He’s certainly doing well so far.
And the Cardinals keep winning. They must be paying tribute to Mike Matheny for his years of service. I commend them.
Not to mention getting Cole Hamels for a bag of balls, he’s 4-0 as a Cubbie.
I know right? I don’t get it. How come Cardinals or Brewers didn’t try to get either of these players?!? Brewers seemed to want to get Harvey… don;t know why…he’s been sorta terrible. Though they did get Cain, Yelich and Shaw for pretty much nothing imo. Oh and Cardinals did get some guy named Mikolas, who has been there Arietta. So it kinda equals out anyway. chatwood n darvish :-(.
The Cardinals have no place to play Daniel Murphy. He wasn’t going to accept or be happy with a bench role, and St. Louis isn’t going to sit Kolten Wong and it isn’t going to sit Matt Carpenter. For all his hitting skills, Murphy is a butcher in the field, and seems headed to a future as an AL DH.
Also, Matt Harvey has not been “sorta terrible”. He’s been pretty solid since joining the Reds and would have been exactly what the Brewers needed.
2018 D. Murphy: -.6 WAR, .803 OPS.
2018 M. Adams: 1.0 WAR, .839 OPS.
Adams already has a house in STL :) And the Cards gave up nothing at all to get Big City back.
I’m wondering why my Phillies didn’t try for Hamels … fans would have loved to have him back. We got no SP help in trades.
And no sooner do I post about the Cardinals not being able to unseat Wong…he leaves tonight’s game grabbing his hammy.
That’s an issue with him (not the hamstring specifically): his inability to stay healthy.
I think they liked what they had. Unfortunately since the deadline it feels like Pivetta, Vinny and Eflin have kind of come off the rails. They might be running out of steam as none of them have thrown as many innings at this point in a season before. So I think the downturn is something that management could have predicted.
Hamels had been mediocre for a while, till he got to the Cubs and went insane. Guess being back on a contender helped.
The Phillies are so bad right now. It’s sad that a very fun season has blown up like this.
This is one hell of an impressive accomplishment:
Murphy pre-DL didn’t look right and put up a 73 wRC+. Since coming back healthy he’s at 154.
Adams put up a 147 in the first half and has a putrid 34 going so far in the second half.
Both are small sample and everything so I don’t think that they are entirely predictive but the clubs are concerned about the next 30-45 games so Murphy’s slow start means almost nothing to them if they think he’s healthy now.
Cardinals call a 4pm CDT press conference today, expected to take the interim tag off the manager.
Because…(wait for it…)
Shildt happens.
One of the St. Louis sports columnists asked his twitter followers to suggest headlines to sneak past the Post-Dispatch copy editors. Said followers did not disappoint. Some favorites:
Manager search? No. Shildt.
Cardinals get their Shildt Together
Shildt Gets Real
Welcome to the Shildt Show
Cardinals Took A Good Shildt Today
Full-on Shildt Storm
Cardinals Have Seen Enough of This Shildt
This Shildt Don’t Stink
The Shildt Hits The Fans
Oh man, the next few years (?) are going to be fun.
My deepest hope is he has a distinctive managerial quirk.
That was classical Shildt
A true Shildty move
He gets ejected
For those of you wondering why there is no Shildt…
I almost feel for the poor guy… almost
He’s the Shildt!
He kind of doesn’t. I called him the Gus Fring of baseball managers the other day when he pulled off a double steal that led to a wild pitch and run scored with the pitcher batting and 2 outs. He just sat there in the dugout, looking impassive as ever.
About the most emotion I’ve seen from him in a game was two weeks ago when Matt Carpenter got hit on the hand with a fastball. He was staring pure, unadulterated malice at the pitcher the entire time on the field while his trainer worked with Carp.
One cool thing about him: his mother (not father or other male relative) was a front office exec with the AA Orioles franchise, and 12 year-old Mike Shildt would shine Cal Ripken Jr’s spikes before games and then go work the manual scoreboard during. Ripken is why the manager now wears number 8.
(Fixed!)
Aww, well we can’t have everything I guess.
Cool story about his growing up with the Orioles. And I gotta say that if you’re gonna pick a guy to commemorate your jersey with, Ripken is a good choice. I mostly missed his career, but I remember watching his last game on the streak in middle school. Always seemed a class act, and a grinder. I can respect that.
Great article from Passan on the coming labor war in MLB. Shaping up to be a doozy.
I believe the baseball commissioner used the expansion word a couple weeks ago. MLB is doing really well now, regardless of the TV ratings.
I think the really nasty labor agreement coming up is the in the NFL.
I got nothin’.
(Pitching porn worth a click.)