I think it is safe to say that this is the greatest giveaway ever concocted. What player is better suited to comic book immortalization than Rick Ankiel?

I am seriously considering attending this game, provided Talent Man (secret identity: R. Alexander Ankiel) is still a Memphis Redbird. Five hours in the car is five hours in the car, but a comic book with Rick Ankiel on it is forever.

Man, I’m beginning to lose patience with this team. They can’t even fall out of contention right.

It’s a little like going car-hunting, only to be informed by the mechanics that that sensible Corrola you rattled in on is still running, kind of. I was all set for the Cardinals to trade away some veteran middle relievers for a gaggle of young or damaged prospects. It’s not that the prospects would be all that impressive, even if the Cardinals were to trade the complete Springer/Franklin/Percival compliment, but having not been sellers in any reasonable capacity in some time it would have been an interesting change of pace to be the one hoping that a Coco Crisp or Jack Wilson turns into a ballplayer, instead of worrying about it. I would’ve liked, this time, to be the one who doesn’t wake up in a cold sweat, wondering if Jason Christiansen pitching ten innings was quite worth it.

But the Cardinals responded with a loud “I’m not dead, yet, provided you don’t look at the Pythags and all”, and here we are. Where are we, again? The long-promised “What they’ve been doing since I left my motivation in Seattle” roundup follows. Let’s go down the order:

David Eckstein
Pre 7/14: .317/.357/.385
Since 7/14: .235/.268/.275

Those post-inadvertant-hiatus numbers aren’t all that impressive, but Eck gets a mulligan since I had no idea he was hitting as well as he was in the first place. That’s a startlingly empty batting average, but after beginning the season with an OPS just barely on the right side of .550 and struggling with an injury that split up his hot streak, it surprises me that he’s been so… adequate.

After April it seemed like there was no danger of the Cardinals playing chicken with middle infielder aging patterns and resigning Eckstein, but now things don’t look so certain. I love watching David Eckstein, but he’s a middle infielder who’s going on 33-years-old. Middle infielders age a lot like alternative rockers, and I wouldn’t pay for Paul Westerberg’s age-35 season, either.

Jim Edmonds
Pre 7/14: .238/.308/.394
Since 7/14: .167/.286/.167

Mulligan. Not only did the time in which I could speak objectively about Jim Edmonds pass long ago, he’s got half as many at-bats as everybody else in the lineup.

Albert Pujols
Pre 7/14: .308/.408/.521, 17 HR
Since 7/14: .370/.462/.815, 6 HR

I have this feeling–call it blogger’s intuition–that Prince Fielder starting the all-star game is going to look really, really dumb by the end of the year. What is it with Pujols getting jobbed at the hands of fat first basemen without secondary skills? Albert might be the best defensive first baseman of his generation, but defense at first base only gets coverage when you can’t hit

Regardless–and I believe this is the third or fourth time I’ve said it this year, so take it with a grain of salt–I guess we can finally stop worrying about El Hombre.

Chris Duncan
Pre 7/14: .293/.385/.552
Since 7/14: .275/.362/.625

Awesome. Between Duncan and Pujols, it would appear that the Cardinals don’t develop hitters–they just sort of appear out of thin air every once in a while. (I feel like it’s relevant that Rick Ankiel hit his 30th home run last night.) Duncan seemed like a perfect example of the Cardinals failing to sell high, back when he was on the block, but the guy with the career minor league line of .262/.340/.415 is now coming up on almost 200 games as one of the best hitters in baseball.

Juan Encarnacion
Pre 7/14: .270/.301/.460
Since 7/14: .391/.442/.478, 13 RBI

(The numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, since Juan is best known for his un-clutch hitting.) I am now in the uncomfortable position of being a Juan backer who would be absolutely ecstatic to see him on the block by tomorrow. Such is the nature of Ankiel Fever, and the weird way in which Encarnacion was a perfect fit for the just-contending 2006 Cardinals, and an awful fit for the almost-contending 2007 Cardinals.

And as far as selling high goes, the man with the ugliest swing in baseball is now hitting well over .290. If I were forced to go solely on observation, I would be hard-pressed to believe that he makes contact in 29% of his at-bats.

Scott Rolen
Pre 7/14: .263/.340/.375, 4 HR, marinating in done-sauce.
Since 7/14: .300/.364/.550, 2 HR, pulling the ball which is cool

If Scott Rolen had hit a home run this year for every time Dan’n'Al had noted, during the 2006 season, that his power wouldn’t come all the way back until 2007, he would be looking for his five-hundredth home run sometime this week. When I left for O’Hare, the surliest member of MV3 had four.

I’m much more reluctant to proclaim that Rolen is back, given the thoroughness with which he’s disguised himself as a utility infielder, but there’s something to be said for hitting the ball out of the infield with some kind of regularity.

Adam Kennedy
Pre 7/14: .213/.287/.255, 2.6 dreams crushed/nine innings
Since 7/14: .300/.300/.567

One way to keep Adam Kennedy from hitting terribly, it would appear, is to not let him hit. The Cardinals’ big free agent acquisition is now at five kilolankfords on the Metric La Russa Doghouse Scale, and as if that weren’t enough for his psychoanalyst he might now be blocking a prospect.

Fun fact: if Adam Kennedy were to hit four home runs in a row tomorrow, he would be slugging .352.

Yadier Molina
Pre 7/14: .264/.326/.321
Since 7/14: .194/.312/.220

Kennedy’s Junior Spivey impression has probably done a lot to hide the way Molina’s regressed after what was a very promising first two months. The problem is that, even in those two promising months, Molina’s OPS was never over .700.

I think the best gameplan at this point would be to set Molina up with some holistic hitting coaches and see if he can’t throw out poor hitting as a concept.

Pardon the–well, the lack of dust. Being off the internet for a week is really hell on one’s routines. My litblog RSS feeds were jammed up, my junk mailbox had to be checked for non-junk, and–most importantly for this website–I had to get back into my baseball news routine. I was shocked, when I first hit the internet, to learn that Jason Kendall was now a Cub.

Has a guy who looked, for a while, to be a possible Hall of Famer ever faded this badly? After those great years in Pittsburgh… and then those good years in Pittsburgh… and that adequate year in Oakland… well, The Ultimate Gamer’s throwing up an OPS+ of 42. Were he to stagger to 120 games this year, it would be the fourth-worst season by any catcher since 1901. (Yes, I did finally buy Baseball-Reference PI.) (The worst, incidentally, was our dear friend Tony Pena, who put up an OPS+ of 31 in 1993 and then somehow kept playing baseball.)

O, to still be in real contention–there would be much joy to wring from so feeble a deadline move, correcting such an asinine fumble. But with the Cardinals struggling to remain even nominally relevant, even the Cubs trading for the rights to bury Jason Kendall doesn’t have a lot of verve to give.

Regardless, now is, once again, the time at Get Up, Baby! where we read Baseball Think Factory obsessively and watch the Cardinals tethered to a computer. It takes a while to sink back into glorious routine, but watching Chris Duncan tattoo a Jason Marquis pitch for a grand slam–well, it’s enough to set anybody back into their groove.

A more thorough post, a look-see about what individual Cardinals have done since I’ve been gone, was set to run in this spot today. Unforeseen circumstances have forced me to delay it until tomorrow.

Namely: I just got passed the family copy of Harry Potter 7. Contact with human civilization here at the GUB compound is set to be resumed at approx. 8 PM CDT.

For the second year in a row my site went down during the one week of the year I do not have internet access, which meant that instead of a bunch of pre-packaged entries going up when I wanted them to, as if by magic, it looked like I up and quit.

Well, I didn’t. Regular posting begins tomorrow, after I finish jet-lagging and find out what I missed.

I can’t help but think that my web host is tied directly to the Cardinals’ performance. In 2003, the last frustrating year, and the average start to 2004 I was on blogspot; I upgraded to Grey Matter and a domain name just as that team took flight, and then upgraded to WordPress the year before they won the World Series.

Now Kip Wells lasts one inning, Chris Carpenter suffers a setback, the Cardinals are down for the count with the Brewers in the driver’s seat, and I’m down for the third time in a week. It figures.

What is there to say about these St. Louis Cardinals? Not a lot. They’re still in it, theoretically, but if the pitching doesn’t come together they’ve got absolutely no shot. And right now the pitchers seem to be pulling a Spartacus so as to avoid getting demoted.

“I’m terrible!”

“No, I‘m terrible!”

“I’m terrible!”

Who can you replace when everybody’s pitching badly? And with whom would you replace him? Whoever is making these decisions–Dunc, Jock, La Russa–will very quickly regret all that talk about Reyes staying down until September, that much is certain.

Some interesting happenings in the minor leagues, though. I finally got to see Mark Worrell’s vaunted weird delivery, since he was the Birds’ lone representative at the AAA all-star game, and… well, it is very weird. Straight sidearm with a “crossfire” delivery that seems more in line with descriptions of 1880s St. Louis star Silver King’s delivery than a modern ROOGY. He seems to lean toward third base before falling toward first, firing a 90 mph fastball in that has to be starting out around a right-handed hitter’s ear.

Worrell’s gotten hit lucky this year–his FIP is 4.19, a full run higher than his actual ERA–and he’s almost certainly not a guy who will be seeing a lot of lefties in the bigs. Look at this difference:

          AB   H  2B  HR  BB IBB   K  AVG  OBP  SLG    K/9  BB/9
Southpaw  47  13   2   2   7   3   6 .277 .393 .447   4.76  5.56
Northpaw  99  16   2   3  11   0  34 .162 .259 .273  10.55  3.30

Wow. The most telling thing here is that he’s intentionally walked three lefties already. It could be a coincidence, but as things stand now his intentional walk rate against lefties is only a walk lower than his regular walk rate against righties–I’d say the kid is aware of his limitations. That said, I wouldn’t put major league success past any sidearmer who can get it up to 90 miles an hour; I think his upside is last year’s Braden Looper, which is pretty useful.

Speaking of that draft, and I don’t like to, how about Jarrett Hoffpauir? Another few weeks of knocking PCL pitchers around and all that worry about his big numbers coming after repeating a hitter’s league will be put to rest pretty fast; as things stand now his year-to-date batting average is over .350, and his isolated power is creeping toward .200. Could it be that the 2004 draft will finally redeem itself? A seventh inning reliever and a starting second baseman who could hit? I can not convey to you with mere words the joy I would feel. No, words would not do this feeling justice. What do I need to make you understand how grand and carefree I would feel? Rococo. I would feel, approximately, like this:

That is how Jarrett Hoffpauir becoming, say, a .280/.340/.440 hitter in the majors would make me feel. I ran the calculations, and a second baseman hitting that well would be worth (approximately) a million billion runs over Adam Kennedy’s 2007 season. As for Worrell, any time I get to mention Silver King I’m satisfied.

Sorry about the downtime; my host enjoys, periodically, reminding me why it is just mediocre enough that I can’t recommend it to friends and pick up the referral cash on the side. The all-star break would seem to be the perfect time for such a meltdown; there’s nothing to write about, and you can watch the Home Run Derby on mute (sans Berman) and talk to tech support at the same time, thereby dealing with two birds whose English skills are rudimentary at best with one stone.

And I wouldn’t have anything to write about, if the Cardinals hadn’t announced their post-break rotation, which–on this special occasion–actually has something interesting not on it:

Wells
Maroth
Wainwright
Looper
Thompson

The Wells move–the Wells move I like. Here’s what Kip’s done since he fell to 2-11:

           G  IP   H  ER  BB   K  HR   K/9  BB/9
last five  5  16  12   2   5  14   0  7.88  2.81
2002-2003                             6.39  3.34
     2007                             6.90  4.56

I’m not sayin’, hence the counting numbers to illustrate the sample size with which we are working, I’m just sayin’. Kip hasn’t pitched quite as terribly as we’ve observed and the results have shown. He’s pitched almost as terribly, but his FIP of 4.84 would be downright bearable, all things considered. And as for what he’s done recently–well, if he can finally lose that extra walk he’s been stuck with since 2004 $4 million would look like a bargain again, in a hurry.

But that’s not what I spent an hour on the line to Distant Lands to write about. More important is who is not on the list. Here’s what Todd Wellemeyer’s absence tells me:

• He’s not really in the Cardinals’ plans for the future. If he’d stayed in the rotation in Reyes’s absence because the Cardinals thought he was the next Dave Stewart, or something… well, I could almost be okay with that, though “Smoke” Wellemeyer hasn’t got much of a ring to it. But he was just a stop-gap.
• The Cardinals think so little of Anthony Reyes–their top prospect a year and a half ago, World Series hero nine months ago–that, not only did they think Wellemeyer gave them a better chance to win the one extra start he ended up getting, but that that advantage, such as it was, was worth whatever goodwill they have permanently damaged with a young, cheap, better pitcher.

And that, more than the absence of Wellemeyer–who did yeoman’s work, better than anybody had any right to expect–is a little bit troubling.

&tThere was going to be a different post here, with more blogger-approved anger and venom, but to quote The Official’s game recap:

With the series win, the Cards will now try and win three series’ in a row for the first time since they did it last October, when they won the NLDS, the NLCS and, of course, the World Series.

It’s time to celebrate, and I’m in so celebratory a mood that I will only mention in passing the egregious apostrophe error (made by the non-Matthew Leach writer who did yesterday’s recap) that presumably passed by a real live editor! I’m in so celebratory a mood that, like so many sitcom fathers before me, I just can’t stay mad at these little scamps. So, without further ado, five people I like:

• Juan Encarnacion: Juan’s not having a good season, really, because he is not the kind of player who has many good seasons. His OBP is under .300, and as a corner outfielder that is unacceptable unless you’re flashing Rick Ankiel power.

  But I don’t care. Not right now, at least, when he is not The Problem and the Cardinals don’t have anybody who would obviously be better (except perhaps person #5 on this list.) Right now I want to celebrate how clutch and scrappy Juan Encarnacion has been this year. As per WPA, which is based entirely upon coming through When It Matters™, Juan has been the second best hitter on the Cardinals this year. He’s made a number of smooth plays in the outfield, too, and I’m sure people are saying to themselves: this Encarnacion character has finally gotten it together!

  Which is ridiculous! He’s in his eleventh season as a major league baseball player! He’s been playing professionally since he was 17 years old. Coming off an injury into a season that seemed pretty well hopeless at the moment he returned to the lineup is not going to make him into a better player, and it hasn’t.

  But rather than take this sudden reversal as possible evidence that our ability to judge and observe “hustle”, regardless of its importance, is not nearly as sharp as we think it is, we will be subjected to increasingly unconcealable hatred from Dan McClaughlin whenever he fails to run something out or plays a ball into the corner, followed by vague inferences from Al Hrabosky about how Juan is playing harder than he used to. (I feel like one day Juan is going to strike out with runners in scoring position and McClaughlin is just going to shoot him from up in the press box, and then jump out of it. I’ve never listened to an announcer try so hard to maintain an even tone when talking about a certain player.)

  Regardless of whether he hustles or not, I like watching Juan Encarnacion. I really do. The intellectual side of me knows that he is not necessarily good for the team, but the baseball fan side of me loves how awkward his swing is. The total collapse of his back shoulder, the utter lack of lower-body involvement–it looks like a baseball swing as animated by someone who just bought his first 3D Design software and doesn’t quite know how to make people move yet. It is the sort of swing that would get an actor fired from a baseball movie.

  And yet when he actually connects squarely with the ball, and his bat whips around like some sort of quasi-Gary Sheffield, he gets a line drive trajectory that would wring ecstatic praise out of any number of traditionalist baseball announcers–if it had come off of any other bat. And you’re left with what you just saw–the bat looping around his body like he’s trying to twirl a sling–and the beautiful home run that sped over the wall. I like that.

  There are hundreds and hundreds of people with sweet swings in the majors and littered throughout the minors, honed by thousands of hours of coaching and video and tedious, unending practice, and I’m sure a lot of them are better hitters. But I feel safe in assuming that no one will ever reach the majors again with a swing that resembles Juan’s. Heck–I feel safe in assuming that no one else will try.

• Ricky Horton I do not like to think of Mike Shannon’s retirement; on the list of things I do not like to think about it slots above my future career options, the Sandlot 2, and even the idea that someone who worked their way through the publishing ranks gave Pamela Anderson a two novel deal. But when that day comes forty years from now–when Cyborg Mike Shannon decides he’d like to spend more time with his family and a series of frosty Cyborg Bud Lights–the Cardinals could do worse than to replace him with Horton, who has done nothing but impress me since he started announcing.

  So far as I can tell, he’s got all the baseball broadcasting bases covered. He’s intelligent enough but unpretentious; he is pleasant enough but he doesn’t try too hard to be funny; and he’s got a voice that lends itself well to radio without seeming put-on or affected.

  Most importantly, he doesn’t do a whole lot of editorializing in the booth, which is my least favorite of all the modern sports tropes that I blame irrationally on ESPN. A broadcaster–a radio broadcaster, especially–is there to describe and/or analyze the action that is happening in front of him. I’m fine with mentioning some statistics, or putting the event into perspective, but I do not want to hear some self-absorbed conversation-monopolizer with his own twisted idea of what makes baseball baseball go off on a rant about These Power Hitters Swinging for the Fences or Teams Not Doing the Little Things. If an announcer wants to hammer smugly at straw men and act like his opinions are so important that national TV is the place for them then he can start a blog like I did.

  What I’m asking is: is anybody else a Horton backer? He seems to get mixed reviews, which I’ve never understood. The worst critique that can be leveled at him is a certain kind of smiling blandness, which is admittedly a problem. But in a field packed so tightly with obnoxiousness, that’s a welcome change of pace.

• Jason Isringhausen Welcome back.

  By my estimation, we’re finally seeing the old Jason Isringhausen–not the broken 2006 model, or the unhittable early-2007 model, but the most terrifying elite closer in baseball, loading the bases and making inadvisable bare-handed grabs and generally acting like he does not care at all that he’s the shutdown closer of a Major League Baseball team. Giving up a double and striking out the side? Classic Izzy.

• Rick Ankiel He’d be the best story in baseball (non-Josh Hamilton division) if he were on pace for twenty or twenty-five home runs this year. After homering yesterday, which makes three games in a row, he has twenty-five home runs this year.

  Is he ready? Probably not. Do I want to see him in the majors anyway? Absolutely.

• Adam LaRoche Thanks, buddy. I’m not convinced these Cardinals are contenders, but that’s something entirely different from falling out of contention. And by homering twice and completing the sweep, Pittsburgh and its big first baseman have pushed these mediocre Cardinals a little closer to the top for a little longer, which will help make August more interesting if nothing else. Today we are all Pirates.

So there we are. It feels good to win three series in a row. Not as good as last time, sure, but I guess I can deal with that.

Carmen Cali has been sighted in the Twin Cities area, moving 96 87 miles per hour in a northern direction. Citizens are advised to avoid swinging the bat at all costs.

Joe Mather may have staked an early claim to being this year’s Terry Evans, but of late Jarrett “Don’t Call Me Hassel” Hoffpauir, AA second baseman and the last relevant position player from the 2004 draft, has gained ground in the race to be the guy we name when we talk about former non-prospects who have breakout seasons next year. After putting up a very solid mid-.840s OPS for two months and looking like a sleeper candidate for next season, he did this from June onward:

 G  AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  SO   AVG  OBP  SLG  K%
24  89  36   9   0   3  10   6  .405 .465 .607   6

The usual caveats apply, of course. He’s repeating the hitter-friendly Texas League (where he put up an OPS of .704 last season) and at 5′9″ he’s not the most projectible hitter to ever come through the system. But hit over .340 in half a season of AA ball and you’ve pretty much ruined your chance to come up unnoticed. He’s a year older coming through the system and lacks the pedigree and the consistency, but as a short second baseman who never strikes out and flashes surprising power he does pretty well compared to Red Sox 2B Dustin Pedroia.

What makes this news? He was promoted prior to today’s Memphis game, after the trade of Three True Outcomes shortstop John Nelson, and–coming in mid-game for Edgar Gonzalez–went 1-1 with a homer and a walk. Welcome to the Pacific Coast League.

This is bad news immediately for Travis Hanson, one-time third base prospect who’s likely to lose a lot of playing time to Gonzalez, likely to shift to third base if he doesn’t get called up to replace Spiezio; and bad news pretty soon for Adam Kennedy, who’s got two years left on what could be a very uncomfortable contract if he doesn’t do a better job impersonating Adam Kennedy in the second half of the season. It’s good news for Chris Lambert, unfortunate figurehead of the 2004 draft, because if His Draft ends up producing an actual major leaguer I’ll be distracted momentarily from my ceaseless loathing of the pick that brought him into the system.

As a Wellemeyer Backer from those halcyon days when he was a low-risk bullpen acquisition, I didn’t enjoy watching the Diamondbacks pound him as much as I would have if it were, I don’t know, Kevin Jarvis or some other ideal true Duncan Scrap-heaper. That said, does Wellemeyer remind anybody of a different, better pitcher? One who pitches well when his off-speed stuff is working (see Wellemeyer’s fine outing last time out) and struggles when his fastball and changeup have off-days at the same time?

Yup: Cole Hamels. One of my personal favorites, Hamels.