Surely no one from Missouri will tweet something incredibly stupid this year: The 2016 St. Louis Cardinals

"local man angry at player leaving team he didn't want to be on in the first place"

exactly! i mean, what's with heyward - he gets a brief taste of the #1 city in the world and he doesn't want to stay for the next 7-9 years???

Seung Hwan Oh's three closest comps for his slider are Scherzer, Tanaka, and Cueto.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/seung-hwan-oh-has-been-completely-unhittable/

Sussman, BP: Sometimes you can't predict baseball, but when a 30-year-old former backup catcher for the Twins and Pirates starts the season 6-for-6 for the Cardinals, sometimes it's like fish in a barrel.

via Bernie: With Jhonny Peralta (age 33) on the DL ... the Cardinals actually have a younger roster (average age) than the Cubs right now.
http://www.101sports.com/2016/04/18/cards-cubs-real-rivarly-enough-lazy-narratives/

he walked and threw someone out, too! that'll most likely be the highlight of his career. feels like hazelbaker's earned a place in the 4th OF competition with Pham, at least, but Diaz is the one I'm excited about. Peralta's obviously the starter once he gets back, but if Diaz keeps playing well it could open up an opportunity to trade Peralta at some point and at least get a return on him while he still has value. Oooor, if Wong never lives up to his potential (feel like they sent the extension his way a little too soon, even though it's likely to be a decent value), they could even think about moving carpenter back to 2B and sliding Diaz over to 3B. it's all small sample sizes of course, but i buy the future of diaz more than hazelbaker.

those guys will all have to sit now -- ruben tejada has been activated

fully expect Leake to get mashed tonight. like our chances with Martinez and Garcia a lot more.

yeah, same. not looking forward to 5 years of mediocrity from leake

it would help if he was funny or did something unique or had a weird delivery or something, but to be v v boring on top of mediocre is just too much to handle

my impression is he's a "who gives a shit, its just baseball" guy. which is fine if he could roll a .500 win pct and 4.50 era, eat innings and get sent to long relief in the playoffs. In his defense, he's supposed to be a ground ball pitcher and the cardinals fielding is very bad.

So it all went about as expected ●︿●

yeah, when i was advocating Diaz just upthread, i kind of forgot that he doesn't know how to play SS. yikes. the infield D would be bad enough with Diaz/Gyorko pretending to be shortstops and Holliday/Piscotty handling 1B a significant amount of time, but Wong has seemingly lost the ability to field routine grounders. nothing against Carp but when he's your standout defender in the IF, you know you have problems

if wong keeps this up he's gonna endure the entire wrath of al hrabosky. i have the game on mute but i can only imagine the sublimity of his concern

there was no evidence of a racial slur is the best cards news of the week. go team!

grich

i appreciate pitchers whose batting stances involve a leg kick

he used to be a SS back in the day

bobby? 2B

aledmys diaz, 5 for 5!

if he can only learn how to be a better SS, :D :D

wonder what it will take to get him out of the 8 hole

although it always seemed apparent hazelbaker's success is (was) a fluke, for some reason i have like full-on aledyms fever right now

viva el birdos ‏@vivaelbirdos 1 minute ago
Aledmys Diaz wRC+ of 267 leads MLB (Manny Machado 2nd)
Aledmys Diaz SLG of .875 leads MLB (Bryce Harper 2nd)
BA and OBP 1st, too
min 50 PA

omg aledmys diaz

wong has to be really nervous right now

anyway his BABIP of .500 will proooooobably regress but for now O_O

@Cardinals
.@EliasSports says Aledmys Diaz is the first MLB player to debut in the modern era to have a batting average of .500 through 50+ career ABs.

Wong's ISO is still 0.00.

Among hitters with enough PA's to qualify, there's only one other player at 0, and that's Chase Headley.

Aledmys Diaz O_O

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChI7d34WIAEcLB5.jpg

i keep waiting for the floor to drop out from under him, but enjoying it while it lasts. obviously the BABIP won't stay like this forever but he's making legitimate hard contact in nearly ever PA, so it's not totally flukey either

http://i64.tinypic.com/4zw2uw.jpg lol xposts

http://i.imgur.com/4TcPWft.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/4TcPWft.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/4TcPWft.jpg

looks like he has a mustache coming out of his nostrils in that pic

<3 aledmys

that's a Hornsby-like start, i'm sure enough to get him elected as an All-Star by TBFIB.

Fangraphs examines Diaz and other hot debuts of the decade

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/pitchers-cant-seem-to-get-the-aledmys-diaz-out/

this prooooobably won't last, but at this point, 4 of the top 10 in avg. flyball distance are cardinals, including moss at #2, piscotty at #4, holliday at #7 and hazelbaker at #10. (heyward is last, at #233, which means he is a bad baseball player)

http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/distanceleader.php

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15434472/st-louis-cardinals-looking-allegations-pitcher-carlos-martinez

.500 with +39 DIFF

This is a funny starting lineup.

Yadi's playing 1B (i'd rather just see him get a rare night off, especially with adams, moss, piscotty, and holliday all capable of playing 1B)

never put piscotty at first

interesting stat on the broadcast just now

they've scored 7+ runs 13 times, most in MLB
they've scored 1 run or less 9 times, second most in MLB

and that lines up with the experience of watching them so far this year. either blowouts against bad teams or incredibly frustrating near shutouts.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/51231442/v660805583/?game_pk=447291

it began with such promise

fyi pete kozma is hitting .172/.274/.237 for the yankees' triple-a club

his best ISO in several years

*drudgesiren* Matheny pulls head out of 2014 stat sheet *drudgesiren*

Jenifer Langosch ‏@LangoschMLB 3m3 minutes ago

#STLCards, who have gotten an awful .186/.270/.333 slash line from their cleanup hitters, try Piscotty in the spot tonight. Diaz to bat 2nd.

but...Piscotty isn't a big first basemen?

?!!??!

although on second thought, maybe matheny can use Piscotty at 1B tonight. then all will be right in the world

looks like Peralta is expected to get rehab work in at both SS and 3B. hoping they go for something like:

Diaz: SS
Peralta: 3B
Carpenter: 1B
Keep one of Moss or Adams, and trade the other.