dg,

I for one was very critical of Izturis infield play early in spring. You must admit that he was not very good then. I will readily admit that he has been very good of late. I thought he was the best defensive shortstop in the NL from 2003 till his injury in 2005. My concern early in camp was that if Izturis could not return to that defensive level then he offered nothing to the club. He will never be a plus offensive player…even in 2004 he had an OPS+ under 100 (for those who son’t know that is worse than the league average for his position), therefore without the golden glove he would be a serious detriment to the team. Having said that, if Izturis can regain his pre-injury form I think he will be a plus to a team full of pitch to contact pitchers.

Now my scorn is reserved for Kennedy who still struggles to make consistent hard contact and whose defensive “skills” are extremely overrated. Kennedy shows good range in the field but very bad hands. Ryan at 2b and Izturis at SS would be an excellent defensive infield. If only Ryan would stop smiling so much…

dg,

BTW, thanks for all your hard work from camp.

Well, we’ll see. Eckstein made an occasional diving stop from time to time, too, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of the the worst SS in the game last year. Izturis was just under average last year.

Anyway, a good SS might have made the same play look effortless.

I will say I was giving him a lot of grief due to the number of errors. But I saw some good plays out of him Sunday and this one sounds like it was a doozy. Hopefully he’ll remind us of the Wizard.

I second the thanks from Nick. Bird Land has been invaluable this spring!

Indeed! Thumbs up to Derrick Goold!! Keep up the great work….

Adding my thanks for the priceless ST coverage, too, DG. Have a pleasant trip home.

Anyway, a good SS might have made the same play look effortless.

Comment by SleepyCA — March 27th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

If you were there, or saw it live or replay, I’ll defer to you. However, I was there and that was an outstanding play that everyone in the place thought was a hit before Izturis turned it into a DP.

DG,

Is the team particularly interested in Jimenez? I assume they would have to pass him through waivers to get him to the minors. I guess what I’m asking is, would it really hurt to lose Jimenez over giving Rico a shot? Does he provide more versatility in position than Rico? It seems that Rico has stood out when I watched him play, where Jimenez really just blended into the background.

Why is there the perception that Miles can “handle the middle infield positions” when he clearly can not? He’s barely passable at 2B, and there’s no reason to even talk about SS.

This club doesn’t have a viable backup for the entire left side of the infield if Ryan can’t play.

If the Cards performance this Spring is any indication of what their regular season will look like, I think we might have some reasons to be optimistic.

Over the last 14 games the Cards are 12-1-1 having won 7 in a row against mostly major legaue talent
Only gave up 2 runs in the past three games.

First 5 spots in the line up look great and the bottom of the order is showing signs of improvement.

I think the bullpen will be solid and we might have a steal in Lohse.

On top of that we play the majority of our games in the NL Central.

Should be an interesting year and it will be fun watching all the new, young guys on the team.

Thoughts?