Random Musings On An Anniversary

Pretty much what it says on the tin

Seventeen years ago today, I kicked off my Cardinal blogging career. Seems like a good day to dust this place off and talk about the team as we get close to the All-Star Break.

First off, I have to say that my last piece didn’t hold up that well. The club was 32-34 when I wrote that and they are 48-45 now, a record a little deflated by the current three game losing streak. Still, a five game improvement over the month does indicate that this team was better than I gave them credit for, enough that playing weaker teams boosted them a bit.

It should be also noted that the Cards took two of three from the Braves in there, so it wasn’t just beating up on weak teams. It is a little disconcerting that the only other plus-.500 team in that stretch, the Royals, swept them this week but turning a two-game series into a doubleheader is a bit of an extenuating circumstance. I think the pitching decisions in the first game especially would have been different had it been as scheduled.

It’s hard to really pinpoint why things have gone well. It felt to me like the home runs were up, but they hit 28 in the last 26 games compared to 33 in the 26 games before that. The previous selection had an OPS of .735, the current .725. (This selection does not include last night’s game because Baseball Reference isn’t updated yet, but it’s not like getting dominated by Kyle Hendricks yet again helped the numbers.)

So while the offense has had some better games, including this past Sunday when they were actually able to win by more than four runs (something that has happened only 6 times this season, the same as the Rockies and one more than the Marlins), but overall it doesn’t seem like we’ve seen a significant uptick in the offensive results. It’s still significantly better than we saw in the worst part of the season, from the start of the season through Mother’s Day (29 homers in 40 games, .639 OPS) but it doesn’t really support a mindset change from the last post.

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Let’s look at the pitching. Over the past month (again, not counting last night), the staff has a 3.88 ERA. That’s not an improvement over the ERA of the last 26 games (3.66 ERA) though it definitely is better than the first part of the season (4.25 ERA).

Looking at B-R’s monthly splits, it looks like June as a whole was a good pitching month that sort of stands out from the rest.

Obviously July is a small sample skewed by the two games with the Royals but you can see the significant dip most numbers took last month. Was that a function of the pitching getting better or was it taking advantage of the schedule? If it’s the latter, that’s a problem because August looks stacked with good teams. At Kansas City. Home against the Dodgers and Brewers. At Minnesota. Home against the Padres. At the Yankees.

Granted the trade deadline comes soon and the club is likely to shore up the pitching staff. It feels like, for the fact that St. Louis has been one of the best teams since Mother’s Day, they are going to have to step up their game to keep their playoff hopes alive.

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It’s remarkable how quickly a tone can shift. When the Cards were rained out on Tuesday and the Brewers lost, St. Louis found itself 4 back in the division and both three games back from Atlanta for the first wild card and three games clear of the teams outside the playoff picture.

Three straight losses and the Cards are five out in the division (and just 2 1/2 ahead of Pittsburgh) and tied for the final wild card spot, up one on the Padres and Diamondbacks. A rough weekend could see them on the outside looking in and lead to a little angst over the break.

Now, it could easily go the other way. Take the next three against the Cubs, keeping them from continuing their momentum, and you probably solidify the postseason picture a little more while allowing the four days off to be more excitement about the draft and the trade deadline than worry and discontent. I think that’s what they should do, honestly.

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The team is also starting to get healthy, which may give it a boost. Lars Nootbaar is back. Ivan Herrera came off the IL, though the club immediately optioned him to Memphis.

(That is both a testament to how well Pedro Pages works as a backup catcher and a critique of how bad Herrera’s dealing with the running game was. It’s going to be interesting to see how he improves that in Memphis. I also—and I’ve made this statement many times since the Willson Contreras signing—feel like Herrera doesn’t really work as a backup. A young, talented guy like that should be starting regularly and that’s hard to do with Contreras healthy. He obviously has work left to do but the bat is hard to hide on the bench. Pages, to me, feels like a much better backup catcher fit.)

Then there’s the elusive Tommy Edman. Edman is actually playing minor league baseball games in a rehab now, something that many of us weren’t sure would ever happen this year. Dayn Perry’s got a great look at the roster situation with Edman over at Birdy Work (if you aren’t subscribing, you’re doing it wrong) and it does feel like when he’s ready that’s the end of the line for either Brandon Crawford or Dylan Carlson. The path of least resistance, something that the Cards are famous for, would be to option Carlson, allowing them to have their cake and eat it too in a certain fashion. The more logical move, given how you should be using Edman especially with the emergence of Michael Siani’s magical glove, would be to thank Crawford for his service. We’ll see which one they pick, assuming they even have to. Baseball, after all, finds a way. Plus if Edman isn’t ready until closer to the trade deadline, some trade might free a spot.

I don’t know how much Edman is going to bring to the team this year offensively—a typically league-average hitter after missing half a season doesn’t scream offensive upgrade—but his glove at multiple positions allowing for some different days off or matchups should be a good thing.

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Ryan Helsley is, at least of this writing, the only Cardinals representative to the All-Star Game. Surprisingly, it took MLB adding him after the player vote left him (and every other Cardinal) off of the roster.

I have always been a supporter of the “every team gets a representative” idea that gets so bashed around baseball. Every fan base should have a person that they can root for or anticipate getting into the game. If you want the ASG to be the “best of the best”, that’s fine, but then treat it that way. That would require more at bats and innings from starters. I think the approach of the past to the All-Star Game was very interesting, with players playing the whole game. It might mean you do the roster selection by statistical measure instead of fan voting.

That said, if it’s an exhibition, it’s an exhibition. That means letting the fans see who they want to see, whether that’s “the best player” or not. It means letting every team have someone there. I have no problem either way, I just want things to be consistent.

The ASG is also really late this year. The Cards will have played 31 series by the time they get the break, with only 21 series left. Usually it’s more around the 85-88 game range instead of the 96 game spot it is this year. I say that, but I’m probably also thinking more of when it was when I was growing up. Over the last few years, with an earlier start to the season, it may have had more games on the front end.

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Disturbing news for those of you, like me, that are hoping for direct streaming options with no blackouts. Diamond Sports and Comcast are back talking, trying to reach an agreement that gets teams back on the cable distributor’s airwaves.

To be fair, this would be good for those that have Comcast and haven’t been able to watch their teams since May 1, but for baseball to get back the streaming rights (or at least the option to use them), Diamond Sports needs to fail. There’s supposed to be a bankruptcy hearing at the end of the month. If Comcast is on board by then, Diamond has a stronger case to make that they are going to be able to come out of this reorganization viable, with agreements with most major providers and with Amazon money coming in.

MLB wants to be able to stream without blackouts. The Cardinals are one of the teams that have retained their streaming rights but can’t really use them while the currently Bally’s (to be renamed FanDuel) is still a thing. I believe that, if Diamond goes away, the Cardinals would have a streaming package option available before the season started next year.

As long time readers and listeners know, I haven’t had access to watching Cardinal games since the end of the 2022 season. The price point on DirecTV Stream, while lower than the satellite version, still got to the point that it was untenable, especially since the Cardinals were the only thing I was really using it for.

Not being able to watch the team brings a lot of disconnect. I keep up the best I can with GameDay and Twitter and articles and podcasts, but you lose something not being able to see things and really get invested in games. Granted, not being able to see last season wasn’t a terrible thing, but it’s still a situation where you feel a bit discombobulated after having a baseball game on every night for 15 years or so, whenever I first started getting Fox Sports Net games down here.

I would love to have my current MLB.tv subscription allow me to watch the Cardinals, but I would be fine with paying an extra fee on top of that to make sure I could. It would still be cheaper than the past option and it would allow me to get reacquainted with my old friend.

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Sunday is the draft and the Cardinals, as you well know, have their highest pick in since I was fresh out of college. (That’s a long time, if you are wondering.) As an Arkansas Razorback alum, I’d be quite excited to see Hagen Smith be the selection. I’m not sure the last Razorback that was drafted and made it to the majors as a Cardinal. I know that Tom Pagnozzi is the classic one but not sure if there has been once then then. There are a couple of guys that were supposed to be Hogs—Masyn Winn and Tink Hence—but the Cards drafted them and pulled them away from their commitment.

If Smith or Chase Burns is available, it’s hard to see how St. Louis passes on that. The pitching depth is pretty limited in the minor leagues, though Quinn Matthews is an intriguing person to add to Hence in the lists. It’s going to be very interesting to see what the club does. As John Mozeliak told us last month, they can’t miss on this pick. Not only because of how high they pick, but because they don’t have a second round pick and the draft class isn’t considered to be terribly deep. By the time they pick in the third round most if not all of those considered to be the “good stuff” should be gone.

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We’ve just one episode left of The Acolyte. It’s been an interesting series, one I’m not completely sure about. Not of its quality—I have enjoyed it—but going into the last episode I’m not sure what we’ll see.

I won’t get into detail, in part because of spoilers, in part because many people reading this don’t care, but you can now understand why the Jedi we see in the first episode or two are in the positions they are in. I wonder if there is going to be some more exploration of that in the last episode, though I would assume not given they’ve already done enough flashbacks. I’m also interested to see if there are any surprise reveals or if they leave a few things mysterious. The show runner has talked about ideas for other seasons while saying this one could be a stand-alone. I’m hoping it gets a second and that it doesn’t take forever to get it.

That’s the problem with these streaming shows, isn’t it? Unless they plan for things, years can pass between seasons. For instance, Marvel just dropped a trailer for Agatha All Along. That is sort of a spin-off of the single season of WandaVision, which came out at the beginning of 2021. There will be more than 2 1/2 years between when we last saw Agatha Harkness and when we now see her. Has the buzz faded? Do people care as much as they may have right after WV? I don’t know.

Back to Star Wars. After next week, we’re in a gap of televised content. There’s a LEGO Star Wars special in September and those are always fun but for actual canon stuff we have to wait until Skelton Crew, a show that started production in early 2022, finished filming at the end of January 2023, showed a trailer only to those at Star Wars Celebration in summer of 2023, and then….nothing really. It was supposed to be out last winter, but it got bumped. We’re probably about five months away and that initial trailer has never been officially released.

I am sure that this is going to be a fun show, harkening back to those ‘80s movies like The Goonies and such, but it’s really surprising how little we know and have seen from a show that has been around this long.

Also, I saw that it appears Lucasfilm is working on its next animation show. With Dave Filoni being so involved in the live action realm now, including his own movie, I don’t know how much oversight he’ll have on this project. Which makes a difference—Star Wars Resistance was his concept but not something he was all that involved with and it was the weakest of the animated shows. I hope that this show is set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. I continue my campaign for a “Luke Skywalker searches for Jedi students” show.

Also the second series of Star Wars Unlimited cards came out this weekend. My son and I opened a box last night and will probably be constructing decks today to get a few games in. I got a Hondo Ohnaka card so I was happy—gotta love Hondo!

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Thanks for reading, especially if you made it this far. A few links:

Meet Me at Musial, which we recorded yesterday

Last week’s Gateway to Baseball Heaven, with a new one coming tomorrow.

If you are interested in Cardinals podcasts, I put together a fairly extensive list of them over here.