St. Louis Cardinals 2022

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Please let the season not be as God awful as last year.

Rick Hummel
The easy narrative is that Albert Pujols had his first three-hit game and first homer as a Cardinal since September 2011. But there was so much more going on at Busch Stadium Tuesday night in the Cardinals’ 6-5 interleague victory over the Kansas City Royals before an impressive April weeknight paid crowd of 40,398.
The Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado, just named Player of the Week for his exploits during the first few days of the season, got a jump on Week 2 with a two-run homer off Kansas City left-hander Daniel Lynch in the first inning.
Arenado’s third homer of the season was his sixth extra-base hit out of seven over his first four games. And he has driven in at least two runs in each of those games. The Cardinals thus scored in the first inning of their first four games for the first time since at least 1901.

But, after Pujols had followed Arenado’s homer with No. 680 of his career on his first hit of the season, the Royals tied the score only to have Cardinals backup catcher Andrew Knizner punctuate his first hit by lining it into the left-field seats. This three-run homer in the fourth broke a tie and ultimately made a winner of Jordan Hicks, who was making his first appearance in the majors since last May 1......Hicks struck out two besides inducing a double play in his two hitless innings of relief. The result of this snappy outing was the first win since May 31, 2019, to be recorded by the former Cardinals closer who soon will be starting.

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Albert homering in bottom of first is hopefully a sign of things to come in a special Cardinal's season.......

Ben Frederickson
Check out the highlights from sports columnist Ben Frederickson’s weekly chat with readers
Q: Wouldn’t it have been nice if the Cardinals treated fans by starting Albert Pujols more often in this first homestand?
A: That's... not how this is going to work, though. Opening day was opening day. Manager Oliver Marmol was not going to snap that streak of 22 consecutive opening-day starts. After that, it's about winning games and using Pujols when he can help you do that. I mean this respectfully. If you are going to games in person or watching only to see Pujols, get used to studying the upcoming opponents and buying tickets and/or tuning in when there is a left-handed starter on the mound for the opponents. If not, there is a good chance you are going to be disappointed. That's the plan at the start. Prioritize Pujols against left-handed pitching and use the Corey Dickerson and Lars Nootbaar combination for right-handed starters.

Performance can change things, of course. Say Pujols gets hot, or Dickerson slumps. There are right-handed pitchers the Cardinals like Pujols against, and he will get some starts against them. But right now the Cardinals are sticking to their plan, and that plan was never advertised as Pujols being an every-day guy


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chat with fans..................interesting........................

Rick Hummel
Weather permitting — and it may not — Wednesday afternoon’s Cardinals-Kansas City Royals game will be one for the ages, as in 40 for Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright and 38 for Kansas City starter Zack Greinke. It will be one of the few matchups this season in which the two pitchers facing each other have more than 400 collective victories, 219 by Greinke and 185 for Wainwright.
But, as Wainwright pointed out Tuesday night, “Technically, I’m not facing Greinke. I’d like to be.”
Therein lies the rub. There is a universal designated hitter now, however, so neither is likely to hit again.
Wainwright and, especially Greinke, are two of the top hitting pitchers in the past two decades. Wainwright, who has spent his entire career in the National League, has 10 home runs in 742 career at-bats. Greinke, who has split time between leagues, has a .225 average compared to .193 for Wainwright and nine homers in 521 at-bats.

“He might get some more hits than me but I’ve got way more pop,” said Wainwright. “But he is a better contact hitter.”
Wainwright admitted he pretty much thought only of the long ball when he hit.
“I would have probably been a pretty good hitter if I hadn’t been thinking like that all the time,” he said. “That was a lot of at-bats to only have 10 over the fence.”

Read on twitter that today's Cardinals-Royals game has been postponed and rescheduled for May 2nd @ 3:15 pm.......................

Former Cardinals manager grabs headlines...........................................


Jeff Gordon
When it rains on Mike Shildt, it pours.
The former Cardinals manager is getting some fill-in work at third base coach with the San Diego Padres while Matt Williams recovers from repairs. Soon Shildt will retreat back into the shadows of player development for that franchise.
But his time back in uniform was marked by an unfortunate controversy.
Shildt is an old school baseball man. Therefore he is a keeper of the sport’s unwritten rules. In the heat of competition, after the San Francisco Giants violated one of these unwritten rules by gratuitously stealing a base with a 10-1 lead Tuesday, Shildt went off.

While yelling at the Giants dugout, he used a profanity that is widely used as a synonym for “guy” or “fellow” in sports.
This is the same profanity that Cincinnati star Joey Votto used while taunting St. Louis fans during a news conference. You may recall that he referred to “some (stuff)-talking (profanity-ers) in St. Louis” after the Reds swept the Cardinals last season.
Somehow this profanity proved triggering to Giants coach Antoan Richardson and one thing led to another. A furious Richardson was ejected from the game, and after the game a still-furious Richardson accused Shildt of yelling the profanity with racial undertones.

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TALKIN’ BASEBALL
Here is what folks have been writing about Our National Pastime:

5 reporters with thoughts about our favorite past time ............................................

Derrick Goold
MILWAUKEE — Of all the places Adam Wainwright has gone with the Cardinals and all the places the right-hander has taken the Cardinals, even the ballpark where he’s so often been his best was a reminder of three keys to any pitcher’s success: location, location, location.
More than where he’s pitching, it’s where his pitches are that matters.
Spinning from a one-seam to a two-seam grip, Wainwright could not get a handle on his sinker and the pitch that is supposed to plunge down instead flattened out against Milwaukee. The Brewers tagged the veteran for four runs, three of them with two out, and pulled away for a 5-1 victory Thursday night in their home opener at American Family Field. A sellout crowd of 42,794 braved high winds to tailgate and saw former teammate Kolten Wong jump Wainwright’s second pitch for a triple. The hometown crew open up a four-run lead in the first three innings and uprooted Wainwright (1-1) from the mound before the end of the fifth inning.

“You get zeroes when you locate, when you mix and match, up and down, in and out, and today I was a very predictable height the whole time,” Wainwright said. “Even when I was on the corner sometimes, it was thigh-high. But I don’t live at the thigh. I don’t make any money at the thigh. I make mine at the knees. Not enough knee-balls, and a lot of thigh-balls.” During a career spent in the National League Central, Wainwright has more wins at Chicago’s Wrigley Field than any other foe’s ballpark, but his lowest ERA in the division and several of his finer outings have been at the Brewers’ screw-top ballpark. He brought a 2.89 ERA into his 20th start at the stadium formerly known as Miller Park, and in his previous appearance he got the win as the Cardinals’ gained propulsion for their historic winning streak. That start was the 300th together for Wainwright and Yadier Molina, and on Thursday, with their 306th, they moved into a tie with White Sox tandem Red Faber and Roy Schalk for the third-most all time in MLB history.

posting at 2:07 am! Dude.

wpr said:

posting at 2:07 am! Dude.

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Psoriatic arthritis acting up big time..............................

Cardinals score 4 runs in top of the 1st.......bout time .................................

Mikolas on the mound for the Cardinals

Disappointing that there is no Brewers cleavage front row girl so far in the two games........She was a nice addition to my viewing pleasure........

she really really was/is...................................

pruman91 said:

Psoriatic arthritis acting up big time..............................

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My condolences. My hips gets the best of me but I roll over to the other hip and wait an hour and start all over.

Cards up 6-0 going into bottom of the second.....................I like it a lot.................

pruman91 said:

Cards up 6-0 going into bottom of the second.....................I like it a lot.................

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Loved seeing Goldy go the opposite way. Arenado is hitting beach balls right now. We need 6+ from Miles.

Knizner is baseballing right now.

Mikolas looks dialed in tonight.........maybe as good as his 18-4 season good......................

wpr said:

My condolences. My hips gets the best of me but I roll over to the other hip and wait an hour and start all over.

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it sucks getting old ......my 93 year old dad told me it doesn't get any better the longer you live either.......I told him "" thanks dad"..........lol

Tommy Ed-"" The Man ""..................................................

pruman91 said:

it sucks getting old ......my 93 year old dad told me it doesn't get any better the longer you live either.......I told him "" thanks dad"..........lol

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yes sir. My Dad would be 90 said getting old isn't for sissies. And other things like that.

Mikolas has only allowed 1 hit through 6 innings and that hit was a knuckling ball hit right at Sosa that moved like 4 feet in the last moments past him........

From around the league, Manny Machado was 5-5 last night and odd to a 1-1 start. Good for my fantasy team.

6 2/3 innings of dominant erupt for mikolas tonight ......best he has looked in a long time......

pruman91 said:

Tommy Ed-"" The Man ""..................................................

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The old saying spring training doesn’t mean anything. Tommy wasn’t hitting at all, but since the season started, he’s hitting a ton, including 3 HR’s!

pruman91 said:

6 2/3 innings of dominant erupt for mikolas tonight ......best he has looked in a long time......

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A welcomed start. Now, let's hang on to this one and hopefully Matz pitches to the ground ball and allows the defense to eat.

Brad Thompson is a better fit for me as the color man instead of Jim Edmonds.....

Knizner looks more than capable of taking over for Yadi next year...................