Vet or no, your catcher is your staff leader and this team puts a lot of trust in him.

Yadi simply flipped the mit up there and kept letting Carp throw those 0-2 fastballs. That's just not acceptable. He needed to call time and get his guy on track.

He should've at least pointed out to the umpire that the Angels were deliberately fouling up Carps rhythm by taking long walks outside the box between pitches.

Yadi was terrible today behind the plate. There's just no escaping it.

Well, we've got an excellent chance to pull this one out. Bases loaded, one out, bottom of the 10th.

Awesome come from behind!

Play-by-play, anybody? Gamecast seems to be stuck.

Come from behind to win it in 10 innings doesn't seem to me to be a team laying down.

Nevermind, I see we won.

:rockon:

Bses loaded with one out. Angels put 5 infielders in the infield with bases loaded and no center fielder. Lopez hits it off the top of the CF wall for the game winner.

Sweet.

Nice :thumb:

Lopez was awesome, Freese was awesome, Albert had an off day and they picked him up, great game!

Does anyone have an update on Penny's injury and have they decided what they're going to do with that turd Lohse?

Anybody heard anything about a recent dust-up between Pujols and LaRussa?

Penny -- seemingly minor muscle pull in his back. Nursed it through the Reds start, couldn't get through Friday. Placed on the DL but expected back as soon as eligible. (Walters likely takes his turn)

Lohse -- DL trip likely, if so it appears that Ottavino will get his start. Nobody's real sure what's wrong with him, MRI will turn up more info; probably just an "Isringhausen" DL trip where they squirrel him away for 2 weeks to let him figure out what the hell is wrong with him.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...9?OpenDocument

Pujols was being a petulant bitch and LaRussa finally called him on it. Albert needs to tone it down a bit with showing up his teammates.

Maybe, but any time you take the bat out of Pujols hands, thats a bad mangerial move for our side.

No it isn't.

Aggressive baseball has worked for 100 years. When Albert is superhuman, perhaps station to station is a viable strategy.

But AP is presently not in the top 10 in any triple crown category and has been in a funk for the better part of May.

You manage based on what you have at that moment in time. When Ludwick went, LaRussa had a guy that hasn't hit the ball well for a month at the plate and a chance to steal the lead with a single.

Diefying players will get you into a lot of trouble. Ask Grady Little if he wishes he'd have pulled Pedro Martinez sooner. Ask Dusty Baker how he feels about leaving Mark Prior out there in the '03 NLCS.

More managers have been felled by 'great man' syndrome than I dare count. You don't always defer to your superstar just because he's a superstar. You manage every pitch by the situation you're presented with at the exact instant you're presented with it. Martinez was gassed. Prior was tired. Albert is struggling.

That's it. Baseball's a simple game and it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

Here's Bernies take on it.

Bernie Bytes: Pujols-TLR, Freese, Double Steal, Jarmo
By Bernie Miklasz

Reading Time, 5 Minutes:
Please excuse me for not entering an opinion in the national debate over the final episode of “Lost,” but we may have a a view on the final “24″ which airs tonight. Jack Bauer may have killed everyone on “Lost,” for all I know…
Anyway…
* There’s nothing wrong with a little tension between Tony La Russa and Albert Pujols. Actually, I think the manager probably scored a few points inside the clubhouse by standing up to Pujols.
* But let’s not get carried away. The TLR-Pujols relationship is a positive one, and that bond will remain strong. Pujols has often described La Russa as father-like figure, and we’ve all had arguments with our Papies.
* Pujols is stressed out because he’s having a bad month by his standards. And La Russa’s decision to have Ryan Ludwick make an unsuccessful steal attempt with Pujols up in the 8th inning Friday — didn’t make much sense. The Cardinals already were up by four runs. And had Ludwick been safe, chances are the Angels would have walked Pujols, anyway.
* Sunday’s double steal in Sunday’s win over the Angels was one of the finest moments of the Cardinals’ season. Great call by La Russa, and Pujols (the lead runner) got enough of a jump to make it into third. Barely. But he got there, with Colby Rasmus trailing and moving into second to set things up for the game-tying two-run single by David Freese.
* So why would La Russa take a risk in that situation? Answer: Angels reliever Fernando Rodney. Since the start of the 2008 season, when Rodney is pitching, teams have been 8 for 8 on steals against him. If you stretch it back to the start of the 2006 season, teams are 19 of 24 in steals against Rodney. Remember, Rodney pitched for Detroit for several seasons before coming to LA this season. La Russa is especially familiar with the Tigers because of his friendship with Tigers manager Jim Leyland. Good scouting and stats info were a big part of the Pujols-Raz double steal.
* This month Pujols has a slugging percentage of .385. I looked up the monthly slugging percentages since Pujols came to the majors in 2001. His lowest monthly slugging percentage to this point was .460 in July 2001. (Pujols had a low slug in June 2006 but that doesn’t count because he was on the DL for half the month.) Pujols’ .256 batting average is his lowest monthly BA since that same July of 2001, when he hit .241.

Ladies...

I didn't realize that we had beaten the Padres 11 out of the last 12 games.

I didn't realize....shut up we're winning.

Of course.

It's the regular season. LMAO

Waino is nails.

And he'll probably take the loss. God our offense sucks shit right now. :shake:

I think I'm going to the game tomorrow.

Cool. That looks like an awesome ballpark.

The novelty has worn off here. It's been open for 6 years already. But it's still nice. No parking lot though so no tailgating.

Damn it's gonna be Heath Bell vs Pujols in the 9th.

Power v Power

There is no power in our lineup whatsoever right now.

Luckily for you guys Adrian is in a slump and he'll swing at anything.

I was exceptionally underwhelmed by Petco when I went there last month.

I heard all these things about how great the park was. Instead I was greeted with long lines for everything (because they don't have beer vendors in the crowd), an exceptionally 'raw' park with bad seats all over the place and an industrial/half-finished (read: half-assed) look. The only real charm was the facade of the building in LF and the flames coming from the top of the scoreboard.

Oh yeah, and any game you watch that takes place there is likely going to be 1-0 or 2-1. Not because of great pitching, but because the damn ballpark kills anything hit with any authority because of weather, wind patterns and dimensions. It makes the games pretty boring when you don't even have to see great pitching and defense to get a low scoring ballgame. Mostly you just throw pitches high and down the middle so they'll hit the ball into CF where they'll never be able to get one out.

The atmosphere on a Friday night for a first place club was stale and the most energy I saw was when the cheerleaders and mascot started shooting t-shirts and hot dogs into the RF seats (though the cannons were quite impressive).

Honestly, I couldn't have been more disappointed.

DJ, that's plain stupid.

****

Explain.

Are the lines not interminably long despite the fact that you rarely have more than 30K people there?

Does the park not have an unfinished/industrial look?

Are the seats not situated in a fashion which creates poor sightlines in many areas around the stadium (this can be seen from the television view, BTW).

There's nothing I've said in that post which is really debateable. The park is overhyped and mediocre.

Busch III runs into the same problems.

But to compare Petco to Comerica, AT&T, Safeco, Fenway, Yankee Stadium, The Ballpark in Arlington, Camden Yards, Jacobs Field, Pac-Bell or even Kaufmann stadium is just folly.

Sorry, but you guys have nothing more than an average stadium. It may be a hell of a lot better than what you had, but when compared to other stadiums I've been to - it ain't much.

The good news is that Freese should get a chance with RISP.

Holliday blows so hard.

Dammit Heath

Thanks, dickhead. 4321

Raise your hand if you actually expected Rasmus to make contact there.

(please keep your hand down, I'd hate to have to hit you with a tack hammer because you are a reerun)

Wainwright should be the one getting free shots with the hammer. What a ****ing waste. This offense is as bad the Chiefs' right now.

In fairness, the Cards have hit a couple of balls tonight which would've been out in any reasonable park.

Though the Pads would've picked up one of their own on Ludwick's catch.

I just hate baseball in Petco. Throw it down the middle and let them blast it into the abyss; doesn't matter, it'll die somewhere in the OF.

There's a reason Jon Fing Garland pitches like Jesus out there and it isn't because he's suddenly become Greg Maddux (his road ERA is only 2.5 runs higher than his home ERA and a 31-27 K/BB ratio doesn't exactly suggest a pitching diety).

That park just sucks the life out of a ballgame.

Dude, how manyseats did you sit in? 1? Where was it?

I've sat in 20+ sections and never had a bad seat.

It may have an industrial look but not unfinished. It's not a big slab of concrete like Qualcomm.

The poor attendance can be attributed to the suffering economy. SD is one of the hardest cities hit. Before last year there were a lot of sellouts.

Check the box scores of all the games this year, there have been plenty of high scoring games.

Lastly I've been to Angels Stadium, AT&T Park, Coors Field, Qualcomm Stadium, and Petco Park. Petco is by far the nicest stadium.

FML

Garland as now given up 3 ER in 32 IP at Petco.

Jon. Garland.

He of the career 4.36 ERA

Nah, the park has nothing to do with that.

Baseball at Petco is a bigger joke than baseball at Coors was pre-humidor. The only worse place to watch a game is at the carnival ride in Houston.

Yeah, I really get to see too much of ****ing petco by following the Rockies as a secondary team.

Welllll at least Pujols got 3 hits. :rolleyes:

I got bored so I went wandering around the stadium. My seats were in RF, but I did a couple of laps around both the lower and upper bowls because I was pretty sure there weren't going to be any runs scored (I was right). The sightlines were terrible.

Coors is the next park on my list and if you think Petco was a better place to catch a game than AT&T, I'm pretty sure Coors will also put Petco to shame.

C'mon - the thing has exposed rafters everywhere and concrete bleachers make up the CF porches. The difference between 'industrial' and 'unfinished' is purely connotation. I have no idea how you can look at stadiums like PNC or Kaufmann and be impressed by the finish of Petco. It's not like you're looking at brick facades out there - it's concrete and steel.

Say what you want about the number of 'high scoring games' there, but please stop ignoring that it's all relative. Any stadium will occasionally yeild a few runs scored, but on the aggregate, Petco is death valley. Petco has the lowest park value of every stadium in baseball and it's not even close. Last season the 2nd to lowest park was the Jake at .83; Petco was a whopping .09 lower at .741.

That's a pitching independant number based on how the ball simply plays out. Petco kills hitting. No matter who's pitching. No matter how sharp they are. It devalues everything that goes on there to the same extent that Coors devalued everything. But at least at Coors, the devaluation led to exciting (albeit arcade-type) ballgames. At Petco, a 2 run lead means game over.

You are acting like the home run is the only legit way to score in baseball.

Garland has a 3.54 ERA on the road, more than respectable. Enough to win games at least.

Also check this site.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor

Petco Park isn't even last, and also, there are more HR per game there than there is at Busch.

WRONG.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor

You haven't figured out how to use the drop-down boxes, have you?

Them's 2010 figures, hoss.

2010 isn't exactly over yet, nor does it constitute "last season".

Try again.

(here's a hint: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor/_/year/2009 or 2008 if you'd prefer -- note last place: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor/_/year/2008 2007 - http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor/_/year/2007 I can't help but notice a trend here.)

It's a place where hitting goes to die. To argue otherwise undermines any objectivity and/or credibility you may have in this discussion.

Look, I'm not trying to say it's the Vet or anything; I'm not even accusing it of being Oakland Collesium (another shithole). But it's no mecca.

It's just an exceptionally average stadium that produces a hell of a lot of extremely boring baseball.

I'm thankful everyday that the Cardinals don't play there.

Sorry.

FWIW, the best stadium in baseball is PNC in Pittsburgh.

There are horrible obstructed view seats at Jacobs if you are in the right or left field seats.

Fenway sucks ass for anything other than historical importance. The seats are too small and too cramped.

Comerica is a good Park, but it's nothing special.

You tell me which park looks better.

http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2009...fman01_576.jpg
http://artfiles.art.com/5/p/LRG/20/2...an-stadium.jpg


http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/nl/petco2007911.JPG
http://www.baseballpilgrimages.com/n...l/sandiego.jpg

You haven't figured out the use of the Present Tense of speech have you?

You sound like a ****ing reerun.

This would be like me trying to convince you about how the K is shit because I went there once and saw highlights on TV.

Are you going on 2010 numbers alone? Check the previous years where the sample size is much bigger. The highest it got in runs was 27th since 2001 and usually closer to last. Almost the same with HRs since 2001 except for a spike in HRs in 2006 where it got up to 15th somehow.

If you haven't noticed, the Padres have had a $40 million payroll for the last 5 years. Our hitting sucks at home on the road, I'm 100% confident that has to do with the numbers in the past.

What do you know, our guys start hitting better, and we aren't last in the league, and the numbers go up.

I'm not arguing its an offensive ballpark, I'm just arguing that there are other ways to score than hitting the long ball.

The Cards ****ed up tonight, they had a few chances and didn't pull through.

I'm not arguing one over the other since I haven't been to the renovated K or petco before. But petco does have the advantage of not being surrounded by parking lots and grass fields.

Yup, its smack dab in the middle of the Gaslamp Distict in downtown.

So you're going go use the statistics accumulated over a 6 week stretch as determinative rather than an 8-year trend as to what constitutes 'present tense'?

When Petco has the lowest park value of every currently exisiting stadium in baseball since they started keeping the stat, I'm willing to go ahead and say it's going to normalize by the end of the season and Petco will continue to play as the worst hitting park in the majors.

As best I can tell, they didn't move the ballpark in the offseason. As such, it will play the same way as it has played for the last decade - as death valley for hitters.

Ugh.

Then you clearly don't know shit about how the calculate park factors.

It's hitting independant. It has nothing to do with payroll.

It kills hitting. You can be an exceptionally mediocre pitcher and put up a sub 1 ERA there for extended periods of time (i.e. Jon Garland).

It's no different than Coors was for hitters, except that it kills games prematurely whereas Coors extended them unnecessarily.

There's just no arguing this point and it's blatant homerism on your part to attempt to do so.

Absolutely.

It was in a very cool location right on the oceanfront.

And it was still an extraordinarily mediocre place to watch baseball.

I was thinking they had marginally more payroll before the dumping last year. Something in the 60's maybe up to low 70's in 2008.

I'm not arguing the HR factor that much but that park does seriously suppress runs.

Atmosphere won the day in Fenway.

When I consider parks, I simply ask "how good a place is this to watch baseball"

Fenway was a great place to watch a game. Yeah, the history had a lot to do with that and the atmosphere was even more important. But the bottom line was that it was a great place to watch baseball.

Petco wasn't.

It probably has to do with the attendance.

Petco was in the top 10 in attendance from 2004-2007 (Its first 4 years), but a mixture of bad teams and recession has killed the attendance. Even this year, they are doing very poorly, which is surprising for a first place team.

I agree with you that its more fun when the ballpark is full.

Game 2 in the shitty ballpark underway.

To me it looked like Torrealba missed the tag. Then again Pujols didn't touch home.

I thought you were going to the game?

I was going to but I didn't sleep last night. Didn't want to go to the game and fall asleep. I'm correcting my sleeping pattern. I'll go tomorrow to the untelevised day game.

Our luck's as bad as our hitting. :shake:

Two outs. Bases loaded. Holliday.

Figures.

Although ball 4 was called strike 1 by the cocksucking umpire, and it wasn't even close.

FML

Matt Casselday.

Well, at least the ump is an equal opportunity blind ****ing scumbag.

I figured it out - the umpire is Leslie Nielsen from Naked Gun.

He is pathetic.

Yeah he has a huge strikezone. I think Pujols is up this inning.

I'm fairly certain whoever scores first will win. Good Luck.

:shake:

I have a special place in my heart for Matt Holliday. He never touched home.

120 million ****ing dollars.

Sure looked like he got there the same time as the ball. Of course, we don't pay the one who sucks the penis to beat out infield choppers.

I honestly can't remember a Cardinals offense this absolutely, completely ****ing awful before. It's like the baseball version of the 2008 Chiefs.

This umpire is unbelievable. He's called balls farther outside than that strikes all night long.

Missed his ****ing spot by 18 inches and got the call.

**** off, one who sucks the penis.

jeezz this umpire is awful. Pathetic. He needs to go back to High School ball.