The sole Cardinal I'll be rooting for this year... and here I thought $5 would turn out to be a wonderful bargain.

Is it me or have the Cardinals eerily turned into the Cubs when it comes to handling the diagnosis of, communication of, and rehabilitation of injuries.

The Cards will find a way to be competitive. LaRussa, Duncan, and Pujols usually manage to get by somehow.

Just let the rookie 3b hit 30 homers. It worked in 2001.

damn there goes my 20th round draft pick

Yeah, that is unless those gawdamn Cardinals have some guy down in the minors that is a stud to replace him. They always seem to be capable of that.

David Freese 25, 464 AB, 26 HR, .306/.361/.550, 111 K in AAA in 2008

I'm trying to think of some way in which this development makes JP look stupid.
I can't quite see it yet, but I'm sure someone on the internets will point it out to me eventually.

Oh, that's easy.

The Blue Jays could be paying 11 million dollars to have a gimpy Glaus on the team. If that was the case, right now they'd be running out something like Inglett/Scutaro/Hill/Overbay in the infield (maybe McDonald instead of Inglett).

Instead, they're paying a gimpy Scott Rolen 26 million over two years - at a time when finances are reportedly so tough that they might have to trade Roy Halladay - for production that's not much better than Inglett, and Inglett was and is practically free. So when Roy Halladay gets traded to some generic NL contender for two B pitching prospects who promptly go all Sirotka on JP, we'll have Scotty Rolen to blame.

Of course, that ignores the fact that Glaus demanded a trade, but thereyougo.

Yeah, that is unless those gawdamn Cardinals have some guy down in the minors that is a stud to replace him. They always seem to be capable of that.

They have Brett Wallace, and if Glaus is going to be out for significant time, which apparently he is, they need to think seriously about bringing him up and seeing what he can do.

David Freese 464 AB, 20 HR, .267/.313/.456, 120 K major league equivalency

Mather will be taking the job for the foreseeable future, if he sucks Freese is probably next in line. If Freese sucks, Mozeliak will probably try to find a replacement while TLR runs Thurston out there or something. I doubt Wallace will see significant time this year.

Freese is above average defensively, so a 770 OPS + Glove might make him around league average. According to BBPro, there were 15 NL third sackers with 400 plate appearances in 2008. The top 4 guys (Chipper, Wright, Aramis, Glaus) were very good. Then Wigginton (#5) had an 880 OPS. Then there were five guys with an OPS between 772 and 808, followed by five guys with an OPS between 671 and 732 (oy, Jesus!). So, that MLE makes Freese pretty middle-of-the-pack, especially if he can pick it.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=464645

I'll be thrilled if Freese can be +5 or +10 with the glove and have an OPS around 800.

Mather might be able to approach 825-850 OPS, but I'd be surprised if he was better than -5 with the glove.

Those two + Wallace makes it very discouraging that Mo/TLR are reportedly shopping for a replacement.

Also discouraging? The Cardinals' consistently poor reporting when it comes to player injuries. It's to the point where I'm not the least bit surprised that a summer return is optimistic, even after the Cards originally said he could be back by 01May.

The local paper has been reporting on the Glaus thing for at least a couple of weeks now, so the Cards have not been guilty of bad reporting. What happened was that his rehab stalled out about 3 weeks ago, and the original doctor can't find anything wrong, nor can he get Troy restarted. No one knows what to think because no one can find the problem. It's hard to report that in a way that gets beyond the local paper because there is nothing solid to hang a story on, so I understand why no one outside of St. Louis knows this.

Also in the local just a couple of days ago, the Joe Mather at third experiment has been abandoned. Joe stopped hitting when moved to third, and Tony apparently thinks that focusing on defense fouled up his bat. He's back to the outfield and Freeze is the projected Opening Day starter at third. Thurston, who hits lefty, will make the roster. He can play third more or less. Also, whoever is the backup shortstop can cover some third base. That spot has yet to be decided. The point is that, with a solid offensive outfield, the Cards can get away with fill-in third base gambles for a long while.

BTW, the reason the Cards seem to have these guys in the minors is that the team focuses on that. Tony likes to have a shuttle system available that effectively makes his roster about 30 players instead of 25. There's always an extra outfielder (Barton), an extra shortstop (whoever does not win the major league slot), an extra catcher (Matt Pagnozzi) and at least a couple of spare pitchers. Tony uses a lot of very short-term (even one day) promotions/demotions as injuries and the schedule require. It's one of Tony's strengths as a manager, although I imagine it messes up the AAA club's chances of doing well.

- Brock Hanke (whose main advantage here is that he lives in STL and reads the Post-Dispatch)

I was not aware of the Mather experiment ending...even though I live in STL. I don't read the PD, so I'll blame my ignorance on that. Thanks, Brock.

Guts - I understand about the Post. It's gotten smaller and smaller to the point that it's close to losing my subscription. If it weren't for baseball. And the Mather experiment may make a comeback.To my surprise, today's Post (April 2) has Mather playing 2PA worth of third yesterday (April 1). Maybe it's a total Mather waffle. Oh, and on the extra outfielder thing. The Cards have a Brian Barton in camp - he's the Rule 5 outfielder. They also have a Brian Barden, who is one of the two remaining candidates for backup shortstop. He's in the third base mix as well. The likely plan will be to carry Freeze as the starter, along with Khalil Greene and Skip Schumacher. The backups will be Joe Thurston (hits lefty) and whichever of Brendan Ryan and Brian Barden wins the backup shortstop job. Mather may stay in the mix as a third base backup because the outfield is so loaded. That's just for anyone having problems sorting these guys out. - Brock

I doubt Wallace will see significant time this year.

He was already at AA last year. He's going to be 22. If it's June, and Wallace is hitting in AA, why not bring him up?

Also in the local just a couple of days ago, the Joe Mather at third experiment has been abandoned. Joe stopped hitting when moved to third, and Tony apparently thinks that focusing on defense fouled up his bat.

No, Joe Mather stopped hitting when he got sick with a viral illness that caused him to lose around 10 pounds. He's still not 100%. I haven't seen anything from tony or mather regarding mather playing at 3rd contributing to his slump.

Mather's break at 3rd came when Freese showed up to camp with an undisclosed injury, but getting sick made it Freese's job to lose.

The local paper has been reporting on the Glaus thing for at least a couple of weeks now, so the Cards have not been guilty of bad reporting. What happened was that his rehab stalled out about 3 weeks ago, and the original doctor can't find anything wrong, nor can he get Troy restarted. No one knows what to think because no one can find the problem. It's hard to report that in a way that gets beyond the local paper because there is nothing solid to hang a story on, so I understand why no one outside of St. Louis knows this.

I couldn't care less about the "reporting" of the issue. Hearing that the "doctor can't find anything wrong" is never a good sign and I think that speaks more to the medical staff's ability than any deficiencies in spin control.