Starving for some live baseball action?
The Caribbean Series gets underway today, Wednesday, February 2. The annual tournament pits the winners of the winter leagues from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Mexico in a round-robin competition. Schedules include double-headers in each of the next six days from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico at 3:00 P.M. and 7:30 P.M Eastern.
The only two current St. Louis Cardinals players participating are left-handed pitcher Raul Valdes and infielder Ramon Vazquez, both of whom were signed over the winter to minor league contracts with spring training invitations.
Valdes, a native Cuban, is listed as the starter for the Dominican Republic in game one at 3:00 today, Wednesday, while Vazquez is on Puerto Rico’s preliminary roster and may be in the lineup for the 7:30 P.M. contest.
All games will be telecast by ESPN Deportes. Do not despair if the worldwide leader’s Spanish channel is not carried on your local cable system.
ESPN offers a feature called ESPN3, formerly called ESPN360. If your cable supplier is a participant in the program, and many are, you can sign up at no additional charge to see via your computer alternate ESPN programming not normally carried in your area. The Caribbean Series games are among the listed options, though telecast en Espanol. You can also view archived telecasts.
About ¼ of the way down this page is a link to the list of participating cable systems as well as instructions for signing up.
ESPN also has a very good website with series rosters, schedules and background information. While it is in Spanish, if you use Google toolbar, you can translate it into English with a single keystroke.
In addition, as always, for The Cardinal Nation subscribers, we will be breaking down the daily performances of Valdes, Vazquez as well as a number of ex-Cardinals competing in the Series.
Update: Gulf Coast League Cardinals catcher Kevin Moscatel was a late addition to the Venezuelan roster as their third catcher for the Series. It is a nice honor for the 19-year-old, who played briefly for Caribes earlier in the winter ball season.
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Now THAT would be a cool feature for sure. Valdes looked great today but didn’t get much help in the seventh.
I only saw a little of it. The Spanish broadcasters were a little distracting.
No Shannon-Rooney radio broadcast to switch to, eh?
I am afraid the best alternative I can offer is this very comprehensive Spanish-English and English-Spanish baseball dictionary. I helped the author out a bit at one point as it is something I use regularly, especially this time of year. It used to be loaded on the Baseball Hall of Fame site, but it seems to have been lost in their web redesign.
Not much of a crowd……….. I love to watch tactically sound baseball……… MLB is like the NBA or pro wrestling to me………….
Wait until tonight. With the home team playing, the stands will be full and noisy. All cheering for Ramon Vazquez, I imagine…
Puerto vs Mexico……..same crowd…………
Yes, I noticed that. I am very surprised.
Found these questions interesting in the Strauss chat today… re: SABR-metrics.
Q: Should we take the signing of Berkman and the continued enthusiasm for the Schumaker experiment as evidence that Mo and the controlling elements of the front office simply don’t buy the advanced defensive metrics that websites like Fangraphs use? Do you think that this is because they are skeptical of the whole enterprise (and Luhnow has totally lost his foothold in terms of major league level decisions) or do you think that they have internal measures that they are using that just rate Schumaker and others as better than the publicly available measures? I’ve heard TLR dump on these kinds of measures (although I’m never sure how much of what he says publicly is serious?), but what about Mo and the front office?
Strauss: TLR is no sabe. He is an outspoken critic of the Moneyball mentality and once labeled the newfound approaches toward scouting and player development as “experimentation.” Jeff Luhnow no longer controls the team’s analytics department [Really?]. Mike Girsch, recently promoted to assistant general manager, has an analytics background. The team owes Schumaker $2.7M this season. That is not bench money. Short of acquiring Dan Uggla and moving Schumaker to the OF, the club’s financial structure dictated Schumaker wins all ties. Schumaker also entered last season a career .302 hitter. Will he be next season’s starting second baseman? Debateable. However, he is considered a core presence on this team. It is interesting to note that the rise of analytics within the organization has corresponded to one playoff appearance (and no postseason wins) in four seasons. Perhaps a reshaping isn’t such a bad idea.
Q: You seriously are blaming one playoff appearance in the last four years on sabermetrics? Tell that to Boston, Tampa, Texas, New York, Toronto, and a rising Oakland team that has been rebuilt. 07, and 08 were products of a transition period, ’09 was a playoff team, and 2010 was a 90 win talent team as well that fell apart because of injuries, and a poorly managed season by TLR because of his refusal to accept analytics.
Strauss: Further proof that no one — and I mean no one — takes a critique harder than a member of the Sabe religion. Funny how success typically comes with payroll (Boston, NY, Texas). Still waiting for that Oakland World Series appearance. And someone needs to brag on the Jays. Always entertaining that when a franchise wilts it’s on the manager. When it succeeds, the numbers mafia pushes its way to the fore. Like everything else, it’s fair to say some organizations apply resources better than others. That would include analytics. I’ve heard poor trades explained as a failure of scouting but am still waiting for someone to admit misapplication of analytics. I’ll probably be waiting a while.
Let me see if I’ve got this right.
The Cardinals haven’t won any playoff games the last four years.
The Cardinals increased their focus on analytics during that time.
The manager doesn’t believe in these new analytics.
Therefore, there is a “corresponding” relationship between analytics and the playoff failures.
All I can say is “wow”. Agendas, anyone?
Brian — I was hoping you would comment on the remark about Luhnow no longer being in charge of the analytics effort… Hadn’t heard that and don’t know whether to believe it.
That is very, very old news. For the last several years, the analytics department reported to John Abbamondi. (So did professional scouting.)
I find it strange that if the Cardinals had concerns about their analytics that they would promote the head of that department into the very important assistant GM job as they did a few weeks ago with Mike Girsch. Then again, he didn’t say the club had concerns, did he?
Ah now we know sabremetrics is a possible scapegoat for TLR to use if the team continues to tank. Brendan Ryan is gone, but he still has Colby, so Colby can be the fall guy this year, unless as I predict, he is traded too. But sabremetrics aren’t going anywhere so TLR has the mother of all scapegoats now. Bravo.
Rasmus is only considered a pick by a sabremetric guy because Luhnow was in charge of that draft.
There was no “hidden” value in Rasmus; he was considered a first round draft talent by everyone, not just Luhnow or the Cardinals.
It’s true Rasmus has ties to Luhnow, only because he drafted him, but he was not a sabr pick.
Are you talking about Strauss’ or Tex’s agenda — as if they are different in this case
CC — I thought about you when I read the line… ‘no one — and I mean no one — takes a critique harder than a member of the Sabe religion….’ That was for you, big guy.
I found the Freese comments interesting. Paints a different picture than I had understood.
“Joe Strauss: Somebody’s going to have to play third base besides Freese. According to my information, Freese is unlikely to play Grapefruit League ball until at least the schedule’s second week. Freese has set a goal of playing the opener but few see the benefit of such a push given that he is coming off double ankle surgery. Freese’s baseball-related activities to date consist of swinging a bat. The club says it is going to play his rehab conservatively.
Even once on the field, Freese is unlikely to start long interrupted stretches of games. His arthritic ankles will be receive plenty of attention and may lead the club to afford him, say, two starts per series. A time share is not a choice but a necessity. Whether Craig, Greene or Punto starts when Freese sits is to be determined. Punto is a switch-hitter and the best defensive player among the lot. Craig carries power but is unsteady at the position. Greene may possess the best mix of bat and glove but has yet to demonstrate it at this level. The Cardinals will be happy to get 115 starts out of David Freese.”
I had not realized Freese was expected to be a 115 game guy, and likely not 100% by opening day. So basically, even if he doesn’t go on the DL, we’re still going to have 3B problems again.
Arthritic ankles?
At WWU a couple of weeks ago, I specifically asked Freese about that and he said he would be doing all the drills from the first day of camp, but maybe not at the same rate and pace as the others. His goal was to be fully ready for opening day. Certainly no one at that time even hinted that he is expected to miss about one-third of the schedule. One might guess that he has not been progressing as fast as hoped but I don’t have any fresh insight about that. It is shaping up like 2011 at third base will again be “Freese or bust”.
The prospect of 3B being manned at least a third of time (most optimistic scenario) by Punto/Craig/Greene is disturbing. That the org will “be happy” with that is even more disturbing.
Texas had one of the lowest payrolls in the majors last year – yet Strauss calls them a high payroll team.
Strauss didn’t quite get it right on Boston-or maybe I’m confusing him with a questioner-I don’t have time to go read through everything right now- Boston has a very high payroll. They have a wealthy owner who spends and the Red Sox brand brings in quite a bit of money all by itself, but they are, and have been, in the forefront of using statistical data-for everything. Oh, they haven’t let their scouts go. They use those guys too; and their on field staff and their medical staff, and their trainers. They are integrated in everything they do from bottom to top.
Boston is the cutting edge because they have figured out a way to use everything at their disposal-not just money.