Talk about a victim of circumstance.

This isn’t the kind of slump that sends a slugger down on a regular basis–Troy Glaus can vouch for that–and since his batting average is steady and his strikeout rate is actually down he hasn’t looked like a guy who needs to get his head together. But it’s a perfect storm of Duncan demotion: the fourth and fifth outfielders are hitting like he is, his platoon partner suddenly turned into Mickey Mantle, and his righty doppleganger–how many 6′5″, 210 pound, late-peaking converted outfielders can possibly come out of the same system?–is slugging .670 down in Memphis.

As if that weren’t enough, the Cardinals are due to play the Pirates and their Cavalcade of Iffy Youngish Lefties. This isn’t just convenient for bringing Mather up–this might as well be Bump Bailey running through a wall. I still think Schumaker is a little redundant on a team with Brian Barton and Ryan Ludwick able to play center field, but I like the idea of giving Duncan a chance to play every day for a while in the hopes that he remembers where he put all those home runs.

As for Mather, consider me impressed; when I first started following the minor leagues on this fine blog he was a low-average, low-minors slugger who had to be moved off of third base. He was one of the few people I held out less hope for than… Chris Duncan. Unlike Young Dunc Mather’s crushed the ball in the minors leading up to his call-up, which leaves me more optimistic than I was when I rode Duncan after his big spring in 2006.

That said, he’s another in a line of call-ups and acquisitions that make the Cardinals cheaper, rather than younger–has any team picked up or utilized more mid-to-late-twenties AAAA types in recent memory than the Mozeliak Cardinals? Barton, Ankiel, Ludwick, Schumaker, Ryan, even Duncan, and now Mather–these aren’t impact players, for the most part, but that the Cardinals are finding them and using them, instead of relying on veteran types like, ah, Cesar Izturis, is still good news.

I’m increasingly convinced that Joel Pineiro–at least the Joel Pineiro that the Cardinals acquired last year–is not a real person. First there was the way he lost it after a brief peak as a hard thrower in Seattle; next there was the way he turned into a completely different, effective control pitcher following his trade to the Cardinals. And now we have a weird, Woody-at-the-battian injury shagging fly balls. That seals it: Joel Pineiro is not a pitcher, he’s the Platonic form of Dave Duncan reclamation projects.

           GS  K/9 BB/9  HR/9  K:BB
2002-2003  60  6.4  2.9  0.95  2.21
2004-2007  76  5.5  3.0  1.19  1.84
2007-2008  19  5.3  2.1  1.34  2.52

He’s been spotty this year, so it won’t be a major loss, but the difference between Pineiro and a AAA type like Parisi is not insignificant. The difference between Parisi and Kelvin Jimenez is also important; what on earth did Mark Worrell do to earn the Colter Bean treatment? There’s no proof Worrell is going to be more effective over the long term than Jimenez hasn’t been, but this year our would-be ROOGY has struck out 17 lefties in 11 innings against them, with only two walks; it seems like he’s learned to get them out and, in doing so, stopped pitching around them. Gotta enjoy that.

Also, reader sleepyCA was kind enough to point out that the link going to the 26th Man, formerly my fellow Land of Lincoln Cardsblogger, is now a porn site–and there, of course, being the 26th man has an entirely different connotation. I know a lot of the links are dead, and I’m missing the Cardinals blogs that have sprung up–well, basically since I migrated to WordPress, which was some time during the Eisenhower administration. So if anyone wants to tell me the best blogs I’ve missed, leave me a comment.

(Also, in my capacity as Mizzou student movie columnist: If you haven’t seen Speed Racer or–less likely–Indiana Jones, you’re missing the best escapist adventure movies in recent memory. [That’s the kind of sharp, in-depth observation I’m known for, as student movie columnist.])

The giveaway statues are seriously improved from that Ozzie Smith model a few years back–from Starting Lineup without the moving arm action to… well, think really nice paperweight. Photos, as ever, taken variously by me, or, in the case of the more competent artistic shots, my mom or my girlfriend. (Click on them to get the giant, suitable-for-moon-projecting versions, as well as like eighty other shots from Sunday.)

Ten minutes of goosebumps, and then, after everyone said their piece, gametime.

What a great game for Stan Musial day–warm Sunday afternoon, relatively crisp pitching for the Cardinals, a late inning rally… just perfect all around, though you wouldn’t have heard that from me after Parisi let a run get on the board in the eighth.

A perfect day of baseball for–as is etched, somewhat less impressively than upon the genuine article, on the giveaway statue–baseball’s perfect knight.

Finals week is over, but in a shocking snub of sentence balancing I’m going to avoid saying Izzy Time is over. (Having written, yesterday, no fewer than three essays about Samuel Johnson, sentence balance is fresh on my mind right now. Forgive me.) Consider it my deferral to his history here, even though getting put on the DL with an unvarnished We-Don’t-Know injury is pretty bad news.

That said, wow–Chris Perez has himself a fastball. I kept yelling at the TV for him to throw a slider, but apparently I wasn’t loud enough.

On the other, Eww eww eww eww eww.

Finals week is a terrible time for a player I’d love to retrospect about to get released, but suffice it to say that in 2000 we were promised a dive-timing, selfish player who’d started late and peaked early, and we got the only guy who will ever be able to say he was the best player on a team led by Albert Pujols, the one who dragged the Cardinals into one World Series and helped them win another.

I’ll update my Hall of Fame cases for him some time this summer, but he hasn’t done any Matt Morris self-eulogizing yet. Here’s hoping some team with a center field need gets a Will Clark year out of him between then and now.

!!!!!!!!

Is Jason Isringhausen’s hip in the progress of exploding for the second time in three years? When he’s struggled this year he’s been completely unable to locate his fastball, which varies wildly in velocity and not just missed but missed badly, particularly up and away. His follow-through, at times, has looked as ungainly as it did in 2006.

Yesterday I was all the way on the “He’s Done Again” bandwagon and hoping, mainly, that he managed to limp his way to 300 saves before the retirement talk started up again, because if it’s good enough for Joe Table it’s good enough for Izzy. But as we know, he proceeded to hit the mid-90s on the gun and move his cutter around in its usual confounding way. That’s Jason Isringhausen: even when the thing being saved is his career he’ll keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end. So: Done or not done?

Is it sad that Anthony Reyes gets sent down today and the big news is who’s getting called up? Yes, yes it is sad. Reyes getting jerked around is dog-bites-man at this point, and it’s obvious that whether he’s throwing 93 and striking people out or throwing 88 and getting ground balls he’s not going to get a clean shot with the Cardinals. It’s not often you see a former World Series Hero and Top Prospect &c. get turned into a future Ken Phelps all-star before your eyes, but the Cardinals seem more and more determined to make that happen.

In the meantime, the Cardinals have replaced him with Mike Parisi, the first player from their 2004 nightmare draft to get a taste of the big leagues. It’s fitting, with this draft, that it’s not the best player–that would be Mark Worrell, a future Braden Looper-class reliever, or Jarrett Hoffpauir, a future Aaron Miles+ infielder–who got called up. Parisi, the ninth rounder from the Lambert Draft, is a just-adequate AAA starter whose chief virtue at this point is not being Blake Hawksworth.

What I don’t understand about this move is, well, the player; the glass in front of Mike Parisi should only be broken if somebody needs to make an emergency start, and that is presumably not the case. A Todd Wellemeyer start is, admittedly, more likely than most to require a sudden three inning appearance from a reliever, but Mark Worrell’s gone two innings once this year already and has the added benefit of being able to strike out minor league hitters.

To the people who have not removed me from their RSS feeds: thanks.

To the Cardinals: I apologize. My girlfriend is a Brewers fan who’s attempting to follow baseball for the first time in recent memory, and before the season I berated the Cardinals to her on what had to’ve been a daily basis. Now that it is May 1, and they do not suck, I look like an idiot. This is not the first time that’s happened, but it is certainly the most pleasant time that’s happened, so to the Cardinals I offer my sincerest apologies.

So what has it been this May that’s got both the knows-how-to-win crowd and the Pythagorean crowd excited? It’s been a while, and I’m one finals week away from having no excuse not to post more often, so let’s go player by player. In Baseball-Reference order that starts us off with:

Yadier Molina: As expected. At .265/.326/.361 thus far, an 85 OPS+, he’s basically repeating his rookie season, which is all I’ve ever asked from the guy. When you’re so brilliant defensively that you put opposing base-stealers in group therapy on a semi-regular basis, getting on base at a near-average clip and showing enough doubles power to keep the bat from getting knocked out of your hands is just fine, thanks. So he’s not playing over his head, so much as right at it.

Albert Pujols: Over his head? On one hand, he’s hitting .365/.523/.594; on the other hand, it’s obvious at this point that having a baseball-hitting cyborg behind him in the lineup wouldn’t be enough protection to keep him from walking at a Bondsian pace. If this keeps on happening and his power perks up just a little we’re looking at an all-time all-time great season. (Originally that sentence had only one all-time great in it, but really–the guy’s already had three all-time great seasons. A distinction must be made.)

Adam Kennedy: Over his head, such as it is. Considering that AK.572, already blessed with one of baseball’s more unpleasant middle infielder swings, looked so done last season that Cardinals historians were checking the Zapruder film to make sure he wasn’t in it, the one we’ve gotten so far in 2008–the actual Adam Kennedy–has to be considered an embarrassment of second base riches.

His BABIP right now, over .360, is kind of an ominous sign, but it was extremely low all through last year so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt until he goes another month without showing any power at all. (Does the fact that Adam Kennedy’s isolated power is over .100 for his career surprise anybody else?) In the meantime he’s given the Cardinals some unexpected baserunners and he’s played outstanding defense, and that’s fine returns for a sunk cost.

Troy Glaus: Over his head is where he should hit some more baseballs. Well, there goes my other fearless prediction–that he would quickly ingratiate himself to the Cardinals fanbase–but month one of the Troy Glaus Era hasn’t been a total loss.

For one thing, he hasn’t looked like a butcher in the field. I don’t know about you guys, but given Glaus’s injury history I was expecting a guy who ran club-footed and fell forward in lieu of diving for balls. He certainly doesn’t have Rolen’s reflexes or throwing arm, but he’s proven pretty mobile for someone who’s missed fifty games in a season three times already. And it hasn’t been a total loss at the plate; as per ESPN.com he’s on pace for about seventy doubles(!) to go with his six homers(!!), and the twenty runs he’s driven in have kept him from becoming a Busch Stadium pariah.

It won’t go all the way, but Glaus’s power, when it returns, will be a big help in replacing some of the over-the-head production currently buoying the Cardinals at other positions.

Cesar Izturis: Suckiest sucker who ever did suck. Izturis, who is hitting .212 and has, thus far, looked like he should hit .212, somehow walked eleven times in April. If I had to guess at a reason why it would be that pitchers, unaccustomed to La Russa’s batting order and a little frightened at Wainwright’s light-tower power, are walking Izturis to get to the pitcher they think should be following him in the nine hole.

You know how bad Izturis sucks? This isn’t even the best eleven walk April by a crappy middle infielder that I could remember off the top of my head. That honor goes to Aaron Miles, who inaugurated his Cardinals career in 2006 by hitting .288/.415/.404. His 22nd walk would not come until July.

Sucktavius has shown an impressive arm at shortstop, but it’s not worth his stunning feebleness at the plate. Brendan Ryan isn’t a star, and he’s probably not a starter, but if he doesn’t see the bulk of the playing time at shortstop for the rest of the year the Cardinals are going to be batting pitchers eighth and ninth.

Chris Duncan: Pass. I don’t have anything interesting to say about Young Dunc. He’s controlling the strike zone really well and when the power comes back he’ll be even more helpful. Way to be.

Rick Ankiel: Awesome. Who had “double his walk rate” in the list of things the Undisciplined Former Pitcher would do this year? He’s striking out less, he’s walking more, he’s hitting line drives, he plays an excellent center field, and if you wanted ice cream he would go to Wal-Mart and get the expensive kind, but not tell you about it.

Skippadoo/Thudwick: Getting it done. I love The Brass Monkey and I hate Schumaker, but I can’t deny that both of them have gotten it done to this point. Thudwick has got thirteen extra-base hits in 23 games and isn’t playing nearly enough and Schumaker hasn’t hurt the Cardinals in the leadoff spot. They’ll both regress, and hopefully when they do it means more Ludwick and less Skip.

The Bench: Barton yay Miles eh Washington nay LaRue n–wait.

Wait.

Since the beginning of last year, Jason LaRue has hit .138/.244/.246. Bill Bergen, your exorcist is ready.