In the event of Rapture all other teams will be Left Behind: the 2015 St. Louis Cardinals

the underrated one

With almost 200 plate appearances in 2015, Holliday is more than a third of the way to a 10th consecutive season of qualifying for the batting title while delivering a park-adjusted offensive line at least 30 percent better than league average. Since World War II, only 13 other hitters have managed such a streak. Six of them are Hall of Famers: Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, and Reggie Jackson. Two more are on the verge of induction: Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell. Another two will be elected when eligible: Jim Thome and Albert Pujols. And the final three would be shoo-ins or strong candidates if not for their ties to PEDs: Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, and Alex Rodriguez. That group of 13 hitters includes more than a third of the 500 Home Run Club, and its least prolific power hitter, Piazza, went deep 427 times.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-mlb-matt-holliday-st-louis-cardinals/

never touched the plate

he'll be going for pujols' franchise record of 42 straight games reaching base to start the season, tonight

never touched the plate

<3 thank you

good lord, this team and baserunning

i can picture the st louis cardinals team collectively getting lost in tthe halls of heir hotel
just totally confused, running around, weeeeee

where is my room, which room is yours, where is home
weeeeeeee /hardcut to jose oquendo, pissed

good lord, baserunning must really be costing this 30-16 team, which is also 17-5 at home

if only the pirates had been in town; a walk-off would have been tres-exciting

if there were any justice in this world they would be 46-0 right now and the entire NL would just cancel the season

weeeeee

http://i.imgur.com/tp42i3T.png

rip Matt Adams

classic mathenaging going on right now, with holliday, jay, and grichuk starting today. unless heyward is injured (he's not), he's just getting straight-up benched in favor of grichuk.

looks like it's up to mozeliak to resolve the situation since matheny is incapable, again. shades of the allen craig situation last year.

granted, with jay back, it is a difficult situation as all 5 OFs have value. and grichuk has definitely been playing very well. way over his head, but very well.

grichuk is LEADING OFF TODAY

holliday playing, despite sitting for the flu the other day and being removed halfway through last night's game after feeling sick

both bourjos and jay on the bench

http://i.imgur.com/NxjHo7n.gif

i guess matheny had second (only?) thoughts and updated the lineup:

Peter Bourjos, CF
Matt Carpenter, 3B
Jhonny Peralta, SS
Randal Grichuk, LF
Yadier Molina, C
Mark Reynolds, 1B
Jason heyward, RF
Pete Kozma, 2B
Carlos Martinez, P

It's gotta be tough being a Cardinals fan.

It's agonizing, I tell you

holliday taking grounders at first!

really hoping that's just as an emergency backup kind of situation, or maybe for late game situations where one of the 4th or 5th outfielders pinch hits, takes over LF to improve the OF defense, and Holliday moves over to 1B to keep his bat in the game. but he has no business playing there for a full game. there's a perception that 1B is a relatively easy position, but i think playing him there for a full game on any sort of regular basis would give away quite a few runs.

i favor a trade for adam lind. he and mark reynolds would actually make for a pretty sweet platoon. and i think lind could be obtained without giving up one of the few standout prospects that the cardinals still have.

yeah. pedro alvarez is a minor disaster at first, even after having once been a serviceable third baseman. (i don't recall a team using a late-game defensive replacement on a first baseman, but he is regularly subbed out for sean rodriguez.)

mark reynolds does kinda look done tho? no power, no cred

yeah. i really hate watching him play. he has the slugger reputation because he somehow manages to hit 20 HRs, but his SLG was .393 in 2013, .392 in 2014, and now .393 again so far in 2015. he's consistent with that, at least!

Does Holliday always argue balls and strikes like that?

not like THAT. i was smdh at that, ugh. he does tend to do a lot of the whiny face whenever he strikes out (so do a majority of the cardinals. it's the worst thing about them imo). there was an article a week or two ago showing that holliday and matt carpenter really HAVE been getting completely screwed by umpires this year, so it's not like they're completely wrong. but although the pitch he struck out on last night wasn't a strike, it wasn't THAT bad, and he looked like a complete douche.

also though, i think whenever joe west is behind the plate the players on any team are more likely to notice shitty calls because that's joe west's thing

tbf, he was the victim of the worst-umpired single at-bat i've seen this season:

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/numlocation_io.php?pitchSel=434538&game=gid_2015_05_02_pitmlb_slnmlb_1/&batterX=50&innings=yyyyyyyyy&sp_type=1&s_type=3&league=mlb&pnf=&zlpo=

i remember that one! who was the home plate ump for that game?

I didn't see the game, but apparently West saddled Braun with an even more egregious strike zone earlier in the game? The Cardinals replay kept showing Braun's reaction from the outfield as Holliday was tossed

This tweet is otm though:

Kyle Lobner ‏@BrewFrostyMug 1h1 hour ago
Today I learned: Taking five minutes to leave after an ejection is ok for Matt Holliday, but ~5 extra seconds on a home run trot is not.

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/numlocation.php?pitchSel=572788&game=gid_2015_06_02_milmlb_slnmlb_1/&batterX=47&innings=yyyyyyyyy&sp_type=1&s_type=3&league=mlb&pnf=&zlpo=

doesn't seem *too* egregious, but as with the liriano at-bat, ppl get pissed when the zone is expanded on both sides, and holliday no doubt thought the second pitch was outside. also that was the only inside strike west called against right-handers the entire game

starting pitching + OBP = slow grind of wins

Jay proves this wrong every year but why MM starts our 5th best OF every day is weird.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGwCFzvWwAAA8q5.jpg
@KyleMcClellan46
Bruce Sutter being a good sport while our team is beating his team #TeamWillieMcGee #CardsFantasyCamp @Cardinals

#TeamWillieMcGee

http://i.imgur.com/VrNmcMc.gif

http://i.imgur.com/lrtpfh0.gif

I might be more sour if Shelby Miller hadn't been pitching well for ATL, but naaaah, I'll always love that guy.

yeah, i'm trying to soak up his presence while i can. even though he's been slumping he's still really fun to watch

lol red sox just drafted matheny's kid as a fourth round pick

god, i hope he becomes the most boastful player ever in like 7 years or whenever (if ever) he makes it to the big leagues and plays the game the most bat-flippingly "wrong way" possible, plz baseball lords grant me this

You got a Tate!

lol from over the monster:

Father Mike requested that St. Louis not draft his son again, though...Matheny is "one of the best all-around outfielders in college baseball" according to MLB.com, and Baseball America rated him 107 on their pre-draft top-500. BA does not see him as an every day center fielder, though, believing that his future is at second base if he wants to start every day, or as a fourth outfielder who can fill in at any of three outfield spots with ease. There is some obvious downside there, but Matheny has some of that Cardinals' blood in him, so this will all look silly in five years when he's a perennial, scrappy all-star because that's just how it works for St. Louis baseball.

is his dad trying to tell us something or did he just not want to pull a doc rivers and coach his heir

Keri:

Opponents are batting just .205 against Cards pitchers with runners in scoring position. That’s 37 points lower than their RISP results a year ago, and 55 points lower than what they’ve allowed with the bases empty this season. With two outs and runners in scoring position, the results have been borderline illegal, with opponents batting just .159/.255/.226 in those spots. Returning to Cluster Luck, we see that the Cardinals have allowed a jaw-dropping 41 fewer runs than you’d expect from a team scattering hits at a league-average rate....

When you throw 65.4 percent of your pitches for strikes, as the Cardinals’ starters have this year, you’re bound to pitch deep into games. And that longevity has enabled the properly rested St. Louis bullpen to flourish. Of course, it has taken a group effort (plus good defense, plus those flashy high-leverage results), but Cards relievers are sporting a stellar 2.03 ERA on the year.

It might be true that it’s better to be lucky than good. But as the Cardinals could tell you, it’s definitely best to be both.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/mlb-the-30-white-sox-tigers-twins-cardinals-future/

xpost
2/3/15:

"The answer to your question is no, the Cardinals are not allowed to draft him," the manager said. "It's not fair to him. It really isn't. There would be too much on him and there would always be that little bit of (wonder) that it wasn't all that he did, that it had something to do with me."

matheny ended up softening that a bit though in the last few days, saying he'd be open to the cardinals drafting him. i dunno. the mathenys are really weird.

xpost
i expect the cardinals to regress heavily, especially if matt holliday ends up out for the year. wacha and martinez have been fantastic, but neither one of them should be allowed to throw 180-200 IP this year, so something's bound to go wrong

it's pretty common for teams to draft their coaches'/GM's/ex-players' kids in the late rounds just as a courtesy (like piazza, back in the day). but yeah if the kid is actually good, it has to be awkward -- is he getting promotions/at-bats/chances just because of his dad? etc. and if he's a fourth-rounder i guess he's pretty good.

cuts both ways, i guess -- the braves traded kyle wren shortly after they canned his dad

St. Louis Cardinals ‏@Cardinals 17 minutes ago
#STLCards place OF Matt Holliday (right quad strain) on 15-day DL. RHP Miguel Socolovich recalled from Memphis (AAA) for tonight's game.

phew (?)

@b_hoffman11: Siegrist and Rosenthal combined: 2 2/3 IP 0 R 0 H 0 BB 6 K. Fastballs averaged 97 #STLCards

@DanHirsch
#Cardinals fewest runs allowed through first 61 games:
1944: 167 (WS)
2015: 177
1968: 183 (WS)
1943: 188 (NL)
1942: 190 (WS)

(so fucked up that the tag is actually #STLCards because of fuckin football tho)

St. Louis Cardinals Investigated by F.B.I. for Hacking Astros

stepping up their heel game along w/ the Royals