Doc Duncan didn’t laugh until Reyes came to him one relief appearance later and begged, without any reasonable expectation of success, to be returned to the starting rotation.

“You’re wasting your time,” he was forced to tell him.

“Can’t you start someone who’ll go deep into games?”

“Oh, sure–of course. It’s a requirement. We want top-flight starters who’ll give us a chance to win by going deep into ballgames.”

“Well, look, I might not have done it recently but I’ve got a history of going deep into ballgames–ask the Detroit Tigers, or the Pacific Coast League.”

“Sure, I could do that. But you’d have to go deep into a ballgame for me to put you into the rotation. It’s a requirement. We want starters who’ll give us a chance to win by going deep into ballgames, and until you prove you can do that I can’t replace Wellemeyer with you.”

“But Wellemeyer doesn’t go deep into ballgames!”

“Sure he doesn’t. He gives us a chance to win by not going deep into ballgames. Allows us to use the bullpen, which is great since he’s not all that good.”

“So he’s not good.”

“Right.”

“And you’re starting him because he gives us a chance to win by not pitching.”

“Exactly.”

“So why can’t you let me give us a chance to win by not going deep into ballgames?”

“I’d love to, but what if you go deep into a ballgame? What will we do then? No, in the meantime I think you’ll give us a great chance to win by not going into as many ballgames as possible.” Doc Duncan had recently increased the number of not-starts required in Reyes’s bullpen to fifty.

“But then how can I–so there’s a catch.”

“Sure there’s a catch,” said Doc Duncan. “Catch-37.”

There was only one catch and that was Catch-37, which specified that back-of-the-rotation starters best helped the rotation by not pitching. Reyes was a back-of-the-rotation pitcher and might one day improve. All he had to be given was a chance–but as soon as he took it, he would be a back-of-the-rotation starter and therefore in no condition to pitch on a regular basis. He might even be demoted to the bullpen. In the bullpen he would pitch the innings the starter in the back of the rotation did not pitch, and pitch well. He might even be promoted to the back of the rotation. Reyes was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-37 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-37,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Duncan agreed.

Yesterday…

Chris Lambert is now some other bloggers’ problem, and what a problem he’s been.

Mid-2005 was the last time he was the fast-moving collegian the Cardinals selected on the basis of his touches-97 fastball. He touched 91 in the Futures Game that year, and since then Lambert International has mainly been concerned with loading people up via the walk and then sending them airborne on one of the 35 home runs he’s given up in the last two years.

But now he’s gone, and we can focus on the young pitching that has turned out for the Cardinals, Adam Wainwright and Anthony–

Not so fast!

… what!? Anyway, Wainwright and Reyes

Ten strikeouts. Two walks. One hit.

I don’t–I’m not sure what’s going on, exactly, but I’ll be sure to

You know you’re a little worried, now, Dan.

Look, Wainwright’s obviously stepped into the ace role, and Reyes has struggled but

I struck out ten batters in six innings in my first start for the Mud Hens.

I don’t–I refuse to believe it!

You know you’ve been worried about this, Dan. Secretly. Maybe it was just a crisis of confidence!

No! You’re done, Chris Lambert! You’ve yet to pitch well against high minors competition. We could’ve had Phil Hughes! Look, it’s… it’s over now. I just watched that crappy Death Wish remake with Kevin Bacon, vigilante justice is justified if you drive a late-model Ford and look pained enough about it. Done and done!

You may have won this round, Dan Upbaby. But I’ll be back, back where you least expect it. When you least expect me.

Today

Wow–so maybe Kip Wells isn’t the answer. Who knew? I have no idea how Kip managed to allow six runs without walking a single batter, but he did it. And–

Wait, Mike Maroth? Mike Maroth?

Is there any rational justification for this move? No, there is no rational justification for this move. Reyes was awful in his last start, and he’s been mediocre at best this year, but Mike Maroth is so done the fork in his back has another, smaller fork sticking out of its back. Here’s what he’s done since 2006, and what Colossal Disappointment Anthony Reyes has done this year:

        GS     IP  K/9  BB/9  HR/9   FIP   ERA
Maroth  28  163.2  3.8   3.4  1.98  6.35  5.94
Reyes   19  100.2  6.3   3.2  1.16  4.54  5.63

That’s 36 home runs over his last 163 innings, if you’re keeping track. It wasn’t a bad move at all bringing Maroth in, and it won’t be a bad move when some team gives him an NRI and a shot to eke out a little more southpaw voodoo next year. But putting him in the rotation because you’re disappointed with a guy who’s got some potential and is already performing much better? Bad move. Inexplicable move.

Ha, ha.

You… you bastard! Anthony Reyes has nothing to do with this!

We Suckubi take no prisoners.

Tomorrow…

So does this guy ever update on time? Possessing this site is boring.

This is absolutely asinine. There’s no way to justify this move, none at all. The Cardinals are moving him to AAA to keep room in the rotation for a scrap-heaper with no breaking pitch, another 25-year-old who can’t strike anybody out, a lefty who is average at best and coming off an arm injury, and a career reliever coming off of a dead arm period. Any rational human being, knowing in particular that the Cardinals are on the fringe of not competing this year anyway, would let the troubled pitching prospect who has dominated AAA time and time again work out his problems in the big leagues.

But the Cardinals have rarely been rational about pitching prospects, and as a result they’re putting themselves in a position to trade another one (probably to a contender with a better rotation) for pennies on the dollar. When people are getting excited about the possibility of acquiring Shane Victorino, well known entirely because the morning zoo rejects that anchor SportsCenter like saying “Flyin’ Hawaiian” like they just made it up on the spot–you know you’ve screwed up a guy who was the Cardinals’ only pitching prospect for a few years running.

I’ve been a La Russa/Duncan backer as long as I’ve been a Cardinals fan. I’ve defended The Administration against nostalgic rants by disgruntled Whiteyballers; I’ve taken La Russa’s side about the Ozzie Smith fiasco; I’ve managed to forget that they shoved the best Cardinal of the 90s–my childhood favorite–out the door twice, all the while keeping Willie McGee around until he got hit by a beanball and turned into dust. But this is unprecedented. It doesn’t help the Cardinals in the short term. It doesn’t help the Cardinals in the long term. It doesn’t make Anthony Reyes a better pitcher, and it doesn’t make him a more valuable commodity.

It’s just stupid. I’m not used to them doing stupid things–even DHing a mediocre middle infielder like Marlon Anderson in the World Series had some explanation, however dumb it was–but this is both stupid and inexplicable. Why send a guy down because he’s not pitching well after one of his better outings? Why send a guy down to work things out when he has?

Because you’re stupid, is why. Because you’re behaving completely irrationally. The Cardinals had better trade Reyes now, especially if they’re not calling him up “until September”. They’ve already made their bed, as they say. I just don’t know why they’re so desperate to short-sheet themselves.

On today’s Viva El Birdos thread–note to Valatan: in the words of Michael Bluth, you’ve gotta lock that down–someone linked to a Nate Silver chat in which he mentions Your Friend and Mine Anthony Reyes, who his very own PECOTA projections assumed would have a sub-4 ERA this year.

Nate Silver: It seems like every time I turn the TV on Reyes is down 5-0 in the first inning. He doesn’t miss bats — just 19% of his strikeouts have been of the swinging variety, as compared to a league average of 22% — and it seems like most of his strikeouts are just the result of his nibbling a whole lot and hoping for the best. And he has to nibble because he’s going to get creamed if he works in the middle of the zone. I think he could be a league-average starter if he played in a big park like San Diego — otherwise, he’s fringy.

boros immediately dropped the hammer on that theory, noting that Carpenter and Wainwright have shown similar percentages. Silver later says this:

Nate Silver: One category that we’re learning to be wary of is pitchers with good K/BB numbers but problems with home runs and flyballs in the minor leagues. Since power is the thing that most differentiates major league from minor league hitters, that really tends to get magnified once a player hits the bigs, and it’s often a proxy for pitchers that are getting by with marginal stuff.

And I’m sorry, Token BP Guy I Still Like, but this is revisionist history of the what-dark-ages? variety. This may or may not be true for pitchers getting by with marginal stuff, but here’s what Baseball Prospectus 2005 said of Reyes’s marginal stuff:

Reyes impressed Florida State histters with his fastball and slider before pitching even better in the Southern League… He profiles as a top pitcher both from the scouting reports and the stat sheets…

And here’s what the only Baseball America book I have handy happen to say about our stuffless wonder:

Reyes has everything teams look for in a front-of-the-rotation starter, from his body to his stuff.

Reyes’s fastball velocity has drifted up and down like the numbers on a used car’s odometer, but Prospectus, America, the Pacific Coast League and numerous major league teams would seem to agree that at times his stuff is as good as his AAA numbers would suggest.

What I want to know, though, is what Silver thinks this new theory of his should manifest itself in. A complete inability to strand baserunners which only appears in a pitcher-with-marginal-stuff’s second big league season? An elevated BABIP that sometimes masquerades as a lower-than-average BABIP? A lack of Mental Toughness over a Replacement Pitcher?

This strikes me as a whole lot of guessing on Silver’s part, and it’s something I’ve seen a lot from the Baseball Prospectus people. They see something that happens over a small sample, and then they scramble to let loose with a bunch of grand theories about what is causing this anomaly in an attempt to stumble over the right answer and be ahead of the curve. Then the anomaly rights itself, and they never mention their brilliant theory again.

Nate Silver may well be right, but he’s basing his theory on what happens “every time [he] turns on the TV” and sixty innings, which sounds like something your average BBWAA member would do. It certainly doesn’t seem to be the work of a group who tries so very hard to appear constantly ahead of the curve.

The no-hitter would’ve been nice but I’ll take making the Royals look helpless, coming as it does from the only natural starter on the Cardinals roster. (Well, the only one who’s actually starting.)

Wainwright has now pitched roughly the same number of innings in the rotation and the bullpen for his major league career. How do the two careers match up?

          IP   K  BB  HR  ER
RELIEF  77.1  72  23   7  29
START   77.0  50  30   7  40

Just from watching him, I’d assumed he had walked and struck out more batters this year; instead he’s resembled early Jeff Weaver, with less control. Not entirely encouraging, but it seems like Wainwright struggles on a game-to-game basis, instead of possessing a few fatal flaws that dog him constantly. How does this start compare to his minor league turns in the rotation?

         IP  HR/9   K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA   FIP
2003  149.2  0.54  7.70  2.22  3.46  3.37  3.01
2005  182.0  0.89  7.27  2.52  2.88  4.40  3.71
2007   77.1  0.81  5.82  3.49  1.67  4.66  4.25

The FIPs paint a neat downward progression, and I’d be satisfied with a 4.25 ERA out of him this year, but for me, at least, Wainwright ranks pretty highly on the gut feeling scale. He’s currently holding his own in the bigs despite appearing to have no grasp of his best pitch every two or three starts, and his slider has improved immeasurably just in this past season. I feel like he’ll at least get his K:BB ratio over two by the end of the year–far from a fearless prediction, since it’s been 2.07 since May 1–and that, combined with his low home run rate, would point him in the general direction of the front of most rotations.

So: it may be that, by the end of the year, the La Duncan Cardinals will have developed one starting pitcher since The Ankiel Incident. If they hop on the Anthony Reyes train to striking people out town, they’ll have two, though they will have developed Anthony Reyes like Rick Ankiel developed himself as an outfielder–it’s not a bad end result, but was all that middle stuff really helpful or necessary?

Speaking of Reyes, this is the second time in two years he’s been banished to the minor leagues to work things out. Last August, he was sent down after posting this line in the games following his one-hitter:

  IP  HR/9   K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA   FIP
44.2  2.22  6.04  5.04  1.20  6.04  6.73

If ever there was a demotion that made sense, it was that one; he was getting hammered in the strike zone and spending a lot of time out of it. Upon dominating the minor leagues for two starts–utilizing his own pitching style, if we want to go with the accepted narrative–he did this for the remainder of the season:

  IP  HR/9   K/9  BB/9  K:BB   ERA   FIP
20.2  2.17  12.2  3.04  5.60  6.10  4.65
20.0  1.35  11.7  3.15  3.71  4.50  3.60

(The second line subtracts his disastrous October first desperation start.) The home run rate was still high, but the nibbling was gone. If it weren’t for that stretch–which included a crappy game among three gems–I could be convinced that Reyes’s struggles are attributable to decreased fastball velocity, or a gameplan that’s not feasible at the highest levels. But when he cut loose last season, fresh out of the minors each time, the results were electrifying. Hitters at the major league level are better than they are in AAA, certainly, but if you can throw up a K:BB ratio over seven in the Pacific Coast League you’re not going to collapse in a heap one more rung up the ladder.

Not unless you’ve got Dave Duncan on the case. I like The Genius, but what’s the saying? When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have in the pitching coach toolchest is a sinker, Anthony Reyes gets nailed.

When I got on the Wellemeyer bandwagon–pretty early, I might add–I was not anticipating this. I was daydreaming about the possibility he would be this year’s Kiko Calero, or maybe even Al Reyes if he played his cards right. Now he is yet another major league reliever in the Cardinals’ starting rotation. I have to imagine that Kip Wells is going to feel pretty left out during conversations.

To be honest, if it were the beginning of the season, or if the Cardinals didn’t already have Brad Thompson stretching out in the rotation, I wouldn’t be all that disturbed by this. Wellemeyer put up some solid minor league numbers, all of them in the rotation. His career home run rate outside the show is an outstanding 0.68 per nine innings, which bodes well, and his control problems weren’t nearly so pronounced. Could it be that, as I postulated with Thompson, the control issues come from an inability to pitch in relief? Sure, maybe. Results with Wonderbrad have been mixed, but there’s nothing in Wellemeyer’s minor league pedigree to suggest he’ll do much worse.

Minor Leagues   H/9   K/9  BB/9  HR/9  K:BB
WonderBrad     8.28  6.64  1.56  0.63  4.27
Todd Terrific  8.55  9.55  3.97  0.68  2.40

One more thing: I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about the straightness of Wellemeyer’s fastball, and wondering aloud how many home runs he’ll give up in Coors Field. The stats just don’t bear this out. His home run rate is pretty low. (His fastball looks pretty good to me, incidentally; straight, maybe, but he locates it very well for a guy with bad control.)

So, devoid of context, this isn’t a bad move. It might even be a good move; the Cardinals seem to be making a concerted effort to exploit a market inefficiency, Moneyball style, by putting players long pigeonholed as relievers into the rotation, where they’re much more valuable. After all, if your scout sees starter makeup in him, why keep him in the pen on the word of some other scout, who saw him when he was in AAA and decided he didn’t have enough pitches, or height, or whatever?

But the problem is who’s going out of the rotation. Wainwright’s going to be fine, but at this point one has to wonder if it really is the way the Cardinals have handled him that’ve contributed to Reyes’s lack of consistent success. Barring a complete meltdown or continued bad command in the PCL, if Reyes is gone longer than a month the Cardinals will be making a huge mistake, and doing it to one of their most valuable assets.

As if that weren’t enough, I’m not convinced Wellemeyer is even the best candidate in the bullpen for the Dave Duncan Starter Plan. When Tyler Johnson was a 21-year-old in A ball, he did this in the starting rotation:

 W  L   ERA   G     IP   H  ER  HR  BB   K  K/9  K:BB  HR/9
15  3  2.00  22  121.1  96  27   7  42 132 9.79  3.14  0.52

Yeah. Then he made ten starts in Palm Beach the following year, and then he was moved to the bullpen. What? Were the 2003 Cardinals really so pitching rich as to not need to watch a guy with a big strikeout rate develop? The move was, apparently, designed to see if his command would improve in a relief role. It obviously didn’t make a difference, since we’ve seen Johnson struggle to locate his fastball (which hasn’t really gained any velocity) as much as he ever did in the minors. With Troy Cate in the bigs as a third lefty reliever, wouldn’t it make some sense to see if a guy with one of the best pitches in the major leagues could go five innings?

Something to consider.

This is what we in the business call a ridiculous move.

Prediction: Reyes will throw whatever he wants in Memphis and succeed; he will be called up and Dunc will say “Very good, now stop throwing those fastballs.”

As for the other half of this equation, Wellemeyer coming into the rotation… seriously? I think Duncan is now convinced that he can just insert whoever he wants into the rotation with success now. Look for Chris Duncan to make the start against the next lefty-heavy lineup the Cardinals match up against; I hear he has a heavy fastball.

This team is not very good. The Brewers are going to come back down to earth a ways, but so long as the Cardinals have a bunch of AAAA players rotating in an outfield spot–and until Kennedy and Edmonds start hitting–they won’t come up enough to catch them, or whoever ends up taking their place.

But I could have imagined this happening in March, and I’m sure some of you did. They aren’t very good, but there’s no reason to think differently than we did about it before the season started; last year’s club was not pretty, and there were some god-awful stretches, but it was what it was.

Panicking when they’re 10-16 or celebrating when they’re 16-10 doesn’t change how good a team is, and until it’s dug enough of a hole for itself that it’s impossible for a feasible bounceback to keep them in contention in what remains a weak divison I would be wary about blowing it up.

To the people shouting rebuild! from the rooftops, I say:

Too soon? It’s May 2. The idea of rebuilding is pretty irrelevant until July, at the earliest. By July I’m still relatlvely certain that Rolen and Edmonds won’t be the problems. The team’s construction will be the problem, but a big part of that can be salvaged if La Russa stops keeping useless players on the bench. If by rebuilding you mean restructuring, and removing players that are luxuries on 100-win teams (the no-hit defensive replacements, the guys who can play several positions badly, the Preston Wilsons), I agree completely. But I don’t think it’ll be a long-term job.

It’s already kind of started. Behold! Two young starters in the rotation, and three members of the lineup 27 or under. (Yes, Albert Pujols does count.) The Cardinals also have some of their best prospects in a while coming up through the system, with Rasmus set to replace Edmonds or whoever’s there in 2008 and Jaime Garcia looking like he’s got a shot to hit the rotation by the time he’s 22. This is an old team, but aside from Edmonds, who most people seem to have written off, and Rolen, whose OPS was .887 last year, the aging players are just average guys who aren’t playing average baseball anymore.

The weird thing about the Cardinals is that they’re built like a rebuilding club, for the most part. A ton of stop-gaps (Eckstein, Kennedy, Encarnacion, Wells), some mediocre young players (Molina), and some prospects. But instead of prospects, they’ve historically just had two or three outstanding players on which to lean. The problem is that with Edmonds on the downswing they’re an outstanding player short, so they need to go back to the 2004 drawing board and add another hitter. Not a trascendent, MV3-ish, world-beating hitter, but a good hitter. They also need to overhaul the bench. That’s the sort of thing that can be done over the course of a season, if they’re creative about it. Come the off-season, they can ask the bigger questions.

That said, there are some good things to take from this series; it certainly doesn’t match up with the Chisox series that proved Mulder was done on the terrified-o-meter, for one. In “list the small things to make them look bigger” form:

• Albert Pujols: I would say he’s back.
• Dennis Dove’s fastball was a lot different than I was anticipating; wasn’t it supposed to be one of those straight, easy to hit pitches? The promised velocity was there, which is rare in relief prospects–remember when we were told Carmen Cali could dial it up in the high 90s?–but in additon to that he has a bit of a weird delivery, and his fastball had some running action to it. He didn’t flash the curveball that he showed off occasionally in Spring Training, but you can’t teach somebody a fastball that’s that good.
• Anthony Reyes looked good. His control isn’t there, but he’s relying more on the high fastball, his velocity’s back, and, most importantly, he missed a lot of bats today. Looper’s start has been (mostly) magnificent, but if this team does anything it’s going to be because Reyes and Wainwright stepped it up. And Reyes looks just about ready.

What I am preaching, as always, is ambivalence. This team isn’t great, but it isn’t a real 10-16 club either.

Inasmuch as Anthony Reyes showed off the ability to allow fewer earned runs than innings pitched, this is a loss I’ll take with a comfortable lead in the division and Jeff Weaver the third best veteran in the Cardinals’ rotation. La Dunc, our Nefarious Villain in this play, seemed okay with his performance. From The Dispatch:

The thought of him serving as a five-inning starter in the playoffs does not exclude Reyes from consideration, according to Duncan.

“It might be (enough) unless we thought we had somebody to do better than that,” he said. “If you think that’s the best you have, you design the rest of the pitching staff around it.”

Or as manager Tony La Russa put it, “Five or six good innings are better than three or four (bad) ones.”

Or, as I read it, “[Anthony Reyes] [is] better than [Jason Marquis].” Good to know.

Speaking of His Sinkiness, his Mystery Start got pushed back once again, with today’s spot in the rotation going to Jeff Weaver. If the rationale isn’t “he’s not starting in the playoffs”, I have trouble thinking what it is; I envision Marquis, electrodes all over his pitching arm, sprinting on a treadmill deep within Busch Stadium as Dave Duncan and Marty Mason, in lab coats, study charts and readouts with serious looks on their eyes. All this to coax one more run of decent pitching out of Marquis’s enigmatic, ever-changing fastball. Hint: put him in the bullpen, tell him to throw as hard as he can, see what happens. Worst case scenario, he’s the same pitcher as Jorge Sosa. But I have to think that even Marquis’s got better luck with a breaking ball.

That said, at this point it absolutely shouldn’t matter what Marquis does from here on out; the Cardinals have, thankfully, four pitchers who are better than he is in the rotation, and plenty of right-handed bullpen arms to choose from. If he wants to help the club out in the playoffs, he should grab an infielder’s glove and take some groundballs at shortstop. I’m sure La Russa wakes up in a cold sweat, some nights, after dreaming about a utility player so versatile he can even pitch–in emergencies.

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?