KMFP

Mound City

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There’s not a whole lot to write about when things are going this good.  The Cardinals have won 10-of their last 12-games and I was lucky enough to be at the real dud in Wrigley, though that’s what my hypocritical rump gets for entering that dump in the first place, mere hours after blasting just that on these very pages.

But hey – free tickets are hard to turn down, I’m out of town working and hypocrisy is a writer’s best friend!  I make no apologies....

A Study in Futility; Cards Head to Wrigley

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St. Louis is fresh off of a 6-game winning streak and head Northeast for a 2-game set with our favorite punch line of the last 104-years, the Chicago Cubs, in that musty little “box that futility built”, also known as Wrigley Field.

Seriously, when does the charm of this place wear off?  It’s like people who still try to convince us that they actually enjoy Fast Eddie’s, instead of just admitting that they lie about it because legions of friends have been doing the same for years, and you somehow feel obligated to fake it – just to fit in....

"Curve" Your Enthusiasm

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The Cardinals just completed in Washington D.C., in 3-days, what voters haven’t been able to do in 100-years…a clean sweep.

Starting pitching continues to carry the team which, while great, cannot realistically be expected to maintain this pace with such lackluster offensive output.

A lineup that looks so formidable “on paper” is having trouble surpassing a field goal and a safety on a regular basis here lately....

Waiting for a Bull to Emerge from the Pen

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Sunday brought another painful loss and another hour of copay for Mitchell Boggs’ therapist.  It seems a bullpen issue arises with one Cardinal reliever per season and Boggs is the pitcher de jour in that department.

Aside from what has become the expected inconsistency of Jaime Garcia, though it’s early on, starting pitching has been borderline stellar, with the bullpen smelling like an ACTUAL bullpen.

Mitchell was lights out a season ago and settled into the 8^th-inning role, holding lead after lead....

Bookends

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The Cardinals opened their season at Busch with a thud and bookended the week with yet another one, both the result of a quickly emerging bullpen problem.

With 4-wins in the middle of that shelf, it’s hard to be too upset with the result, but the bottom line is that those other 2-games were there for the taking and that always stings at least a little bit.

I’m not going to pretend that most teams don’t go through this a few times in a season and I have all the confidence that things will be juggled, or simply straighten themselves out....

Open Up and Say...

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It’s nice to see St. Louis with some momentum heading into their own home opener, after providing the Diamondbacks and Giants with some positive openers of their own.

The good news is that the Cardinals lineup heated up in the last 2-outings against San Francisco and that they were very close to coming out of the gates at 5 – 1, with a couple of losses in the “should have won” column.

The bad news is that a few more of those runs from the weekend relocated to last October could’ve had last season ending on a much higher note and that “could’ve” and “should’ve” mean about as much as “hope” and "change”, and “close” only counts in horseshoes and nuclear bombs, which isn’t such a funny analogy these days....

Play Ball (yeah, I know)

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The slowest five months or our lives are officially over.

First pitch…ah – drink it in.

You can have the kickoff, tipoff and faceoff, but I’ll take the first pitch.

You can wave a flag at a bunch of yahoo’s doing sustained, 190-MPH left turns or drop a ball between a couple of flopping Nancy’s and wait about 2-hours for it to POSSIBLY enter a net the size of a 3-car garage entrance, located at opposite ends of a ¾-mile long “pitch”…which the rest of us mortals simply refer to as a “field”....

Trade Freese...Think About It??

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Only a few weeks left and I feel as if every scribe across the city could write the same column they did at this juncture each of the last 3-seasons.

It seems like the beginning of most recent Cardinal campaigns begin with the proverbial “if” of injury and performance questions, as I suspect most MLB-camps do really.

“If” Jaime Garcia performs as consistently on the road as he has at home…

“If” Lance Lynn’s new physique can help build on his impressive stats from last season…

“If” Matt Carpenter can crack the starting lineup as a second baseman…

“If” David Freese, Carlos Beltran and Allen Craig stay healthy…

And, “if” I were a foot taller and a whole hell of a lot more charming and better looking, Jessica Biel may return my letters…instead of the FBI doing so, but I digress....