Monday, April 2, 2007

Cardinals Lose, Opening Day, The Natural and other stuff

To your imidiate left would be a dead cardinal. This is a fitting image for the St. Louis Cardinals as they were steam rolled by the New York Metropolitans 6-1 last night.

Cardinal ace Chris Carpenter had a fabulous fantasy night for the Schilbies, going 6 innings giving up 9 hits, 5 runs while striking out 3 and walking one. Oh, he also got the loss. Good start for Schilby and Carpenter...y.

At any rate, the Royals are officially better than the Cardinals - having a supirior 0-0 record to StL's 0-1 clip. Psh, Cardinals suck.

StL has the day off before getting their butts kicked again by the Mets Tuesday night. Kip Wells is starting for the Cards, so this is a good sign for the owners of Jose Reyes, David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca.

OPENING DAY

The REAL Opening Day is today and is headlined by the Royals/Red Sox game ... or something like that.

It has been anounced that Dotel will not be available to the Royals to close out the game due to a muscle strain. Not that we were going to need him anyway. The Royals have the HARDEST opening 30 game schedule according to Buster Olney, which is great for a young team coming off its fourth 100 loss season in 5 years.

At least we have Zack Greinke.

There are three big things to watch out for the Royals in April:

First is how the Royals will use Ross Gload. Gload finished in the Top 10 in bating average for American League players in Spring Training. Our own Erik Johnson is not too thrilled about Gload even being on the team. I see his point. But I figure that having someone to back up Shealy, who is playing his first full season in the big leagues, a reserve corner outfielder and a guy to fill in for Sweeney when he misses random streaches of 5-7 games before, ultimately, getting hurt for a full two months is good to have.

At any rate, it gives the Royals options, which is something we are not used too.

Next is putting the over/under on when Tony Pena Jr. legitimately becomes Angel Berroa the Second. I set it at 30 games. Pena can't hit. His fielding has been suddenly bad since joining the Royals in Spring Training and he is starting his first full season in the big leagues. It is also his first full time starting job in the bigs. Yep, we're screwed. The bright side is that he is not Berroa. Yet.

I would look for the Royals trading Sweeney by the deadline for a shortstop/shortstop prospect like Wood from Los Angeles. This, of course, assumes Sweeney is healthy and not doing interviews with kids because he can't move.

Finally, is Zack Greinke back? I think so. Thursday's match-up of Greinke versus Dice-K is going to be amazing. Its the Gyroball versus Greinke's Brain. Scarry. At bare minimum, it will be the most unconventional pitching match-up in recent memory.

If Greinke is back, the Royals rotation looks far less unstable and upgrades to "Shaky" at best. That, my friends, is a SIGNIFICANT (yes, all caps for that one) upgrade.

By the way, the last time the Red Sox were in KC, Boston was swept.

THE NATURAL

One thing that gets me going for the season is the movie The Natural. If you haven't seen it, rent it. Its a good movie. Andrew Wessley has debated making out with the movie's music composer John Williams. Its kinda weird, but Andrew is like that. Williams did the music for such movies as Jurrasic Park, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Braveheart and every other Steven Speilberg movie known to man.

Joe Posnanski recently did a blog on a scouting report for Roy Hobbs, the main character in the movie. Check out the guy who left a comment on the report. He came up with what Hobbs' stats might have been that season. Its crazy and makes me feel less nerdy.

I like the movie mostly for that one song that is played when Hobbs hits home runs. It gets you going. But not in the kind of way it gets Andrew going.

OTHER STUFF

It should be noted once again that the Cardinals lost and suck.

Football is getting too crazy.

Be thankful for your parents...

Why the Royals have sucked.

Get to know this guy.

With that said...

1 comment:

The Tao said...

Good point about the Red Sox getting swept by KC last time they were in town. This blog is off to a nice start, btw. Keep it up.

-Tao