Jobu's Altar: You Are Sparta....Nahht
Posted by Rob Rabies on 05.09.2007
The 2007 season is not Thermopylae. With that, and their Stalingradian-like losses in mind, 411 Mania's resident Cardinals fan explains why the Redbirds should pack it in.
It's probably a good thing that I wasn't the commander of the Apollo missions. Other than my infinitesimal knowledge of astrophysics and basic engineering, I may have the tendency to give up on certain things too early. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. Jim Lovell and co. probably would have been mighty pissed if I'd have been there…
"Umm, sorry guys…you're fucked."
In actuality, none of this is true. I'm perhaps the world's most stubborn sonofabitch. From goading people into message board flame wars that last weeks to mouthing off to a cop to the point where I tell him to use a Tazer on me, I just don't like to give up. That's why this next sentence is so hard:
The Cardinals need to shut it down for the year. Tap out. Tap...TapTapTap
Now, this is coming from the same person who cancelled the classes that he was teaching and skipped the ones that he was supposed to attend to drive 1,000 miles round trip, and pay 150 dollars to sit in the very last row of upper deck of the very last game old Busch Stadium, to watch Roy Oswalt eviscerate the Cardinals and guide the Ass-hoes to their first World Series. As people were filing out in the 8th inning, I began verbally ripping into them, calling them quitters and pathetic excuses for fans. I don't give up, but I am this year.
It's hard enough to have respect as a World Series champion when the pitchers of the teams you beat have the fielding acumen of the catcher in tee ball, especially when you only won 83 games that year and played sub .500 ball the last 4 months of the season.
Of course, we all know that that is the least of their issues. Tony LaRussa's mug shot has become the favorite avatar of snarky NL Central and Kansas City Royal fans, and last week Josh Hancock decided that it would be a good idea to drive when completely obliterated whilst talking on a cell phone and contemplating smoking a doob. He paid for it with his life. Honestly, I can't say that I feel that bad for him. He made a bad choice. You play Russian Roulette long enough, you'll eventually get the bullet, even if your revolver has a couple hundred empty chambers.
If you are Walt Jocketty, this is what you are looking at in your clubhouse right now:
Jim Edmonds, your centerfielder, is aging like a progeriac, with more head trauma than Thomas "The Feeding Tube" Hearns, and at this point he couldn't hit Tina Turner if he borrowed Ike's pimp hand.
You don't have a right fielder. In fact, I got the call-up yesterday to play right field for the Cards. Preston Wilson's carcass just went on the DL, and Juan Encar-vag-ion is taking his sweet fucking time healing from his injury because he's still miffed about getting benched in the World Series when he was hitting --.342 in the postseason. He was so bad that Cardinal fans just wanted him to strikeout so we didn't have to worry about a double play.
Your left fielder, Chris Duncan, is a DH who runs around about as well as Captain Ahab, and sees fly balls like he just had Mr. Fuji throw salt in his eyes.
Scott Rolen's shoulder still looks like it's made out of papier-mache (Constanza voice: Pappy-A Muh-shay??).
The starting rotation consists of Adam Wainwright, Anthony Reyes, Kip Wells, Braden Looper, and 3 Finger Brown. Chris Carpenter is about to go on the 60 Day DL with elbow surgery.
When you've got 10 pieces of Simian Turds and nothing to eat, you don't have many choices but to chow down on a monkey shit sandwich.
What are the Cardinals going to gain by playing out the string this year? The LaRussa method of "Hard Nine" is great in that it gets guys up every day, but at this point, maybe it would be best to just lie down and take the ten count. I'm sure that Apollo Creed's wife would agree.
Some are a little more optimistic. One of the best baseball blogs around is the Cardinal-themed VivaElBirdos. Over at VEB, one of the posters tried to weigh the team's chances in light of its start. Here's the dim news:
The Cards' opponents are outscoring them by almost 2 runs a game and out-slugging them by an appalling 63 points. To put this into perspective, last year's worst MLB team, the Royals, were out-slugged by 65 points.
I'm sorry, but sometimes, you just can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit. That's poop reference #2. No matter how talented Dave Duncan is as a pitching coach (my god, look what he did with Jeff Weaver), he can't make Randy Keisler a starting pitcher. Nothing short of the arm injury from Little Big League could help that poor bastard out.
If Jocketty was smart, which he no doubt is, I think that he should do the following things:
1) Let Wainwright and Reyes take their lumps this year, but if they get to the point where they are consistently getting shelled, put them on the DL for a couple of stints to fix their mechanics, or solder together some loose wires. These two need to form the middle/back end of the rotation for the next several years, so there is no point in completely ruining them. It's a razor's edge—experience will no doubt help, but you can't have them get Mike Maroth-ed either.
2) Bring up Blake Hawksworth for some spot duty and have him platoon with Brad Thompson in the five hole—This one could be a little contentious, as Hawksworth got shelled his first three outings of the year at AAA, but he's put up much better lines his last two appearances, only giving up 2 runs in 12 IP. He's also the closest thing the Cardinals have to a big-league-ready starter in their farm system. You can't go with Randy Keisler forever, the guy has beer-league stuff. I'd also definitely consider bringing up lefty Chris Narveson, who, despite getting shelled in his last appearance, still has more K's than hits allowed, and a 2-1 K/BB ratio.
3) Trade Ahab Duncan. Several AL teams still need a quality DH, and Duncan is absolute death for right-handed pitching. If Jocketty waits until mid-July, he can probably get a decent prospect for the aforementioned peg-legged outfielder, with the hopes of bolstering a flagging rotation for next year.
4) Call up Rick Ankiel. I swear to God, I'm not smoking crack. Ankiel, like Duncan, struggles against LHP, but he has very good power with 8 HRs and an OPS of .879 in a little over 100 ABs in his current assignment at AAA Memphis. He's also shown a good instinct for fielding, and I think we all know that he has a good arm, albeit Rube Bakeresque (the catcher from Major League 2) accuracy. **Note that the Cardinals recently put Preston Wilson's stiff ass on the 15 day DL and called up journeyman Ryan Ludwick. This is a step in the right direction at the very least.**
5) Have your hitting coach do this again:
6) Ride it out. If you are a Cardinal fan, the most that you can hope for is that Carpenter and Mulder are reasonably healthy by the first part of August. If the team has fallen out of contention by then, hopefully Duncan, Russ Springer, or even Wells or Looper will have been moved for prospects. Pipe dreams like trading Scott Rolen to the Angels for Brandon Wood are just that, so there's no hope in setting your mind on that only to be disappointed.
Sometimes, when you're being blitzed ala London in 1940, the only thing you can do is hunker down and wait for it to pass, but before that happens remember:
(Slam, slam, slam!) "Blood alone moves the wheels of history! Have you ever asked yourselves in an hour of meditation which everyone finds during the day, how long we've been striving for greatness? (Slam!) Not only the years we've been at war, the war of work. But from the moment as a child when we realize that the world could be conquered. It has been a life time struggle (Slam!), a never ending fight, I say to you (Slam!), and you will understand that it is a privilege to fight! We are warriors!! Salesmen of north-eastern Pennsylvania I ask you, once more rise and be worthy of this historical hour!"
