***Official 2015 STL Cardinals Thread III.***
 

2011 World Series Championship
2012 NLCS. One win from another WS appearance.
2013 World Series. Two wins from another World Series Championship
2014 NLCS. Three wins from another WS appearance
2015 Central Division title. Won 100 games. Lost in the NLDS.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQNIu68UwAA7-c2.jpg:large

• Made the postseason 11 times in the last 15 seasons.
• Only 1 losing season since 2000.
• Reached the World Series 4 times since 2004 and won as many championships (two) the past eight seasons as it did from 1965 to 2005.
• Made the NLCS 9 times including the last 4 years 2011-2014
• Three million attendance? Take it to the bank.
• 65 post season wins since 2004. 22+ wins more than any other team.

II thread was dragging.

picking up where we left off.

I don't think Lynn is scared. Garcia yes, Lynn just looks tired and his fastball doesn't have the movement that makes him successful. It's flat.

Injuries did us in partly. We had to ride the rest of the players hard.

Losing Martinez and Molina in the playoffs? Thats just too high of a hill to climb.

FWIW, the new server SHOULD be able to handle big threads better, though it never hurts to prune a big thread that's not necessary.

The server is the Jaime Garcia of servers.

It took forever for my posts to load. Maybe it was just me.

Hootie was saying it was slow. Jewish Rabbi also. I thought it was slow loading too.

Lackey on starting on short rest:

Short rest? Pitch counts? Chuck all that out the window. "I'm not guarding against nothing," says St. Louis CardinalsGame 4 starter John Lackey. "I'm gonna go get it."

I really hope he pitches just as good in the next game

All it is is two 1 game series for the Cards ... I never get too worried down 2-1 in a 5 gamer ... you know, until we're down 6-2 in the 8th inning ... but even then ...

I think I read that you all were 96% to lose going into the 8th. Those are some pretty dire straits. Not impossible, mind you, but you're looking at a two-outer on the river.

I imagine the Cubs are probably 4:1 to advance right now.

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/10...b289921ba7.jpg
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/10...fc808c3537.jpg

Wacha getting squeezed?

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/...o=&cache=1.gif

Arrieta got strikes at the bottom of the zone that he didn't (a notable one was the first pitch to Pham in the 4th), but Wacha's problem was that he ****ing sucked dick tonight when we just needed him to be competent and keep the ball down.

I wonder who starts game 5 for the Cardinals if they win tonight. Do they have the balls to throw Wainwright out there for 5 or so innings and just have him stand at the plate?

It will be Garcia with a short leash and a prayer of no meltdown.

I wouldn't say 4:1 ... I'd put the cubs more at 65% ... But if it gets back to STL ... Even with the favorable pitcher on the mound ... That's a tall order for a young team

And hopefully no tummy aches for poor widdle Jaime.

Good God.

The takeaway isn't how the pitches were called - it's the location of the pitches themselves.

You can't live in the middle of the strike zone like that. That looks like a full 1/3 of his pitches were in cripple pitch territory.

Though ultimately I do think we can conclude that the TBS strike zone was a bad one. Looks like the zone was actually called quite well.

The TBS did look off. Wacha is more than tired. Arm angle, trying the curve too much I'm no expert.

He has to locate that fastball to set up the change. Thats what made him so successful in 2013.

Wacha's location was the problem, not the calls. The wind didn't help (see Heyward's severe wind aided pop up homer off Jesus Arrieta), but some of the ones they hit off him were pretty damn legit bombs.

Well shit, he has to at least try throwing the change on occasion.

The HR he gave to Bryant was off his 6th straight fastball. The 2nd time through the order he actually had that change working a bit; was slowly lulling them into the rocking chair and looking like he might settle in.

Then he just quit on the change altogether. It's been a theme of his this season; he's simply gotten away from his changeup and appears to have completely lost the feel for it. It's a legitimate putaway pitch and yet he seems to favor that inconsistent, rolling-ass curveball of his these days.

I've actually thought his curve has improved a little this year, but he's tried to throw a cutter more for some stupid ass reason.

Fastball, change and curve. End.

So Heyward cuts one into a left to right wind for an oppo homer, but it's wind aided.

I'm at the point where I don't care if it cripples the franchise, give Heyward 200 mil just so I can tell you to **** yourself everyday

What did he do with the game on the line ? :) Can't wait for another half dozen years of empty stats. 200 million for a 12 HR 60 Ribbie clean up man FTW!

Yeah, that shot was not wind-aided. Balls to RF had the wind behind them but Heywards was actually cutting through the wind.

I've said it all year, I have no idea why you'd ever throw him a pitch on the outer third. The guy has so much natural power that if you extend his arms for him, he'll hit one out on accident.

Of course his approach is so ****ed up that he's a 12 HR hitter because he refuses to simply open up and turn on a ball, but that's not terribly germane to this particular conversation.

He goes thru stretches where he's pulling it sith power, but it last for a series. Maddening.

Alot of it looks like the typical Mabry approach to me dj. Let it travel as far as you can before commiting. He never gets to one out in front of the plate.

Yes yes let the hate flow through you O

4 years 70 mil. Easy pgm

Can you guys please put the Cubs out of it. I'm tired of the national sports media slobbering their knob.

Time for cards to crash and burn.

That wouldn't be....terrible to be honest

Oh knows they've only won a billion playoff games the last decade plus!! The depression!

They are good...real good. Would be a worthy opponent to take us out. Those Giant teams and Babe Ruth Ishikawa though...:#

That's absolutely the case, which is why I say they've steered into the skid with Heyward.

Heyward's spent the last 3 years trying to shorten his swing and close what he perceived to be a hole on the inside of his swing. I swear it looks like he's done nothing but fence drills for the last 36 months (and seriously, fence drills are ****ing reeruned). In the process he's cut down his strike outs but at way too high a cost. He's absolutely destroyed his power potential. To some degree, that even limits his OBP because pitchers will attack him inside the zone now. Power hitters draw more walks because guys are intimidated to come into the zone against them - not so with Heyward.

Then when you pair him with a guy like Mabry that encourages and reinforces those self-destructive tendencies he's had, it absolutely wrecks his ability to be a true difference maker offensively.

The worst thing you could have done with Heyward was pair him with a hitting coach that told him he was right to be doing what he'd been doing the last couple of years.

Yeah, I can live with losing to this Cubs team. It sucks they have to be the Cubs, but that's a team that's built itself up the right way and has created a !@#$ing monster.

There's no shame in losing to those guys.

Losing to the !@#$ing Giants in 2014 and 2012, OTOH, will always bug the hell out of me. It really does make me wonder if this era of Cardinals baseball won't be looked back on similarly to the Braves of the 90s - lots of chances but just always coming up a tick short and losing to teams they were better than.

Why on earth would Heyward accept something like that?

He was a top 10 NL WAR player at age 26. He'll be getting a nice "mega contract". Pablo Sandoval just got a 5/95 contract. Heyward is looking at 100+ if not 150+.

That wont stop if the Cubs lose. They were the 3rd best team in baseball with 4 starting rookies.

Heyward is going to get nearly $200M you guys are kidding yourselves

If you're going to spend that kind of money you might as well just throw it at cespedes.

Probably.

It's hard to know how teams are pricing defensive win shares these days; it doesn't seem like they're nearly as willing to pay for defense as they are for offense. That's especially true when the defense is coming from a corner OF rather than CF.

But the contract I'm looking at is Jacoby Ellsbury. Like Heyward, Ellsbury showed intermittent power but good OBP skills. Like Heyward, he showed he can play a credible CF but may be more suited for a corner. Ellsbury had the 'gamer' reputation and a championship on his resume, but he was also 4 years older.

I'd say you start with the Ellsbury contract and you'll probably have to add about 10% due to age and inflation.

Ellsbury was at 7/$153 million. Plus 10% gets you to 7/$180 million. Now that's a slightly higher AAV than Stanton, which I doubt anybody's going to want to pay but to get to the $180 million figure that an agent is likely to target (so as to best Ellsbury) without surpassing the $25 million AAV that Stanton got, you'll probably end up having to put an 8th year on there.

So 8/$180 seems like a likely outcome to me. It will probably have a fairly substantial backloading to it with a player opt-out after 4 years.

$15/$16/$20/$23/$24/$26/$27/$28

AAV of about $22.5 million; less than Stanton's but a higher total number than Ellsbury's. Heyward can opt out after 4 but with the bulk of the deal in the last 4 years of it, there's incentive for him not to do so as well, thus protecting the Cards a little bit if they wanted it longer term but giving him an option to cash in huge if he outplays the deal and wants to re-enter the FA market at 30 yrs old. The smaller amounts up front give the Cards some buffer while they wait for their new TV contract to start.

Seems like a pretty likely outcome to me.

Can I have my moment please?

P.S. That's based an a faulty premise - notably, that $153 million plus $15 million = $180 million. In other words, I can't ****ing count but I put enough effort into the goddamn post that I'm not going to delete it now that I've re-read it.

Those numbers still seem right to me, it just takes an even larger premium over what Ellsbury got (which is already a damn albatross of a deal). Perhaps I'm overshooting by about $10 million there though. Maybe a $21 million AAV with each of those years reduced by about $1.5 million?

It would allow him to cash in again, similar to greinke. I doubt they do it as the talk of that has died down though

Bob Dole is trying to find out which bar the Cards fans are going to invade so he can go and cheer for the Cubs.

It also allows him the possibility of never cashing in again if he stinks it up. Players that take deals like that aren't one of the best at what they do.

Which is why he'd do it the way I'm discussing.

With my way, he could elect to cash in again, but if he's injured or underperforms, he has the security of simply not exercising the opt out.

Perhaps the Cardinals would do something like an opt-out after 4 years but with the last 2 years being mutual or team options. That would also seem pretty fair.

He's not signing a 4-year deal. ****ing Boras and the Drew contract introduced the idea of player opt-outs to MLB and now just about every young player that signs a deal is going to get one.

Being that he's 26, there'll be an opt out cla use for him. He miraculously hits 25 bombs at age 27 or 28, and nothing else drops off, he'd be in harper territory from a Saber perspective and could really cash in.

ESPN sent out some kind of fan survey. The Cardinals rank 13th out of 122 franchises and third in MLB, behind the Pirates and....Diamondbacks.

Also, the Chiefs came in 38th, despite not having won a playoff game in 22 years. Just another friendly reminder that fans are dumb as ****.

For all the Devil Magic, the Cards haven't been terrible lucky in the PS. They were the best team in baseball in 2004 and '05 and won zero WS games out of it.

They were the best team in 2013 and lost to a one year fluke in Boston.

The teams in 2012 and 2014 were better than the Giants, but the '06 and '11 teams were far inferior to the Mets, Tigers, Phillies, and Rangers.

Out of this 15 year run they probably should have gotten another WS or two, but it's somewhat tempered by the fact that they won two when they shouldn't have.

This team rode a wave of unsustainable run prevention and HR/FB luck. When it runs out, it's a good team, but not much more than an 88-92 win one.

2006 and 2011 says
http://media.makeameme.org/created/hello-nj39pv.jpg

Russell out for game 4. Baez at short. Hope this ****er decides he wants to actually throw the ball.

The thing is, if you look at the number of playoff appearances they've had over their recent golden streak and then just assume them all to be random coin flips, you'd get about what the Cardinals have had. In fact, they'd probably done far better.

So 12 playoff appearances over the last 15 years and if you just go with random chance you get:

6 NLCS appearances, 3 WS appearances and 1, maybe 2 WS championships.

The real outlier comes with the Cardinals absolute dominance in the LDS. The Cards have made it to the LCS an amazing 9 times, only losing twice in the LDS over that period (so far). In the LCS appearances, they've gone 4-5; so pretty random. In the WS they've gone 2-2.

So to my eyes, they're simply due to start losing in the LCS more often. I'm to the point as a baseball fan that I really do see the MLB post-season as blind !@#$ing luck - a complete crap shoot. There's no rhyme or reason to it at this point.

The way to win a lot of championships is to get a lot of bites at the apple. Make it to the post-season 16 times and over that stretch you should get 2 world championships and 4 pennants out of it. I'd like to believe otherwise, but I've seen too many random outcomes in a short series to believe that the best teams really win in the post-season (including the 2 WS the Cards have won over the last decade).

That's why I'm generally opposed to win-now moves, especially at the deadline. Just make it to the post-season as often as possible and sooner or later things will come together for you.

Cespedes is going to get Stanton money.

Well even the Braves finally won one of them.

And really, I'm not including the 2006 team in that bunch, though I probably should. I'm thinking more of the 'post-MV3' era; Mozeliak's bunch.

If the Cards go to 2020 when the window on this present incarnation of the Cards shuts and they haven't won another title, wouldn't you look at the decade as successful but at least a little disappointing? Much as the Braves have to view the 90s?

But like I said, if you adhere to the crapshoot school of post-season baseball, then you can't really fault the Cards for much there. They've played to the coinflip odds.

Well heyward make take less on 8 years if he gets an opt out clause after 4 ... But he isn't taking a 4 year deal straight up

And whoever gives it to him will really, really wish they hadn't...

Still more sizzle than steak there, IMO.

meh, not a big of a lost as Molina.:(

There is something powerful about being a Wildcard team that wins the one game playoff... a WC team has won the WS in 2 of 4 years since they implemented it. Before that, IIRC, only the 2005 White Sox won it as a 4th seed wildcard.

We were already playing without Molina, even when he was in the lineup.

I'm not entirely certain that Molina is much more than his reputation at this point, especially if there's a veteran hurler on the mound. Molina is a HUGE boost for a guy like Martinez and possibly even Wacha, but for Lackey, Lynn and Garcia, I don't know that he's a real difference maker. Moreover, he's become such a liability at the plate that Cruz - as terrible as he is - probably isn't a real dropoff from what we were going to get from Yadi today.

It sucks, but it is what it is.

So, of the 8 WC teams that have been around since implementation, two have won the WS, which is 25%

Meanwhile, they also constitute 25% of the "real" playoffs.

Where's the advantage?

Unless you're the Giants, in which case you just go Chris Moneymaker three straight times.

Molina is in the lineup, at least according to the Cards website.

!@#$ the Giants.

HOW DID WE GET SMOKED BY BARRY ZITO AND RYAN VOGELSONG!?!?!?!?

God dammit that LCS will piss me off until I die.

Well, LOL. No more than 4 of them could have won. Factor in how many of them made the WS.

In the 10 years of just 1 WC team per league... 1 WS champion. In the 4 years of there being 2 WC teams per league, 2 WS champions. And the Royals were a WS participant.

I've not seen the numbers on WS participants being WC.

It just seems like the WC game winners have more momentum and are playing with house money. Just like the Royals last year, and potentially the Cubs tonight.

I'd rather go back to 1 WC team, personally. Even though it benefitted the Royals.

In 1985, we benefitted from going from a 5 game series to a 7 games LCS, as well.

IMO, a 7-game LDS and a 7-Game LCS is better for the teams that had the better record throughout the season. Now the playoffs are a crap shoot.

Just an opinion...

Playoffs have, and will always be, a crapshoot. Even seven games is not a representative sample size in baseball.

If you wanted a true representation of the best team, have it set up the way it was before '69 and then have the two league champions play a 51 game series.

Your numbers are off a little, too.

'97, '02, '03, '04, '11 were all WC teams.

Best of 51. LMAO ROFL

Cardinal website is for shit. Molina is out.

Disagree. I think he made a difference behind the plate on Friday.

Yep, all true. But the Cardinals have won 5 straight NLDS elimination games. 5-0. They have had their backs to the wall and responded.

Lackey reminds me so much of Chris Carpenter. He is a bulldog on the mound. He just wills himself and his teammates to wins.

The Cardinals are simply getting by on pure grit and determination at this point ... I personally think with all of the injuries they are the least talented team left in the entire playoffs.

I think most Cardinals fans will admit that.

We lost Martinez right before the playoffs. He was an All-Star. He has the best stuff on the team. Wacha and Lynn are tired. Waino doesn't have the arm strength to start. We have Lackey and a fragile Garcia.

We lost Yadi. Holliday and Grichuk are still trying to find their stroke coming off injuries.

If we win, it will only be because their "toughness" overcame talent and momentum.

Losing Martinez was the death knell.

He was the guy with the swagger to go out there and stare down Arrieta. He was the guy that still had some bullets in his gun.

Once he went down, it became very similar to the 2011 post-season except the level of competition in the NL this year is several of orders of magnitude higher than it was in 2011.

Carpenter, chaff and a powerful offense wouldn't have gotten it done this year, let alone Lackey, chaff and a largely popgun offense.

They just don't have the horses and they're running on fumes.

It's disappointing, but it's the reality of it.

Yep, Martinez could walk the bases loaded and then strike out the side. He has a Cy Young ceiling.

They have always stepped it up another gear come playoff time. But this year they just look tired. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if they win today like Hootie said, they just have too much pride and grit to go down just yet.

Great start for Hammel. :#

At least make it to the 5th you bum.

Thats making a statement early.

Lackey looks to be "on".

I had no doubt in my mind STL would win this one .. I should've bet it. Too busy at work. You can't slay your nemesis that easily ... It'll take some actual dramatics

Already waiting for Maddon to pull Hammel. Everything is flat and up.