Physiology Of A Noncontender

My friend and shopkeeper of this fine business venture, Mike, is correct in noting that the history of the Astros is long and pointless. While 40 years without a World Series victory is the average half-life of a Cubs fan, it's nothing to strive for as a franchise. The Astros debacle of 2005 (swept by the White Sox in embarrassing fashion) was a nice "me too" to the Cardinals debacle of 2004 (swept by the Red Sox in embarrassing fashion.)

But that was then, this is now. Mike has confided in his therapist and come to grips with the fact that the Astros won't contend in 2008. But given the Cards-Astros rivalry in the NL Central, I couldn't let that stand. Here are the seven reasons the Cardinals won't contend even more than the Astros won't contend this season. I'll reduce the reasons to body parts for simplification.

Elbow:

The elbow is clearly the new Achilles heel for the Cardinals. Last season, Chris Carpenter was banged up when he made his one and only start. Not long after, he experienced numbness in his right elbow. After a lot of unnecessary attempts at throwing his way through the problem, the ace of the team finally went in for Tommy John surgery in late July. Why that didn't happen earlier is anybody's guess. Carpenter will be out til the all-star break at the earliest, by which point this whole thing should be well out reach.

But that's not all! Losing your Cy Young winner for most of the year is just part one in the Year Of The Elbow. The Cardinals are treading thin baseball-ice with perennial MVP-candidate Albert Pujols, who has acknowledged that at some point he too will need Tommy John surgery. He's playing on borrowed time, just one tweak or awkward throw from deep in foul territory away from missing about a year of playing time. AP has said he won't play through the pain this year. The prospect of a Pujols-free lineup is making me consider seppuku. It's worth looking up.

Brain:

Simply put, the Cardinals are suffering from brain problems. Extending Edmonds to a two year deal at the end of his career, then dumping him for nothing and paying for him to play for the Padres. Signing Cesar Izturis and his .295 OBP for nearly $3 million. Bringing back Aaron Miles. Signing Juan Gonzalez in a deal that may force the return of impressive Rule V draft pick Brian Barton. The headcase that was Scott Spiezio. And, scariest of all, whatever boogiemen lurk within the psyche of ever-talented but ever-delicate Rick Ankiel, who was an unholy force up to but concluding precisely at the moment of his HGH revelation. This delicate blossom may be Pujols' lineup protection this season.

Arms:

Oh my God, the arms. After Adam Wainright, things go downhill quickly. Braden Looper, Anthony Reyes, Todd Wellmeyer, the possibly-deceased Mark Mulder and Matt Clement…all should serve up more hot taters than Waffle House. Former bullpen stalwarts Josh Kinney and Tyler Johnson are missing and presumed wounded. Scrapheap (and league average!) veteran Kyle Lohse is set to wander in off the streets, probably dressed in clothing made of the newspapers he slept on last night, to be our number 2 starter.

Feet:

As a team, the Cards stole 56 bases last year, 15^th out of 16 NL teams. I think Jose Reyes had that many by the all star break. Granted, stealing isn't exactly the most important element of winning baseball games. In fact, in many instances, the expected outcome of a stolen base attempt is not worth the risk. The team was 11^th in runs scored, probably because it ranked 14^th in slugging percentage.

So there you have it. Your physiological guide to the Cardinals' impending 2008 failure. It's not going to be what we baseball fans call "a winning season." But hold on to your pride, Redbirds. There are always two things we'll have that the Astros don't: A recent World Series ring and a second baseman who won't be missing the start of the season due to anal fissures.

Baseball and Food Metaphors

The St. Louis Cardinals of today are the baseball equivalent of the leftover Thanksgiving Turkey that you find in your freezer the following March, frozen solid, covered in fuzzy frost, and inedible. It looks almost exactly like the turkey that was so delicious at Thanksgiving dinner, and it even got the job done fairly well for a few days afterwards. But only now, rummaging through your freezer for sustenance, do you realize that keeping it around this long has left you with nothing but frozen, useless bird.

Cardinals management is guilty of a sin that countless teams before them have committed: Finding a very successful and popular core, and then keeping it together after its prime at the cost of building the next team. The ’04 Cardinals were Walt Jocketty’s masterpiece, a 105 win juggernaut with solid pitching, the “MV3 core” of Edmonds, Rolen, and Pujols in their primes, and valuable complimentary performances by Larry Walker, Reggie Sanders, and Edgar Renteria. Only the smoking hot Red Sox, coming off the greatest playoff series perhaps in baseball history, could take them down. The 2005 Cardinals threw in another 100 wins for good measure.

2006 should have been the year for rebuilding. Injuries took their toll on Edmonds, Rolen, and eventually Carpenter. It’s hell getting old. Walker had retired, and Sanders and Renteria departed for greener contractual pastures. A significant number of starts were given to people like Sidney Ponson and Jeff Weaver. But somehow, the same way that that leftover turkey still worked in a sandwich two weeks after turkey day, this team got hot in the playoffs, rode head-scratching performances from Jeffs Weaver and Suppan and Adam Wainwright pitching out of position as ace closer, and won the first Cardinals World Series since 1982. I was still in Velcro shoes back then. It felt like the ’06 championship was the postscript accolade that the earlier, truly dominant teams had earned.

The one unforgiveable sin made by management was the 2005 trade of young ace in the making Dan Haren, teenage slugging catcher Daric Barton, and useful middle reliever Kiko Calero for the disintegrating corpse of Mark Mulder. It’s easy to call a trade terrible in retrospect; this was a deal that looked bad from the moment it was made, and has proceeded to get worse with every passing season. Instead of building around young talent, the Cardinals tried to keep the good times rolling with more veterans. But veterans, particularly pitchers, get old in funny ways. Funny in the way that Taxi Driver is funny. Not so much ha ha funny.

And now you see the 2007 Cardinals. The team gave Edmonds, no longer a useful every day player, an extension, then had to dump him for a bag of unicorn tears the next season. Carpenter was given a huge extension, only to go out with Tommy John surgery. A series of tragic and ridiculous and embarrassing events befell this team; LaRussa’s spring training DUI, the drunk driving death of Josh Hancock, Rick Ankiel’s triumphant return and then HGH shame, Scott Spiezio’s trip to rehab, the tragic and career-ending blinding of Juan Encarnacion when he took a foul ball to the eye in the on-deck circle, and the pouty craptacularness of post-injury Scott Rolen. This was a team that suddenly had like those 90 cent off-brand hotdogs you see on sale at the grocery store: mostly sawdust and filler.

The problem is, only Walt Jocketty seemed to recognize this. He addressed the problem by resigning after the season. After a lot of handwringing, LaRussa decided to come back. That scared off all of the GM candidates who didn’t want to see Tony giving scrappy veterans like Aaron Miles 500 at bats over their useful acquisitions, so the team gave Jocketty’s understudy the job. The big offseason acquisitions proved to be, first Cezar Izturis (OPS+ of 69) to form, along with Adam Kennedy, a middle infield that can only be described as “poop in a bag,” and second, the straw-based remainder of Matt Clement. Mozeliak managed to get rid of poutypuss Rolen and his 8 home runs for Troy Glaus and his bag of magical HGH beans – a downgrade on defense, but a legit cleanup hitter threat that Pujols has been begging for since Edmonds and Rolen dropped off.

There will be precious few things to look forward to for Cardinals fans in 2008. One interesting wild card is Rick Ankiel, phenom pitcher turned headcase turned slugging outfielder. He should get a full season in center and right field this season, and how he does is anybody’s guess. He hit 43 homers between AAA and the pros last year. Anything is possible: He could hit that many for the Cardinals, or he could get spooked by his shadow and retire from baseball. The other bit of excitement for fans is Colby Rasmus, Baseball America’s #3 prospect in the game. Only 21, he hit 29 homers with a .932 OPS in the minors last season, and he’s reported to have amazing defense in center with great speed. Rasmus is likely to start the season in AAA, however.

The encouraging news, though, is that it may be a few years late, but the Cardinals are finally starting to develop young talent and not dump it for broken pitchers. An outfield of Ankiel, Rasmus, and Chris Duncan could hit 100 homeruns (and misjudge 100 popups), and all three are under 28. That’s the upside.

The downside is that this is a rotation that will prominently feature Joel Piniero, Braden Looper, Matt Clement (if he pitches at all), and Anthony Reyes, who this season should prove whether he is what he appears to be: a failed prospect. There’s not much hope for this team to finish above .500. But it should at least struggle to the finish line in an entertaining fashion.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 Cardinals. At least we’re throwing out the turkey.

What's In A Name?

Hello everyone. My name is Josh. I grew up in St. Louis but went to college with baseballwallets.com purveyor and uberbaseball fan Mike Austin. I'm an environmental lawyer and a foremost expert on American cheese. Mike asked me to write this blog, a chance to explore why my chosen team, the Cardinals, is both better than your favorite team, but also will suck more this upcoming season too. You can really have it all as a Cards fan.

I figured I should just start off by explaining the name of this blog. One of the most vexing aspects of being a current Cardinals fan is Tony LaRussa's insistence on giving lots of playing time to highly worthless players who he feels have more "intangibles." Veteran leadership. Grit. Hustle. Gristle. This results in lots of starts being given to retreads like Sid Ponson and Kip Wells, and innumerable at bats for the likes of Black Hole of OPS Aaron Miles (henceforth known as BHOPSAM. He's back for 2008! Oh boy!)

Hence, a few years ago, I combined a few of the team's least talented, but most prominently featured, players into one borg-like fictional person: Preston Wilson (the old and injured outfielder), So Taguchi (powerless, speedless, but still plays almost every day), and Skip Shumaker (see: Taguchi, So) became "Preston Taguchimaker." When looking at the lineup every day, I would often say things like "Oh, Adam Kennedy has a hangnail. Time for another start by Preston Taguchimaker!" Or, in a late-game situation where we need a righthanded power bat off the bench, I can yell at the TV, "Tony! This is a perfect chance to squander an important at bat on Preston Taguchimaker!"

So, as 2008 dawns, I decided to pay tribute to this unsung amalgam of all that is wrong with the Cardinals by naming my blog after them. So Taguchi and Preston Wilson may be gone (Is he? He might still be in the locker room getting iced down. Someone should check on this), but their spirit lives on. Particularly when Aaron Miles gets 500 at bats this year. Awesome.