebrink, and Shumacker.

The bad news: Loshe is not Tom Seaver, Lynn is not Bob Gibson, and Westbrook is not Greg Maddux. Big regression from those guys is coming. Furcal, Freese, Jay (when healthy), and Beltran cannot keep up these paces either. Schedule has been very soft so far too.

Really haven't learned a lot about the long-term outlook of the team, other than everybody on this team is one blade-of-grass-not-cut-short-enough from a 15-day DL stint (or worse).

[StanTheMan]

Some of the young players... Matt Carpenter, Cruz' D and handling of the staff/pitchers, etc. I like.
a lot.

I do like the bullpen immensely, Garcia's potential/upside as well as Lohse when he pitches at te higher end of his "window" of probable results. I'm less excited about them all with Dave Duncan 1,000+ miles for them at all times.


btw... This particular board has never been a hot spot. Big deal. Call Tom Herr and complain if you'd like.

[Matthew C.]

Some of the young players... Matt Carpenter, Cruz' D and handling of the staff/pitchers, etc. I like.
a lot.

I do like the bullpen immensely, Garcia's potential/upside as well as Lohse when he pitches at te higher end of his "window" of probable results. I'm less excited about them all with Dave Duncan 1,000+ miles for them at all times.


btw... This particular board has never been a hot spot. Big deal. Call Tom Herr and complain if you'd like.

I think our staff's solid performance by the end of the year will show how overrated pitching coaches really are.

[StanTheMan]

I think our staff's solid performance by the end of the year will show how overrated pitching coaches really are.

You mean the guys who were previously coached by one of the greatest pitching coaches of recent times?


Pitching coaches do more in a week than McGwire's sorry *** does all season.

[Matthew C.]

You mean the guys who were previously coached by one of the greatest pitching coaches of recent times?


Pitching coaches do more in a week than McGwire's sorry *** does all season.

Not sure what mcGwire has to do with any of this, but oooookay.

I am not saying that pitching coaches are irrelevant, but I do not think a pitching coach makes or breaks pitchers. pitchers do that. In fact, Duncan forcing the "pitch to contact" idea only works when he has great defenses. He stunted a lot of power arms by telling them to real it in. there are a lot of cases of big prospects that never materialized and some cases of veterans that struggled to counteract the famous cases. I like the guy, but I wasn't losing any sleep when he left. that is all I am saying.

[StanTheMan]

Ummmm. He's the hitting coach.
And less important than the pitching coach imo.

[Matthew C.]

Ummmm. He's the hitting coach.
And less important than the pitching coach imo.

But I don't recall anybody mentioning him in this thread, much less praising him. Still not sure what he has to do with the importance of the pitching coach.

[StanTheMan]

But I don't recall anybody mentioning him in this thread, much less praising him. Still not sure what he has to do with the importance of the pitching coach.

You were diminishing the importance of pitching coaches. I disagreed with that, and mentioned that the pitching coach does more than McGwire does to provide a comparison The hitting coach does more than an Advance Scout, who does more than an advertising secretary, who does more than a part time ticket taker, who does more than the goofy college kid selling foam fingers and pennants in the upper deck.

[Matthew C.]

You were diminishing the importance of pitching coaches. I disagreed with that, and mentioned that the pitching coach does more than McGwire does to provide a comparison The hitting coach does more than an Advance Scout, who does more than an advertising secretary, who does more than a part time ticket taker, who does more than the goofy college kid selling foam fingers and pennants in the upper deck.

Yeah, I do not think the hitting coach has a terribly large impact either.

Right now I'd trade every pitching and hitting coach and bench coach on the team for the bazillion of our injured players to get back into the lineup.

[Matthew C.]

Craig supposedly coming back tomorrow with Berkman supposedly right behind. That is very good news!

[Matthew C.]

Well...

Loshe, Lynn, and Westbrook are coming back to earth (as expected). Unfortunately, Wainright isn't getting better and Carp is still nowhere to be found.

The bullpen is a mess, and the Card's OF can't stay healthy.

Their run differential is enormously better than their record, which isn't a good thing.

Hopefully they can keep raking until the pitching solidifies.

[dominik]

what's up with the cards? huge losing streak now being a .500.

is this just a slump? or just all the injuries (and loss of pujols-although he would not have helped this year so I'm talking about the "old" albert of course) catching on to the team (several guys especially pitchers have overperformed at the beginning)?

[Matthew C.]

what's up with the cards? huge losing streak now being a .500.

is this just a slump? or just all the injuries (and loss of pujols-although he would not have helped this year so I'm talking about the "old" albert of course) catching on to the team (several guys especially pitchers have overperformed at the beginning)?

Most of the injuries have occured to slugging 1B that have been replaced by other slugging 1B.

No, the issue is the pitching. Carp's injury is bad, yes. But Wainwright's ERA is close to 5 and the pen has been awful. Across the board. Loshe, Westbrook, and garcia are who we thought they were...mediocre at best guys. The only surprise is Lynn, and we have seen reality set in for him too.

Unless Waino can become old-Waino and Carp return and pitch well, I do not see where the pitching will come from. The offense is good enough that they could contend in this awful division or squeek out the 5th WC spot still.

Still, having the leagues 2nd best run differential but being 1 game over .500 is embarrassing.

[abolishthedh]

As a fan of Beltran for most of his career, I have noticed that his walks AND his strikeout totals are up this year. He is still the same patient hitter, except maybe too patient. His only real fault as a hitter is that he takes pitches which leave me scratching my head. Oh well.

The second thing which I have noticed over the last few weeks is that he is swinging and missing a lot more on off-speed stuff down low by swinging right over the ball. There have been a couple of ABs where I considered this habit of late, and then he struck out again on the next pitch. The habit seems to be new, for what that is worth.

[Blue387]

Should the Cardinals bring back Kyle Lohse or let him hit free agency?

[Matthew C.]

Should the Cardinals bring back Kyle Lohse or let him hit free agency?

Let him go. He is a career mediocre pitcher who will make $15 mill from some very stupid team.

[Blue387]

Let him go. He is a career mediocre pitcher who will make $15 mill from some very stupid team.

I think some team will see his 2012 win-loss record and give him some absurd amount of money.

[Matthew C.]

I think some team will see his 2012 win-loss record and give him some absurd amount of money.

Of course. Like any mediocre pitcher, Loshe will have some years where he is very lucky (08,12), some years where he is very unlucky (09,10), and years inbetween (like most of his Minn. stay) and because of it will have some years where they look mediocre, some years where they look good and some years where they look bad. Stupid teams overpay for guys with long track-records of ho-hum pitching who are coming off an isolated good year. For every guy who "finds it" out of nowhere, there are dozens who will go back to mediocrity.