Am I the only person who thinks this cardinal season, could play out like the Cleveland Indians in “Major Legue”?……..

We don’t have a Wild Thing in the bullpen, but we do have Ankiel in the outfiled and
We don’t have and aging catcher, but we do have Juan Gonzales.
Also we have some known stars and several unknowns (or hasbeens) trying to make it.

DG,

About your article on starting pitching, you said “… and that signing a free agent wouldn’t leave them with an expensive ejection when the injured starters return.”

You might want to amend that to ‘if’ the starting pitchers return.

Additionally, I have been watching MLB for going on 40 years now and I can’t remember a team ever really, truly being in the position that it said, “You know, we just have too much terrific starting pitching on this team. We need to figure out how to ditch a couple of them.”
If there really is someone in the Cards organization that sees that as a pending, realistic organizational concern, I just have to question their acumen.

Has there ever been a dollar better spent than a dollar spent on good starting pitching? That is a question that the quants in this business might want to consider.

DG,
I’ll add another candidate from the “Bleed Red Party” that’s already in camp - Cliff Politte.
He came up thru the Cards organization as a starter. What are the odds on him converting back to a starter’s role?

Another member of his party that might get consideration is John Wasdin.

C’mon Dewitt!….knock the dust off your wallet and bring back Weaver! Dunc can get him back on track…….cause he did it before. And besides, the Cards fans would love it! Sign him…

DG,
What are the chances of the Cardinals signing Lohse? Deserved or not, this guy was supposed to be one of the top free agents this winter, and he must have been humbled enough to take a one year deal by this point. He’s gotta be better than some of these guys we’re counting on - at least he’s been a starter his entire career instead of two years!

Blake Hawksworth dropped out of the race? I could see him as a darkhorse Green Party candidate.

Blake certainly has the talent. Its just a matter of consistency with him.

Don’t know much about Mortenson other than Duncan rated his session the other day as a ‘Whoa!” Or was that a ‘Woo!’ Either which was good, I think. Is he a guy that can go seven innings?

Seems like anyone trying out for a SP position ought to be thinking about getting their arm in shape quickly since the job is wide open the first two months or so. The field is playing out to be more crowded the second half of the season - at least we hope it will be.

I also think that the Pineiro is going to be a very pleasant surprise on the upside.

Brutal on Reyes, but probably dead on. Wellemeyer has pitched well, so probably deserves & probably will get it, but there’s something about having two bullpen-ers in teh starting rotation that makes me uncomfortable. My vote goes to Mr Thompson, who is also a bullpener but really was a starter in the minors & should be again. I vote for him for teh same reasons I voted for Mike Huckabee, not because I think he will win, but because I vote idealistically in the hope that something will “catch on.” Poor, blind fool that I am. Go Brad!

@ Joe G–

The problem is that the starting pitching available isn’t all that good. Of the three guys Goold mentioned–

Lohse is extraordinary overrated, which is why nobody has signed him yet, prefering to add pitching by trades. We’re talking about a pitcher that went 9-12 with a division champion and had a 4.62 ERA . Not completely horrible in this day and age, but far from being a legit “top free agent starter.” If he comes on a one-year, $5 million deal, yeah, but that’s not what he’s been asking.

Weaver was bad in his time with the Cardinals until the playoffs and bad after he left. He’s a decent innings eater when he’s on, but he’s always been a headcase and horribly erratic. The Cardinals should be interested only if they were really desperate (i.e., Reyes, Thompson, and Wellemeyer all disappear in the wee hours of the morning, never to be seen again, and Mo winds up trading the top three pitching prospects for a utility infielder).

Fogg is a soft-throwing, below-average, back-of-the-rotation starter (he had a worse season than Looper, in fact). Plus, he’s not a durable innings-eating pitcher, which is someone the Cards should be looking for. It’d be a bad match, even given the Cardinals’ current uncertain starting rotation.

None of these guys are worth the money they’re asking , and with some of the odds and ends the Cardinals have in camp, they probably have the same talent, just younger and cheaper. St. Louis is in a transition season (although an attempted competitive one), trying to figure out what they have in younger players and veterans returning from injury. Which means you have to let them play rather than replace them before they have a chance. For the long-term health of the franchise, this is a necessary season, especially when you’re dealing with a 25-man roster, a 40-man protected roster, and a whole lot of average depth in the system with some interesting prospects. What they find out this season will determine the direction of the Cardinals for the next five to seven years.