Impressions of Miller Park

Being only the 2nd city I’ve seen a professional baseball game in, I certainly have to say that my perceptions are not as well educated as many others, but it seemed like a good topic to post on, to compare Miller to Busch.

First off, being the first away game I’ve been to for the Cardinals, it was truly awesome to get a chance to ACTUALLY see them take BP, as opposed to home games, when if you rush in right at the 90 minute mark when the gates open, you might see them walking off the field to let the visitors start BP. Edmonds looked very good during BP, launching about half of the balls he hit past the wall. Ankiel did the same. Pujols sprayed balls around, and I was actually a little amused to see how he starts BP: by bunting the first ball that comes to him. He did this at least two different times that he stepped into the cage.

The real impressive feat of batting practice also was for Pujols. The center field scoreboard is above the wall(obviously) and probably about the same amount of shrubbery as there is grass above the wall. Pujols drilled one BP ball that was probably 75% up the scoreboard, which I would have to guess was probably around a 450 foot home run, if not more.

I almost got two autographs from Cardinals. The Cardinal players who were the friendliest about signing autographs were Yadi Molina and Gary Bennett. Yadi signed about 30 autographs about 5 feet down the rail from me, but I could never get in to get my ball signed. Bennett told a crowd of us he would sign, and did so, but not before I was yelled at(more to come later) by Booker, one of Milwaukee’s “guest relations” people, to back off the railing because this particular walkway was being blocked.

Other random observations: Beer prices seemed about the same. Miller was actually cheaper for their large beer, at $7.25 vs. I believe $8.50 at Busch, but Miller’s large beer was considerably smaller than Busch’s, so I would imagine it’s probably pretty much a break-even situation. Bottles in the stands were $6.25 and were the typical 12 ounce size, although they were, of course, in the plastic bottles that Miller has adopted for sports venues.

They had a lot of the 1982 Brewers team there, signing autographs, and one such table was near where the Cardinals dugout was, which led to my being yelled at unreasonably by Booker. To be brief, basically, the front row was the pathway out for people after getting their autographs from Rollie Fingers and a few other Brewers, and I was able to get down into that row in a way that wasn’t blocking traffic, well before either of the two Cardinals came over to sign. When Yadier came over to sign, everyone crowded around, completely blocking people’s ability to get out of there, and that’s when Booker, the very large Brewers staffer, came over and starting telling us we needed to clear out of that row. At one point, after he said it about 3 times in a short span(and people were voluntarily, although slowly, clearing out), I said, sincerely, that I’d move once I was able to.

Booker’s response: “No, you’ll move now.”

To which I responded something along the lines of “I can’t, there are people all around me. I’m not going to shove someone over.”

For the moment, he seemed satisfied with that until about 15 seconds later, when I was moved over about 4-5 feet and still trying to find an opening among the very slowly moving mass when he yelled “Get moving, Number 5!”(a reference to the Pujols jersey I was wearing).

Eventually, I was able to move, but to say the least, I wasn’t very impressed with the courtesy of Booker. I understand he’s got a job to do, and that’s to get that aisle cleared, but as someone who was trying to be understanding and courteous to him, he didn’t have to be singling me out and yelling at me. To put it best, I’ll quote a bumper sticker that the guy who did maintenance at my old apartment building had on his truck: Booker: “Don’t be a Dick.”

The game itself was great. The seats we had were in section 119, which is nearly behind home plate. Edmonds, Pujols, Eckstein and Rolen, the ones we’ve counted on in years past, all played well. I was a little disappointed we were going to see a Kip Wells pitched game, and moreso after the first inning when all the Crew fans around me were up on their feet for the two home runs, but he really shut them down afterwards.

I do have to say though, with as many deep counts as Kip was going into, it didn’t seem like he was as good as he was beyond that first inning. But I do remember looking up sometime around the 4th or 5th inning and seeing that the Brewers hadn’t gotten a hit since that first inning. Sometimes the eyes can be deceiving.

Another observation that I was a little shocked about is how much that place cleared out late in the game. Being used to seeing games in St. Louis, where there are always a few fans that trickle out, I was thinking it would just be a few, but the seats would be mostly filled still. In our section, a prime section of 119, there were probably only 35% of the people still there by the 9th inning. Attendance for the game was around 37,000, but by the end, I’m guessing it was closer to 10-12,000.

Overall a great time: Suggestions for anyone making a trip to Milwaukee for a game. The Ambassador Inn and Hotel(two hotels, across the street from each other and owned by the same group) have a free shuttle that will take guests anyone in the downtown area, including the Miller Brewery, which we also toured(that’s my other suggestion – three free beers at the end of the tour! It makes paying $7.25 a beer at the park a little more palatable when you’ve already got a light buzz going into the game), and also including Miller Park.

The Park itself is beautiful. It seems much more triangular in the way it’s built compared to what I’m used to, which is of course, the current and the last Busch Stadium. But regardless, it’s a really cool park and other than my man Booker, all the staff and other fans there were very kind.

Late inning highlight: Two kids in the next section over got a nice clap/chant going of: “Bill!” clap clap, clap clap. “Hall!” clap clap, clap clap. They repeated this over and over during the at bat until he laced one into the outfield for a base hit. The two kids, who seemed like probably 14-16 in age, seemed very proud of themselves. I’m the same way, but it’s always amusing when fans take ownership of an athlete’s performance because they(the fan) wore their lucky shirt or found a “lucky spot” on the couch and refused to move until the rally was over, even though they had to pee really bad.

Juan Encarnacion Hatred

On many Cardinals blogs that I read, most notably Viva El Birdos, a great Cardinals blog, there seems to be a lot of angst towards Juan Encarnacion. This was true last year, during the World Series run, when he was even benched for two games in the World Series and during the limited time he did play, registered a .000 batting average.

Much of this seems to be because of his seemingly lackadaisical play in the outfield and his less than overwhelming offensive stats. Now I'm certainly no huge fan of Encarnacion. I think he's a pretty average player at a power position, and he does look like he's playing at 80% effort most of the time. However, I do contend that at this time, he's probably our best option out there, and certainly better than most of our options.

First off, to once again refer back to Larry at Viva El Birdos, he did a post several weeks back showing what kind of returns there have been in trading the apparently very tradeable Juan Encarnacion. In his career, he has been traded four times, and each time, his role in the trade diminished from being the main part of the first trade, as a relatively young player with some more upside to being a throw-in in the last trade. Given that his trade value doesn't appear to be great(especially with a moderate, but not exactly cheap 6.5M salary next year), why would we trade him just for the sake of trading him?

Let's look at all the other options compared to Juan:

Juan has posted a very pedestrian .305 on-base percentage so far this year, showing that he still doesn't know how to take a walk. However, his slugging is a very respectable .461, which again, isn't monstrous by any means, but it shows he can slug in some runs.

Our other options on the major league roster to take his spot are So Taguchi and Skip Schumaker.

Their OBP/Slugging:

Taguchi: .344/.372
Schumaker: .333/.377

So if we dump Enc for one of these because Enc sucks with the bat, we're actually putting someone even more inferior out there. Sure, Gooch and Skip both get on base more, but certainly not enough to give up 90 points of slugging in the power position that is right field.

Our AAA outfielders pose only slightly better options:

Ankiel: .319/.588
J-Rod: .377/.503
Stavinoha: .327/.419
Cabrera: .275/.250

Ok, so obviously Cabrera and Stavinoha would be steps back. They're not keeping up with Encarnacion's stats and they're in the Pacific Coast League, a notoriously hitter-friendly league. That leaves J-Rod and Ankiel as options.

Ankiel's slugging is huge. To give you an idea of how good .588 is, Pujols is slugging .533 so far this season, Chris Duncan .545.

So that seems like a good option right? Wrong. Ankiel's huge slugging is due to his relatively impressive HR total(26 in 301 AB). However, he's drawn only 19 walks this season. Obviously against the far superior pitching in the majors, his homers are going to decline, and he doesn't get on base even in the hitter-friendly PCL. He might be a guy that could come up and give you 10-15 homers for the rest of the season, but he'd probably do it while putting up a .250 On-base, which is pretty god-awful. Also, in the case of Ankiel, because of the many times he's been optioned back and forth between the majors and AAA, he is considered to be "out of options." This means that if he doesn't work out and we want to send him back to AAA, he has to clear waivers first, so basically any MLB team could try to steal Ankiel from us if we decide he needs to go back to Memphis to work on that plate discipline. So now the player we put about 8-9 years of time into is playing for someone else. That's obviously not good.

Rodriguez however does bring up an interesting possibility. He's shown the ability to hit major league pitching pretty well, albeit in a very small sample size. He only has 332 career at-bats to go on, but his major league stats are a .378 on-base and a .434 slugging. His AAA stats reflect this at .377/.503 right now.

Rodriguez would be a decent option offensively, as he would be cheaper and would give pretty similar production if he's capable of producing that .378/.434 clip as a fairly regular player. However, he's not a huge improvement, despite his much superior OBP. And while Encarnacion looks like he's going through the motions in right, his defense is far superior to the defense we've seen in the past from J-Rod. Not to rip on Duncan, because he's a far better outfielder than last year, but does anyone really want to see an outfield of Duncan and Rodriguez in the corners with either Taguchi, Schumaker or a diminished Edmonds in center?

That seems like a recipe for disaster.

As sad as it is to say it, for the remainder of this year, at least, and quite possibly for next year, unless we're ok spending 10M+ on a player like Eric Byrnes(who, by the way, has career offensive numbers of .328/.456 as far as on-base and slugging, about 20 points better overall in OPS than our own, much cheaper Juan).

Juan Encarnacion, like it or not, Cardinals fans, is our best option in right field until his contract expires.

Edit: Realized I left one person off. Ryan Ludwick could be an option. Monstrous AAA numbers of .380/.642(yes, .642 slugging, 100 points higher than Pujols has this season), but keep in mind in limited playing time, when he's probably ideal for the situation, his major league numbers this season are .278/.477 and his career MLB numbers are .294/.433, so still probably not an upgrade over Juan.

Desperate Times

Ok, so I'm back. March turned into a stressful/lazy month for me. I'll compile my overall W-L in the MWSF Challenge for my next post, but for now, I just want to get in some sort of post to start this thing back up again.

I still have a chance in my bracket. . .

but it's a longshot.

If the final game is Georgetown beating UCLA, I win two of the three pools I'm in(sadly, they're the two "pride" brackets, with no cash involved that I could put towards, say, a new acoustic guitar or a couple new wedges).

My final game was actually Georgetown over Kansas, but the people I'm competing against that are ahead of me both have Florida in the final game, and I'm far enough behind that I cannot have them getting those points.

Another big game today too: Chicago Bulls host the Cavaliers with the #2 seed in the East on the line. Now really, no one in the East really has much of a shot of making a competitive Finals series with Dallas or San Antonio save maybe Detroit and Miami with a healthy Wade, but still. Being the #2 seed could help the Bulls make a conference finals or even an NBA finals run. I don't know that too many Bulls fans would be heartbroken by losing 4-0 to the Mavericks, although it would be the 2nd straight major sports championship that Chicago would lose though.

Lastly, and most importantly--OPENING NIGHT! TOMORROW!! I wore my Cardinals jersey much to the chagrin of all the Cubs fans up here in DeKalb.

I made a run at getting opening day tickets, but due to the "You're buying 2 tickets and a baseball card of my choice" auctions on ebay, they went WELL above the face value, to the point that I can't justify paying even to see them raise a banner(if I weren't probably somewhere around 5-6 hours from St. Louis, maybe I could justify it better). REgardless, my TV will be on ESPN Sunday night to see Carpenter begin his run at a 2nd Cy Young and the Cardinals begin their run as defending World Series champions.

Opening Night and the Final Four. This perhaps might be, the best sports weekend of the year for me.

Mike Matheny Retires

This is actually relatively old news at this point, having been announced last Thursday, but former Cardinal catcher Mike Matheny retired from baseball after 13 seasons. All of us here at MWSF(which of course is just me) want to wish him well in his future endeavors, and I decided there's no better time than to discuss the catcher's achievements than now.

Matheny was a very fierce competitor who from previous interviews and seasons worked very hard in Spring Training and the off-season trying to improve his anemic batting average. While in St. Louis, he worked several off-seasons with 2005 MVP Albert Pujols, working on improving his stroke, even considering becoming a switch-hitter fairly late in his career to try to improve upon his career .239 average.

His best season came in 2005, his first season with the Giants, when he only batted .242, but hit 13 home runs and drove in 59 runs(both career highs) and posted an OPS of .701(also a career high). That year was also the last of his four gold gloves(others in 2000, 2003 and 2004, all with St. Louis). Other career highs include his .261 batting average in St. Louis in 2000, his first season with the Cardinals, and his strong 2003 season where he had a career high .320 on-base and played in 141 games.

His career highs, offensively, are not impressive, but they don't really fully depict what Matheny meant to his teammates and especially to his pitchers.

From the above linked article on ESPN.com: "As my catcher and as a person he just meant so much to me," said Giants pitcher Matt Morris, who also threw to Matheny in St. Louis. "On the field he taught me how to be a professional. Off the field he taught me to be a man and a respectful person. He's going to be sorely missed by everybody."

This appeared to be how many pitchers viewed him, as well as his former manager with the Cardinals Tony La Russa, who at one point questioned out loud that, had Mike Matheny been healthy to catch for Rick Ankiel in that 2000 NLDS, whether Ankiel would be the star pitcher that everyone in St. Louis envisioned he would be.

His work with Yadier Molina has turned Molina into one of the best defensive catchers in the majors as well, so by that coaching job, I honestly hope to see Matheny in a Cardinal uniform as a coach someday.

He seems, by all accounts, including the account of my wife, who had the opportunity to meet him in the St. Louis clubhouse after my brother-in-law took a batting practice ball to the head during pre-game one time, to be a wonderful person and a clubhouse leader. My wife has been completely in awe of Matheny since that day, far before I ever met her.

Mike Matheny--Not that you're reading this, but I'll talk directly to you anyway--have a wonderful life away from baseball, and we hope to see you back sometime as a coach. You'd make an excellent one.

Cardinals farm system rankings

Keith Law ranked the farm systems on an Insider article on ESPN.com recently!

...and to say the least, ours is still ranked as hurting pretty bad.

If you have Insider, here's a link:

The overall lowdown of the article: Tampa Bay is #1, having a crapload of talent, even though most of the really high ceilinged players are in A or AA ball. Milwaukee is the best in the NL Central, ranked 9th, the Cubs 19th, with only Felix Pie as a piece that's anywhere near major league ready, and then the good news:

We're better than Philadelphia and San Diego.

The Cardinals farm system ranks at 28th out of the 30 major league teams in Law's analysis. He does however say Rasmus, with a good year in AA would likely be a top 10 to 15 prospect across the board.

In about two weeks, Baseball America also has a write-up on the Cardinals farm system, where they rate the top 10 prospects in their system. That article is set to debut on February 9th.


Keith Law has been historically harsh on the Cardinals in his analysis of them on ESPN.com, but there's probably still some truth to this. Beyond Rasmus, the Cardinals have Chris Narveson and Blake Hawksworth as probably their two most likely future big league pitchers. Narveson probably has the ceiling of being at best about a #4 starter, and Hawksworth was derailed by surgery after being a top 100 prospect in 2004(#47 overall by Baseball America). The cupboard probably isn't as bare as Law states, but we're certainly no better than 20th even if you're REALLY optimistic.

For more on this topic, there are plenty of diaries on the site Viva El Birdos.

Now, time to work on a second post for today, my week's picks for my challenge!

Four-man Rotations

Valatan, a regular poster on Viva El Birdos(a GREAT Cardinals blog) posted recently about the idea of the Cardinals using a four-man rotation. I voiced concerns in a reply, namely that an injury could leave the Cardinals seriously deficient in the rotation, that with two very young arms, I’d hate to see the Cardinals jeopardize their careers for an experiment, and that while the 5th starter for a playoff team is overrated, as they aren’t used in the playoffs, that our fifth starter ideally is Kip Wells, and that it’s not a situation of cutting our fifth starter out.

After this, I brought up that I thought I remembered a team(Montreal I believed it to be) used a four-man rotation recently and that looking up how that experiment went would be the most recent view of the four-man rotation.

I suggested someone else do it, but eventually decided to look up this information myself.

Three situations where a four-man rotation was used include the 2003 Toronto Blue Jays(I had the wrong Canadian team), the 1995 Kansas City Royals, and the Orioles of the Weaver era(69 to the late 70s).

In the first two of these, the experiment ended pretty quickly due to injuries and other problems. However, the Orioles had incredible success with the four-man rotation.

First up: The 2003 Toronto Blue Jays

Halladay and Lidle were the two biggest names in that rotation. Halladay pitched brilliantly all year long, starting 36 games and pitching 266 innings. He posted an ERA of 3.25 and won the Cy Young award that year, having won 22 games. Lidle on the other hand, had issues, only starting 31 games and posted a 5.75 ERA in 192.2 innings. The 5.75 ERA was his career high in ERA, so the four-man rotation didn’t work out so well for him. No one else even posted 30 games started for the Blue Jays that year.

Despite Halladay’s success, he also suffered arm injuries the following two seasons, starting only 42 games the following two seasons and pitching almost the same number of innings in 2004 and 2005 combined that he did in 2003. With pitchers’ arms, they are often so fragile and they break down anyway, so it’s not entirely certain that Halladay’s injuries are because of that season, but it does seem to be a good possibility.

The 1995 Kansas City Royals

Their attempt at a four-man rotation completely fell apart when Kevin Appier, their best pitcher that year sustained an injury that season. The team high for games started that year was 33 and innings pitched 213.1, both by Mark Gubicza. Overall, this attempt at a four-man rotation was complete failure.

The 1970s Orioles

This was the longest sustained success of a four-man rotation in recent memory. Under Weaver, who used the four-man rotation to great success, several players became stars. The four-man rotation setup(having more chances to win games and pile up huge innings pitched numbers also gave them greater chances at post-season awards).

In this group is Jim Palmer, who won three Cy Young awards and from 1970-1978 started at least 35 games every year except 1974, where he battled the injury bug. You could blame this on the four-man rotation, but given how pitchers break down, having one injury-plagued season is pretty meaningless as far as damning the idea of a four-man rotation.

Also in this group of pitchers with sustained success in Baltimore was Mike Cueller, who had his greatest success under Weaver, winning a Cy Young in his first season there. He was always a good pitcher, but got the most notoriety from his time under Weaver. He fell off in 1976, but at the age of 39, this should be expected.

Dave McNally was the last of the three longest tenured pitchers in the four-man rotation. He emerged in 1968 and pitched very well under Weaver for six seasons until 1974. In 1975, he only started 12 games and never pitched in the majors again, instead retiring after a labor dispute. (My first thought here was maybe an injury, but no evidence that the Baltimore 4 man rotation really hurt anyone).

I’m sure a fan of the 1970s Orioles would know whether there was anyone who tried to fill that 4th spot that it seemed the Orioles could never really fill reliably(Most years it was these three guys making 35+ starts and a handful of other guys filling out the other 60+ games). I couldn’t find anything in short time though showing that Weaver wrecked anyone’s career with the four-man rotation.

Overall, I still think it’s a bad idea for the Cardinals in 2007 because of having two young arms that are unaccustomed to pitching like that. If we had Woody Williams and Matt Morris in the rotation with Carp and one of the young guys, I think it’d be an awesome experiment to try. But injuries to the likes of those players seem less likely as they’ve proven themselves very durable starters, and it’s not wrecking an entire career. The risk-reward doesn’t seem to justify trying to go it with four guys.

To be honest though, I do give more credence to the idea than I started with.

MLB's Greatest Innovation?

Perhaps the greatest article/blog post I’ve read all baseball off season was penned(or typed rather) by the Brewers SB Nation poster

In his article, he discusses that the Nationals might very well be the worst team ever as far as starting pitching is concerned. His plan? Well, he found “a pitcher” that doesn’t strike anyone out, but also never walks anyone or gives up home runs. Using other statistics to estimate what the ERA of this pitcher is comes to 3.20. Sounds like a pretty good option right?

Well, I won’t ruin it. Read the Brew Crew Ball article for more explanation.

On the Cardinals homefront, the unrest continues, as Jayson Werth, who the Cardinals expressed interest in, has apparently agreed to terms with the Phillies. Werth wouldn’t have been a huge pickup by any means. He would have been a good bench guy/platoon option, but overall he’s only a .245 hitter career. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but at the same time, Cardinals fans(myself included) are ready for any good news. Even if it meant we were paying Suppan the 10M a year that most of us agree would be pretty silly.

Cardinals in '07 (2nd base)

Alright, with the free agency situation much different than the last time I posted what I thought would happen(Suppan is probably going to make 8M a year from the Yankees or Orioles or some other team, afterall), time for a new post about the '07 Cards.

Here's the skeleton team right now of players who are under contract for next season:

1B - Pujols
3B - Rolen
SS - Eckstein
RF - Encarnacion
LF - Duncan
C - Molina

Holes at 2nd and in center, where Belliard is a free agent and Edmonds' option has not yet been picked up.

The Rotation at this moment:

SP - Carpenter
SP - Reyes

.... with the other spots unoccupied, this is obviously the biggest area of concern.(Wainwright I'm currently placing in the bullpen, but he could end up in the rotation.)

The Bullpen is particularly settled, with no changing faces:

Lefties - Flores, Johnson, Rincon
Righties - Thompson, Looper, Hancock
Closer possibilites - (both righty) Isringhausen, Wainwright

The bench is mostly gone as of now, but they do still retain rights to Rodriguez and Miles I believe.

For today, I'm just sticking with 2nd base options and predictions.

At 2nd, the list of free agents the Cardinals would be at all likely to pursue include:
Ronnie Belliard, Mark Loretta, Todd Walker, Craig Biggio, Adam Kennedy and there was some slight talk about possibly trying to make Scott Spiezio into a 2nd baseman if he came back.

Here's the options broken down a little more:

Name - OPS - 2006 Salary - Age

Belliard - .725 - 4M - 31
Loretta - .706 - 3.25M - 35
Walker - .754 - 2.5M - 33
Biggio - .728 - 4M - 40
Kennedy - .718 - 3.35M - 30
Spiezio - .862 - 335k - 34

Obviously the best looking numbers here are those of Spiezio's, but remember, that .862 OPS was in limited playing time, so we don't know what to expect out of 140+ games of Spiezio. Also, Spiezio is not a 2nd baseman, so defensively, he's likely to be the weakest on this list next year if he signed and converted to 2nd.

Belliard turned it on in the playoffs, giving him a slight chance of being resigned with the Cardinals, but rumors have him going back to the Indians.

Loretta is a solid #2 type hitter who can still take walks and could probably come for around 3M. He's certainly adequate defensively, but he does lack range that with Jocketty's emphasis on contact pitchers could be problematic.

Walker has relatively good numbers, but he's not a great 2nd baseman defensively, and actually played most of this season at 1st, with D. Lee hurt in Chicago and then with SD after being traded.

Biggio is likely to stay in Houston, but according to this New York Post article by Joel Sherman, Biggio's agent, "that if they don't value me enough and I have to go to St. Louis, Chicago or New York to play on a winner and hit milestones, then I will do it." So should the Astros lowball Biggio, a team like St. Louis could sweep in and pick him up for maybe 2.5-3M. Biggio is a tough competitor, would give the team another clubhouse leader, but is 40 and obviously declining. Nevertheless, he might be just the type of player Jocketty would go after, and he'd be superb between Eckstein and Pujols, giving Pujols another reliable batter in front of him to get on base.

Kennedy's the last real option here. At 30, he's the youngest of this crop. He's probably also the best of this crop defensively. As a former Cardinals(he went to the Angels as part of the Jim Edmonds trade), Jocketty might be more willing to bring him back(think Mabry, Looper, others that have been brought back after being traded or let go).

My predictions for 2nd: Belliard back to the Indians, Biggio will stay with Houston(because the fans might mutiny if Clemens and Pettitte are both gone and the team spurns their last icon from the last decade of success), and Adam Kennedy signs with the Cardinals in the neighborhood of his last contract, around 3M, probably something like 10M over 3 years.