The 13th of FOX Sports Midwest’s live chats of the 2010 season will be held throughout Wednesday afternoon’s Cardinals-Astros series finale. Join in the discussion with me and the FSM personalities.
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Jeff Suppan (1-6, 5.72) returns from the disabled list to face Nelson Figueroa (3-2, 2.77) as the Cards try to end the disastrous road series with a win.
Wednesday’s first pitch is scheduled at 1:05 P.M. Central with pre-game starting at 12:30.
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I can imagine what every one will be saying and it won’t be pretty.
Here is a link to an article about late season swoons leading back to around 2004. I have argued that the mental demands of playing for TLR could quite possibly wear on you to the point of you not having anything left for the stretch run. The mental part of the game is so big of a part and you see year after year that this happens as the cards seemed drained down the stretch. Like I have stated a couple of times, over the last 5 years or so I have noticed a change in the toughness of the up and coming kids and this birdland entry seems to echo my thoughts on the subject. And those thoughts are that managers are gonna have to make adjustments to how they deal with their clubs in the real near future to get the most out of them. Do you notice how these late season additions seem to be the best players on the team? My contention is that these guys haven’t been through the gauntlet of mind games and aren’t mentally exhausted so we see that boost in production from them. Just a theory and I’ve seen this from a high school level so I know those kids are moving up the ladder and it was only a matter of time before you started seeing it at the ML level.
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/birdland/article_a09b96dc-b5d7-11df-8ba9-0017a4a78c22.html
Funny how the 2006 team had a lot of injuries and those players came back at the end and that team won the World Series. So again, my thought is they missed out on the mental stresses and were mentally fresh for the playoffs. Just a few thoughts on why you have this year after year season ending swoon. Not fact Jumbo, just a theory
lineup Schumaker-4, Miles-6, Pujols-3, Holliday-7, Jay-9, Feliz-5, Rasmus-8, Molina-2, Suppan-1
Miles is playing ss?
Most years, most teams end up with a defeat. The suspense is when and how.
OTOH, this year is disappointing, with Pujols, Holliday, Carpenter, Wainwright, Garcia, Franklin, McClellan and others enjoying good seasons. You dont like losing when you have the best hitter in the game on your side.
Some years there are injuries that explain fades. There seem fewer injuries this year, mainly Penny and Freese.
In 2008, Lopez came over from the Nationals and was red hot; this year he is in a funk.
I’ve decided to help the team out by not shaving my legs.
RC, I have not yet read the Stltoday article, but the concern over how the Cardinals finish seasons is not new.
For example, last September, I wrote a detailed piece that looked back at how all TLR’s St. Louis teams played during the final month and compared to their playoff results.
“Cardinals and September not made for one another”
Tony’s strength is that he enters the fabric of the team to sense its emotions.
Tony’s weakness, is that he enters the fabric of the team to sense its emotions.
His methods break the chemistry between player. That’s sometimes a good thing, a functional utility of his natural methodology…………………………the anomaly that is Albert Pujols, distorts this effect. Tony’s relationship to AP, also sanctioning YM……his mini-me has unmade this team. Players cannot respond to each other emotionally. It’s every man for himself. Sad state.
This team limped along finding some motivation from its heroic starters. With AP’s sudden miraculous turn around………”at the trade deadline”……….. Albert’s example completely blew away any fabric of team that had survived….. AP now laughing and celebrating his success completely emasculated his team mates…….. and then the massacre in Cincinnati……. Tony lost control. The top blew off ………….. everyone was a home run hitter now.
But hey…………that’s just the way I see it……………………….Molina 8th? looks like someone noticed Yadi trying to go deep last night….without reason….. Makes me wonder if he asked to hit 5th?
I don’t know Jumbo. I can’t organize this data like I would like but I will list this for argument of my position purposes.
The Following are the teams records from 2004-2010, excluding this September.
April (103-66) for a .609 winning %.
May (105-90) for a .538 winning %.
June (110-104) for a .514winning %.
July (126-83) for a .602 winning %.
August (123-95) for a .564 winning %.
September (79-85) for a .481 winning %.
This data guides me in this direction. Team is hell on wheels coming out of Spring Training every year and steadily declines until the all star break, where we have a few days off, are rejuvinated mentally and we are hell on wheels again and this second stretch really sees us fall off at the end hard as we are mentally exhausted. Now this is a primitive look at this data and there are others factors that could be factoring into these records but I could present these facts as they are and argue my case that there is something to it.
RC, I think we would all agree that TLRs style is what it has been all along.
Here is my concern with the data slice you selected. Why did his teams play well in September prior to 2003 but haven’t since? As I noted in my article I linked to above, from 1996-2002, his Cardinals teams had a .626 win percent in September – very good.
Are you suggesting today’s players are more sensitive to La Russa’s approach than they were earlier in the decade?
Maybe it’s a seven year curse.
The Players are different Brian……………..no drugs…..steroids…..etc. No video game addictions. And that is a problem here…………… but most importantly, the AP effect is gaining mass…..
Damn, Sept is our worst month and it hasn’t even started yet!
WC, it is unclear to me how any “AP effect” would equate to a poor September record.
CC, I guess I should go back and look to see if they had a really bad August before and recovered…
The best player in baseball is ruining this team. Can we trade him for Milton Bradley?
WC, This I agree with you 100%. But Albert’s desire to be the best is what drives him to be what he is, which is the best player on the planet. He is the leader by example, not the make my teammates better leader. Thats the role I hoped Matt would fill and he has tried but he is not the big dog, and the weight of Albert has weighed on him as well I feel.
I can tell you I have driven my teams over the years, Colby could tell you some stories. The difference is you ride them all and they develop a bond and you(the coach) may be somewhat of an enemy. They band together as one unit, its them against you and the world. I actually rode my best players more than the rest. I expected them to bring their teammates up even at the expense of their selves.
Now when you ride some and let some others do what they want, thats when you start having the unit split into different factions. Now some groups hate what you are allowing some to do and thus hate them. So they hate you and then they hate some of their teammates for what you allow them to do.
I had this exact situation happen to me with my 2006 team. I had a pitcher, who was the 12th player selected in the first round of the draft. I let him do what he wanted because he worked hard at his craft and he was the best pitcher I’d ever seen. He did things on his own, not as part of the group you see. Well I let this go on until I had to pull a couple of my other players off of him. He had grown in his mind to a point where he was so superior to everyone else and didn’t care what happened to anyone else that his team hated him. You see it was my fault for allowing this monster to grow. He was a LH pitcher who was also a great hitter. He hit over .600 when he pitched and under .100 when he didn’t. You know why? He wanted to make sure he got a win and could care less if the team won or not when he wasn’t pitching. At that point I couldn’t reel him back in to the group, lord knows I tried. He had grown into the most arrogant prick I had ever seen and it was my fault. And it destroyed my team. I had never treated a superstar like that before that and damn sure haven’t after. My son Cory played on that team and tells me all the time that that 2006 Russell County team is what he sees in the cardinals. Now granted the cardinals don’t have a player that acts like that player did for me. But the differing levels of royalty that exist could very well create those same feelings within the group.
Accumulated fatigue……………..no cross top whites……….. more and more media sensationalism……the threat of no salary enhancements because he will utilize all available resources……………….on and on…………..but as I’ve said, the load on the starting pitchers is always a problem late………… and his excess just exacerbates the problem………………
he has a 3/1 count yesterday…………and he dived at a ball out front……….the team notices whats going on…………..
WC, if Albert is really selfish as you suggest, he is simply trying to get hits at this point not HR’s as he needs to up his avg for the triple crown. To imply he is trying to hit HR’s to improve his wallet or his legacy is just silly as that is not what he needs right now to do that.
I know, being a smart ass isn’t helping. I get worse when I am frustrated.
I don’t understand how a losing team helps Albert. Is his ego just too big to see that?
Trying to avoid a base on balls…………for a chance .300 chance at rolling the ball through the infield? That’s not so good……………. with men on AP was continually attack away by Wandy, all pitches predictable…………..single………double down the line or in the gap…………..Wandy could see, as anyone could, that Albert was trying to turn on something…………he went hit less in the attempt.
His setup and targeting aspiration had an obvious “slant” that was recognized withing the competitive environment………….he got beat trying to fulfill his own needs. Period………
Good analogy RC……… its a big issue.
Yes Brian, Kids are a changing and I’m just not sure they are as mentally tough as kids were before them. An example:
Every travel ball kid on my team today has his own hitting coach, depending on which team he plays on. Those kids play with those guys way more than they do with me and rely on them when they struggle. I don’t fix swings anymore, or even try. If a player struggles he is on the phone with his travel ball coach and that guy is at practice the next day working with him, or after practice at his hitting facility. They rely on those guys to a fault. They have hitting coaches, fielding coaches who are different than the hitting guys. It gets hectic figuring out who’s doing what, and with whom.
I’ve got 7 sophomores who are gonna be studs. one is 14 and threw 90 last week at a showcase. He may throw 100 before all is said and done. They played on average, 90 games this year in addition to the 45 they played with me. 4 already have division one offers from college world series type programs. I say that to say this, most of them have been in the same travel programs from when they were 7……………I said 7. When my kids were playing coach pitch these kids were actually pitching from the stretch and leading off base. Its amazing. They rely on these travel ball coaches like nothing you have ever seen. These guys are like their dads.
Colby was one of the first of these types, only he depends on me in the same manner. Its hard on them when you try to wean them off of that. They collapse. I have learned to manage it having dealt with it these last 5 years or so. Colby was the first kid in our area to play travel ball, now I’ve got 45 kids in my program and if they don’t play travel ball they might as well quit because they are way behind the other kids who do play travel ball. Its not unlike the Dominican baseball academies. The US kids start earlier now, and play year round.
My point, I can’t ride these guys or even begin to treat them the same way. I tried for a short while, and they were failing and we were failing. I have since learned how to manage them wheere they can have success and so can the group. But it took some changes on my part and that was the hardest part.
RC, I am not questioning your experience in any way. I just remain unsure if it relates in any manner to how the St. Louis Cardinals played in the month of September prior to 2003 compared to since.
Your adoration of mathematics and statical variation could be the answer Brian……….. your desire for “understanding” of the variables may very well conflict with your need to over emphasize there usage, especially in your everyday life………………. emotional transposition………………. the knowledge of “how we know anything”…….is one of the most elusive demons in the Zen Buddhist tradition to exorcise. I could go on………..but lets just pretend that I did.
CC,
I, myself wouldn’t call Albert selfish. Albert is Albert, a guy who is gonna work his but off to be the best baseball player in the land. Albert isn’t worried about what any other ball player is doing, except maybe Yadi. Albert is possessed by being the best first. I think thats what WC is trying to convey.
Where a Jeter like player may actually try to help this guy or that guy by giving him some advice or help him to avoid the pitfalls associated with the game, Albert just does his thing and keeps to himself, except for Yadi. I don’t see this as being selfish, he’s just not the leader type of player that a Jeter is. He is the best player alive today because of what he does and how he is. He can’t change nor would you want him to.
I used to say this, my 2005 team was 38-1, won the National Championship in the USA Today, and Baseball America. Colby was our leader, he cared about every guy on our team, and those guys still today would kill for him. And they played their asses off to make him proud, not us the coaches but Colby the player. The very next year I had Kiker, who was our best player. He worked hard to be the best at his craft, but didn’t give a hoot about any of his teammates and they knew it. That 2006 team was far superior talent wise than my 2005 team and we didn’t do worth a crap and like I said, I had to keep everyone from killing Kiker. Kiker was a stud, just not a leader.
This cardinals team probably is lacking leadership of the variety that brings everyone together. Albert definitely leads by example, and is just not the type of guy to worry with the other guys. Someone else is gonna have to step up and take that role. I believe the shaved heads is someone trying to develop that kind of stuff, its just a little bit too late at this point. But I do commend them for trying.
Well Brian, I’m just rambling on and on……it seems to work for WC
Just playing WC.
I’ve got some good ideas but you’ve taught me that its best to keep them to myself. So in the place of cutting directly to the facts, lets just beat around the bush.
Too many guys trying to hit 6 run HRs.I think Albert trying too hard to make something happen.To light a spark with a big hit.I don`t asee it as selfish…………..Then again i don`t see a shooter behind every grassy knoll or a conspiracy under every rock.
I will stand by the notion that Tony’s system is one where it disallows anything but serious, fulltime mental work and that wears a person down. People will lay down and quit on themselves all the time but find it hard to lay down on others if they care for them. If I don’t care for you we can just all quit.
WalMart has pep rally’s every day before they start, they have party’s to pep every employee up. They don’t come to work every day and say, don’t you dare smile, this is a business and we want you to treat it like one. No playing around.
I was offered a job one time way back at an Autozone. More money than the job I had and better benefits. I was in until I went to their before work early morning pep rally. They cheered and chanted and dance around. I was like I’m in no way capable of doing that BS.
Its the way many successful businesses operate today, its not old school. Ask Joe Madden, who was a coach of mine, and I would consider him a good friend. He does all kinds of stuff like that with the Rays. The job is tough enough without making it unbearable. Incorporating fun into a baseball game doesn’t seem like asking for the moon.
Kids used to play sports no matter if they rode the bench, they just wanted to be part of the team. Now, they will quit on you in a minute because they have so much more they can be doing. Its a different world today verses 10 or even 5 years ago. You gotta change with it or get left behind.
Sometimes you have to mow the lawn 52……and of course move the rocks to spare your tools, before you can have a peak at RC’s 50 cal………………..
I find it hard to believe the guys don’t care about Waino or Garcia or Carp, but they have laid down on them. I am not trying to start another “discussion” RC, I just don’t get the reasoning.
The teams went off even up…………..late money swings toward Houston. The line up///////////
Well, that helps.
Shoe breaks with a double……….Tony gets involved, insistent……..1 out loss of base………AP is trying to pull pitches on the outer 1/3 2 outs……………. Holiday is over swinging….here it comes………but Figurosa intervenes……… hangs the front door and its 2 zip……….. Houston may be what we need here.
Yadi drops anchor……………..loss of momentum………pray for soup.
This game is just an invitation to catastrophe…………. Just let them hang around to bat against Motte …………not so smart…………………..Molina trying to go to his strength…….no smile from the 8th spot…………………….Albert popping up trying to turn an outside pitch………..again.
The only positive about this game so far is it is not a shutout.
Jay takes big swings……….but cuts it back in time………….. Feliz??????????? doesn’t seem to have much going on.
AP hasn’t got a hit since the “rally”………………… that BD………..
Bogasvic is a sprinter………..that’s a blue chip asset.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
Tony tries to resolve the KL issue………………oops! Houston color men point out their surprise that Tony allowed Soup the opportunity to pitch to Pense……………………..
RC, I dont think Albert is selfish but our resident non-qualified shrink seems to think so.
Hey RC………….your talking to the Brazilian from here on out. Best of luck friend, its in the hands…………WC
RC, some of TLR’s ex-players have even commented publicly on the difficulty of playing for him, including Mike Matheny. There are just so many factors that can affect play, I am uncomfortable laying it all on one number.
Did all those playoff teams succeed despite of La Russa? That seems far-fetched. Are all the men on the Cardinals today more fragile than their predecessors a few years back? I don’t know. You can call it beating around the bush. I call it not jumping to conclusions.
You are certainly welcome to post what you think. That is how we have discussions here.
We can agree that the September record over the years contains the teams worse winning % ?
Over the last seven years, yes.
The three legged dog thinks it can run with the pack, and play with the other dogs. And it doesn’t matter how much you love that dog, you just can’t watch.
Whether or not Albert is the best player in baseball depends on your time frame. He wasn’t today, there’s no arguing that. Wasn’t yesterday either, or the day before that. I’m not sure when it was exactly, but I don’t dispute it. Its just that it doesn’t help now.
Tony figures hitting Colby 2nd or 7th somehow establishes his point that Colby needs to be something besides a middle of the order power hitter. We’ve got plenty of those I guess.
Pads have lost 7 in a row now. I wish the Reds would catch the disease.
Lets say Freese comes in healthy and plays well. What exactly does that do for us. One guy hitting well wouldn’t be enough now so it won’t be enough next year. You can’t have a third of your lineup that OPSs .700 or worse, which is what we’d have with Brendan, Skip and Yadi. You can’t have a pitch to contact staff and a mediocre defense. You can’t have singles hitters and no speed. You can’t not have a leadoff hitter. You can’t let a guy who hits .225 with RISP be a fixture at cleanup all year long without regard to results. You can’t make one of the best right fielders in baseball a part time player. You can’t keep one of your very few power hitters out of the middle of the lineup, or on the bench, and you certainly can’t run him out of town. Not before finding out if he’ll be one of the best center fielders in the game. You can’t have guys that are too big too fail. My guess is Tony will be invited to decide not to return.
Just in case anyone is interested, ESPN has officially called the NL Central race over.
bb, I agree with much of what you said but the myth that Ludwick sat an exorbitant amount has been shown to be just that – a myth.
CC, I agree with you regarding what the numbers say about Ludwick’s playing time, but even he had the perception. It may be in how he was communicated with. I don’t know.
I played with some stuff this morning and came up with a few interesting numbers. There is no way I can post them all as I don’t have a clue how to do it on this blog so I’ll list just a few.
From 2004-present here are the best September winning %’s with their overall winning % during that time period.
Sept Overall
1. Yankees………669……………..(1)599
2. Phillies………..624……………..(5)550
3. Angels………..606……………..(3)571
4. Red Sox………576……………..(2)579
5. Braves…………564……………..529
6. Astros…………563
17. Cardinals….482……………..(4)555
Unless there is a new point you are trying to make, RC, I haven’t seen anyone post who disagrees that the Cardinals have been late-season underachievers in recent years. Where the discussion has been is “why?”…
I took another look at the numbers and do not dispute CC’s point about Luddy. He was pretty close to full time, usually, but still not the everyday guy he wanted to be. We’ve heard about the conversation the day before the trade. The point is not central IMO, anyway.
With RF looking like it is a non-power spot next year, Colby needs to be helped to become a more effective power hitter rather than encouraged to be a 2 or 7 hitter. Maybe his private coach should be signed on. MM could use some help anyway.