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:

Minor league free agent time. It’s like those honor-system libraries at hotels, where you leave your Michael Crichton/Tom Clancy airport fiction behind and pick up some more of the same–theoretically different, but with all the same problems and trappings and limitations as the stuff you had before. Different names, same square-jawed scientists and weapons experts.

Sometimes you get lucky; I found a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy anthology in one of those things, and the Cardinals picked Scott Spiezio and Josh Hancock off the top of the bin this year. The most fungible asset of all seems to be relief pitching; besides Hancock, the Cardinals have found mainstays like Randy Flores, Al Reyes, Cal Eldred, and Kiko Calero in the brush.

But before we get acquainted with the newbies we must say goodbye to the Cardinals’ minor league free agents, who filled the space between the prospects we actually cared about on the box score so very well. The list, from Baseball America:

C Brian Esposito
C Iker Franco
C Gabe Johnson
C Dan Moylan
1B Jorge Toca
3B Ryan Barthelemy
3B Juan Richardson
SS Luis Cotto
SS Bo Hart
SS Rico Washington
SS Derek Wathan
OF Shaun Boyd
OF Shawn Garrett
OF Brian Martin
RHP Alan Benes
RHP Cory Doyne
RHP Ricardo Rodriguez
RHP Travis Smith
RHP Dennis Tankersley
RHP John Webb
LHP Randy Leek
LHP Matt Perisho

Gabe Johnson was, in the dark Jimmy Journell ages, almost a prospect, a catcher/third baseman/first baseman who hit pretty well in the low minors. Bo Hart, obviously, needs no introduction; if he sticks around, I wouldn’t be stunned if he made Cardinals minor league stint number three some time in the next two years. Rico Washington buried AA for the third straight year, putting up an OPS over 1.000; he struggled in AAA, though, and he’s short, so he’s going to have to put up an Emil Brown Spring Training to get a shot anyplace. Shaun Boyd–poor, poor Shaun Boyd–was a top prospect for one shining year before his hitting and his fielding deserted him at the same time and he had to move from second base to the outfield.

Cory Doyne is your classic hard-throwing bullpen fodder; don’t be surprised if he’s in somebody’s bullpen for a few innings next year. Alan Benes is probably the saddest non-Ankiel story in La Russa’s Cardinals history; he was ridden hard, got hurt, and he just hasn’t had anything since then. Travis Smith always beats up on AAA pitching, but Specs doesn’t have the stuff to get outs in the major leagues; he pitched 54 innings for the Cardinals in that nightmarish 2002 rotation before spending some time in places as remote as Korea, and Florida. Finally, Dennis Tankersley was another of the Cardinals’s 2006 minor league free agent signings. He was probably better than Sidney Ponson, but when the Cardinals picked up Jeff Weaver and refused to give up on Jason Marquis his big league window was closed.

So: here’s to you, minor league free agents. May they charter better buses wherever it is you’re going.

In other news: I got an excited phone call from some female friends of mine this weekend that sounded something like this: “We thought we’d call, because–well–So Taguchi is like five feet away from us.” Apparently So was making a public appearance at the Galleria wearing what they initially described as flannel, which is quite possibly the greatest mental image I’ve ever had.

They weren’t about to stand in line, but they were impressed anyway; unfortunately our heroines, Jill and Rebekah, fell into the same trap most Cardinals fans seem to. They decided he was boyishly attractive; they guessed he was, say, 25 years old. I hated to break the news to them that they were off by 12 years.

As they say, you can beat the Cardinals, but sometimes you inexplicably don’t beat the Cardinals. Somehow this seems even more satisfying than a genuine Carp win; if he had gone seven scoreless and Molina’s double stood up on its own we’d have watched them win a game with their one trump card, and then gotten back to worrying about the Mets’ superior offense and bullpen.

Instead, they pulled off a win that was totally mind-boggling, and mostly devoid of good things to take going forward. So Taguchi pulling a 98 mph fastball into the seats? I like His Defness, I really do, but I don’t feel all that worried putting down a wager that he’ll never do that again. He had to have seen the fastball coming a mile away, so as to start his swing up, right? And Spiezio’s clutchness, and Tyler Johnson making Carlos Delgado look bush league, and Josh Kinney inducing a double play right in the middle of the Beltran Worship Festivities… it’s all the hallmarks of a lucky game, but wow.

If I believed in baseball momentum, this would be the showstopper to end all showstoppers; with the Tigers’ win yesterday and Carpenter’s early struggles it seemed like they were already printing up the t-shirts for a Teams of Destiny matchup. The Marginally Scrappier New York Nine, moving forward where the Yanks couldn’t, against a team that’s been anointed as Hot ever since they almost blew it all. The Cardinals, who haven’t gotten the same benefit of the doubt since righting the ship from their late-season collapse, delayed what seemed inevitable.

And I don’t believe in momentum, but man if it doesn’t feel like I should at this late hour. They might lose three straight after this, and I’ll forget about what it was like to watch So Taguchi momentarily channel Gary Sheffield–but in that moment, in this game, I felt at peace with the 2006 Cardinals, in all their frustrating non-glory. Win, lose, it was worth the time spent watching them for that.

In the hypothetical “Important things” capsule review, sized to fit the little boxes in TV Guide, I’d probably write:

Cardinals win game they’re supposed to; Jim Edmonds looks dialed in; lots of work left.

But that’s not what I’ll remember when I think about it.

Wait, that was him? I thought they were trying out Mulder’s good arm. If nothing else, be glad that they shut Swamp Gas down when they did; Reyes needs some time to work things out, and to prove that he’s a better bet for the rotation than Marquis.

Meanwhile: September call-ups, O how I love thee. Had this game taken place in July I would have switched over to one of the many Law and Order reruns circa the third inning, but as things were I had Nelson/Narveson sightings to look forward to.

John Nelson takes a big, big swing and he’s an infielder; it’s good to see in terms of variety, but given the AAA results–.219/.291/.411–he’s not going to be the shining example to inspire La Jocketty to invest in infielders with isolated powers over .100.

Narveson looked like a basic lefty back-of-the-rotation type; he threw strikes, he kept his fastball from 88-92, and his curveball was, variously, a sterling strikeout pitch and somewhere in the left-field bleachers. Just from looks, his upside is Mark Mulder 2005, which is definitely not a bad thing. With Mark Mulder 2007 looking ever-more-likely to be a St. Louis bargain by default, it would be the best case scenario if another, more reliable free-agent signing squeezed him out of the rotation. But if it didn’t, God forbid, or if Wainwright ends up shoehorned permanently into the pen, he’s a more interesting option than Pondre the Giant.

And then there was that Japanese second baseman they trotted out; he showed good range around the bag and a solid pivot, but I don’t know if his bat is strong enough to keep him in the bigs. Seriously, is second base a legitimate possibility for The Gooch? He certainly looked competent out there. And if he can play it in the same way Spiezio can, or the way that John Mabry stood at third, he might have one remaining advantage over future fourth outfielder/Real American Hero Skip Schumaker.

Today we get Marquis/Webb, a matchup which Dan McLaughlin described charitably as a battle between two sinkerballers. For those of you keeping score, Marquis Marq’s G/F ratio is now 1.16, about where it was during his days in Atlanta. Of course, he struck batters out in Atlanta; does it surprise anybody else that he once whiffed seven batters per nine innings? Does it surprise anybody that he once whiffed seven batters?

maybe “enjoying” Ramon Ortiz’s stint as Baby Pedro was too much to ask.

That said, it’s over; I’d rather not discuss the Cardinals almost being no-hit by a pitcher whose career since 2002 has been less consistent than Matt Morris’s fastball, except to say that it should never, ever, ever happen again. Ever.

Before I go on: if you weren’t torn between liking So Taguchi the guy and disliking So Taguchi the fourth outfielder, this Post-Dispatch piece should seal the deal. His strange defensive spells seem to have stopped; hopefully he can get his slugging percentage back up around .400.

Today, of course, the Cardinals face another down-on-his-luck pitcher, Pedro Astacio. Last year, Astacio provided a pretty solid object lesson about the limits of momentum and hot streaks. Left for dead after a disastrous stint with Texas–pitchers are typically left for dead when their last three seasons can be described as “disastrous stints”, so this probably didn’t come as a shock–he signed on with the Padres in midsummer and suddenly became their second best pitcher, putting up a 2.20 ERA in August and September.

Of course, he still wasn’t striking anybody out; he actually had better peripherals in Texas. But the Padres stuck with him, since he was the hot hand, and started him in game two… where he lost to a genuine #2 starter, Mark Mulder. There’s something to be said for being hot, but there’s more to be said for being good. And if the Cardinals want to get anywhere, they’d better hope that Young Reyes can prove he’s good come playoff time.

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.

According to Matthew Leach’s latest, it seems that So So Def has a leg up on Bigbieguez for the starting left fielder spot. Does this make any sense to anybody?

First of all–wait. Before I go any further… why was I not told that So Taguchi had an official website? I mean, I know I can’t read it or anything, but that’s just awesome. I eagerly await “Simontacchipundit.” Anyway, the picture on your right is from said website. Seriously. Apparently, eerie homoerotic caricatures are a big part of Japanese baseball.

Okay, yeah, where was I… first, and most obvious, Taguchi has never hit well enough to be an above-average left fielder. If he was really a Gold Glove centerfielder back in Japan, his .277/.333/.387 career mark there was relatively valuable. But even if you give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s improved as a hitter (despite being on the wrong end of 30 and playing in a stronger league), his career Majors OPS of .751 is mediocre at best. Give him ten runs above the average left fielder on defense–and I might, because the guy has a cannon for an arm–and he’s still no better than average. In fact, even the much-maligned Larry Bigbie outhit him when last he was healthy, and he did it over a full season.

Second, Rodriguez and Bigbie are pretty redundant if they’re both bench players; both are lefties with borderline bats. Rodriguez might be a slightly better hitter, and Bigbie’s a better fielder, but it doesn’t make sense to throw two southpaw corner outfielders on the same bench when you have the prototypical 4th outfielder–suspect bat, range for center, good speed–sucking up at bats in the starting lineup.

I doubt any of them is going to get 500 at-bats this year, especially with La Russa’s love of messing with the lineup, but it just doesn’t make any sense; Tony seems to want to reward Taguchi for what he did last year, but the fact remains that what he did last year wasn’t enough out of a corner outfielder. Bigbie and Rodriguez still both have a shot at putting up impressive–or at least adequate–offensive totals, so why not give them the chance?

But that’s not the worst bit of news that Leach breaks:

In each case, there’s a favorite — but not a prohibitive favorite. …and Junior Spivey is a mild front-runner over Deivi Cruz, Hector Luna and Aaron Miles at the keystone corner. But that’s all subject to change.

So help me God, if Deivi Cruz–the Deivi Cruz that was rated as as many as fifty runs below average on defense, who has posted an OBP over .300 exactly three times in his nine year career–if DEIVI CRUZ wins the second base job over two–maybe even three–players who are his superiors in every way, I will be left with no choice but to stop following baseball forever. Get Up, Baby! will be converted to a site about infant exercise methods, and I will be a broken man. There shouldn’t even be a competition here; Spivey is, by far, the best candidate the Cardinals have. Unless every single defensive metric has Cruz pegged wrong, he rivals Neifi Perez as one of the most hopeless long-term major leaguers of all time. [Note: Cruz does not have his own official website, but I will publish any caricatures sent my way.]