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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
After suffering through the worst start of his career in his previous meeting against the Cardinals, Astros left-hander J.A. Happ had one of his best Monday night.
Happ, who couldn’t survive the second inning in St. Louis on Aug. 4, dominated the Cardinals with a two-hitter to lead the Astros to their seventh win in nine games, 3-0, in the series opener at Minute Maid Park.
Astros rookie first baseman Brett Wallace, a former Cardinals first-round Draft pick, who was in a 5-for-45 slump, had his first career three-hit game and drove in a run.
St. Louis’ relative inability to defeat sub-.500 teams is getting pretty comical. They play in the NL Central, so they’ve had plenty of practice against such teams.
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1. GutsYep. This is an awful, awful team right now. Completely listless. The only upside is that this should be it for La Russa in St. Louis. It's time for him to go elsewhere or retire, and this should cinch it. The Reds are flat-out better.
The frustrating thing is that they're not, really. The Cardinals still have the superior Pythagorean record, and if you looked at their respective rosters, you'd be hard-pressed to say that the Reds are the better team. The Cardinals just have a maddening inability to get the job done.
You are right about the Cards being the better team, but wrong about why they are not winning.
It is the judgment of the Lord upon them, all praise His Name.
Amen
The Cardinals are far and away leading baseball in underperforming their pythag, but I wouldn't be surprised if they get a nice dead cat bounce in September; there's still a slim chance of stealing the WC from Philly. If not, they're still one of the two or three best teams in the NL going into 2011.
They do just seem completely dead... listless... so many quick ABs ending in a first-pitch infield grounder...
Pujols' lack of discipline---which has always had a habit of coming and going---has been present for a while (he's going to K significantly more times this year than any other year since his rookie year)...
FWIW, the Birds are 4-10 since August 14---Rasmus' last full game until he started again last night...
One's skills tend to slip a bit as one reaches 50 years old.
Clearly, if you're going to blame someone, it should be the guy who is 4 hits shy of leading all three triple crown categories. The guy has 61 strikeouts for chrissakes. That's (slightly) over one-third as many as Mark Reynolds! Does he think he's being paid to imitate a helicopter or something?
Turns out they still have some hap left.
This is true in general, but it doesn't explain why Pujols himself peaked at 56.
I'm not blaming anyone, just pointing out that right now, the team is in a funk, with several players struggling. Albert's struggles may seem inconsequential compared to other players, but he has seemed to be pressing a little more lately---an uncharacteristic 7 strikeouts in the last 8 games (during which the team is 2-6) against 4 walks, all intentional---maybe in response to be being pitched around so much, who knows...
I'm really starting to fear that the fans are going to end up running Rasmus out of town. The comparisons to J.D. Drew are already beginning. And my dad, who's a pretty good proxy for the average, talk-radio-listening Cards fan, wants to get rid of Rasmus because "he doesn't look like he cares enough." (He feels the same way about Holliday.)
we suck.
Sure, he's been good when he hasn't been giving away at-bats....
Well, it's clearly not because the cardinals are often starting Felipe Lopez at SS, or have not playing Rasmus because of an umpire-player matchup. Or used pitchers to bat with RISP in extra inning games- repeatedly- after removing the cleanup hitter for a double switch, ensuring Pujols is IBBd every time. or used Aaron Miles ever, or let Kyle Lohse start major league games after getting bombed at AA. Or allowed the team's best player and manager to go to a political rally on the day day of a baseball game.
Not sure whose fault those things would be.
To be fair, the fans didn't run Drew out of town. Jocketty wasn't willing to pony up $10M a year to keep him and instead dealt him for a package of useful spare parts and a pretty good pitching prospect.
TLR may not care for him, but Rasmus will almost certainly be in St. Louis longer than his SS-drawing manager.
(Astros actually have been pretty decent the last few months, though)
(Entering his walk year, obviously management isn't going to do anything to irritate him)
Well, Miles has actually been shockingly useful this year. But those other things, yeah.
TLR may not care for him, but Rasmus will almost certainly be in St. Louis longer than his SS-drawing manager.
One can only hope. From Miklasz's online column today:
Tony La Russa and Colby Rasmus: I have no idea what's going on between them. But to repeat something Joe Strauss said in his STLtoday.com chat the other day: you just get the feeling that one of these guys won't be back in 2011.
Somewhere on this site, some years ago, well before he was within sight of the majors, I called that La Russa was going to hate Rasmus once he finally came up. (I am actually half-convinced that La Russa's hatred of players whose surnames start with "R" is not a coincidence, but an legitimate pathology.)
I have been a great defender of La Russa's over the years. He has done wonderful things for this franchise, and in a few years, #10 will be deservedly emblazoned on the left-field wall at Busch. But it's time. It's time.
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