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cardinalkarp wrote:

raddy wrote:

TimeForGuinness wrote:

raddy wrote:The tone of the game was set in the first inning by the nbr 2 men in both lineups

LoDuca can handle the bat got the man over and they drew blood first

Cards nbr 2 man power/k hit into a DP--Pujols comes and a lines a double with 2 outs and nobody on.

Who ever made out the lineup has to take a lot of the blame IMO

What makes me wish Wainwright was starting vrs the Mets tomorrow night.

How would you change the lineup?

I would put Duncan in one of the power spots--probablly 5th and put Kennedy in the 2 hole at first because of his LH bat and speed

I would certainly put Pujols in the 4th spot --Rolen 3 --Edmonds 6th --Molina 7th and Skip/Taguchi in the 8 slot.

That actually sounds like a pretty good lineup. At this point its all the DP's that are killing the team. Any time you think they might get something going by putting the leadoff guy on the next AB is a DP.

It is a reasonable lineup, but too much attention is being given to lineup construction. It makes very little difference, there is no magic ordering that makes a big difference one way or another. You could throw names into a hat and not do that much worse than a carefully constructed lineup. Probably more important than the power hitter here, contact hitter there approach is to make sure you don't have a block of hitter prone to bad platton splits. i.e. hitting Edmonds/Duncan together isn't good, because late in the game they can bring a LOOGY in and have him pitch to 2 hitters in a row with the platoon advantage.

People who have studied lineup construction will tell you #2 and #4 are where you want your best hitters OPS wise. Many managers, starting with our very own TLR, figured out on their own without computer simulations that having a thumper at #2 is a good idea. Take a look around the league and see the #2 hitters being used this year, the Larry Bowa type hitters aren't there.

Last night, and almost every night in every game, the batting order didn't matter. As far as LoDuca bunting Reyes over, they did us a favor. With that lineup if they want to play for 1 that's fine by me.

Michael wrote:

TimeForGuinness wrote:

Michael wrote:Not a bad outing by Kip...

Agreed. Little more control, but his first outing was promising.

Had some really good pitches.

I love how he'll throw anything on any count. It's fun to watch.

Is Uncle RC starting to get some converts to the Church of Kip?

RC21 wrote:

Michael wrote:

TimeForGuinness wrote:

Michael wrote:Not a bad outing by Kip...

Agreed. Little more control, but his first outing was promising.

Had some really good pitches.

I love how he'll throw anything on any count. It's fun to watch.

Is Uncle RC starting to get some converts to the Church of Kip?

Back off. The First Unitarian Church of Kip opened first.

To reply to Leroy and Cronos, I really don't think anything negative has been spread around. I realize it is two games, but the Cardinals look way too average. They weren't smoking those double plays off of Hernandez like Rolen's the other night, they were lightly tapping it back to him, meaning they were trying to pull a 64 mph curve, which is just bad hitting.

Wells definitely had some bad luck. Any time the pitcher tags you for two of seven hits and it is the only extra base hit of the night, it just isn't your night.

meaning they were trying to pull a 64 mph curve, which is just bad hitting.

You would've thought that they would've picked up that he was basically starting off EVERY batter w/ that same pitch (followed up by a pitch in the low 70's in most cases) and start to tee off on that thing. He was obviously throwing it for strikes.

We've got to get the offense going and got to start putting real OF'ers out there that can hit and field. I'm actually looking forward to JuanE's return. At least we know what he's capable of and it's respectable.

But, I'm not putting all the blame on Skip and So. Not hardly. These have been full team loses and we'll have plenty of them throughout the season.

Fat Strat wrote:We've got to get the offense going and got to start putting real OF'ers out there that can hit and field. I'm actually looking forward to JuanE's return. At least we know what he's capable of and it's respectable.

But, I'm not putting all the blame on Skip and So. Not hardly. These have been full team loses and we'll have plenty of them throughout the season.

I can't get excited about Juan's return.

He's below average as it is, and with an ailing wrist, I can't see how he'll be much better.

cardinalkarp wrote:

meaning they were trying to pull a 64 mph curve, which is just bad hitting.

You would've thought that they would've picked up that he was basically starting off EVERY batter w/ that same pitch (followed up by a pitch in the low 70's in most cases) and start to tee off on that thing. He was obviously throwing it for strikes.

It seems to me that might be a general pattern with this team for a number of years. Whenever a pitcher that doesn't throw 90 miles an hour is able to change speeds even a little bit and consistently locate them for strikes, the team struggles. They pop it up, they weakly ground out, they try to pull everything as Snake said.

Having Glavine and Orlando Hernandez as the first two pitchers your team sees to start the year doesn't help that tendency.

Maybe it's a general case where if an off-speed pitcher can locate their pitches that they're going to have a good night against any team, but I've seen the Cardinals struggle too much against the Glendon Rusch types of the baseball world to really think that, especially when they go on to get consistently lit up by just about any other team.

Dissertation on why this isn't complicated
by Leroy

In most respects, the Mets are better than the Cardinals. We know that. They make the Cardinals look average. They will make a lot of teams look average.

The job for the Cardinals is to play well against all of the other teams in the league, who for the most part, are average as well (with some being slightly better than average), and maybe steal a game from the Mets here and there. And trust me, a win with Looper pitching would be a steal of the highest order.

If they do that, they'll be fine.
If not...I shudder.

Very uncomplicated.

Leroy wrote: And trust me, a win with Looper pitching would be a steal of the highest order.

The way this bizarro series has been going thus far, Looper will pitch a 3-hit complete game shutout tonight with Skip Scott hitting a pinch-hit walk off solo HR in the ninth.

Cronos69 wrote:

Leroy wrote: And trust me, a win with Looper pitching would be a steal of the highest order.

The way this bizarro series has been going thus far, Looper will pitch a 3-hit complete game shutout tonight with Skip Scott hitting a pinch-hit walk off solo HR in the ninth.

And Skip's causing a game saving out in the top of the ninth, by having a ball bounce off his melon towards Jimmy, who hackey sacks it to defensive replacement So Taguchi, who barehands it just over the wall.