As promised, I’m back just in time for Opening Day, which I may or may not be attending–presently my driver’s license is at the mercy of the Illinois Secretary of State’s office.

Hey, Dan, what do you think about Skip Schumaker?

Well, my mom called to tell me about the driver’s license hijinks, and added as a postscript that Schumaker had made the team. I was much angrier about Schumaker, who, in a moment of Tony Peña, Jr. forgetfulness and general anger I declared “the worst player in the major leagues.”

… okay, he’s not the worst player in the major leagues–an old friend seems set to regain that spot. But he’s pretty bad. Last year he hit .306/.348/.382 in the PCL. That’s a .730 OPS, and if he repeated that in the major leagues he’d be a respectable last guy off the bench. But he’s not going to. His value is entirely predicated upon hitting .300, and he can’t do it; not only that, but as an empty average hitter he’s going to lose walks, an area in which he is already deficient.

It’s understandable that the Cardinals are worried about the center fielder situation, but what does it say about So Taguchi and Preston Wilson that a much better player was left off the roster so as to have a fourth option in center? If the Gooch and Wilson are that suspect, they shouldn’t have gotten guaranteed money in the first place. (Of course, they are that suspect, and they shouldn’t have gotten guaranteed money, but I’ve been forced to move on to grinding other axes.)

On the pitching end, the Cardinals did a complete 180. Tony could have retreated into the safe, inexplicably employed arms of Ricardo Rincon after Tyler Johnson developed a bad case of the yips in Spring Training. Instead Rincon, who is likely to pitch like Johnson will in a worst-case scenario, got the boot.

These are similar choices, with drastically different results. in one case the Cardinals went the overly safe route, keeping a center fielder despite his mediocrity. In another, the Cardinals completely forgoed safety, severing all ties with the Proven Mediocrity when they could have just sent Tyler Johnson to Memphis. Sometimes I wonder if it’s the same guy making all of these decisions.

Tomorrow, to make up for lost time, a season preview. But you’ll understand if it’s second on my list of things to do after a certain ridiculously well-casted movie, right? Will Arnett and Jenna Fischer? If they cast Andy Richter, Zach Braff, and Dick Van Dyke they would have hit all five of my favorite sitcoms ever, but I’m willing to give them credit for two.

Are you ready for Skippy Schumaker and So Taguchi, sharing a roster? Probably even an outfield, before Jed and Juancar get back? I’m ready like I was ready to watch the venereal disease slideshow during middle school sex education: if all else fails I can just close my eyes, or join the priesthood.

That said, Juan’s absence does mean that John Rodriguez will get a fair shake in the outfield. It got him to the big leagues, but does anyone else get the impression that J-Rod’s ridiculous 2005 performance in Memphis–seventeen home runs in 120 at-bats–has kept him from holding down a big league job? .434 isn’t a good slugging percentage from a corner outfielder, but it’s not very far below what we should be expecting from him. Aside from that stretch as the PCL’s Babe Ruth, his career high slugging percentage is .542, and that came in a year where he hit ten triples in addition to his sixteen home runs.

That, combined with his propensity for a lot of long, long fly balls, has led to him being cast as an underachiever. He’s been labelled a home run hitter who doesn’t hit home runs, when he’s better thought of as the player managers seem to think Timo Perez used to be.

There’s another hobbyhorse of mine in that article, though, did you catch it? Tyler Johnson, Last of the One-Pitch Pitchers, is trying to learn the sinker, and he thinks that might have to do with his terrible spring. His terrible spring, in turn, has something to do with Ricardo F. Rincon getting back into the race for the twenty-five man roster.

Seriously? Is there any problem Dave Duncan hasn’t tried to solve with the sinker? I have it from good sources that he’s gotten in contact with Hamid Karzai about keeping the ball down in the zone. Tyler Johnson’s problem is not that he elevates the ball, it’s that he walks six batters per nine innings. Specialist pitchers with giant, loopy sliders tend to have that problem. Teaching him a new pitch that he has trouble controlling that’s designed to lower his strikeout rate–his main advantage as a pitcher–is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. I know I talked about giving Dunc a lifetime pass, but Braden Looper hasn’t panned out yet.

With midterms over, expect Get Up, Baby! to resume its irregular-but-relatively-often posting frequency once more.

Especially if we get more news like this. Josh Kinney? Hurt? I think I speak for a certain kind of baseball fan everywhere when I say: please, please not Josh Kinney.

Why? Well, this Certain Kind, of which I am a charter member, gets over-attached to relievers with ridiculous pitches. Remember Mike Lincoln and the Slider of Death? The one that lasted all of seventeen innings before his career basically ended? I can’t afford a repeat, not with Isringhausen’s curveball inconsistent and Tyler Johnson the only other one-pitch reliever in the pen. Josh Kinney induced jumping swings with his slider. His production is probably replaceable, even courtesy GUB favorite WonderBrad, but that sort of hitter humiliation is not.

Good news today: Chris Duncan homers.

Bad news today: Skip Schumaker homers. I know he has his backers, within the organization and without, but Schumaker is a great throwing arm attached to a terrible baseball player. His career minor league slugging percentage is .378. Compare: Aaron Miles’s career slugging percentage is .401. Furthermore, at 27 he’s no more a prospect than Rick Ankiel, and Skip’s spent his entire career trying to learn to hit. If the Cardinals want to keep him around in AAA, fine. But the best-case scenario is that he becomes a poor man’s So Taguchi, and given the organization’s undue infatuation with the Gooch I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Rincon DL’d, Gall up. And… Skip Schumaker inexplicably in the starting lineup for today’s game. Baby steps.

No baseball on TV the day after (the day after) Opening Day? Don’t give me my fix and then hold out on me like that, man, it’s–it’s not cool.

In any case, baseball season’s a go, and considering how on edge I was even as the Cardinals’ 13-5 eviscerating of the Phillies came to a close, I’m going to need to invest in some high-class tranquilizer before the season’s over. Or the month. Or–but that can wait.

So. Aaron Miles. How many IMs, e-mails, and passing-in-the-hallway-conversations do you think I got about his opening day performance? If you said “Not many!” you’d be right, but it’s only because you know I am not very popular; they make up for what they lack in quantity by their consistent “I told you so!” quality. I intend to pay it back in full when he is sucking it up a month from now, although I don’t think most of the hallway folk will care because he Hustles and Plays the Game the Right Way and is Not Very Tall.

Some people are taking a degree of solace in his minor league numbers, which show competance at the very least, but I’m worried that hitters of his type just don’t turn out as well in the big leagues as their numbers would forecast. One thing is certainly true, just like it was for keystone partner Deckstein–his walk rate isn’t going to look like those minor league totals, because pitchers in the major leagues have no reason at all to pitch him out of the strike zone. As a Boston farmhand, Eckstein’s BB/AB was 17.3%, 18.4%, and 14.2% over his last three years, generally walking less as he moved up in the system. In the majors, he’s walked in 7.8% of his at-bats, rising all the way up to 9.2%–a very good number for a guy with so little power–in his debut with the Cardinals.

Miles, in his third year in the low-A Midwest League, had a walk/at-bat percentage of 5.9%. Moving up to hi-A the next year it was 9.4%; I don’t have numbers for the next year, thanks presumably to the whims of Baseball Cube, but in AA and AAA the two years after it was 7.5% and 7.3%. In the majors, over his career, it is 4.3%; I don’t expect a lot more than that, but I will say this: if he either walks in more than 9% of his at-bats, a la Eckstein, or puts up an OBP of .340, a la 14 points lower than Spivey’s fluke-aided career average, I will sponsor his pages on Baseball-Reference and the Baseball Cube for so long as he remains a Cardinal. If his OBP is over .380, this page will be known as the Aaron Miles Appreciation Club for the calendar year 2007 and I will stop making Woody Allen references.

But for the moment, the one thing that has me scared, the nightmare scenario that would keep me up at night, if I wasn’t already, is the vaguely off-the-wall idea that Skip Schumaker and So So Def might form a platoon at left field. Either makes a fine backup outfielder–good contact hitter, speedy pinch runner, and a bat nearly-average enough to stick for a few weeks at a stretch. But having both of them on the roster not only seems a little redundant, but also, so long as La Russa is the manager, dangerous–a little like leaving a Dave Matthews Band tour bus parked outside of Nate Newton’s house. One’s left-handed, one’s right-handed–one day, Tony might get a little bit mad at the sitting, hitting left fielder, Larry Bigbie or somebody, and Skippo Tagumaker might emerge as the Anointed One. Their career highs in home runs? So popped 10 of them in Japan in 1997, while Skip hit 7 in 450 at-bats between AAA and the bigs last year. If I had to guess what such a platoon would hit, it would come out looking something like .280/.325/.400, which would be awesome if they could just play second base.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Cody Haerther? Please come soon. And maybe bring Junior with you.