re-entry

two weeks remain in spring training. the games are meaning more, braden looper looks more like a sure thing, and rabid redbird is doing the pee pee dance waiting for meaningful baseball. we visited knox vegas last week, aka the land that baseball forgot (my grandmother gets mad when jack is wearing cardinal colors instead of a vols outfit, as though they were rivals or something), so i have been flooding my consciousness with baseball since saturday.

some thoughts
position players
jenc on the dl to start the year? well, at least some of our aaaa guys will get a chance to prove something, i guess. skip and so, together again? if we must. i love so, but i still want to know why skip doesn't just have his job at this point.

skinny jrod still hits virtually everything to the warning track, but not out. however, the .350+ batting mark says let him keep that up as long as injuries require.

hamlet better start hitting, from the sound of things. tony won't stand for settling, and neither will cardinal nation.

pitchers
i'm liking the springer signing less and less these days. true, 1.75 million isn't much in today's baseball market, but it's a lot of money to pay for a guy who's a) old b) possibly injured (see rincon, ricardo) and c) russ springer. i know we need some veteran presence in the bullpen, but thirty-two-year-olds can be veterans as well as thirty-nine-year-olds.

dennis dove? why not. he's a fireballer, and not jorge sosa, both strong selling points.

it's good to see izzy feeling more comfortable on the mound, if only to help tums sales in st louis. i'd say rolaids, but my brother-in-law works for the people who make tums, so i'm bucking the norm.

more to come later this week.

oh, and thanks to cardnilly for the new link

m(iles) precious....

aaron miles (who i'm still going to call gollum; look at the eyes and teeth and try to deny it) gets a free pass for the rest of the month. so does josh hancock, though i was never that bothered by him. true, he's had his issues, but fewer problems than the bulk of the rotation, and there have been a few times this season that he's pitched like an absolute champ.
izzy blew another save, but i'll let him slide on this one as well. the error shouldn't have been; even our gold glove caliber first baseman can have troubles, and we have to protect that oblique. if craig biggio wants a sac fly, it's pretty hard to keep him from getting one, short of walking him.

all star break time is great for the team, but hard for me. hell, during baseball season, days the cardinals have off are hard for me. i guess i'll watch the baseball circus of the stars tomorrow, though i hate that it determines home field advantage (can't we just give it to the struggling nl for a few years? please?).

we needed that series. we really needed that series. hell yeah, gollum.

what's all this about great minds?

i think that it's really funny that three cards bloggers other than me titled a post since saturday "the sky is falling."

izzy, izzy, izzy, damnitall.

memo: izzy

izzy
your stat to shoot for should be saves, not wins.
sincerely,
everyone