Lindbergh Reference or ABA Reference?
The Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter trailer was released yesterday, and as a native of Springfield, Illinois I've been doing my best to avoid this refashioning of the greatest American president (and our only meal ticket) into a kitschy horror star. But this is what I get for reading the comments at Viva El Birdos: a not-insignificant faction of VEB readers are convinced that Lincoln's rail-splitting axe-swing at the end of this teaser trailer looks like nothing so much as Matt Holliday's wild-looking line drive follow-through. I'll leave how similar as an exercise to the viewer:
This link will take you to the video itself; the swing is somewhere around 1:05.
I have to admit it: It's a little uncanny, if only because Holliday always looks like he's swinging an axe. And since Matt Holliday is more in need of an image boost and additional popularity than Springfield's only hero, how about we just pretend the whole thing is about making the Cardinals' left fielder look cooler, instead of making Lincoln into a wacky punchline?
For a while in the immediate aftermath of the St. Louis Cardinals' failure to sign Albert Pujols I was all the way on the Yoenis Cespedes bandwagon—we didn't know much about him, so he had no easily discernible cap on his upside, and the Cardinals are, for all their farm system improvements, still lacking in potential stars in the batting order. When the Cardinals chose to rebuild with aging stars on short-term contracts instead, I mostly let it go; the Oakland Athletics, however, never stopped pursuing Cespedes, which is why baseball's cheapest team now controls Cuba's top prospect for the next four years at $9 million per.
Cespedes actually projects pretty well, so that's not the issue. It's an odd move primarily because the Athletics are making it—in the last few years Billy Beane has appeared to be in a permanent rebuild loop, trading players who are nearly developed for prospects that he'll trade for more prospects when they're nearly developed. Combined with the Athletics' continued attempts to move out of Oakland, it seemed like they were running on a skeleton staff until their future became clearer.
Now they'll be running on a skeleton staff and Yoenis Cespedes!
The Pittsburgh Pirates have done some impressive things since Neal Huntington came on as general manager, but perception in the free agent world lags reality by a few years—most recently, that's kept the Pittsburgh Pirates from signing the middle-of-the-rotation free agents they covet, like Edwin Jackson. Now they're closing in on the only kind of free agent they can get: The one that's already signed with a big-market team and then disappointed there. An A.J. Burnett trade with the New York Yankees has reportedly been in the works for a while now, with the only question being just how much Yankees largesse the Pirates will have to take on.
There's probably no statistical reason for me to be saying this, but A.J. Burnett seems like the kind of guy who might do better in a place where not everybody in the city despises him. His main problem in the Bronx has been a brutal home run rate, but he hasn't lost a ton of velocity and home run rates are more likely than the other peripherals to vanish in a puff of smoke some random year.
And hey—he probably wants to be in Pittsburgh, which is a nice change from Edwin Jackson.
Hey guys! Let's get psyched about Spring Training! Here's round one: The St. Louis Cardinals are just now assembling in Jupiter, but Joe Strauss already has a report about Adam Wainwright throwing at nearly full strength, and he's already throwing curveballs, sinkers, cutters, and everything else you were hoping to get really psyched about. He did not yet give us a Best Shape of His Life quote, but I'm already on the lookout for it.
It's that time of year: After a season in which the Cardinals won the World Series without a single inning from Waino, let's remember that in 2010 the Cardinals had a starter who threw 230 innings with an ERA of 2.42 and won 20 games, if you're into that. This year, in some form or another, they will be getting that guy back.
It's February: You don't have to pretend he doesn't exist anymore, and you don't need to be worried about how well he'll recover. Now is the time to get excited about Adam Wainwright.
Look, I'm too busy with this whole Yadier Molina thing to even bother building some spiteful motive or latent hypocrisy into this story, but here it is: Albert Pujols is now being called "El Hombre" in the Los Angeles media, a few years after politely but firmly declining to be called by the Stan Musial derivative in St. Louis. Here's the picture, from Jeff Pearlman:
My guess is that Pujols wasn't consulted about it; in LA, after all, you might use Spanish on a billboard for more pragmatic reasons than you would in St. Louis, Missouri. But even if he was, I'm tired of trying to divine whether he feels some kind of resentment toward his only baseball home or not; he took one deal, he didn't take another, and the Cardinals have managed to field a very competitive team in 2012 in spite of it. (Of course, if you're looking to divine etc. etc., JoeSportsFan has given it a shot.)
(If he was consulted on it, though, he should really consider firing whoever handles his public relations work. Signaling a lack of respect for a 92-year-old icon with Alzheimer's—even though that was almost certainly not his intent—is probably not the right way to maintain your reputation throughout baseball.)
The St. Louis Cardinals made their yearly trip through the veteran relief pitcher aisle of MLB free agency over the weekend, signing Scott Linebrink to a minor league deal with a non-roster invite to Spring Training. Linebrink is a classic minor league pickup at the position, a hard-throwing former set-up man who's been floating around for a while just above replacement level and could help the Cardinals out of a depth problem if their younger options flail. The problem, as bgh discovered at Viva El Birdos, is that he's an eerily exact clone of Kyle McClellan, who the Cardinals offered a Roy-Oswalt-confounding $2.5 million to earlier in the offseason.
It's more a lesson on the fungibility of pretty-okay relief pitchers than the fungibility of Kyle McClellan in particular, but it's salt in the wounds of a fanbase that briefly imagined Oswalt to be a done deal.
Here's the good news, though: He isn't Miguel Batista. Given 50 innings, for whatever reason, Linebrink's a reasonable bet to strike out some batters, keep his walk rate bearable, and—well, and allow too many home runs to ever get a shot at a closer's job, in spite of those big years he had in San Diego. There's a reason he was available for free, after all—it just happens to be the same reason Kyle McClellan should also have been available for free.
Since suffering a concussion on October 13th in a game against the Dallas Stars, one of the Blues’ top scoring threats and power play booster-uppers has been benched. Andy McDonald has suffered multiple concussions in his career, and every subsequent one that he receives is worrisome to fans, the team, and of course to McDonald. The longer he sat out, the better.
He has been skating with the team at practices the past several weeks, and has been out of the red no-contact jersey for a bit. It might be time for him to get back into a game jersey, as well. According to an article from the Canadian Press, McDonald stands a strong possibility of making his return on Sunday night as the Blues face the Sharks at home in St. Louis. Says McDonald:
“I feel really good. I’ve been clear on the ice for a while now. I’m real close. Today it felt really good. I got to do some more line situations and it felt good. I’m looking forward to getting back in … whenever that is.”
Hopefully it’s soon. Alex Steen is still benched with a concussion, Jason Arnott and his shoulder are now on IR, and Matt D’Agostini won’t play either game scheduled this weekend.
Welcome back, A-Mac. We’ve missed you.
ESPN.com baseball writer David Schoenfield previewed the NL Central earlier this week ranking every team by position using the scientific Schoenfield method:
Rankings are based on my own subjective predictions for 2012 performance, including offense, defensive ability, durability and risk.
So if you disagree with him, that's just -- like -- your opinion, man. Anyhoo, he ranks all the positions one through six and then adds the points up and the team with the most points wins. Or something. It's really absurd and a terrible way to try to predict a division. That is not the worst of it, though.
Intangibles
1. Brewers
2. Reds
3. Pirates
4. Cardinals
5. Cubs
6. Astros
This is the worst of it.
He somehow ranked teams by intangibles, which by definition are unable to be grasped, thus are not able to be judged against other intangible things.
OR SO YOU THOUGHT.
Today we go inside the mind of Schoenfield and into the locker rooms of the NL Central to find out just what in the devil is going on here.
I didn't vote in Turf Show Times' community effort to crown a St. Louis Rams MVP, but I'm willing to bet it wasn't a difficult choice for the 350-some voters who cast their ballots—of all the Rams on that star-crossed roster, only two players made a major contribution without either disappointing or breaking some important body part. Steven Jackson, the Rams' lone constant non-disappointment, finished second, but for a good reason—this year Chris Long didn't just meet our expectations, he exceeded them.
Long shook off two subpar seasons in 2010, when he topped eight sacks for the first time and finally looked like a top draft prospect, but in 2011 he missed the Rams' 14-loss memo and got even better; his 13 sacks were seventh in the NFL.
After a few years in the wilderness Long finally gave the Rams something to cheer about in 2011, but I think I speak for every Rams fan on the internet, every Sam Bradford shersey owner in St. Louis, and Jeff Fisher when I say that I hope he isn't in a position to repeat this award after 2012.
Normally it might be a good thing, for Rams fans, that the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals both have major quarterback problems—but this year the NFC West's paucity of arms is complicated by Peyton Manning's pending availability with the Indianapolis Colts' successful Suck for Luck campaign. The good news, if you're worried about either squad getting their hands on the best quarterback ever, is that in Indianapolis the slagging of their long-time superstar has already begun.
Talking to Tony Kornheiser, Bob Kravitz, a columnist with the Star, says Manning's arm is presently noodle-y and possibly gone for good, and that Manning intentionally attempted to co-opt the Super Bowl with news that he was medically cleared to play.
Me? Manning's United Way PSA on Saturday Night Live rights a lot of wrongs, real or perceived, in my book. A shaky conspiracy theory about Manning's Super Bowl motivations and some second-hand stuff about his arm strength isn't enough to wipe out the best athlete turn in the history of SNL sketches.
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Edited by Dan Moore
Dan Moore has written about the St. Louis Cardinals since 2003, which is like 1925 in blog years. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he lives in Springfield, Illinois. See my profile
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Scoreboard data copyright © 2012 by STATS LLC. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC is strictly prohibited.
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