Hooray for power hitters Jim Edmonds, John Mabry, and David Eckstein. July is almost over, and already the Cardinals are looking a little better for having weathered it. Of course, that’s in part because I forgot to write yesterday–it would have been a five hundred word variation on “Matt Morris didn’t have the fastball at all”, you’re not missing anything–and so I only remember yesterday’s highly satisfying outing.

Jeff Suppan didn’t really have anything, but that’s not anything new or exciting on the Jeff Suppan front; it wasn’t a quality start, but when you have the power bat of The Eck on your side you can afford to give up two home runs and not strike out a batter. Ray King’s outing was encouraging–he looked like the Ray King of old, throwing eleven of his fourteen pitches for strikes and going an entire outing. It’s been an odd year for the only man who can be affectionately called Burger King; some years down the road a kid will look at his baseball card and see 2005 as a great year, what with the low ERA and all. And some fargone fan of this very team will look at him through tearful eyes and wispy, graying hair and say: “I’ll tell you about a good year, oh, I’ll tell you. You ever had a dear friend die bleeding in your arms after another batter squibbed a hit up the middle and clogged up the basepaths? I’ll tell you about that good year, boy, that good year was hell.”

Or something like that.

Trading deadline could very well have passed by the time you read this; Randy Winn was the only guy on Cardinals radar that went off the table. I’ve got to wonder what the Giants are doing; Yorvit Torrealba’s only an average catcher at best, and Jesse Foppert’s Shiny A+ Prospect status is as shredded as his arm, but was acquiring an token-all-star outfield tweener pushing 30 who was once traded for a manager really the key to saving this season, or the next one? It’s understandable that they want somebody other than the cooked Marquis Grissom patrolling center field, but perhaps they could have traded, say, Moises Alou for somebody who would be doing that for the foreseeable future, instead of the next three or four years?

In any case he would have been a good fit with the Cardinals, but I suppose we’ll never know whether the Mariners would have accepted Brad Cresse and Blake Hawksworth for him.

I’m hearing third hand rumors, the kind that pop up every year around this time, that radio shows are talking about Jocketty negotiating a Marquis-for-Junior Griffey deal. I liked this trade a lot more when it was Marquis-and-prospect for one of the Reds’ younger outfielders or Marquis-for-Brian-Giles, but seeing Griffey in a Cardinals uniform would certainly be cool, so long as he stayed healthy. For those of you who haven’t been paying a lot of attention to Griffey, his seasonal marks are up to a very healthy 283/.358/.541 despite his extremely slow April. After his .681 April OPS, he’s put up .901, .911, and 1.086 monthly totals.

Random diversion: the Cardinals’ draft picks have now logged some significant time in the minor leagues, and I’m all for a paragraph where the only research I have to do involves the minor league baseball player search engine.

Colby Rasmus, the power hitting high school center fielder the Cardinals selected first, has… yet to hit a home run. Yes, after hitting more than Bo Jackson as an amateur, he’s got zero in 121 at-bats as a Johnson City Cardinal. It’s not all bad news, though; he’s hitting .299/.369/.402, with four stolen bases. Tyler Greene, the flashy collegiate shortstop, is hitting .267/.374/.344 after getting off to a slow start in the pitching-heavy short-season league. On-base percentage is all well and good, but you like to see some toolsy skills in a low-level prospect. A little power would be awesome.

As for the first round pitchers, Tyler Herron has been absolutely victimized in Johnson City; he’s striking out 9.27 batters per nine, but his mediocre 4.03 walks/9 and his insane 2.42 homers/9 have kept his ERA over 7. Home runs/9 has been found to be an important indicator for future performance, but in 22 innings it could well be a fluke, in which case the rest of his numbers are very encouraging.

His draft partner, Mark “The One Who Went to College” McCormick, has made much quicker work of the low levels. After spending all of six innings in New Jersey–ten strikeouts, three walks, one hit–he was moved up to low-A, where in twelve innings he’s struck out nine and walked four for a 1.50 ERA.

Swamp gas tomorrow, hopefully the LA smog will help him disguise his fastball.

I know, I know, I wasn’t going to make any X-Files jokes, but I had to work for that one. Mulder and tonight’s starter, Marquis, continue to be effective despite having no consistently solid–or even just consistent–peripherals to speak of, no particular ability to hang their hat on. Yesterday’s Mulder gave up hits, struck nobody out, got whiplash from some of the scorching line drives he had to watch, and showed the kind of control that made Rick Ankiel pick up a bat.

Oh, and he just missed a quality start and only allowed two earned runs. My goodness, I don’t think I would follow Daric Barton’s AA stats so much if Mulder’d just be bad, even. I’m just going to chalk this one up to luck, or the baseball gods apologizing for Larry Walker or something, because 5 2/3 innings, 9 hits, 3 walks, 1 strikeout translates into two runs about as often as… well, as Neifi Perez hits a game-winning grand slam.

And yes, the title means that I’ll call Mulder “Swamp Gas” for the inexplicable way he gets through games until I forget about it.

In any case, it was a great win to have; Cardinal fan morale seemed to be at its lowest point of the season, what with the injuries and the Cubs series going as they did. A loss due to Mulder’s sloppy performance would undoubtedly have started the first pessimistic wave through Cardinals message boards.

It was strange to see John Gall after having heard calls to bring him up since Mark McGwire was the guy whose spot he’d take. It’d be like if Ross Perot were to suddenly be made Secretary of State after 10 years of looking back on his time as a Presidential candidate as some sort of early-90’s kitsch. For me, at least, Gall’s name will always be tied to that ugly time at the beginning of the decade when the Cardinals’ idea of a top prospect was a first baseman who was old for his league, or a pitcher who couldn’t go 100 innings without his arm exploding.

As a player, though, Gall should be a good enough stopgap while Walker rests and Jocketty works the phones. His hitting style seems to me taken almost wholesale from, say, Ted Williams’ The Science of Hitting; no movement, slight uppercut, lots of contact. lboros, on the other hand, is reminded of Gregg Jefferies. He strikes me as a guy who’ll perform a little better than his minor league record indicates, but I can’t really back that up.

Tonight’s matchup is a little more worrisome than the ERAs would indicate; Jake Peavy, the ERA champ a year ago, is one of the two or three best young pitchers in baseball. He dominates games with occasionally Pedro-esque strikeout/walk totals, thanks to a fastball with ridiculous movement on it. Jason Marquis… well, I don’t know how he does it, except by driving in run support for himself. Is he a groundball specialist with a heavy sinker? A mid-90’s hurler who racks up strikeouts? A control pitcher? It’s time to spin the wheel and find out what role he plays tonight, I guess. Hopefully winner.

Larry Walker is the latest Cardinal to end up on the fifteen day DL. This is just getting ridiculous.

From the sound of the article he won’t miss much more than the minimum, but then that’s what they said about Scott Rolen, too; John Gall had better take this time to pull a J-Rod and start raking immediately. None of the Broken Wings are expected back for a while, either; according to the Post-Distpatch the one closest to return is Yadier Molina, and he isn’t expected to play in at least the next six games. I hope you’ve been enjoying the Mike Mahoney Show!

Needless to say I think a move for an outfielder would be pretty cool right about now; if Walt doesn’t want to expend the prospects necessary for a move for one of the Cinci Three that are getting bandied about Matt Lawton could post an .800 OPS and keep one of the corners warm while Sanders and Walker recover. The Orioles are looking for him in exchange for Larry Bigbie, which would make the Pirates very, very dumb if it goes down but would also mean that even the Cardinals’ minor league system could offer a better deal. The half of it that isn’t on the 25 man roster, at least.

It’s best we don’t speak of this game again. Also, C.B. Bucknor is a freaking moron.

I leave you with this: 12 games up, ha ha ha.

When Morris can’t keep the fastball down you get games like that one, where five strikeouts and the one walk and those seven hits don’t look all that bad, oh but by the way three of the hits went 400 feet. His curveball looked good, his slider looked good, his fastball apparently looked very appetizing.

Of course, the Cubs did get a look at our jealousy-inducing bullpen–Cal “Forgotten Man” Eldred and Al Reyes pitched three flawless innings without any need of dipping into the setup men.

Speaking of forgotten men, with yesterday’s solid day at the plate Mike Mahoney raised his averages to .150/.227/.200. Yadier Molina circa May would look at those numbers with a twinge of disappointment, and yet inexplicably Mahoney has been anointed the starter while Molina recovers. At this point it’s fair to wonder how many dogs Einar Diaz had to strangle to get this far into Tony La Russa’s, er, peoplehouse; it’s not that he’s even a good hitter, and his defense has slipped a little, but given the other option it’s stunning how little playing time he continues to get.

Today’s matchup–Mark Prior/Jeff Suppan–doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence; you just hope that Dusty Baker’s 150 pitch limit for his young starters–such coddling!–comes quickly.

No shortage of heroes in this one; Chris Carpenter dueled with a brilliant Carlos Zambrano for nine innings, John Rodr–okay, okay, J-Rod–lining a pitch 400 feet, Jason Isringhausen shut the door on the Cubs’ collective arm after opening it wide enough to get them greedy… of course, we’re all going to remember primarily Mabry managing a stunning triple into the opposite field and Eckstein executing a suicide squeeze like it’s no big deal. Even Get Up, Baby! Official Non-Cedeño Whipping Boy Hector Luna got into the act, not telegraphing the squeeze until there was nothing the Cubs could do about it.

With Scott Rolen’s availability stretching into the postseason in question, it’s games like these that reassure me. There’s a certain amount of luck in these one run games, but when you execute as well as the Cardinals did, winning despite Albert Pujols’s struggles, the “luck” swings your way more often.

But FSN Midwest is broadcasting a AA game, so I’ll liveblog an excerpt of that instead.

Stu Pomeranz is the starter; he’s one of the young prospects that have made the jump from A ball and scuffled a little.

He leads the game off with a strikeout of Royals prospect Mel Stocker. His knuckle curveball looks great, really sharp and a little reminiscent of Jason Isringhausen’s.

Man, Pomeranz is a big guy. He can’t throw strikes, though; he walked the second hitter on four pitches. It’s not even the breaking ball that he’s missing with, the fastball is just coming in below hitters’ kness. It’s better than missing high, I guess, but it’s not an good problem to have as you hit the high minors. He worked the count full to the next hitter but missed with a curveball, so now with two on and one out he’s got…

Futures Game MVP/squandered Mets prospect Justin Huber! Pomeranz’s fastball has a little sink, but it’s pretty disappointing considering how big he is. Huber lines a pitch into the opposite field to load the bases, and suddenly Pomeranz starts throwing strikes. It seems like when he’s not consciously trying to keep the ball low he can control the fastball. Nevertheless, this improvement by Pomeranz results in a sac fly, and it’s 1-0 Wranglers.

Okay, I take it back, Pomeranz misses with a lot of breaking balls, too. Three of them consecutively hang and thankfully move too far inside for the hitter to crush, but then he puts two fastballs together for strikes. Another fastball outside means the bases are loaded again, and I’m reminded why I wanted to see Chris Lambert pitch. Unfortunately he pitched yesterday, throwing five innings, striking out six, walking two, and allowing four earned runs.

After a visit from the pitching coach Pomeranz gets ahead 1-2 on the next batter and blows a knuckle curve by him for a strikeout. Portrait of a 20 year old pitcher in AA: one inning, three walks, two strikeouts, one hit. It looks like he’s trying to throw a splitter at times, but without much success.

The Cardinals don’t have a lot of prospects outside of the two starting pitchers in AA. Cody Haerther, the starting left fielder, killed the ball in A ball but has struggled in his first exposure to the high minors. Brendan Ryan has shown a good batting average coming up through the system as a shortstop, but has little in the way of peripheral skills and isn’t particularly young for his leagues. He’s leading off, I’m excited to see what he looks like. He made his AA debut yesterday, going 1-4.

He’s got a crouched, slightly open stance, and he stands way off the plate. His plate discipline looked a little rough in his first at-bat, though, as he was unable to bring the bat back on a breaking ball off the plate and got called out on strikes.

Man, either this pitcher is really good, the hitters are really bad, or it’s the contrast between him throwing strikes and Pomeranz not; hitters are swinging and missing on a lot of balls in the zone. Thad Markray–I had to check the spelling–gets journeyman Tyler Minges out on a nasty splitter that paints the outside corner. He’s a little old, but that still looks good.

While I was checking the spelling I noticed that the Wranglers also have fireballer Colt Griffin on the roster; he’s the draft bust famous for being the first high schooler to get clocked with a 100 mile an hour fastball who I begged the Cardinals to pick up in the Rule 5 draft. He’s got a 4.07 ERA out of the bullpen this year, with an ugly strikeout to walk ratio and his usual low home run rate. He’d better pitch.

Pomeranz, inspired by Markray’s performance, blows two strikes past the first pitcher he sees. He’s definitely got some sinking breaking ball going that isn’t his curveball, but the announcers (including Andy Benes) haven’t mentioned it. He throws it for two straight balls to even the count, which could explain why. He finally breaks out the curveball and gets a line-out to Haerther. He continues to struggle with keeping the ball in the zone, but this time he gets at least one pitch out for the hitters to swing at and retires the side in order.

The Royals pitcher I’ve been raving about apparently started off as a third baseman, which would explain his age. And me raving about him would explain the next pitch he throws going 450 feet courtesy of Juan Diaz, a big minor league journeyman slugger who put a huge uppercut swing on an off-speed pitch.

Elsewhere in minor league land, injury-prone prospect Blake Hawksworth, who has just started rehabbing down in short-season New Jersey, has gotten pounded; through three innings he’s allowed four runs on three hits, two walks, and two strikeouts. First rounder Tyler Greene is 0-1 with a walk, and AJ Van Slyke has a double.

Speaking of nepotism, Aaron Herr is up after Diaz; he’s got a batting helmet on that Craig Biggio would probably throw into the wash, but strikes out on another low-and-away fastball. Leo Mazzone would be proud of Markray.

Pomeranz looks like a completely different pitcher entering the third inning; his curveball has flattened out, but he’s throwing the fastball for strikes. He retires the first two hitteres without issue, but Justin Huber–obviously the class of this game just by watching–hits a line drive on a 2-2 count despite a very good outside fastball from Pomeranz. The third out comes quickly; Pomeranz threw three consecutive fastballs for strikes, and on the third one Mitch Maier hit a weak groundball to first base.

In the third inning we see former second base prospect Shaun Boyd, now an outfielder. Boyd’s swing reminds me a lot of Fernando Viña’s (he’s the same number, too), and he appears very fast on a double grounded hard past the third baseman. Brendan Ryan walks in his second at-bat.

They’re interviewing “Sign Man”, a Busch Stadium regular whose name is in fact Marty. He, apparently, is a Springfield, MO native. Meanwhile, over the course of the minutelong interview, Pomeranz retires the first two batters with no trouble at all. He falls behind the next hitter 3-0–more fastball issues–but works the count full again before walking him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pitcher who has this much consistent trouble finding his fastball. The ump is calling a tight strikezone, but he’s throwing a lot of them well out of the zone. It’s so erratic that it’s a disappointment when a hitter fouls one back, because Pomeranz needs those balls in play.

The game’s pretty uneventful, now that Markray continues to put away hitters and Pomeranz is throwing strikes. Markray made Aaron Herr look silly with a fastball up at his eyes.

So, barring any Colt Griffin-related developments, this has been a test of the Emergency Liveblogging System. In the case of a real liveblog, an important game would be going on, and I’d probably be funnier. (Funny?)

The more I read and the more I blog the more my subconscious becomes conditioned to the idea that I have some idea to predict what will happen next based on trends and recent happenings surrounding the Cardinals. And then, right after Reggie Sanders gets hurt, they break out the bats and put the hurt on the Brewers. I should really stop listening to my subconscious.

After the bizarre fascination with Mike Mahoney earning his not-first hit–check the media guides, Fox–Cardinals fans were finally given an actual rookie to bust out the standing ovation for. John Rodriguez, who is looking to build a pension-securing career on one of the biggest fluke months of all time, reminds me of a cross between Roger Cedeño and Randall Simon. Which is to say, I have my reservations. Only the Kosher Krusher could swing at more pitches, and his awkward stance and flailing uppercut swing remind me of the Rog. (There’s some facial resemblance, too.) I was surprised he didn’t swing at the people doing postgame interviews, because they were all moving in on him. I can’t really pass judgment now, because he’s yet to hit the ball in the air and that’s kind of what’s gotten him here, but I’d like to see better plate discipline. Sadly, Joe Buck and Al Hrabosky were excited about his “aggressiveness.” And just for reference, I’m not calling him J-Rod until he does something cool. Pulling a home run out of the park with that cartoonish stance of his should do the trick, at which point he’ll probably permanently be in my good graces.

Randy Flores continues to be a total enigma, striking out the side and allowing two baserunners (and another on a Hector Luna error.) I think he’s got it in him to be a solid second lefty; those breaking balls can be pretty nasty to a left-handed batter, and that strikeout rate is good to see. Nevertheless, he and John Rodriguez probably shouldn’t put up the down payment on those condos just yet.

Caldred didn’t have much today, as evidenced by Rickie Weeks’s massive upper deck home run in garbage time. He was leaving a lot of fastballs up in the zone, and aside from a perfectly-formed surprise curveball that caught everybody in the stadium off guard his breaking balls just weren’t biting. Rickie Weeks, though… wow. If a player could possibly resemble Gary Sheffield more without alienating the media, I’d like to see him do it. What a hard swing. Take the performance for what it was, though; Eldred’s the last righty out of the pen, and he’s good for an ERA under 4. That’s pretty handy.

The Cubs have mostly been supplanted by the Astros in my Cardinals-Meltdown nightmares these days, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their recent acquisition of Jody Gerut. Gerut’s a media-friendly guy in the vein of Mark Grace, funny and quick with a one-liner, but since his dark horse rookie year he hasn’t been a particularly good player. Right now he’s a plus defensive corner outfielder who gets on base but doesn’t hit for a lot of power. Ladies and gentleman, the Cubs have acquired… Ray Lankford, 2004! Without the magical Ray Lankford powers, of course, or the big peak. I wouldn’t mind the Cardinals acquiring the actual Ray Lankford, for that matter; insert pointed Marlon Anderson/Roger Cedeño jab here, with added topical bonus in the wake of Sanders’ injury.

In exchange they gave up Jason DuBois, who killed the ball in AAA last year and has predictably not been given much of a chance to repeat the effort in Dustyland. For one, he’s ten years too young and apparently is a slow version of Cedeño in the outfield. Not only that, but his bat has gotten off to a slow start. His OPS (.761) is higher than Gerut’s, but that’s misleading; his line is .239/.289/.472, which would look much cooler coming from the real Rob Stratton. Their EQAs tell the story: .256 for Gerut, DuBois .251. Low risk, moderate reward move for both teams, who didn’t have a place to put the players in question.

Chris Carpenter is a machine, that’s all there is to it. He throws strikes, he gets groundballs, he misses bats… did I mention he throws strikes? Strikes that apparently repel bats, as opposed to the other way around? I don’t know that I like La Russa letting him throw more than 110 pitches with a huge lead in the standings in mid-July, but it’s certainly cool to see him throw shutout number four. When was the last time the Cardinals had a guy this good? Pre-first-injury Matty Mo?

The fact is, Carpenter has taken a path similar to Johan Santana in 2004 and suddenly gone from well-above-average to Walter Johnson in the middle of a season. As lboros noted, he’s on one of the best six start runs ever. Here he is, not compared with the Greats, but himself, pre Olympus:

          GS  CG    IP    H  R  ER  HR  BB    K  K/9  BB/9  HR/9  K:BB   ERA
2004 Carp 28   1   182  169 75  70  24  38  152  7.5   1.9  1.19  4.00  3.46   
Pre-June  11   1  73.6   73 35  31   6  22   69  8.4   2.7  0.73  3.14  3.79 
Since      8   3  64.6   36  5   5   3  11   68  9.5   1.5  0.42  6.18  0.70 

So the control is back where it was in 2004, and the strikeout rate’s stayed up. Not good news for opposing batters, although at some point he’s got to start giving up those hits on balls in play, right? Well, as lboros also noted, Carpenter combines impeccable control, high strikeout rates, and a high groundout/flyout ratio. That’s an extraordinarily rare combination, and the only real, recent comparison is peak Kevin Brown. (Brandon Webb, VEB’s other mentioned groundballer, walks twice as many batters.)

Enjoy it while it lasts, obviously, because pitchers are notoriously finicky creations; for every Greg Maddux there’s 20 or 30 Steve Averys catching lightning in a bottle for a few years and then falling back into the pack.

Of course, the bad news is Our Man Reggie’s injury. My least favorite part about this is that he was vocally trying to become a 30/30 man, and he had a good shot at it. He should be back in time to get a rolling start into the playoffs, but meanwhile the Cardinals have to play those games scheduled for the next four weeks. John Rodriguez, come on down! You’re the next contestant on the $300,000 pyramid, with your host, Bo Hart! That’s got to be a lot of pressure on a guy; if Rodriguez continues his hot streak for a month or so, he’s suddenly got a seven or eight year career as a fourth outfielder ahead of him. If he doesn’t, he’s got a trip back down to the Pacific Coast League.

This only intensifies the Cardinals-trading-for-an-outfielder murmurings, of course. (It also kind of hurts their bargaining standpoint; it’s like having your car spontaneously combust while you’re haggling with a salesman about that ratty old Corvette you could, uh, take or leave.) If they don’t win the Dunn/Pena/Kearns sweepstakes, I wouldn’t mind them trying to pry Matt Lawton away from the Pirates. He’s a butcher in the outfield, but he’s hitting .276/.381/.454 and would make a great #2 hitter. And if the Cardinals return to the world series, it would be cool putting those numbers into the DH spot instead of Marlon Anderson’s. Seeing as the Pirates are the same team that gave up Aramis Ramirez for an older, already-inferior player, I’m sure Jocketty could find a way to make it happen.

One of the five best pitchers in the National League tries to fool him with a curveball, gets it pulled into the second deck. Somebody get Preston Wilson on the line, we need somebody in right field.

Somewhere between his last start and this one Jason Marquis went from strikeout-guy-afraid-of-his-sinker back to the 2004 “Efficient Groundball Specialist” model. I’m working on a longer post about his extremely bizarre year, but at this point I’ll just say that I can’t get a read on him, except that at this point it’s got to be pretty obvious to La Russa that he’s a better hitter than Minar Mahoneyaz and possibly Yadier, too; if he was daring enough to bat 1998’s starters eighth for a while, you’d think he could throw a guy who’s slugging .563 a bone.

I’m happy about today, though, however he managed to do it; you don’t get a lot of opportunities to watch a back of the rotation guy outduel a rival ace so handily, and you see him start off the rally against said ace with a bruising line drive even less. Jim Edmonds continues to scuffle somewhat, but Grudzielanek seems like he’s… well, I almost said on track, but at this point I’m just convinced he’ll alternate .350 stretches with Bad Grudz periods. At this point the only major fret for the Cardinals is when Rolen’s going to start outhitting Marquis again. He’s looked tentative since he came back, kind of half swinging at the ball; thankfully, it hasn’t affected his defense. Honestly, he looks better than I can ever remember seeing him on that side of the ball, like he’s compensating for the Mendoza-esque offense.

That whole 13 inning, walk off home run thing? I, uh, missed it, so I’m afraid I can’t comment. When the combined positions of the moon, Neptune, and that hypothetical second sun from 2010 hit a certain Numerological value, I turn into someone with enough of a social life to go places on a teenage friday night. Don’t worry, it doesn’t happen a lot.