***Official 2015 STL Cardinals Thread II***

[BigRedChief]

2011 World Series Championship
2012 NLCS. One win from another WS appearance.
2013 World Series. Two wins from another World Series Championship
2014 NLCS. Three wins from another WS appearance
2015 Clinched Central Division title and Home Field advantage in the playoffs. First team in MLB to win 100 games since 2011.

• Made the postseason 11 times in the last 15 seasons.
• Only 1 losing season since 2000.
• Reached the World Series 4 times since 2004 and won as many championships (two) the past eight seasons as it did from 1965 to 2005.
• Made the NLCS 9 times including the last 4 years 2011-2014
• Three million attendance? Take it to the bank.
• 65 post season wins since 2004. 22+ wins more than any other team.

[O.city]

Cruz catching and hitting 7th. Yes

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by O.city

Cruz catching and hitting 7th. Yes

This sounds awful, but maybe more games where he goes 0-fer and his average dips below .100 and Moe might be forced to act. I doubt it, but a guy can hope.

[Stargazer]

Royals hoopla has turned me in to a Cards fan. Go red birds!

[DJ's left nut]

So I'm watching the Cardinals weather delay.

And because I'm not allowed to discuss 'clutch' in the training camp thread anymore I thought I'd briefly speak to it here. They have Ozzie Smith doing drills with some 'fantasy camp' old guys.

So he's getting hard liners hit at him and he's catching them behind his back and between his legs and his firing them directly over the 2b bag under handed on a rope and without looking. He does a twirl and rockets one to 1b.

The guy is sixty and he's picking balls and firing them like you and I would brush our teeth.

The level that the best of the best play on is simply so far beyond our comprehension that every now and then you can't help but just be in awe of it. THAT'S why they come up huge when it matters; they're simply amazing players.

[DJ's left nut]

Grichuk's WAR is all the way up to 3.0.

Pederson is at 2.2 and Bryant at 2.7.

He won't win the ROY because the hype's just not been there but man, he's just hits the ball so hard so often that he's literally bludgeoning his way to success. He just got made look really silly (again) by Lorenzen but in a game where sometimes one swing is all you need, you just have to take the good with the bad right now.

[O.city]

Cruz gotta hit, read all about it

[DJ's left nut]

Black Frenchy flat out stole that run. He fisted a pitch that probably should've been an out into the OF nice single and then got himself to 2b on a pretty incredible slide after the throw beat him there by a couple of feet. He got a great jump off 2b on Cruz's hit and with his speed and nice turn around 3b, he managed to beat a pretty strong throw to get the Cards on the board.

Heyward doesn't have the power I wanted him to have and he has a little more swing and miss to his game than I expected, but he does do a lot of the little things well.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by O.city

Cruz gotta hit, read all about it

Grichuk and Moss struck out by a guy that gave up a hit to Cruz.

Lorenzen doesn't have much in the way of command or stuff and yet he blew 2 fastballs by Moss at a whopping 92 mph. The first one was at the letters and should've been tatooed, the 2nd one was at his eyes and nobody with any strike zone judgment bothers offering at it. It's not like he came up the latter at 96, he'd just missed way inside with a breaker. To get carved up by mediocre heat that far out of the zone by a guy you have a platoon advantage against is just really worrisome.

I'm not sure what Moss's pitch is right now. I feel like he'd struggle to hit liners in a HR derby.

[O.city]

I still think you could get more power out of him by letting Mueller Rizzo him

[O.city]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Grichuk and Moss struck out by a guy that gave up a hit to Cruz.

Lorenzen doesn't have much in the way of command or stuff and yet he blew 2 fastballs by Moss at a whopping 92 mph. The first one was at the letters and should've been tatooed, the 2nd one was at his eyes and nobody with any strike zone judgment bothers offering at it. It's not like he came up the latter at 96, he'd just missed way inside with a breaker. To get carved up by mediocre heat that far out of the zone by a guy you have a platoon advantage against is just really worrisome.

I'm not sure what Moss's pitch is right now. I feel like he'd struggle to hit liners in a HR derby.

Moss just isn't very good, and I don't think he's going to be. It sucks.

[DJ's left nut]

I'm going to call a Heyward homer here in the next game or 2.

Perhaps he's just seeing Lorenzen well, but even on the 2 balls he just fouled off, he got good extension, got his hands to a nice solid hitting point in his trigger and largely had his upper and lower halves synced up.

That's kinda how he looked before he had that brief power spurt a month or so ago.

[DJ's left nut]

{facepalm}

The umpires reviewed an out on a neighborhood play (which is expressely exempt from review) and then manage to mess up the call anyway.

Unless they got on the phone and the replay booth just said "seriously, WTF are you guys doing? Just stand here for a minute so you don't look completely reeruned", then I'm not sure what the hell just happened.

[Swanman]

Big 2-out hit by Wong there.

[DJ's left nut]

3-2 count that would've loaded the bases with 1 out and Grichuk swings at a pitch that would have hit the plate if it wasn't also 6 inches wide of it. At no point anywhere in that ball's flight path could it have been remotely considered a strike. Grichuk knew he was going to swing before the pitcher went into his windup.

BRC, you have no idea how difficult it is for me to take the good with the bad with this guy. His bad is just SOOOOOO bad. I'm trying to overlook it because of the nights like last night but wow is it ugly.

[O.city]

+30