But not like this.

Let’s say Carp misses the season due to injury. Oh, God. Let’s not say that. I don’t like the sound of that hypothetical. Let’s say Carp doesn’t pitch because he’s called to solve the various crises in the Middle East, or patch up Brangelina’s ailing relationship. While he’s doing that, the Cardinals lose several games in the standings. It makes it a lot tougher, but five or six games don’t mean the jig is up.

That said, I reserve the right to panic tomorrow.

Ball-in-play hijinks and general rust combined to create an opening day I don’t mind having missed. Bullet points:

Carp: This was a pretty typical Bad Carp outing–when he’s off his curveball hangs, but the main issue is that he doesn’t have what seems to me to be the definining Chris Carpenter pitch, that fastball that he likes to throw right at lefties that seems to dive back into the zone at the last possible moment. It would be a pretty good pitch to have against these Mets, and looking at the box score it’s obvious he didn’t. By the sixth inning he looked like Chris Carpenter, and he was victimized by the next bullet point–altogether this wasn’t a disastrous outing.

So Taguchi: I hate that I like So Taguchi, because there appears to be absolutely no reason for him to be on a major league roster and it would be much easier to campaign for his immediate release if he wasn’t a nice guy who worked like crazy after the peak of his career to stick in America.

My subjective observation, since 2006, at least, is that he’s been extremely shaky for a guy who’s supposed to be a defensive replacement. Nobody this side of Young Dunc makes the balls he gets to such an adventure, and every once in a while he just makes a play that’s astonishingly absent-minded or lead-gloved. It seems like he’s desparate to remind us that he is, in fact, a converted infielder.

Tony: really? With a side-arming rookie right-hander up against it and a tie ballgame in view for the first time since 0-0, he chose to let Preston Wilson hit for himself. Chris Duncan was on the bench, and if there’s one thing I trust him to do it’s hit a righty with middling stuff. If there’s one thing I trust Preston Wilson to do, it’s strike out against any vaguely deceptive right-handed pitcher. Any one at all. Worst case scenario, the Mets would have brought in Aaron Heilman; the lefty Schoeneweis had just stood up when Wilson came to bat.

There’s also the matter of batting Yadi fifth. Granted, Jim Edmonds looked pretty sluggish out there, and Molina still has the potential to turn into a decent hitter. But putting Edmonds and Kennedy within one So Taguchi-sized batter of each other is going to be easy pickings for the LOOGYs of the National League.

Joe Morgan: really needs to get up the nerve to ask Jose Reyes to go to prom with him, already.

Jon Miller:

I think the most important thing here is that Trevor Hoffman didn’t get the Cy Young. Hoff pitched sixty-three innings with a very good ERA; that said, he probably wasn’t the best reliever on his own team; Cla Meredith pitched fifty innings with a cartoon ERA. He was as much Cy Young as Jason Isringhausen was last year, except by breaking the save record he very nearly won himself a lifetime achievement award.

Brandon Webb pitched really well, though; I had him second to Carpenter in my hypothetical ballot, because Carpenter pitched more great games, games in which the Cardinals were almost guaranteed to win. That said, if I was paying attention I would have put Roy Oswalt ahead of both of them; if there was any justice in the world the NL wouldn’t have struggled so much with starter wins he’d have picked up his third consecutive 20-win season, which is a neat trick and a good indicator of his status as maybe the best pitcher of his generation right now. Remember when he and Wade Miller were 1 and 1A?

Anyway, good for Webb; he’s never had an ERA+ below 120, but the Diamondbacks’ mediocrity has left him remarkably under the radar. It took a year where everybody was mediocre to do it, but it’ll be a lot harder to underrate him now.

The headline on the mothership, at this very moment: Carpenter’s latest shutout pushes Astros down. I try not to take for granted having a starter about whom statements like that can be made. Latest shutout? Ho hum. Watching Chris Carpenter is like watching a Powerball winner’s Jeff Suppan; there’s nothing overwhelming about his profile except he has no weaknesses. His fastball moves and his curveball’s electric, he’s got command and he strikes people out, he throws hard without relying on velocity. With three fifths of our rotation–Marquis and the sinker, Weaver and the slider, Reyes and the changeup–relying on one particularly brilliant pitch or plan of attack, Carpenter provides stability in more ways than one.

Not a great offensive performance by the Cardinals, but certainly one they had to have. It says a lot about the Cardinals’s futility against the most random of marginal pitching that lboros could comment, even jokingly: “now watch bucholz throw a shutout.” Without their glamorous MV3 designation they’re this week’s St. Louis Rams: sans Greatest Show on Turf nomenclature it’s a matter of getting more field goals than the other guy. The Cardinals drew walks, waited patiently, and beat up on a mediocre pitcher. That’s more than can be said for showings against numerous other minor league chaff types this year.

Having taken advantage of that opportunity, the Cardinals promptly lose it again: Petitte’s on for tomorrow’s game against Jeff Weaver. Jeff Weaver Lefty Watch: .385/.459/.726. For all intents and purposes, he turns every lefty batter into Hack Wilson 1930, who hit .356/.454/.723; I get the feeling that if he faced an exclusively lefty lineup for any length of time they would probably drive in 191 runs, too. The Astros can and probably will trot out Lance Berkman, Mike Lamb, Aubrey Huff, and Luke Scott. Orlando Palmiero, too, if they want to get cute about it. It’s a good test for Weaver, who–divorced of his splits–seems like he would make the best fourth starter candidate. If he can hold lefties to numbers that don’t bring to mind members of the All Century Team, the Cardinals might be able to keep Jason Marquis’s one pitch in the bullpen, where it belongs.