The Philadelphia Phillies designated Chad Qualls for assignment Thursday, leaving St. Louis Cardinals fans desperate for relief help wondering aloud about a guy whose strikeout rate has fallen around five per nine innigs, and who allowed seven home runs in 31 innings for the Phillies in 2012. Don't get me wrong, though--now that he's not striking anybody out, the grounder-heavy Qualls makes perfect sense as an inexplicable Cardinals reclamation project!
↵If the name sounds familiar, you probably remember Chad Qualls from his time in the Houston Astros' outstanding bullpens of the mid-aughts. He was part of the big three of the 2005 model, behind Brad Lidge and Dan Wheeler, and made Octavio Dotel expendable back in 2004. Now 33, he spent a year as the Diamondbacks' closer and reemerged after a year in the wilderness as a respectable groundball-heavy reliever for the Padres in 2011.
↵I think he'll land somewhere, and the Cardinals are as good a bet as any, but I don't think Chad Qualls is going to be the answer to many of the questions we have about the bullpen as it exists right now.
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