Your opening line on Mulder’s Return
TOWER GROVE — The last time Cardinals starter Mark Mulder won a game Owen Wilson was the voice of the hottest thing in animation (Lightning McQueen of Cars) and Jack Black was the wannabe tough guy, Nacho Libre. Fast-forward two shoulder surgeries and two summers, and Mulder returns to the rotation from the bullpen tonight against Philadelphia still pitching for that next victory. His is not the only role reversed.
Now Jack Black powers the punchiest animation movie around, Kung-Fu Panda, and Owen Wilson has already faded out as the wannabe tough guy, Drillbit Taylor.
Things sure have changed.
It has been nearly 25 months since Mulder last victory, and even longer than that since the last time he registered an out in the sixth inning (June 3, 2006) or had a quality start (May 22, 2006). On June 15, 2006, Mulder took the mound at PNC Park looking to end a skid of three losses. The starting lineup that night featured seven players who are no longer with the team; the first six batters, from David Eckstein through second baseman Hector Luna are now elsewhere. The lede to my game story from that night read:
PITTSBURGH — As far as omens go, the first inning was a doozy for the Cardinals. The first batter faced by beleaguered lefty Mark Mulder cracked a home run to the deepest nook of PNC Park, and that was after the Cardinals’ two-out rally in the top half ended with a bases-loaded whiff by a rookie.
The signs signaled trouble.
Signs can be so hasty.
Steeled by his first faults, Mulder was given and lost the lead twice. But he found his misplaced groove in time for the most critical three outs of his start. Chris Duncan, the rookie who ended the Cardinals’ first inning, got hits in his next three at-bats and propelled a 6-5 victory over Pittsburgh on Thursday …
“With or without Albert (Pujols), that’s a heck of a piece of work,” said Cardinals manager Tony La Russa … “Mark did a good job of not being discouraged and kept trying to work, and ultimately it worked out for him. …
As for Duncan, La Russa said: “It wasn’t just that he had the three hits. After that first at-bat, a lot of guys would be hiding.”
Mulder has started several times since then, but never for much of an appearance and not all that successfully. So, of course, he returns to the rotation tonight at Citizens Bank Park against, as Joe Strauss put it so well in this morning’s paper, “a team that eats lefthanders for lunch, in a claustrophobic place prone to giving pitchers weak knees.”
Following in the success of the interactive Two-Words exercise at STL Sports Nation, here is Interactive Bird Land (iBird?): What kind of line can be expected of Mulder? That’s the question posed to year reliable reader. Will he pitch long enough to get the win (5 innings) or only long enough to get a loss? Will he surprise … or just survive?
Pitching coach Dave Duncan said he wanted to get Mulder a start now before he got too far away from his starts in the minors. This was a conditioning concern, not a quality concern. Mulder has appeared twice in relief — his first two regular-season relief appearances of his career — but the Cardinals believe he is still in shape to handle a starter’s pitch count, or close to it.
“He’s ready to throw what is expected of a starting pitcher,” manager Tony La Russa said on Sunday. “Physically he should be able to handle that number of pitches. We’ll watch him and see how he does.”
Mulder’s rehab assignment lines have been well-chronicled here and in the paper. But for research sake, as you consider your best guess for his line, here are his recent Triple-A lines and his one Double-A line (June 14) with the new, lower arm slot:
A30 … 3 1/3 ip … 9 h … 7 r … 7 er … 1 bb … 1 k … Loss
M5 … 6 ip … 9 h … 7 r … 7 er … 2 bb … 4 k … Loss
Jn14 … 5 ip … 5 h … 0 r … 0 er … 3 bb … 0 k … Win
Jn 19 … 3 2/3 ip … 10 h … 6 r … 6 er … 2 bb … 3 K … Loss
It isn’t much to go on, and if it is it isn’t much to run with. Mulder’s is a faith-based start. Asked why they would elect to have Mulder start tonight instead of, say, Mitchell Boggs or another pitcher from Memphis’ mound, a Cardinals official responded with a question: “Do you think any of them would give us a better chance?” To answer that question, the Cardinals are siding with experience … and hope.
When predicting the line go with either of those ingredients. Go with the numbers. (Check out his last three starts in the majors, from 2007.) Go with your gut.
Best guess here:
4 1/3 ip, 7 h (three on groundballs, mind you), 4 r (one after he leaves), 4 er, 1 bb, 3 k, 1 HR.
What say you? Does Mulder kick it like Panda, or get Drilled-bit?
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
If everybody in the universe was predicting a terrible outing ending in an average of 3 innings, why could the Cardinals’ organization/medical staff not see this coming?
Jeremy,
You ask the question that has been asked before — two years ago, when Mulder returned and started at Shea Stadium and just did not look right. Everyone saw it. Some talked about it.
And, yet, he made one start after that before having surgery.
It’s an interesting question. Not sure there’s an answer. But, man, what a unfortunate outcome tonight. As ugly as some of the guesses in here were, I don’t think anybody could have predicted it to go this … sadly. Giving up runs is one thing. It looked like Mulder gave up a lot more tonight.
dg
-30-
It’s time to let Mulder go! How can a pitcher in the Major Leagues not expect to pitch in some pain and discomfort? I understand that he is not the same guy he was 2 years ago but c’mon. Everytime he gets close to a comeback or makes a comeback their is always a reason he can’t go. Is he really that much of a wuss? I think he needs to (bow his neck) and pitch. If he can’t do it then release him and move on to young guys who want to be here.
Thank God! Is it over? Are we done wasting time and energy on this guy? Is this career over?
If you’re a levelheaded person, you could not have predicted how bad the Mulder/Haren trade would be. One could argue that we’ve had to bad a habit of trading youth for age. But no one could have predicted this.
However, after that contract was up? Now we’ve been wasting massive amounts of time and energy.
And the Cardinals need to really look into how they handle things. Mulder . . . Ankiel . . . Clement? Talk about repeating mistakes. They got lucky with Carpenter and they are stuck on stupid right now.
I want to be a good little Cardinal fan and feel bad for Mark Mulder. But I don’t. All I want is for the organization to learn a lesson and stop taking on projects and spending years on them. In the meantime, Mulder can just go away.
Mo the Mouth is looking more and more like his hero Dal Maxvill. He is a good talker and has the media here hypnotized. He must have gotten his training working in Politics because I have never heard anybody spin BS like this. “Solve this problem from within” is code for “we aint parting with a red cent”. Anybody that thinks the Cards and Mo the Mouth are going to trade or sign anybody that is not hurt, recovering, released, or designated for reassignment needs to SEEK COUNCELING NOW! I didnt expect them to shell out millions for players needlessly but frankly I dont give a darn about how much they have to spend or how much they make. They dont give a hoot about how outragious the prices are at the ballpark. I treat them like everything else; If a product is sub-par then I dont buy it. When they show me they are really trying to win and put the best team they can on the field then I will return to spending my money on them. Lets look at this team;
They have a great first baseman, catcher, and third base. After that it goes downhill pretty fast. Ankiel has his moments but except for the KO’s he is reasonably solid. Duncan is Toast no matter how many at bats he gets. they can ram that guy down our throats all year and next too but he is here for 2 reasons; he is cheap, and his dad is the manager’s best friend. His minor league stats are a matter of record; 93 home runs in 9 years. That is 10 a year average. And he hit 261. Why would anybody think he was ever going to be the next Willy McCovey? i got 2 words for you….DAVE KINGMAN….Schumacher is OK but he aint no Lou Brock as a leadoff man. Actually, he aint really even a David Eckstein. Isturis is a glove and thats it. I think they let him run the bases during BP just to make sure he remembers where they are at. And the second base thing is so jumbled that they have about 14 different guys playing there and NONE of them can take the job away from the other 13. I understand not wasting money but this is stupid. I vote ‘No More Doubletalk from MO the MOUTH!
I personally give Mulder a lot of credit for the effort he gave. I believe he invested a lot of time and energy in trying to get back. He wants to play ball.
I am concerned that the front office may be drinking its own bathwater. My impression of the Cards minor league ‘depth’ is that LaRussa has put a lot of guys in positions to succeed. He has, perhaps, used some of the newer talent in ways that make them look better than they are. After all, wasn’t the whole world just saying a few short months ago - and for the past several years - that the Cards farm system was depleted? Does a whole farm system go from depleted to robust in 6 months? Through judicious and prudent use of some younger guys Tony may have fooled some of the people some of the time. It now worries me that he has fooled the front office - or they are trying to fool us.
Did anyone realistically expect Mulder to escape his first start without giving up a single run? Wow. A 16-pitch shutout.
These seem to be the accurate predictions from pre-game posts to this blog:
I hope I’m wrong, but the only line I’m predicting is the one that leads from the dugout to the mound. A visit from Duncan, then La Russa with the hook. He will not make it out of the first inning.
— Cory Redick
Everyone is so negative toward him…. He’s pitching a no-hitter for sure! …
— Biff
(OK, not an OFFICIAL no-hitter, but no hits in Mulder’s outing.)
… Mulder is back on the disabled list within 48 hours. …
— Nathan
I hope he does well but realistically I don’t see him getting out of the first inning
— t
we are so schrewed! That was painful to watch! The end of a career. Oy vey! Hey Mo! Tell Dewitt junior that I ain’t re-upping for 2009 season tickets, All-Star game or not! I aint paying to watch the nightly drama of Chris Duncan trying to catch a fly ball or Ryan Franklin trying to find the strike zone.
Arena football,anyone?
They should have gotten rid of Mulder a long time ago. I could not believe they got rid of Suppan and kept Mulder, that was one stupid move and now it has come back to bite them. That is what they deserve.