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

bastros

last night i was trying to quiet the boy and watch some of last comic standing, so i didn't get the game turned on right away. when i did, i was just in time to hear rolen's solo shot called by john rooney. seconds later, i heard what sounded like a replay of the call, which had me curious, and then it turns out to be jauncarnacion's homer. i was ecstatic. anthony reyes is major league ready (or so three very strong starts would have us believe).
josh hancock, however... well to be honest, we can give as much or more blame to so's throwing error. let's just say that with the exception of scott rolen, our redbirds weren't themselves after the seventh inning last night. maybe they were worried about jim edmonds. god knows i am.

but enough gloom and doom. juancarnacion looked decent last night, which is a plus. yadi hit an rbi double, which has to be good for him (and when you're batting .174, going 1 for 4 can only help, albeit slowly). hector luna continues to play above his actual skill level, even if no one could manage to get him home. hell, even anthony reyes got a hit.

i still think this could be our year, but it's going to take the acquisition of a larry walker-type to re-energize our offence. i just hope we can settle for only replacing one outfield position by the trade deadline.

spearfishing

just what a ballclub that has had recent struggles needed: a weekend series with the fish. there were a hell of a lot of great moments during the series this weekend, but here are a few random thoughts about the games in miami.

-scott rolen is a baseball hero. we all knew this, but over the course of 2005, a lot of fans started to lose faith, and the national media completely forgot that he was ever a dominant presence in the infield and at the plate. no more. ten pounds lighter from illness, and he still performs like that?

-soup nearly pitches a complete game... i thought perhaps he'd get the chance, but i'm not complaining. he had a fantastic outing, pitching like the top notch suppan only the cardinals have been able to draw out of him in his career.

-hr #16, rbi #38. we have a baseball god in this town, folks. i'm not the only one who thinks so, but i will add my voice to the throng. (the next in the rbi race is lance berkman. i wonder how many of those rbi come from crawford box cheap homers?)

-100 career wins for mulder is great, but i don't see him getting 300 unless he's still pitching at 49-50. just a feeling i get. feel free to disagree, but in the end, it won't matter to me, because i doubt he'll be a cardinal after this year.

-ponson's elbow. dave duncan says that it would be more likely to go with a four-man rotation than to have a spot start to cover sidney's spot in the rotation, so we go back to my mantra from an earlier post... short rest marquis!

-we seemed to recover some of our offense, even from those who haven't had much this year (read: yadi). encarnacion is working his way back to his lifetime numbers, and jrod (i like to say it with only one syllable... it rhymes with zod) is tearing it up still.

tonight, i'm going to see my second (marquis start) game of the year. today my son is four weeks old, and he will be attending his first cardinals game with me and my wife. i'll post some pictures of jack at the game in the next few days.

juan love

today's game was something of a foreseeable disappointment, but i would like to point out that juan encarnacion proved a worthy redbird again (at least in the third). i think he's coming out of his spring slump. on the whole, i was glad to see a strong showing from the team without albert, scott, and jim. god forbid we prove to be as injury plagued as last year, but i'm glad our bench can still make some waves.

i'll start taking bets as to how long cincy can remain in first...

slump buster

i had a feeling encarnacion might find his stroke soon. last night was the kind of confidence booster that would do any struggling position player right: great play in the outfield, 3-4 at the plate, and every one for extra bases. ok, juan, good job. just hit two singles today, and you're starting to bring all the redbird faithful to your side.

speizio once again proves that when the pressure is off, he can perform with the best of them. (to be fair, though, our bench hasn't exactly been clutch this year.)

at the beginning of this season, i was touting 2006 as the year of yadier's bat. as yet, this hasn't been the case. shouldn't catchers have something of an advantage just based on their familiarity with the look of pitches? whatever, i'm not really complaining. continue to be a great backstop and a force to be reckoned with for baserunners, yadi, and you'll continue to be one of my favorite cardinals.

just two more days until my first trip to new busch...