Dan and McCarver are just ****ing awful. One game and I can't stand it. How can this team not get better announcers?

I love the cards, but the doom and gloomers in this thread make it hard to read, most of you sound like grumpy old women in here.

Oh comon. It's not like we haven't seen this team boot the ball around the infield for 3 or 4 straight years now.

Carlos Martinez has been hot garbage all day today. Yank him and use one of our 49 relief pitchers.

I can't believe they let him lead off last inning.....

No shit. This is exactly what we’ve seen the last few years. Terrible defense, Martinez’ complete 1st inning incompetence, and 17 strikeouts.

Tried to watch the game online, but it's blocked out.

Just saw the score, that's probably a good thing. :shake:

Pretty awful all around effort today. Minus Yadi's two run jack.

14 plus ks and Turdy Pham carved up with ease on breaking balls....Dan jerks off to Jose Martinez and a no name reliever pitching a scoreless inning. Pathetic.

"Hey remember that time when the Cards were good!" Jesus ****

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Grumpy old man

Until they bring in a new broadcast team and a better two hole hitter ...yeah

and how do you describe Hicks performance? Martinez 3 hits?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Grumpy old man

I would be more worried about Martinez pulling his head out of his ass than the #2 hitter or the broadcast team.

I think this is probably what Martinez will always be.

Flashes of brilliance surrounded by meh.

He was trying to pick his way around the plate today, he needs to just hurl it.

To be fair, i turned it off after cecil to go to work :)

Concerning that he was pitching to minor leaguers all spring and then looks like complete Pawnmower today.

true dat. His next outing he could throw 7 innings of 1 hit ball.

he was trying to make the perfect pitch to get out of trouble.

Maybe he thinks he can get out of any jam. And it is a possibility. We have all seen him walk the bases loaded then strike out the next 3 batters.

I swear Martinez looked absolutely terrified of every left handed hitter he saw today. Wouldn’t throw it anywhere near the plate.

And that covers about half the Mets lineup.

Too bad we didn't draw the Mets a couple of months into the season, when half their team is on the DL.

Kinda shocked that you guys signed Holland. $14 million seems kinda high.

Well, it's pretty obvious that we need the help.

That’s nothing in today’s baseball money for one year deals. Baseball just gave each team $50 million for the sale of some software that was developed on Mlb.com. It’s the long term deals with players that go south that matter.

Bigger possible hit on this is that we had to give up a second rounder (the 59th draft pick in the draft) and $500k in international money.

Martinez will be fine. Inconsistent, but fine.

Looks like a repeat of Thursday is on tap for this afternoon. :cuss:

Terrible

DeGrom carves up the pathetic top three of the Cards and the Muts rope missiles all over the place for a 2-0 lead.

I know it’s just the 2nd game of the year but it looks like a repeat of last year. I’m sure they will hit some hot streaks and stay around .500 baseball.

Pham had a horrible spring. Complained about his eyesight. He hasn’t looked good at all. Carp laced a ball hard in the first.

Carp had a double play to end the 1st without a score and made a bad decision.

Told y'all

Should have traded Pham last year when he had some value. He won’t last at the 2 spot. We do have Matheny as manager so maybe he will.

yeah Matheny will back Pham, and that will hurt us for many games before he’s pulled to get his act together.

I think I heard on one of the spring broadcasts that Matheny has the 6th most experience in managing a MLB team now. He’s still making the same mistakes he did in his rookie year.

DeGrom sure got a wide strike zone that AB.

Garcia stares at strike 3.

9th k of the day for the Cardinals.

Pathetic

Nine strikeouts already. SMH.

I don’t think they’re good enough to stay around .500.

I should have went to San Antonio this weekend instead of STL next weekend.

ROFLROFL

Great teamwork Pham. Way to go getting in front of Ozuna for the throw home.

Pham what the **** was that?!?

Then he k's on a pitch half a mile out of the zone. Is he blind?

I’m beginning to think Mike has no ****ing clue what’s he’s doing.

Beginning to? He is clueless.

:eek:BEGINING? :cuss:

Okay why in the hell do you play him in those last few spring training games if his shoulder is hurting? Just rest him and don’t let this linger all year. Hernandez was saying on the broadcast l watched today that his swing didn’t look crisp. Wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t nursing some tweak or injury. And of course......


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Marcell Ozuna has been receiving treatment on his shoulder, and he said it&#39;s much improved from the start of spring training. Not quite full-strength, but &quot;much better, all good, getting there.&quot; Tommy Pham says if Ozuna&#39;s &quot;arm is healthy I don&#39;t do that.&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/stlcards?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#stlcards</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MLB?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MLB</a></p>&mdash; Derrick Goold (@dgoold) <a href="https://twitter.com/dgoold/status/980196432966799361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

welllll now we know why he did that.

Yes, yes let the hate flow through you. Finally, you guys understand.

So far in 2 games this season, he's let the pitcher hit in the top half of an inning, only to pinch hit for him in the bottom half.
All of the moves made in the offseason really won't matter, this team will go nowhere under the "leadership" of Mike Matheny, Michigan Man.

I'd root for a total tank but I still dont think Dewitt would fire him.:sulk:

I'm planning for 2019 when our young pitching and Reyes will be ready to go as front line starters. Holland was a stop gap till Hicks gets another year under his belt. He could be MLB's next top closer.

1-If Hicks is relegated to the bullpen, then the front office has failed.
2-All of the young talent will continue to waste under Mike Matheny, Michigan Man.

All this young pitching talent needs to be moved for a middle of the Oder bat

A better idea is to spend $300 million and get Manny in the 3 hole.

On the open market,he isn’t coming to stl

Dejong with 2 homers, Ozuna and Pham with 3 hits each. Bowman, Hicks and Leone looked fantastic in relief. Matheny didn’t make any bonehead managerial moves today.

Where’s all the grumpy old men?

I didn't watch. Glad we won. Also glad the freezing rain is out of the forecast for the weekend!

I wasn't panicking early.

I actually think they are putting together a good young team. Probably wont win it all but I like what they are doing.

They aren't over committed on a single player and have a bunch of young talent.

This...we have better options than the past two years.

I agree. This is going to be a very good team, maybe sooner than later.

Despite Mo's bumbling and Meathead's gameday management, we have another winning window opening up in 2019.

We have so much young talent in pitching and the outfield plus supposedly the best young catcher in the game that we can trade for offense and still have that coming window.

We have the money to compete in that window starting in 2019. We must have a #3 hole hitter to complete this window. We can pay the $300 million to get Manny and still have our window. If other teams offer $300 million, we should offer $325 million or $350 million. The young cost controlled pitching and outfielders will help balance out the payroll. Manny is the missing #3 basher we need to shape our offense into a championship winning team.

Mikolas 2 run dinger for his first MLB hit.

Lol

DeJong appears to be the real deal.

Really hope they intend to get Hicks into the rotation sooner than later. Dude is filth

they had Martinez, Waino, Reyes and Wacha pitch in relief their first year in MLB. Then next season moved them to starter.

Why should Hicks be different? What’s the rush? He doesn’t even turn 22 until late Sept. He spent last season pitching in “A” ball for crissakes.

See Trevor Rosenthal

The Cardinals think they have the front-end talent in the back of their rotation

https://theathletic.com/297984/2018/...heir-rotation/


When experts shied away from picking the St. Louis Cardinals going into this season, they often cited a vanilla starting pitching rotation.

A lot of Cardinals fans wanted the team to sign one of the remaining name-brand starters as spring training kept going and a few remained available.

The Cardinals didn’t budge in that direction, and here’s why: They think they could have one of the deepest rotations in the game before long. Judging by early results, they’re not necessarily crazy.

The area of this Cardinals roster with some of the dimmest name recognition also has some of the most exciting upside.

After Adam Wainwright strained a hamstring and then Carlos Martínez and Michael Wacha pitched duds in New York, the relative no names have steadied the ship.

Luke Weaver and Miles Mikolas soothed Cardinal fan nerves with solid starts. Jack Flaherty could pitch the Cardinals to a three-game winning streak with a good start Tuesday.

Wainwright likely won’t pitch for another week or so, and top prospect Alex Reyes is about two months from joining the rotation, but the Cardinals believe what they have now is good enough to get them through this. Once they get healthy, they could have enviable depth.

A burly right-hander, Mikolas is, for now, best known for swallowing a live lizard while in the Arizona Fall League (hey, we all did crazy stuff when we were 22, right?).

He is with the Cardinals on a two-year, $15.5 million deal because scouts Matt Slater and Jeff Ishii liked him and the Cardinals analytics department loved him. Why? One phrase:

“A high strikeout rate in a contact league is interesting,” Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said.

In three seasons pitching for the Yomiuri Giants, Mikolas had a strikeout-per-nine rate of 8.1. It was an indication to the Cardinals that Mikolas not only continued to have good command but that his raw stuff had enjoyed an uptick. In MLB, where hitters often sell out contact in a bid for home runs, Mikolas might be roughly as effective as he was in Japan and that’s saying something. He was 31-13 with a 2.18 ERA.

The Cardinals saw surprising velocity from Mikolas all spring. He looked pretty strong dotting a 97-mph fastball on the outside margin of the strike zone to strike out Ryan Braun on Monday, when he held the Brewers to four runs in 5 2/3 innings.

“The more we watched, the better he looked,” Matheny said of Mikolas’ spring.

Weaver started his season promisingly with five strong innings against the New York Mets on Sunday and helped shake the pitching from its sluggish start. Beforehand, Matheny said he doesn’t view Weaver as he might another pitcher with just 18 major league starts.

A lot of perceptions changed when Weaver came up for his second taste of the big leagues on the eve of Independence Day last summer.

He was different. In 2016, the Cardinals watched a rookie pitcher who gave too much credit to major-league hitters and walked too many. When he tired of giving free passes, he threw too many strikes and got hit hard. Then, he showed up the following summer.

“He just had a physical confidence on the mound that relayed into how he was executing pitches,” Matheny said. “I’ve seen enough from him. I don’t think the rest of the baseball world has – maybe Cardinal fans who pay close attention – so he’s done enough to take away a lot of those doubts.”

Weaver’s approach is not typical of a young pitcher. With two runners on base against the Mets, Weaver – his jersey sleeves flapping in a cool, westerly wind in Queens — faced a possible make-or-break moment in the first inning.

He showed Wilmer Flores everything he had in a nine-pitch at-bat and, as a result, he got away clean. That allowed the Cardinals to get their first lead of 2017.

He threw four different pitches, starting with an 82-mph curveball for a strike. When Flores fought through changeups and cutters, then fouled off two 94-mph four-seam fastballs in a row, Weaver froze him by throwing an 81-mph curveball on the outer edge for a strike. Here's the video.

The least-known commodity, Flaherty, will make just his sixth major-league start when he faces the Brewers on Tuesday. The Cardinals hope Flaherty, like Weaver, benefits from having already gotten major-league time last season. While he wasn’t terribly effective, pitching to a 6.33 ERA and 1.55 WHIP, he did show a sometimes-devastating slider. In the spring, he refined a sinker to give him a five-pitch mix.

“The kid’s got pretty special stuff,” Matheny said. “You watch him, and he competes and prepares like a guy who’s been around a whole lot longer than he has.”

Flaherty’s first stop in St. Louis this season could be a short one. Wainwright, according to all accounts, should be ready to return after just 10 days on the disabled list, meaning Flaherty likely will be sent to Triple-A Memphis. Still, two starts, if they’re strong, will keep him in his current role: as the Cardinals’ No. 6 starter.

What – or, in fact, who — the Cardinals have going for them as they try to bring along the untested back of their rotation is Yadier Molina. He spoke highly of the young pitchers he saw this spring, taking special care to get to know their unique repertoires and competitive styles throughout camp. There’s a reason he has a reputation as one of the best handlers of pitchers the game has seen.

Molina encourages the pitchers he doesn’t know to shake him off as much as they want the first few times he catches them.

“That’s the best way for a catcher to learn a guy, not sit back and go, ‘I have a whole bunch of Gold Gloves, and I can show them to you if you need to see them. So, do what I tell you,’ ” Matheny said. “It’s never that conversation. It’s, ‘Show me what you’re thinking. Do your thing, and then trust the fact we’re not going to let you do anything stupid.’ ”

The Cardinals will stay on the lookout for rookie mistakes. Meanwhile, they sound pretty confident in their least-tested starters.

Can someone explain to me why Gyorko should be on the bench vs Martinez starting at first?

Martinez can flat out rake, but he can not play defense worth a shit.

Best everday line up should have Wong/Marp/Gyorko in it.

full article here:

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/platfor...mp-thump-thump

All aboard the Jose Martinez train

If you weren’t already, it’s probably time to go ahead and let yourself get all hyped up

This probably isn’t news to you if you’ve been following along closely over the past year. It isn’t like Jose Martinez has completely flown under the radar. VEB’s John Fleming, in particular, has been banging the drum for Martinez with some frequency this offseason. A national baseball nerd-blog writer who has since been hired to help run a team in real life asked if Jose Martinez was the new J.D. Martinez is September. I’m not covering new ground here, and I have little big-picture information to add to those pieces. If you want lots of detail supporting the idea that Jose Martinez might be awesome now, read those. For our purposes today, I’ll just play the hits:

The fancy cameras in MLB stadiums that track batted-ball velocity and angle off the bat let us calculate average results for each batted ball given its characteristics off the bat. By that metric (xwOBA) Martinez was the 5th-best hitter in all of baseball last year (minimum 200 PAs).
That elite result was driven by the 15th-best xwOBA on balls hit in the air (minimum 100 such events), combined with a better-than-average 19.5% strikeout rate. Lots of contact + good quality contact on balls in the air = great overall production.

Martinez was comically good against lefties in 2017: best xwOBA in the league by 38 points.

For good measure, he was the 7th-best hitter in the league when going the other way in 2017 (minimum 40 events).
Jose Martinez creamed the ball all of 2017. He creamed it during Spring Training this year. He creamed it in the opening series against the Mets. He appears to be a guy who creams the ball. There are many compelling pieces of evidence pointing that way.

Which is to say, it’s time to seriously entertain the possibility (if you hadn’t already, which you should have!) that Jose Martinez is great. A guy the Cardinals got for cash considerations after the Royals designated him for assignment in 2016, because he was too old to be a prospect and didn’t seem to be much good. A guy I remember squinting at when he came into a clutch spot against the Cubs late that year, in a game I happened to be at, and thinking this guy, who is this, this won’t work (it didn’t, but that’s not the point). A guy many of us, myself included, scoffed at when he made the roster after a strong 2017 spring.

There’s a real chance that this guy has become the best hitter the Cardinals have,

I like Jose

Martinez has the best batting average and slugging % of all Cardinals since late in 2016 when he first got a taste of the majors with the Cards.

Gyrko headed to the 10 day DL most likely due to a hamstring.

Ozuna smashed that ball!

Martinez can rake, fellas

Don’t tell Rams Fan

The Kentucky traitor?

Flaherty looked fantastic tonight. That slider was pinpoint on the corners all night.

9 strikeouts in 5 innings, yea he was tough to hit tonight.

As usual Matheny is a batter too late with his pitching change.

he’s went two games without a stupid bonehead managerial move, he was due.:#

Speaking of dumbass managerial moves, carp is either nursing an injury we don’t know about or why switch out Carp for the double switch two games in a row? One run game and Carp’s spot is due up 3rd in the 9th. Instead we get a useless Garcia AB?

...and they blow it.

God damn it