Breaking down the Pittsburgh series

Picking through the rubble of the Pirates series:

Starting pitching: C-... Todd Wellemeyer was excellent, Kyle Lohse was alright, Joel Pineiro was great for three innings, then fell apart for a disappointing start.

Relief pitching: D-... Got bombed in extra frames during the first game of the series and in the 8th and 9th of the third.

Offense: D... The only thing the offense seems to be exceptionally good at so far this season is racking up runners left on base. Disturbingly, Albert Pujols seems to be racking up the strikeouts these days when he's usually pretty tough to fan.

Defense: D+... Isringhausen's wild throw to third threw the doors wide open Thursday. The Cardinals let too many balls drop just beyond the infield, let too many double play opportunities slip through their fingers and don't hold baserunners well.

It doesn't look like much help is available in the minors for the sputtering Cardinals offense.

Top prospect Colby Rasmus has seen his batting average sink to .189 and his on base percentage grind down to .280. He is striking out about once in every five plate appearances as he tries to make the jump from AA Springfield to AAA Memphis. On the bright side, he does have six homers.

Although the Cardinals have an outfield glut, Nick Stavinoha is doing his part to earn a look with a .374 batting average, four homers and 24 RBIs.

On the mound, Anthony Reyes pitched Thursday night and didn't impress the scouts.

In 3 2/3 innings he gave up six hits and two walks while allowing two earned runs.

Comments

[Bob from PA]

Uh, it is PittsburgH

[Cardinal John]

I usually agree with ya, Joe. But this week I have several disagreements.

I felt that the starting pitching was a tad better than a c-.

The team averaged slightly better than the league average in runs so a D is a bit low as well.

Izzy's bad play was not enough to overshadow some serious webgems by Ankiel and Izturis. Much higher than a D+.

Relief pitching?! Two blowups and Izzy got REALLY lucky as he was being hit hard. F is the rating here...

Like I said, normally I agree with your posts...

[View From the Cheap Seats]

John,

It's cool. Everybody's opinion is welcome here.

I agree Ankiel and Izturis made some nice plays. But Izturis also ran an S pattern on a relatively easy popup and, subsequently, wasn't able to catch it. I'm also perplexed by the Cardinals inablility to turn potential double plays quick enough to get the job done.

There are a lot of things happening with the defense that don't show up in the box scores as errors, but they aren't up to Cardinals standards.

As far as the office goes... they may have put more runs than average across the plate. But they left 28 runners stranded on base on Wednesday and Thursday alone. They could have and should have scored more. They just aren't very good in the clutch right now...

[Tim]

Tonight is the first ever time that the Tampa Bay Rays have played at Busch Stadium. How come they aren't giving out a pin, like they did for the other American League teams when they played their first game here?
My guess is that St. Louis is embarrassed it took over a decade of interleague play for MLB to bring the Rays to St. Louis, considering how St. Petersburg was the spring training home of the Cardinals for more than a generation. I'd be interested in your thoughts about this, though.

[View From the Cheap Seats]

Tim,

I didn't realize that this was the first time Tampa Bay came to town, actually.

It would certainly seem like they should offer a commemorative pin in the spirit of the occasion.

But maybe the Cardinals promotions department was too busy trying to figure out why the Redbirds have gone to Detroit three years in a row for interleague play...