now that's what I'm talking about

It's good news, Cardinals fans!

The Cardinals are bringing back the amazing Flip.
F-Lo. Fe-Lo. Lo-deck.

Finally.


No, that's all.


Just the news I've been waiting for all off-season.


Ready for some baseball? Me, too.

UCB Roundtable: Salary Cap

My turn at posing a question to the UCB began with buying myself a new purse. Well, it's Spring Training, right? New season, new opportunities, new jerseys. Why not a new handbag to announce my fandom to the world? (And some pretty cool new earrings to boot!)

Spring makes me feel like shopping, and shopping makes me wish I had a lot more money. Money got me thinking about salaries and bonuses and team spending, and that made me wonder about payroll discrepancies across baseball.

Sure, some teams can get by spending less, and some teams feel the need to write blank checks to bring in the talent, but amazingly, there seems to be very little correlation between the number of zeroes and the number of trophies. Maybe this is because of the farm system. Maybe players feel more connected to the team that brought them up, and this loyalty shows itself in the form of "hometown discounts". Maybe arbitration and options and years of service have a positive impact on team development. Maybe a salary cap would only give players more incentive to "test the market".

At any rate, I was curious what the rest of the bloggers thought about the notion. Is a salary cap necessary? Would it work? And how would it affect the Cardinals specifically?

Read more »

it's spriiiii-iiiing

The awesomely talented photog over at stltoday.com is back in Spring action, and the boys in red are back at work. Pitchers and catchers reported today for the St Louis Cardinals (although evidence suggests a variety of position players showed up), and Jupiter is once again the best place on earth. (And believe me, as I stare out the window at another sunny yet snow-covered day in the Midwest, I'd much rather be in Florida.)

Of course, nothing is as important as the arrival of hitting coach Mark McGwire to camp (at least if you judge importance by the amount of ESPN coverage dedicated to something). Derrick Goold even got to speak on SportsCenter about the colossal and world-altering event. He described it as "mooted".

The most fitting definition I could find goes something like this: Of no practical importance; irrelevant.

Never mind me, I'll just be enjoying the pictures.

planet Schumaker

Yay! Skip "the second baseman" Schumaker is ours for the next TWO years. Arbitration avoided. Negotiations done. Trato hecho. And for quite a reasonable price, as well.

Ooh, buddy. I gotta tell you, there are a lot of our guys whom I would hate to see playing somewhere else--Albert, Yadi, Wainwright, and Carp come to mind--but none any more so than Skippy, er, Jared. (Whatever.) He has quickly become one of my most favorite Cardinals.

Last off-season, after some confusion regarding the second base position, Schu stepped up and made us all question our concerns. "Were we concerned?" we questioned ourselves, some of us aloud. And after waiting an acceptable period of time for a response, we gave up (and just as well since we knew the answer all along anyway). The answer was, well, yes, but that's not the point, actually. The point is that we needn't have been concerned at all. We needn't have worried. We needn't have run out into the street, stopping traffic, concern showing plainly on our faces as we wondered, some of us aloud, "It's a week before Spring Training and we don't have a second baseman?"

But, as I may have mentioned, Skip rescued us. He came through when we needed him the most (a week before Spring Training without a second baseman), and gave us not only a replacement, but a pretty darn decent second baseman. 

So darn decent, in fact, that I named him my intermedista of the 00s. What? Me worry?

United Cardinal Bloggers to interview Kyle McClellan

The United Cardinal Bloggers will be interviewing St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Kyle McClellan on Saturday, February 6, at 4:30 pm Central for a special edition of the UCB Radio Hour.

McClellan, a Missouri native who has spent two years with the Cardinals, was 4-4 with a 3.38 ERA coming out of the pen last year. He has been a solid part of the bullpen since his debut in 2008 and has been conditioning himself to challenge for the fifth spot in the St. Louis rotation this spring.

The United Cardinal Bloggers was formed in 2007 to foster communication and collaboration among those that blog about St. Louis. The UCB Radio Hour began late in 2008 and now is a weekly staple, airing Wednesdays at 9:30 pm Central at Blog Talk Radio and available for download as a podcast from that site and from iTunes.

No callers will be taken for the McClellan interview, though callers are encouraged on the regular Wednesday show.

The McClellan interview can be heard here, and the show page at Blog Talk Radio can be found here.


[ps ~ I gave K-Mac 10 NDD points for being an awesome enough guy to make an appearance on the show. Yes, I am trying to resurrect novios and NDD; we'll see how it goes.]