I guess Boggs doesn't kiss LaDoucha's ass sufficiently.

Franklin blew at least 5 games. That destroyed part of the season.

Boggs has allowed 6 runs in his last 7 innings and been scored on 4 of his last 6 appearences after a nice stretch of games. It's not like he was lighting things up. The pen is just a complete joke at this point.

More like mediocre with 2 POS in it.

He's playing Descalso because Skip and Freese are hurt - we saw his usage pattern prior to that. Ditto Craig. If he had any faith in either of those kids, they wouldn't be emergency injury contingency plans.

He's batting Rasmus against lefties because he has precisely nobody else on the team that can play CF that isn't even worse against lefties than he is (i.e. Jon Jay). Don't you remember the attempts at making Tyler Greene play CF this spring? Had Greene shown any ability to track fly balls, Rasmus would be in a platoon right now.

If Boggs were a 35 yr old with a couple nice seasons on his resume, he'd be a 'core' reliever for this squad. Because he's a young guy, he's always 1 bad week from getting buried and demoted on a LaRussa team.

Maybe the fact that LaRussa is keeping 13 MFing pitchers on the roster, including 2 guys he will only use in mopups, has something to do with it.

How many relievers thrive getting one inning every 3/4 days or so? LaRussa has dicked this pen up so badly that none of them can get in a rhythm at all. When he was pitching every 2 or 3 days, he was nails. Then LaRussa uses 1 batting outing as an excuse to bury the kid and suddenly he's not quite as sharp when he's getting 2 apperances/wk. Shocker, eh?

Oh yeah, and he also still throws in the mid 90s and in his 'horrid' last 10 games has 6 strikeouts to only 1 walk.

He's unquestionably a better option than Ryan Franklin or Batista, but he doesn't have enough grey in his temple yet. He has the stuff, the command and the poise to retire major league hitters yet he's getting dumped in favor of dusty old shits like Batista and Franklin. Guys who's sole qualification is the fact that they're at/near 40 years old. It's horseshit.

Your team ERA should drop a lot over this next series, FWIW.

It's not surprising at all. He's struggled a bit, so he got sent down.

Eck, Rick Honeycutt, and Orosco could call Tony tonight asking to return to the big leagues and they'd all be on the roster tomorrow LMAO

5 games out of 162 doesn't destroy a season.

So, if the Cardinals finish four games out of first, can I blame Franklin?

You can blame Franklin if the Cardinals finish 20 games out of first if it makes you feel better. Still wouldn't get them into the playoffs though, so why bother?

Colby just robbed Luddy of a HR.

Anyone know how much Pujols is making now... what his contract was/is through this year? Just curious.

No, blame pujols grounding into double plays.

I believe it is $17MM.