it seems to me that the golden rule of baseball is that you can never have enough pitching. i really don’t understand why the cards did not sign some of the free agent pitchers in the off season. if for no other reason that they seem like a good investment. they could have helped until the return of our injured starters and then been dealt at the trade deadline for some good young prospects. this would have helped restock the farm system. i just could not figure how the cards felt these pitchers: livan hernandez, lohse, weaver, and several others that had no injury history and could eat innings were overvalued. i don’t mean signing to long term contracts. just one or possibly two years. but other teams signed them to small contracts.

i wonder if parisi, mcclellan, etc. will be ready to step up this year. it’s looking like they’ll have to.

I know its only spring, but this is depressing. There are only a handful of pitchers we can count on to eat innings. Meanwhile, teams like the Cubs and Brewers aren’t standing pat waiting for players to come around. Even the offense looks like it will struggle when teams pitch around Pujols. A bunch of .250 and .260 hitters structured around a .300 hitter doesn’t equal success, even if a couple of them are power hitters.

There were so many “ifs” necessary for this team to have some success this year. Most of the “ifs” currently happening are guaranteeing the opposite result.

Maybe now Mo and Tony will take their heads out of the sand.

I’m really disappointed in this situation. I know these things happen, but it seems to be such a regular issue with the Cards’ staff lately. I don’t trust the MRI results that are given to the fans anymore, and I can’t help but figure that we might get the same 11 starts out of Piniero this season. They will try to start him at the beginning of the season, and then suddenly it will be more serious than the doctors thought. Then, he’ll be out for most of the season. They will try to rush him back, he’ll pitch poorly, and then he will miss all of next year rehabbing from surgery. Meanwhile, a middle-of-the-road long reliever will be “promoted” to the starting rotation, give an inconsistent 4 2/3 innings, and wear out the remaining bullpen. At least the team will save some money that will later be spent on … nothing, because everything on the market is “overvalued.”

>>>” i just could not figure how the cards felt these pitchers: livan hernandez, lohse, weaver, and several others that had no injury history and could eat innings were overvalued. i don’t mean signing to long term contracts. just one or possibly two years. but other teams signed them to small contracts.”

There were rumors that the Cardinals were interested in Hernandez; it’s entirely possible that he simply chose a playoff contender (Twins) over a team that has some serious question marks in the rotation, outfield, and middle infield. Both Weaver (who is not an innings-eater; he averaged less than 6 innings last season) and Lohse (who is simply a bad pitcher) are presented by Boras, which should explain why no team has signed either one yet, much less the Cards. I’m not sure what you mean by “several others that had no injury history and could eat innings” because outside of Hernandez and Carlos Silva, there were no others that fit that description.

DG,

Why the tepidness towards Kyle Lohse or Jeff Weaver? Those are two guys who are at least certain to eat innings.

The scale remains the same for the Cardinals, they have continued to say. The free agent out there has to be better than the pitchers they have in here. Their feeling may change now that Pineiro is a question mark in mid-March, but even today they insisted it’s not a clear-cut comparison between having Weaver in the rotation and having Kyle McClellan.

Kyle Lohse has not been brought up all that much in those same comparisons. One Cardinal said Lohse “had a great arm and just needs somebody to show him how to use it.”

dg

Does it look like Jeff Suppan is overpaid now? He sure would look good in a Cards uni now, but I guess he was overvalued too.

Bingo.

I always get amazed by these comments and forum posts that basically say, “let’s take our dregs and send them to somebody else for the best they have.” Sign pitchers that nobody has any interest in now (since they ARE, after all, still currently unsigned) and would only cost money, so that later in the year when we have discovered why they are still unsigned (aka, dregs) to someone else for “some good, young prospects” ON TOP OF the salary they would have to be paid by the receiving team? Sigh…..

In response to #6, depsite all the Cardinals shortcomings, they have better chance of contending for a playoff spot than the Twins because the NL central does not feature Detroit and Cleveland. The argument that free agents chose to go to a contender rather than the Cards doesn’t hold any water, they simply chose an offer that was made instead of one that never came because the Card’s DeWallet never opened.

great arm, needs someone to help him know how to use it, eh? Sounds like the perfect Dave Duncan candidate for me. As for Weaver, that is good to hear the preference over a guy like Parisi or McCellan then an established, mediocre vet.

Although part of me is sentimental for the Weave-Game 5 heroics and all.

if the team says that no free agents are better than what we have, does this mean we will see mortenson, parisi, mcclellan or boggs in the starting rotation? right now, we have three pitchers who have proven they can’t go five innings, much less seven. wellmeyer, thompson and reyes belong in the bullpen. they are good pitchers who are trapped in the wrong role. they have all proven they can be effective for two or three innings, but they don’t have the makeup of a starter. if we had two true starters (i.e. mulder and carp) with the aforementioned three in the pen, that would be a good staff. but what to we do til carp and mulder come back other than wear out our bullpen. and can we really count on either mulder or carp? it’s time to trade a couple of outfielders for a starter.