***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.

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by O.city

+30

6 up and Cards go to play the Brewers while the Pirates have the Dodgers. Good place to be. Pitching matchup tomorrow of Kershaw vs. Cole, that will be one to watch.

[George Liquor]

I was down in Arkansas all day today, so the game was in and out on the radio.

Sounds like Wacha pitches a good one though, had his change up working real well?

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by 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.

That was as ugly as bat as you will ever see. Luckily those type of AB's when he started the season was at least once a game. Now its only a couple of times a week.

You and I both will take those gawd awful AB's as long as he keeps mashing the ball. He can change a game with one AB and if he gets hot, can carry the offense in a playoff series. Thats a helluva upside to a team with challenges scoring runs.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by BDj23

I was down in Arkansas all day today, so the game was in and out on the radio.

Sounds like Wacha pitches a good one though, had his change up working real well?

Yep, but his curveball was also looking much improved.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Originally Posted by O.city

Best way to combat trolling, just leAve it alone. It will go away when they don't get attention.

[Hootie]

I'll go away when BDj23 stops being a little bundle of sticksy Bitch ..

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by 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.

Bryant is busy slurping from the Baez fountain of strikeouts. The guy finds it impossible to hit a ****ing change up no matter where it is. He is probably going to have change his swing. He has the most obnoxious upper cut.

My vote for RoY goes to Carlos Correa right now.

[Jewish Rabbi]

Originally Posted by jd1020

Bryant is busy slurping from the Baez fountain of strikeouts. The guy finds it impossible to hit a ****ing change up no matter where it is. He is probably going to have change his swing. He has the most obnoxious upper cut.

My vote for RoY goes to Carlos Correa right now.

Well Correa plays in the American League so

[VAChief]

Originally Posted by 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.

Let's hope that AB was an example of a young hitter still being overly aggressive and not what I fear could be a much harder trait to develop which is identifying pitches.

After the 2-1 pitch went to 3-1 I thought I saw a hint of recognition on his face that said..."ah you might be trying to pitch around me"...which they were in effect doing. After that pitch I think the pitcher thought "well heck if you are going to swing at crap, let's do this!" The 3-1 pitch is a ball that I think he just decided, this is a pitch I can hit somewhere and we get a run. The last one, just seemed like he didn't have a clue that it was breaking out of the zone, when most good HS hitters could have seen it coming. He is a puzzler. His upside could be fantastic, or he could turn into an Uggla type hitter. The middle upside projection to me is a better fielding Ron Gant.

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi

Well Correa plays in the American League so

True. I've always hated the AL and NL distinctions. Hard for me to see anyone other than Bryant getting the NL RoY. He's 2nd in HRs, 1st in Runs, 1st in RBIs, 2nd in SB. If Bryant gets hot again, wouldn't be shocked to see him end up with 100 RBIs. WAR isn't much of a factor to me. If you go by ESPNs stats, Grichuk is a 2.9 WAR player and Bryant is a 2.7 WAR player. If you go by fangraphs, Grichuk is a 2.7 WAR player and Bryant is a 3.6 WAR player.

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by jd1020

True. I've always hated the AL and NL distinctions. Hard for me to see anyone other than Bryant getting the NL RoY. He's 2nd in HRs, 1st in Runs, 1st in RBIs, 2nd in SB. If Bryant gets hot again, wouldn't be shocked to see him end up with 100 RBIs. WAR isn't much of a factor to me. If you go by ESPNs stats, Grichuk is a 2.9 WAR player and Bryant is a 2.7 WAR player. If you go by fangraphs, Grichuk is a 2.7 WAR player and Bryant is a 3.6 WAR player.

Grichuk can be a spectacular player and an awful player. The dispersion with him is huge. I haven't seen a ton of Bryant's games, but he definitely feels more steady overall, even with a recent slump.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by VAChief

Let's hope that AB was an example of a young hitter still being overly aggressive and not what I fear could be a much harder trait to develop which is identifying pitches.

After the 2-1 pitch went to 3-1 I thought I saw a hint of recognition on his face that said..."ah you might be trying to pitch around me"...which they were in effect doing. After that pitch I think the pitcher thought "well heck if you are going to swing at crap, let's do this!" The 3-1 pitch is a ball that I think he just decided, this is a pitch I can hit somewhere and we get a run. The last one, just seemed like he didn't have a clue that it was breaking out of the zone, when most good HS hitters could have seen it coming. He is a puzzler. His upside could be fantastic, or he could turn into an Uggla type hitter. The middle upside projection to me is a better fielding Ron Gant.

Your memory of Ron Gant is probably not quite right (I know mine isn't).

My memory of Gant is of a mistake hitting, K happy hacker with little strike zone discipline. Now go back and look at his career K numbers and BB numbers. No, he wasn't a low K guy by any means, but he wasn't anywhere near as bad as your memory probably portrays him. And he drew a bunch of walks in the process. He only had one truly bad K season over a 16 year career. Towards the end he got a little K happy but for most of his career he was a guy that was going to have about 60 BBs to 120 Ks.

Good lord, if Grichuk could manage that he'd be a legitimate superstar.

Gant is more like Ryan Ludwick than the free swinger you probably remember him as.

Truthfully, there aren't many good comps for Grichuk because most guys that do what he does just aren't very good. That's why I keep getting stuck with my Adam Jones comp (and even Jones doesn't have near the K rate Grichuk does). Statheads talk about the 3 true outcome players - Grichuk isn't even that. Grichuk is a 2 true outcome player at this point and I still don't know how he can possibly make that work long-term.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi

Well Correa plays in the American League so

{drool}

That guy is going to be so absurdly, ridiculously good.

Thank God the Astros are out of the NL. Dealing with the Stros and the Cubs over the next decade would not have been a good time.

[George Liquor]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

{drool}

That guy is going to be so absurdly, ridiculously good.

Thank God the Astros are out of the NL. Dealing with the Stros and the Cubs over the next decade would not have been a good time.

They're the Cubs, they will inevitably find a away to screw it up.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by BDj23

They're the Cubs, they will inevitably find a away to screw it up.

If Schwarber starts striking out in droves, then I'll have to agree with you.

I'm not sure if it's something in their approach at this point or if they just have a couple of high-end prospects who've never seen a pitch they wouldn't swing at.

Schwarber appears to be a completely polished hitter - if he becomes a 150 K hacker, then you have some serious institutional issues. I'd have never expected Soler to become the whiff machine he turned into this year. If they do the same to Schwarber, then something is rotten in Chicago.