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.

Outfielders since May 1st, and Yadi for good measure:

      G  AB  R  H  2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  K   BA  OBP  SLG
Juan 34 139 14 39   8   3   6    7   6 21 .281 .308 .511
Jim  26  92 12 26   4   0   2   16  15 14 .283 .373 .391
John 17  74 12 21   4   0   0    5   6 15 .284 .337 .338
Yadi 24  90  8 24   6   0   2   14  10  3 .267 .356 .400

So, uh, Yadier–would you mind hitting sort of like that over the rest of the season? And maybe the next ten years? That would be great. I was never on the J-Rod-should-start/Encarnacion-should-be-sent-to-a-work-camp bandwagon, so I can’t really jump off of it, but this puts me much more firmly on the free-John-Gall-and-platoon-him-with-Dr.-Nickname bandwagon. I mean, I knew J-Rod was wanting for power at the moment, but those are Quilvio Veras numbers. And not even the good Quilvio Veras numbers! (Juan’s putting up Alfonso-Soriano-in-Texas numbers, while Edmonds is Yankees Chuck Knoblauch without the speed. It’s not good when you can compare each outfielder to a second baseman.)

Of course, there’s another way of dealing with the outfield problem, and if MLBRumors is at all accurate on this report… well, wow. Another prime example of Jock selling high on a prospect in exchange for a player alienated by the hometown crowd and victimized by circumstance as of late. (Were he GM of some other team at the moment I think he’d be looking at Isringhausen and Encarnacion.) Now, there’s one problem: this trade makes absolutely no sense from the perspective of the Mets, unless Omar Minaya is suffering from some as-yet-undiagnosed dementia. Diaz isn’t a great player, but he’s young, he’s cheap, he’s got a career major league OPS over .800, and most importantly he isn’t a minor league closer who relies on a strange delivery and a low-90s fastball. I like Worrell–he’s pitched much better than recent minor league closers like Gene Stechschulte and Scotty Layfield–but the Cardinals would make out like bandits in this deal.

You know, for a guy with good control, Brad Thompson has terrible control. For all the ridiculously contrived contradiction of that sentence, it’s the one thing I kept thinking as WonderBrad was pitching. I had the same thought about last year’s iteration of Mark Mulder, the one that nibbled at the corners with his unimpressive fastball between almost-eephus curveballs, and it confused me just as much then; generally, if a guy has a low walk rate we assume he can throw a fastball through a thimble. But–chalk it up to youthful-looking naivete–Thompson appears to have no idea where three out of four of his strange, moving fastballs are going. (I can’t remember another pitcher less likely to throw a ball straight; he must have been hell on his dad playing catch.) It’s just that, eventually, he gets one that at least starts off in the zone and the guy makes contact with it. The start also made it apparent why La Russa and Duncan have never considered him rotation material; his curveball, which he normally has no need to throw, wasn’t particularly impressive. He was victimized by the bloop ball-in-play in yesterday’s outing, but so long as one out of four fastballs brings about an awkward swing things should be fine.

It also helps when your pitchers nearly hit for the cycle.

And, finally, it doesn’t excuse all the outmaking he did in April, but during May Juancar has been a perfectly solid hitting right fielder; he’s hitting .276/.329/.487, which only furthers the notion that La Russa was absolutely nuts to ever consider him in the two spot. Given his very good outfield defense, if he remains around his May line for the rest of the season he’ll definitely be a valuable player. In April he hit .222/.245/.333; in May of 2004, new Cardinal rightfielder Reggie Sanders hit .182/.213/.247, which he followed up with a .234/.280/.442 mark in June. It just goes to show how important a good start can be to how we view a guy for the rest of his time in uniform–that April, Reggie had slugged .700.

Mike O’Connor got suitably buzzed–it’s okay, Mike, most lefthanders aren’t going to hit you so long as you keep throwing that weird frisbee curveball–but Ponson and the Cardinals bullpen were both unnaturally good. O’Connor didn’t really have a chance, especially on three days’ rest. In an unusually telling pregame interview, the reporter asked Hal McRae about how little they knew about the guy. He spoke about it for a while, and then when he got to what they did know he started giggling, almost, and said: “He doesn’t throw very hard.” I think he wanted to step in against the kid himself. In the comments, Max (who happens to run one of my favorite book blogs, if you like that sort of thing) offers up some of the Ponson nicknames gleaned from his tenure as an Oriole fan, and I think the best one–Sidney Fatson–is brilliant in its bluntness:

Fat Sidney, Sidney Fatson (pronounced FAT-sown), and The Judgepuncher.

So if he loses Heavy P status through a bad game or two, I highly suggest breaking out one of these slightly less tactful choices. Yesterday, at least, Ponson managed to push his K:BB ratio over one with a four strikeout/two walk performance. (Also worth checking out in yesterday’s comments: The Ol Goaler informs us that Youppi! did indeed land on his feet, with the Montreal Canadiens. Normally I’d consider becoming a hockey mascot a bit of a step down for someone so distinguished as Youppi!, but hey–he was an Expo before, crowds at Habs games are probably much bigger than he saw at the O.)

As for Juancar’s 0-5 performance–well, if J-Rod could run the bases or Jose Guillen wasn’t patrolling right field it would be 1-5, not that that’s a whole lot better. I’m just glad he’ll be left alone by the fans for a little while to climb back up towards his usual performance, however pedestrian that happens to be.

I don’t get Scott Spiezio. I just don’t. I’m needlessly hostile towards him on this blog–because of the facial hair, mainly–but I was still pretty convinced, objectively, that he was done. And now he’s hitting .259 and slugging .600. I’m not convinced he’ll keep it up, or even keep being mediocre up, but it doesn’t take a lot of production to be the last guy off Tony’s bench, so long as he can prop you up at several positions.

Today the Cardinals send up Jason Marquis to face Tony Armas, Jr., better known as (ouch) the last thing the Nationals have left from the Pedro Martinez trade. It’s hard to imagine, but the Expos apparently asked for the only two pitchers on earth (Carl Pavano was the other) more fragile than Pedro. Armas was no Pedro, obviously, but he was a very good prospect coming up through the system and managed to be an above-average pitcher by the age of 21. And then, from 2003 to 2005, he pitched about 200 innings total. Most of his success this year comes from an unnaturally low home run rate, but he’s going to be solid as long as his arm stays attached.

Which I give another week, maybe.

Two of the Cardinals’ best prospects played at Quad Cities yesterday. One, Colby Rasmus, is almost certainly having his lawyer type up the restraining order against me as I type, but he continues to hammer the ball; he went 3-6 with a home run and two stolen bases. He’s now hitting .293/.350/.457 on the season. Mark McCormick, who’s apparently got one of the best fastballs in the minor leagues, continues to prove two things:

• Batters in the minor league can not hit him
• He can not hit the strike zone

Six shutout innings; he struck six out and walked six, and allowed two hits. Somewhere, Mitch Williams is feeling inexplicably nostalgic. According to lboros (the link is down right now, but VEB has the synopsis) Ben Jacobs of the Baseball Analysts thinks there’s a hitch in his delivery which keeps him out of the zone. If it is a mechanics issue, and he can at least get his walk rate into fringe-average range, he might have as high an upside as any Cardinals pitching prospect. On the other hand, having walked 19 in 19 and 2/3 innings… he’s got a ways to go.

Just in case Joe Strauss is reading: we do call him Instant Breakfast, but it’s not pronounced like carnation. Whatever you call him–I’m still partial to Juancarnacion, in the grand Caldred/Jedmonds tradition–it would appear that the boo him/don’t boo him debate is over for the moment. Numbers prior to Tuesday’s game: .203/.236/.217. Numbers following Tuesday’s game: .233/.263/.329. He’s moved up from “pitcher” to Rey Ordoñez on the hitterometer, which is a good thing, though inherently depressing.

That leaves Yadier Molina in pitcherland. Now, I know that, as a catcher, his job isn’t to hit, but to deal with pitchers; apparently theirs is a fragile intellect, so fragile that it requires a skilled caretaker to get them to do the thing they’ve been doing since high school without congealing into a useless mess. (One would think they’d have some idea of how to pitch themselves by this point, but one can never be sure.) But, come on: unless this is a really in-depth example of new journalism, he’s getting himself a little too entangled with his subjects by hitting like one. I’m sure he’ll pick up eventually, but is this due to his new Albert Pujols imitation at the plate? Should he switch back?

A Rick Ankiel injury? Again? Man, does this guy have some mob connections gone sour or something? Apparently he’s still able to hit, but this can’t be good for his roster chances. (I think he’ll outhit Taguchi this year, so if he’s adequate in center field he’d be a nice bench guy to have.) Of course, at this rate he’s going to be suddenly allergic to some fabric used in the big league jerseys.

Darn. “Manny being Manny” leads to Juancarnacion getting invited to play in the WBC. I’ve been more lenient about him than most people, because you never know when a peaking tools guy’ll go Jose Guillen on you, but it would have been a good thing for him to stick around in camp for a while and maybe try to get the giant hole in his swing patched up.

I don’t have a lot for you, but over at The Birdwatch they’re ramping back into midseason form. Len checks in with a great Pepper Martin retrospective in time for what is… well, almosttouches on the days of the 25th men’s lives.

The Josh Hancock signing–after, you’ll remember, he was released by the Reds for showing up overweight–isn’t a big deal, but it’s always nice to see the Cardinals grab up free talent. Even if they don’t play him in the majors, there’s always a use for AAAA pitching; they did this a few years back with Luis Martinez, a former Brewers prospect released after some gun-related incident, and midway through the season they flipped him for Larry Walker. Matthew Leach has Hancock’s side of the story on what seemed to be a Message Firing™ from the Reds, who are really in no position to give up mediocre pitchers, even if they show up overweight with a gun.

Of course, it doesn’t really bode well for Hancock; on my depth chart he’s probably below Ponson/Reyes, Wainwright, and Chris Gissell (who may or may not still be a Redbird) on the emergency starter list. Not only that, but if Ponson wins the #5 spot in the rotation and Reyes is sent down to get regular starts, the Memphis rotation could get pretty crowded when Chris Narveson (the important half of the Walker trade, at the time) gets totally healthy. A lot of other teams could use a guy who’ll probably be just a little below average–the Reds, for example–but on the Cardinals he’s a ways down the list.

In other news, the visa: you’re everywhere you want to be, so long as it’s not the US incident appears to finally be over. The new right fielder was the first to show up, and Derrick Goold even has a dispatch from Juancarnacion’s slightly corny press conference. In the non-cheesy portion, he says this:

“I’d like to have been here early because it is a new team,” he said. “I like the fans there in St. Louis and hopefully they cheer me even more now that I’m there for St. Louis.”

Waiiiiiit a minute.

I don’t know about you other fans there in St. Louis, but we Moores were avid Encarnacion haters all the way back to his interleague days with the Tigers. During his half-season stint with the Reds, in particular, he always seemed to burn the Cards. Thanks to the excellent Day-by-Day Database I can check and see if we were right to hate him, and as it turns out…

We were oh so right. In his first game at Busch II, way back in 1999, he homered; all told he hit .333/.388/.487 at Busch, with 4 homers and 12 RBI. Playing for the Reds at Busch, he hit .423/.500/.769.

So we’ll cheer him now, but apparently we weren’t booing loudly enough before.

And finally, I haven’t brought this up before but Scott over at CardNilly has had the “stolen” billboard story covered about as well as possible for the past week or so. He proclaimed his hands washed of the incident, but as he opines, they just keep dragging him back in. Here’s the latest, and–for Scott’s blood pressure’s sake–we hope, the last word.