Looks like plate discipline will be an issue again this year.

To be fair, we haven't had a hitting coach worth a **** since Mitchell Paige fell off the wagon seven years ago.

I've been taught since I was 9 years old not to chase shit out of the strike zone.

I would hope that a professional baseball player wouldn't need to be "coached" to refrain from chasing.

It's a goddamn epidemic with this crew.

It's a philosophical problem, and it starts with LaRussa, who believes that the first pitch is one of the best to get. In a vacuum, that may well be true, but it ignores the fact that you get lest accustomed to the pitcher when taking fewer pitches, and you allow him to work deeper into the game, thus exposing the worst part of the staff, the middle bullpen, the least.

Mother**** you, MIF.

:facepalm:

Is www.firetonylarussa.com taken?

Scores from first on a goddamned single. So much for Enos Slaughter. ****.

This is going to be a looooong season.

No shit, Al.

We should all be used to this club giving games away to lessor teams.

It only took 10 2/3 for me to check out on this team.

Same shit as last year. Same exact shit. **** these guys.

First home opener I've missed since 2004, and I'm not a bit disappointed I missed this ****ing abortion.

Welp,

Horrible MIF defense? Check
Boneheaded baserunning mistakes that would make Joe Thurston blush? Check
Franklin's pitch to piss-pounding regressing to the mean? Check
Players routinely chasing garbage out of the zone in disadvantageous counts? Check
Inability to move over runners or drive them home when ISP? Check

This team has learned nothing. The entire organization needs to be carpet bombed.

"Two outs and the final hope is Skip Schumaker."

Funniest sentence in the history of the English language?

It's only 1 of 162, but I can't disagree with anything you've posted.

bundle of sticksggots
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Probably the most apt critique of our club I've seen.

LMAO

I just realized the Cardinals play the Giants in their first home series of the season.

Mickelson better get himself un****ed for the majors this year, or this could end up being the worst sports year of my life.

Mizzou is going to be ****ed in football and basketball, the Cards look dead in the water, and there may not even be an NFL season.

Three goddamn runs against the Madres. FML :facepalm:

We own you. Get over it.
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LMAO

Everybody will own us this year. Don't read too much into it.

Don't care, we won!
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Go **** yourself, Skip.

c'mon guys...you're not going to be riding the cotton pony for another 161 games are you?

i'm still holding back til july 4th.
go cards.
sec

Holy crap did Franklin suck the life out of that stadium. Everyone behind him and he craps all over the field.

well, everyone has their opinion on what the team needs, but a bonafide closer could make a hell of a difference. we've been dodging a bullet w/franklin for too long, imo.
sec

Isn't Izzy making a comeback?

Going to the game Saturday. Wish me luck...

ROFLROFL

Wonder if this is what we will look like without Pujols?

He sure wasn't a factor yesterday, could have trotted Bob Horner out there if you wanted 0-5

For what it's worth, that game would've made me far more angry had it not been so predictable.

Everyone knew coming into the season that we had serious problems with our middle infield defense. We also knew that Franklin was faltering and we had no depth outside of him due to McClellan being shifted to SP. Finally, McGwire proved last season that he has no interest in coaching situational hitting and yet he's back again.

And what happened? Awful interior defense, poor relief work and miserable situational hitting doomed us.

That game will be a microcasm of this season. If you think that's the only game (or even 5% of the games) we'll be losing due to pitiful interior defense, bad relief pitching and shoddy situational hitting...well I'm sorry to hear that.

Cardinals fans have become a little spoiled. Over the last decade we haven't had a 'bad' baseball team. We've had a few that were bitten by injuries and a few that underachieved, but we never had a bad baseball team so its impossible for us to conceive of the possibility.

Well face the horror, gentlemen. This is a bad baseball team. It has 5 or 6 good players on it, but it's a bad team because our general manager is over his head and our esteemed General Mubarek has lost his goddamn mind.

We should bring him back....


....oh wait. Damn.

Oh well, he's probably still better than McGwire.

I've wanted LaRussa gone for a long time now, but bringing RoidBoy in as hitting coach really should have been the last straw. The damage the two of them are doing to this club is frightening.

More good news: Holliday had his appendix removed last night

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseb...9bb30f31a.html

Fortunately, the PD writer is a damn moron if he honestly thinks Holliday will be out 6 weeks w/ a removed appendix (afterall, Cassel was back playing quarterback in 2). Nobody's speculating that the thing actually ruptured, so it should only be a minor laproscopic procedure that has him back on the field in a week or 2 at worst.

Hell, have someone whack him in the head and put him on that new 7 day DL for concussions - that should be just about right.

i hears larussa was a pedophile

Bernie Miklasz did untold damage to the Dispatch's rep a mere 48 hours ago.

I find it very very unlikely that the PD is running an April Fools gag the day after the Cards shit down their legs. STL will NOT take kindly to it.

:facepalm:

Guess it's too much to hope this is just an elaborate April Fool's joke.

It's no joke, it's all over ESPN radio.

Un****ing believable.

The season from hell....

what did he do?

Reported Painter as MU's new BB coach being a done deal.

If cassell can play QB in the NFL after 10 days why does a baseball player have to be out a month?

And then he apologized repeatedly and said how embarrassed he is. He also asked to be suspended from the PD.

whoops :LOL:

Its not the end of the world but it sucks. He may play before long but the effects could last a while.

Every athlete should have to have to have a pro-active surgery to get that unneeded organ out of the way.

While we are at it...Every pitcher that signs a major league contract must have "Tommy John" surgery before throwing their first pitch.

The Cardinals are a legitimate threat to lose 90 this season.

Theriot is horrible, absolutely horrible. And Schumaker remains a piece of shit.

So now guys like Westbrook are nibbling because they're afraid of contact and now he's walking the ballpark. Always good when you can spend $9 million on a guy then surround him with players that ensure he has no chance to succeed.

Berkman's getting beat by belt high 90 mph fastballs and Albert can't be bothered to run to 2b on a ball blasted down the line and off the wall (that the LFer had to go to his knees to retrieve).

They're lazy, they're disinterested and they're lifeless. Even if they weren't all these things they'd be a station to station ballclub that relies on hitting HRs to win while playing piss-poor defense.

They're absolutely everything a Cardinals team should never EVER be. And if you sign Albert Pujols long term, this is what you get until he retires.

I'm no longer apathetic towards re-signing him. I'm actively opposed to it. I want the whole ****ing team shipped out except for Rasmus, Holliday and Wainwright. This team is rotten to its core.

I left at the end of the 7th inning. Theriot has horrible range at SS, Berkman can't play the OF for his life and everything else sucks right now.

I kept trying to tell people this in the offseason.

Last season he was with the Dodgers. When Furcal went down, did they play Theriot at SS? No, of course not. They brought up Jamey Carroll from the minors. Is Jamey Carroll some hot prospect? Nope - he's a 36 year old scrub with a career OPS of .700. So maybe he's a great glove man? No, in fact Jamey Carroll had played more innings in the OF than SS over the last 3 seasons.

So the Dodgers decided that they'd be better served to play an aging OFer at SS over Ryan Theriot.

The Cardinals, on the other hand, decided to trade the best defensive SS in the NL to make space for him.

Now we're surprised that a pitcher that lacks strikeout stuff is nibbling?

John Mozeliak and Tony LaRussa are absolutely ****ing incompetent.

Put down that crack pipe. :facepalm:

We are not the Pirates and Royals. Maybe you should just take a break from the Cardinals this year?:hmmm:

You're right. We've both won a game.

Who exactly were you telling this to? I don't recall anyone on here being a proponent of Ryan Theriot at shortstop.

The truly damning thing is that almost everyone realized how abjectly horrible this team was put together, and run-of-the-mill baseball fans should not be able to figure that out before spring training.

sorry not meant to diss your team. If you frequesnt this theread often, then you know I give props to royals fans all the time. You guys are great fans that deserve to root for a winner.

Just stating the reality that we haven't lost 90 games in a real long time but the Royals and Pirates do.

I've been talking to my boss about this.

As Cardinals fans, we've spent the last 10+ years without never having dealt with a 'bad' team. We've had underachievers and injury problems, but never just 'bad' teams.

This is a bad team. It doesn't get on base. It doesn't have any depth in the lineup. It doesn't have a decent bullpen and the back of its rotation is mediocre at best. It has no speed and it's probably the 2nd worst defensive ballclub in baseball. However, unlike the worst defensive team in baseball (the Brewers), the Cardinals have built a pitching staff that relies on its defense to generate outs.

Yes - we're a bad baseball team. It has some good players, but it's a bad team. You cannot build this pitching staff and back it with this defense. You cannot have a team built around power in the middle then surround it with players that don't get on base (especially when part of the 'power' comes from Lance Berkman who is absolutely spent).

We're not the Royals or Pirates - they're a threat to lose 100. But the Cardinals aren't going to play .500 ball and if that's the case, they're only a handfull of loses along the way to losing 90.

They're absolutely a threat to lose 90 ballgames. And in the end, that's probably the best thing that could happen to this organization long-term.

no chit, who here thought Berkman an dtheriot were good pickups? Who here thinks the GM is doing a bang up job?

I live in Columbia - my office is full of Cardinals fans (including some of the 'true fan' variety). And my introduction to message boards was a Cardinals board I've been on for a decade or so. I apologize to Kyle, but the world does not revolve around CP.

We haven't, but there is a really good chance that we will. We're going to have a really, really bad rotation this year, and our offense is the same bumbling mess it was last year.

I think DJ is being a bit hysterical. This team has assets, and the right manager could make a massive difference.

Fire LaRussa and Mozeliak. That way you also get rid of McGwire's dumbass.

Let Carpenter walk, save 15 million
Let Berkman walk, save 8 million
Let Theriot and Schumaker walk, save another 6 million.

Make Craig your everyday RF, Jay your platoon guy and 4th OF.
Give Descalso/Greene a shot to man the MIF. If one of them can start from there, great.

Even if you bump Albert up to $30, you still have $15 that you can use on finding another starter and infielder.

Let Lohse walk the next year, and funnel that money into extensions for Wainwright and Rasmus.

Not to break out the No True Scotsman fallacy, but what kind of bumbling ****ing idiot would actually believe that Ryan Theriot wouldn't be one of the worst SS's in baseball?

I've got to see my team win 4 World Championships in my lifetiime including one in person. We have won more WS than any other team besides the Yankees. We have had our share of winning.

I also remember the late 70's as clear as a game this week. To see my team take it on the chin after watching Gibson, Brock etc kick azz for 10 years was painful but it passed and we were good again.

There is nothing mystical about the uniform. Those teams were good not because of birthright or because you root for them, they were good because the organization was run well and they made tremendous personnel decisions.

This team sucks because John Mozeliak is a terrible GM and Tony LaRussa is years past his usefulness.

I can get on board with all this but the Carp part. Until Carp's replacement is ready (Miller) we need to keep getting the last juice out of carp.

I respectfully disagree.

One of the first memories I have in my life is watching the 64 World Series with my Dad and Grandpa. They certaintly seemed larger than life to me at the time.

I grew up hearing tales of on this day they watched Stan the man play. Heard about how my Great Grandpa once had Diizzy Dean spend the night at his house. I grew up in an era when I couldn't watch the team in person or on TV. I spent my summer nights listening to KMOX and imagining the events happening that Jack Buck and Harry Carey were describing that evening. To a kid stuck in bum****t egypt, they were indeed mythical.

As an adult, I'm aware of reality. there is no real magic, there is no Santa Claus. But, that boyish zeal and belief is as part of baseball as it is in me.

My son (a 5th generation Cardinal fan) was there in person with me to share the experience when we won the WS. Two years ago we were in row 7 behind home plate playing the Cubs, bases loaded, Pujols up at the plate. He had already had several Grand Slams that year. We had no hope that he would get a pitch to hit. From our vantage point directly behind home plate, we saw the mistake pitch and Albert didn't miss it either, that grand slam ball landed, on the fly, right where I took this picture. The longest and hardest ball I've ever seen hit in person. Mystical? A magical moment? Probably not, but, it was a damn good moment.

I hate to agree with this, but have to.

I'd be shocked if this club goes .500 this year.

And I absolutely agree with the last paragraph.

Best thing that could happen to this organization is to burn it to the ground and start over. Adios, TLR. Adios, Mo. Enjoy being an Angel, Albert.

Jaime is on fire.

Yup, Jaime is bringing the good stuff today.

BTW, the Pads don't own the Cards. The Cards are 256-177 against them all time.

We own your asses.

Have fun going to a half empty Petco.

and the Playoffs we own them like no team has ever owned anohter in the playoffs.

Have fun getting swept today.

Jesus Christ.

Hit and run on with a pitcher (.183) at the plate?

TLR has gone full ****ing reerun.

Sacrifice bunt, dipshit.

**** nah. Moseley's starting for the Pads? He was a RP with the Yanks last year.

And we have 1 ****ing hit off of him through 3 innings. And we wasted that runner with another stupid decision by TLR.

Time to face the music - this team is BAD.

He's handled you guys pretty well so far.

No name pitchers always do that.

I.E: Bud Norris.