Mea Culpas

While taking my regular weekend sabbatical from blogging, I got to thinking about some of the posts that I’ve written this week and I realized I’ve strayed a little bit from what the general tone of this blog usually is.

Back in my  very first entry , before I swapped WordPress for Blogs By Fans or started up the United Cardinal Bloggers, I wrote the following: “I root for the Cardinals and typically give them and management the benefit of the doubt.  I’ll criticize when necessary, but I’m not big on general bashing.”

While I don’t think my posts have been bashing per se, I don’t think I’ve been giving management enough of the benefit of the doubt.  Look, the number of moves that have gone toward veterans and away from younger players is not necessarily a philosophy that most of us on the internet would espouse.  When you see things like that, one straw on top of another, it becomes difficult to keep any optimism about the moves.

Fact is, though, management has more information and insight on these things than we do, especially people like me sitting a state away and watching a few innings and reading some articles on a daily basis.  There’s a reason they think that Blake Hawksworth should start, that signing Jeff Suppan is a good idea.  And, honestly, most often they are right, or at least are right for a while.

Criticism is fine and good, but kudos are due when it pans out and, so far, most everything has at least not blown up in their faces.

Let’s get to the last four games before talking about the team in general.  Apparently I should have never said anything about  not having pitching woes with  Adam Wainwrighton the hill.  I had no idea I was such a powerful jinx.

Waino seems to be having a little trouble settling into games.  For the year, his first 15 pitches have been hit at a .305 clip.  His only run against Oakland was allowed in the first inning.  Seattle got him for two in the first.  In fact, you’d have to go back to his complete game shutout against the Brewers to find a game where he didn’t allow at least one run–and usually more than one–in the first frame.

He gave up three in Toronto and then allowed two more in his shortest outing since Sept. 13, 2008 against Pittsburgh.  Not what you want to see out of Wainwright and not what you expect to see out of him.  We’ll see if he’s able to dodge that first inning bullet against Arizona on Tuesday.

Tough to find a Hero in a game where the team is  shutout on five hits , so we’ll give it to  Fernando Salas.  He threw two scoreless innings at a time when the pen needed a little extra boost and, though he did allow four baserunners in that time, he worked out of trouble.

How is it not possible, though, that this juggernaut that we as fans thought we had going into the season has yet to sweep a three game series?  They got the four gamer against the Braves back in April (part of their season-long five game winning streak) and took a short two-gamer against the Nationals, but that’s it.  When you go for the sweep with Wainwright on the mound and don’t get it, you start to wonder just how snake bit you are.

Going into the Kansas City series, already having to have used the pen more than expected when Wainwright starts, with Suppan and a bullpen game coming, it’s not surprising that Salas was sent down to bring up Adam Ottavino, making a fresh arm available.  Now, when the move was announced, I expected that, since Ottavino was a starter and had started in the bigs, they might make him the starter on Saturday instead of taking a reliever and making them a starter.  Not so much, which was another baffling move at the time.  More on that in a bit.

First, though, you have Jeff Suppan going against Zack Greinke.  While this one had a result you’d have expected when looking at the matchups, it was a  much better game than you’d have thought.  Suppan had the one bad inning where he allowed three runs, but other than that looked fairly sharp.  The Cards had a couple of chances against Greinke and finally dented him in the ninth, but couldn’t get enough going to overcome that one bad inning.

Give the Hero nod to  Skip Schumaker, who went three for four.  You’d like to think your leadoff hitter would see more than seven pitches in a game, but Skip make it work for him and perhaps he’s really coming around.  After this game he was up to .261, which still isn’t spectacular, but it’s a far sight better than where he was a few weeks ago.

On the flip side you have  Albert Pujols.  Like it or not, the expectations are raised even beyond AP’s normal standards when he goes into Pittsburgh and into Kansas City.  This wasn’t one of his stronger KC weekends, though he did keep his streak intact of reaching base in every game he’s played there.  However, he had a chance to at least get the Cards back in it, down three in the eighth with two on and two out, but couldn’t get the big hit.

As a fan, you didn’t know what to expect Saturday but odds were it wasn’t going to be very good.  The dreaded “bullpen game” never does inspire confidence.  Again, it looked like a natural spot to use Ottavino, but the Cards stuck to the plan, showing that they do know what they are doing.  (Or got lucky, but I’m being charitable, remember?)

Blake Hawksworthpitched a gem of a game, given the situation.  He honestly should have gotten out of that with six innings of shutout ball had not Schumaker completely missed that double-play ball tossed to him by Brendan Ryan.  Trever Miller came in and didn’t make me feel much better about the lefty situation.  Took Jason Motte to finally slam that door closed.

The Goat would probably go to  Yadier Molina.  I’m a huge Yadi fan, but I think I voted a little too early in the  Baseball Bloggers Alliance All-Star voting when I cast my vote for him.  Yadi’s down to .233 and, while still playing impeccable defense, is that really All-Star caliber?  He  didn’t win , of course, but I kinda wish I had that one back.  I don’t know if the workload is getting to him or what, but Molina hasn’t been the same this year, regressing more to that 2006 level.  He’s in a 1 for 33 slump and striking out much more than he usually does.  It’s a  bad combination .

Got to give attention to Colby Rasmus and Schumaker for getting some pop and winning that game for the team.  Rasmus is keeping pace with Albert–wouldn’t it be surprising if someone else led the team in home runs with him on the squad?

So the Cards have a split and they go into Sunday looking for the win.  That went by the wayside really quickly when  Jaime Garcia got lit up .

You knew he wasn’t going to keep a sub-2 ERA going forever, so this really shouldn’t cause a lot of concern.  He had a quality start in Toronto (though he did give up three runs there as well) so it’s not like it’s a big tailspin.  All that said, is it 1) just a bump, he’ll make adjustments and be OK, 2) the league figuring him out or 3) a little fatigue setting in?  I don’t know that it’s three, but I am glad the All-Star Break is coming so that hopefully he can get a few extra days of rest.

Ottavino struggled as well, though a couple of his runs came in after he left and he did have a good stretch from first inning of work until the last where he kept KC down.  Still, he’s going to have to have better results before the management is going to let him have another crack at the rotation.

On the positive side, both Pujols and Rasmus got their 16th home runs.  Being that he didn’t strike out and he didn’t leave runners on in a big situation, I’ll give the nod to  Colby Rasmus.

Look at the stats Derrick Goold in the above story and  Matthew Leach at his blog point out.  Right now, this team can’t win if the other team scores, basically.  They’ve lost 12 of 17 games when the opponent has tacked on more than one earned run.  They are 4-17 when the starter allows more than three runs.  Which means that, most of the time, a defined “quality start” (3 ER in 6 innings) would be a loss for the Redbirds.

As Leach elaborates, you can’t expect this rotation to do that.  Chris Carpenter and Wainwright, OK, maybe they can do it on a semi-regular basis, though as we’ve seen Wainwright is struggling to keep the other team off the board.  Jeff Suppan is going to only give you five or six innings and you have to figure as he starts to face some of these NL teams that are more familiar with him, there are going to be nights where he gets touched up. Garcia is making another circuit around the league–how long with his ERA stay down?  You have a fifth slot that is up in the air and Brad Penny and Kyle Lohse are still weeks away from returning.

What to do, though?  It’s not necessarily about shoring up the rotation, though that’d be nice.  It’s about getting some productive offense.  Brendan Ryan has slid back down toward Mendoza.  Molina’s not hitting.  Felipe Lopez has had a rough June.  Aaron Miles is one of your bench players.  When you have two or three holes in your lineup, the scoring goes down real quick, especially when the big bats won’t fire at the same time.

I don’t envy John Mozeliak.  Your outfield is set, you have first base and catcher locked down (even if Molina is struggling with the bat, he’s obviously not going anywhere).  Third base has a nice player at it, but he’s not giving you the power you should get at third.  (Remember when we thought he was starting to put it all together when he hit three home runs in four days at the beginning of May?  One home run since, and even that’s been about a month ago.)

You really only have the option of upgrading at second or short.  Leach mentions Tyler Greene, who is hitting at Memphis but is he a AAAA guy, someone that never will be able to turn his success into regular production in St. Louis?

If that’s not the answer, though, what is?

There was a little bit of news off the field this weekend, as the Cardinals signed Marlins cast-off  Renyel Pinto as a bit of lefty backup .  However, that would make me feel much better if he could actually get lefties out.  As you can see in the article, lefties hit him for a .364 average and a .519 slugging.  He’s much better against righties, but that’s probably not how he’d be used in St. Louis.

To make room, though, the Cards sent off Rich Hill.  You can read that, back in the spring, I thought the team really was going to break camp with Hill as the fifth starter.  He was a lefty, he was experienced, he seemed to be over his medical issues.  However, besides Garcia’s emergence, he never had the command that the Cards wanted to see and nothing in Memphis seemed to indicate that he had it on a regular basis.  Maybe he’ll catch on with another team.

Cards and D-Backs tonight, as Carpenter gets to take out more frustrations against them.  Actually, Arizona’s been able to get to Carp (both physically and mentally), getting three runs in seven against him in April and three in six against him a couple weeks back.  Carpenter doesn’t have a decision against the squad yet this year.

Dan Haren goes for the Diamondbacks.  The biggest thing will be seeing if the Cards can actually retire him when he comes to bat, as he had a 4-4 game and has six hits total against his old squad this year.  Cards tagged him for seven runs in April, though he took the punch, stayed in there, and got the win.  He shut them down for two runs over eight innings the last time he faced them.

We’ll see if the offense can click tonight or if Carpenter can throw a shutout.  If not, it might be a long evening.