The Best NL Central Fans in Baseball 2020

What are the “Garvey ones”?

Hahaha, I’m intrigued by that as well!

My NL non-cardinals “win it all tiers” are:

pirates
Brewers
Padres
Mets
Reds

Dbacks
Rockies
Marlins
Nats

Cubs
Giants
Phillies
Dodgers

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/2/los-angeles-dodgers-steve-garvey-april-12-1982-sports-illustrated-cover.jpg

I hated that popeye armed dude.

That said, I liked Ron Cey with the Cubs and any dude that looks that awkward and is actually good at their sport is ok. Turner definitely has some Penguin vibes with the current Dodgers.

Ever since the Reds brought Junior 'back home to Cincy' - it has not been all that much fun to follow the team.

That said, I grew up a Bears, Reds & IU Hoops fan...it's not been all that good a run for ANY of them for a couple decades plus - I'm a bit embittered.

"Is Steve Garvey Really Too Good to Be True?"--wait a few years, Sports Illustrated.

is yelich hurt? or his arm, at least?

congrats to the pittsburgh pirates, on the anniversary of roberto clemente's 3000th and final hit, for achieving their 100th loss for the fourth time in my life

also congrats to me for having watched absolutely none of their games this year, because why on earth would i

Congratulations, Karl Malone!

https://www.mlb.com/news/adam-wainwright-cardinals-agree-to-extension

thank you. remember, i'm the guy who was begging wainwright to retire after 2019 (and 2018). what can i say, i know a gamer when i see one!

just had a look at all-time pitching stats for the cardinals, and at some point very recently Wainwright passed Dizzy Dean for 2nd place all time pitcher WAR. kind of surprising considering how long the franchise has been around.

has there been an investigation of how he's doing it? i mean, he has That Curveball, but how has he rebounded/scoffed at mortality?

there's been a fangraphs article, that's about the best i know of

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-incomparable-adam-wainwright/

my own thoughts,

watching (every single - seriously) his games this season, it is very much that terrible cliche "pitching instead of throwing" thing. his command is as good as i've ever seen it, his curveball seems to be as good as ever. his arm slot and all that shit is pretty much identical from pitch to pitch, and he has the best defense (arguably) in baseball behind him. so even though his pitches are slow as shit, the relative difference between them is still stark, the arm slot's still the same, and lots of balls get put into play and turned into outs. he's been relatively "lucky" with HRs this year (11%/FB) but i credit that to the weak contact that he tends to induce.

i don't even know what the league average HR/FB % is. maybe 11% is high, who knows. regardless, he doesn't walk many so when he gives up a HR it often seems to be a solo HR in the 7th inning variety.

also went way into games repeatedly this season, almost as a matter of habit. he will get downvote cy young votes this year and totally deserves them. it's hard to quantify "veteran leadership" kind of stuff but in the dark ages of this summer for the cardinals, when they were walking people with the bases loaded a record number of times and hitting batters a record number of times, he was the only one who seemed like a normal baseball man, every 5th game.

thank you! <3

are there any other questions about cardinals baseball, because that is totally up my alley

it's going to be awesome in 2022 when yadi does his farewell tour and every opposing team/stadium gets a chance to really let him know how they feel

:-o

i can talk about mike shannon. it's his 50th anniversary on radio, and he actually died on air earlier tonight, of alcohol poisoning

tyler o'neill hit a HR and he forgot to get excited. it was so matter of fact, like "and there's, uh, ....there's O'Neill and it's a long one and it's gone, a Cardinals HR. that makes it 2-1."

it was amazing, to be honest

but not so bad it's good, more like, so bad it's just mostly bad and i don't recommend you look into it, mike shannon has had many beers at this point and is ready to retirement

stl cardinalsc vicory

Too bad his career WAR is relatively low, because, depending upon what happens next year, he'd have some markers that would give him an outside chance at the HOF in this era: ~200 wins, solid career ERA, Cy Young support through the years (24th all-time, though he never won), good postseason box.

yeah, he is a perfect Cardinals Hall of Fame candidate

if/when yadi (current hall of famer, 100% been voted in already, according to the home team announcers) gets in later, that's great. but he and yadi WILL go in together in the same year in the team hall of fame, and that will be a must see game, i can't wait

on a team level he's somewhere between dizzy dean and bob gibson, (somewhere far below gibson, to be clear!), just an all-time legend in terms of STL pitchers. other players that get talked about were usually people like Tudor or Forsch, and when mccarver was still calling games, early Carlton

i think fans of so many pitchers could tell versions of this story, but wainwright's career, as successful as its been, was ruined by injuries in his 30s. it always seemed like he was amazing until just before an injury, than coming back from, his entire career. his age 29 season was wiped out entirely, even though he got a world series ring (2011). and especially 2015 and afterward. that was brutal to watch. it was all about the command. a slow/command pitcher that loses command is horrible to see

to see him come back and rule is actually kind of awesome, one of the better parts of life right now

Is that what it’s called when the Cardinals retire a number - “Cardinals Hall of Fame”?

They formally made it a thing a few years ago, and now they hold fan votes every year to add new members. Keith Hernandez was added this year! He seemed genuinely pumped. Tommy Herr, as well!

The numbers on the wall, and retired numbers, are separate, I think. It’s getting complicated in STL

schildt out. seems a bit odd

Yeah, I don't get it.

i just saw the news. no idea. as a strategist, he didn't seem notably bad or good. he had another year left on his contract, too!

also...i mean, everyone hated matheny but schildt seemed to be well-liked

Nobody's going to let "philosophical differences" go, so the story will surely come out soon.

the only explanation is they're gonna make Yadi the manager

oh god

i mean, that might be right though

but actually i think not

but it could be

xpost

i don't know, in the st louis media, they actually might let that go. mozeliak is pretty tight-lipped about everything

also, i think the true good pick would be jose oquendo

it's gonna be really funny when some other midwestern team taps shildt though

Re:Yadi, Mozeliak did say that they have many internal managerial candidates ...

This reminds me of Girardi getting to within a game of the WS and not being brought back to manage the Yankees. The Cards decided midseason that they're going in a different direction no matter what.

reading more about this makes it even weirder

no one, including schildt himself, had any clue it was coming. they’d already committed to bringing back the rest of the coaching staff. and it was so important to fire him now that they asked MLB for permission to announce it on a playoff gameday (when there were no games just the day before)

https://www.baseballrumors.me/2021/10/blindsided-disagreement-over-analytics.html

Schildt wanted to use fWAR; front office, bWAR.

lol

bench coach oliver marmol to take over in st louis, it seems

hmm, well, ok!

it's funny, i know next to nothing about marmol (or stubby clapp or pop warner) because the announcers rarely talk about them, and if they do it's just generic things like "well-respected" and "knows the minor leaguers well". i think 95% of the time marmol has been on the camera the last 3 years is when he on the phone with some mystery person to determine whether or not the replay challenge should be used

they kept the rest of the coaching staff though, except for shildt, and i think they added a hitting coach position this week. the general sense seems to be that they're moving toward the sf giants model of having more than a dozen coaches, more of an egalitarian approach? i don't know.

Notable picks for the #Cardinals in 2007, by round:

1st -- Pete Kozma
1st -- Clayton Mortensen
3rd -- Daniel Descalso
6th -- Oliver Marmol
24th -- Sam Freeman
26th -- Tony Cruz
38th -- Adron Chambershttps://t.co/tgxc8rUqqP #MLBDraft #MLB #stlcards

— Derrick S. Goold (@dgoold) October 25, 2021

pirates are ten games up on the cardinals for the first time since the end of the 1992 season

can't not cheer for the pirates