Are you like me? Have you not edited your RSS feeds since 2004, or whenever it was you first discovered RSS? If that’s the case–for that is the only reason, I would imagine, that you would have GUB and not Viva El Birdos in your RSS folder–then you will be pleased (maybe) to know that I am now blogging over there no fewer than three times a week, which hasn’t been the case here since some time in 2006. You probably already knew this, but what is a blog promotion if one doesn’t brag about it on one’s own blog?

Anyway: I may do something with this eventually, since I’m in way too deep, e-mail address-wise, to let this website lapse completely. But until then I hope you enjoy my continued adventures at a blog with–seriously–twenty times as many daily page views as this one.

I should probably remember to mention this before the end of the series, right? If you didn’t get enough of me answering questions last week, Joe from Mets Today asked me a few questions about the Cardinals a few days back. It’s pretty well-trodden territory if you follow the Cardinals enough to read several blogs about them, but who could resist my finely-honed prose? Also, a vintage Mike Shannon baseball card shot in the intro?

I have all the automated e-mails sent to me by this website set to go straight to the spam folder on my e-mail client, because getting excited about the e-mail sound only to see it came from my blog, which most certainly does not want to go out Friday night, was just too much for me, so every day or so I check the folder to see if there’ve been any comments. It’s a good system, but sometimes I don’t look enough to see if the comment was posted successfully or sent to WordPress’s enigmatic moderation queue, which seems to snap into effect on a completely arbitrary basis.

So I was wading through that queue–a once a month task fraught with phentermine/HOODIA HOODIA HOODIA/online gambling terror–when I realized that a very good comment, which I’d read in the e-mail, was sent to the queue instead of being posted. So here it is: a few posts back, right before the draft deluge, I asked if anybody knew what had happened to Cardinals first rounder Paul Coleman. Reader jake was on the ball:

Oh yeah, Paul Coleman signed. He was awful.

Here’s some info http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Paul_Coleman

Last I saw he was racing. [RC cars! -ed.]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3825/is_200212/ai_n9161725

Leave it to the last of the Whiteyball teams to draft a guy who was so much the platonic ideal of the all-speed/no-bat archetype that he was forced to transcend baseball to achieve it.

From this moment forward–we can check this after the season courtesy Baseball Musings and its Day By Day Database–Rolen and Edmonds will each have an OPS over .800. Rolen I’m not worried about; Edmonds could be done, sure, but he looked just as awful at times last season.

Worry about the offense, sure, but I’m willing to bet Molina and the Right Field Mystery Spot will remain problems one and two. It’s too soon to worry about good hitters.

I guess it’s good to win these games–the ones where Gary Bennett and Aaron Miles go 7-10, and two relievers with a combined ERA over 20 preserve a slim deficit through regulation–but I can’t say it taught us a lot about the team, except that it sucks to root for a team where Preston Wilson, Gary Bennett, Aaron Miles, and So Taguchi can bat consecutively without bringing up the worst hitter on the bench.

Keisler was as good as could possibly be expected, but it’s pretty clear to me why he hasn’t stuck as a LOOGY despite having a live strikeout rate: he’s got no breaking ball. His curveball wasn’t just a curveball that hung; like there are cut fastballs, and knuckle-curves, he throws a Hanging Curveball. His fastball and changeup were very nice for a free lefty, with more movement and giddy-up than, say, Mark Mulder has ever shown as a Cardinal, and in general he makes a really good spot starter to have stowed away in Memphis. But he doesn’t have a slider or a curveball with which to immolate southpaws, so as a reliever he’s just a fringe arm with a platoon problem.

What I’m saying is: he needs to hook up with the Nationals.

Speaking of people who showed a fastball and nothing else, Tuesday was my first time paying close attention to New + Improved Jason Isringhausen. He looked disturbingly similar to the 2006 model–his curveball hit the dirt, and his cutter manifested itself as a high, slow fastball that typically, and thankfully, sailed out of the zone and away. The only difference–and it’s a big difference–is that he can and did throw his regular fastball, now hovering in the low 90s, for strikes. It’s a nice fastball, still, but I’m holding out hope that he regains his command of the Curveball of the Gods. I’m a little more ambivalent about the cutter.

Finally, to Exciting Prospect News: Blake King made his first start of the year in the Quad Cities; five scoreless innings, which is a little less exciting than his two inning/four walk/five strikeout relief debut, but more encouraging. Now, I like Blake King, but I reserve a prospect crush for players like Jose “Not Top-Twenty Alum” Martinez, who is now hitting .381/.381/.619 following a cameo role in Palm Beach’s 14-1 beatdown of St. Lucie. I realize that it’s been five games, but it’s good to see him get off to a hot start after stumbling out of the gate in 2006. And to complete the GUB minor league favorites trifecta, Rick Ankiel went 3-4 with a homer and a double for Memphis. Meanwhile, Skip Schumaker and So Taguchi are in the major leagues.

Speaking of the minors: I have an idea for a newer, more useful, less table-y version of Coming Attractions. So we’ll see how that works out.

Just in time for the boring part of Spring Training–most of the prospects are gone, most of the roster spots decided–Tony helps His Public by making things interesting.

Not to condone drunk driving, but this story’s a non-starter. The guy blew something that wasn’t even a DUI pre-MADD and the subsequent federal extortion fun, but the main story here is that a sixty-two year-old man fell asleep at an inopportune moment late at night. Which isn’t quite as stunning as, say, his predilection for Scrappy White Hustlers, be they the baseball players or the hypothetical mixed drink. (You can’t see it, but I’m pointing to the guy behind the drums and–ah, there’s the rimshot.)

People make mistakes, and in the grand scheme of things having what is literally one too many is not a colossal one. Let’s just be glad nothing bad happened.

A bigger potential mistake detailed here.

Marrero, trying to make the Cardinals as a third catcher and utilityman, made his first start behind the plate this spring on Thursday. He threw out two runners trying to steal and guided four Cards pitchers to a six-hit, two-run performance.

He knows he’s a long shot on a team that already has more bench players than spots for them.

Hmm. If only there were some way they could make room for him! And the next segment in the story is…

Bennett banged up: Gary Bennett was a late addition to the travel roster for Friday after initially being left off. He was bothered by something of a headache on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. Bennett believes the condition resulted from taking a foul tip off his helmet on Wednesday.

Shortly before Bennett left Roger Dean Stadium on Thursday, he was added to the travel roster for St. Lucie.

Oh, yeah–it’s the gamer they committed to too early! Eli Marrero solves two problems for the Cardinals, but the problem is that they’re only aware of one. First, he’s an outfielder who can hit lefties–on a team that could at one point start Chris Duncan, Jim Edmonds, and John Rodriguez or nominal switch-hitter Scott Spiezio in one outfield, that’s a big deal. And he’s also a backup catcher that can hit. When was the last time the Cardinals had a backup catcher with an OPS+ over 60? One who was better than forty percent below an average hitter? That would be 2002, with noted Nice Guy Mike Difelice.

There is absolutely no reason to carry Gary Bennett, especially on a team with a durable catcher like Yadier appears to be. Absolute worst case scenario? Yadi gets hurt, and the Cardinals have to call up a guy who’s going to play exactly like Gary Bennett. Catchers like Gary Bennett are utterly fungible, which is why the Cardinals have typically just picked up a new one for free instead of signing the old one. Since they’re so interchangeable it would be fine that they decided to hold on to the one they had for a year, because of the World Series warm fuzzies, but something better came along. There should be no doubt about Eli Marrero making the team, and instead he’s a “longshot.”

Suddenly I’m angrier about La Russa getting a DUI… and I’m just not sure why.

On a site-related note–consider the meta tag your pro tip re: skipping the first or last paragraph of an entry that has it–I’ll be mostly internet-free for the next week. If the Cardinals do something awesome–Walt, the Devil Rays are undervaluing BJ Upton–or not awesome–hey, Walt, stop considering what the Red Sox just considered–I’ll find a way to peddle my unique brand of non-analysis, but in any case I’ll be back right in time to get into regular season mode.

The regular season! Awesome.

So, here’s the thing: there’s just one guy currently with the Cardinals’ AAA affiliate who’s particularly impressive, unless you’re excited about the idea of John Nelson striking out in half of his at-bats at the big league level (slogan: I’m Not Jose Vizcaino!) And, honestly, I don’t know what to make of Andy Cavazos. He doesn’t put up extreme Colter Bean numbers in the minors, so I can’t get excited about him from that standpoint. And I didn’t watch him throw cartoon sliders for a month and a half, so he hasn’t yet earned the Josh Kinney Exception. But he did put up a 3.43 K:BB in Memphis, so I wouldn’t have minded the Cardinals handing him the job, rather than give Russ Springer money to… do whatever it is that Russ Springer does better than Andy Cavazos. (Russ Springer’s slogan: I’m neither Jose Vizcaino nor Ricardo Rincon!)

In any case, we’re back to your regularly scheduled programming here at Get Up, Baby!, whatever that is. I’ve been asked by the lovely people at CubsHub–I don’t really know them, but I like to think they’re lovely–to draw up a prospect list for their series on the NL Central. I hadn’t planned on doing one, but after slumming it with the pseudo-prospects for a while I feel like I’ve earned the chance to pretend I know any better about prospects than people who’ve actually seen them play. So that should be happening in the next few days. (Danup slogan: I never, ever turn a writing “job” down! Ever!)

On a hypothetical note: would you prefer a more open design? This fixed-width column deal was basically done out of convenience–I can fake my way through HTML and CSS, but that’s about it–and it doesn’t transfer well to very large and very small screens. For that matter, is there anything else you, The Viewer, would like to see?

Billing issues (hint: my host has one tech support line that’s open 24/7, and then another tech support line that can actually do things for your account which is open 9-5 weekdays) kept the site offline for last night and most of this morning, so the Quad Cities Not-Top Twenty will show up tomorrow. Sorry for the delay. Why do I stay with 1&1? In the words of Suzanne Vega, and later, inexplicably, Evan Dando, it only hurts until I cry. After that, I don’t ask why.

Unless you live in the Pacific time zone, in which case you still have five more minutes of 2006. Don’t squander them, here in 2007 we’re at war with this strange race of communist aliens; as it turns out, Art Bell was right all along. O, for our innocent past.

Regular posting, like the NBC Thursday Night Comedy lineup–I really should be compensated for this kind of promotion–resumes this week. Sorry for the delay.

Is that spelled right? I don’t know if that’s spelled right.

Anyway, today Get Up, Baby!, a blog started at the worst possible time to start a blog about a baseball team, turns three. The date wasn’t the only problem. In hindsight, I did a lot of things wrong: for one thing, the URL was getupcards.blogspot.com, because I figured people would rather not type “getupbaby” into their work computers; as a result, websites started linking me as “Get Up Cards!”, which is already an emo band, I think. Not only that, but I started with a typical crappy introductory post and didn’t write the second entry until February. But as the Cardinals bullpen went, so went the website, and from those depths of 2003 I think I’ve pulled the site up to “pretty adequate, although too many high-leverage innings are going to Randy Flores.”

Three years ago, that joke would have been about Pedro Borbon, Jr. Ain’t progress grand?

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed the site as much as I’ve enjoyed forcing my opinions on you. To everybody who comments or e-mails or just lurks–although you lurkers should delurk sometimes so that every other comment in the queue isn’t about microcap stock opportunities that just! can’t! wait!–thank you very much. I couldn’t do this without you guys, because I’m a narcissist in need of constant attention.

Last year I took this opportunity to upgrade the CMS to Wordpress and unleash the greatest test-pattern ever. In 2004 I–well, we won’t talk about the proposed wiki, although its decaying husk still lurks on this very server. So what have I got planned this year? Check back Tuesday–it would be Monday, but I think some holiday falls on the 25th. Hint: it’s a weekly feature, and I’m ripping off Aaron Gleeman. And it’s not having an Official Get Up Babe, although his recent decision to consider Jenna Fischer for the Official Fantasy Girl position was truly an inspired one.

In fact–heck, it’s my blogiversary, isn’t it? Isn’t it!? Google Image Search, can we get some Dundies action in here?

Perfect. I feel God on this website tonight.