The Cardinals edged the Braves out for the National League Wild Card and are now preparing for their Division Series matchup against the Phillies. Here are some Cardinals-related links, as we await tomorrow's Kyle Lohse–Roy Halladay contest…
- Lance Berkman told Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he doesn't question his durability the way others do. The switch-hitting slugger adds that he feels great about his resurgent season and recent $12MM contract extension.
- Everyone wants to know how the Cardinals completed a seemingly impossible comeback and GM John Mozeliak tells Derrick Goold of the Post-Dispatch that the team succeeded because the starters pitched deeper into games and the bullpen became "more credible and more functional."
- Cardinals players told Strauss that they were impressed by the July trade that brought Edwin Jackson, Marc Rzepczynski, Octavio Dotel, and Corey Patterson to St. Louis. Here's a complete recap of Mozeliak's in-season trades.
People keep doubting the Cardinals. First it was the trade to get rid of Colby. Then it was the Wild Card. When is anyone gonna learn that the Cardinals are for real and know what they’re doin? Rasmus sucks. And we got some great arms in return.
Beating Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt will be what it takes for people to learn they are for real.
they did it 5 times in the regular season.
So did the Washington Nationals… what’s your point?
If they beat the Phillies in the NLDS, they’ll become the favorite in the National League. That’s what I meant. I’m not being arrogant. The same thing happened to the Giants last year. (who were 5-1 against Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels)
first it was when they lost their ace, actually. nobody was really doubting anything before then
Who is the PTBNL or did they accept cash
I dont think it has been decided yet, or at least I haven’t heard anything about it.
People didn’t hate the Rasmus trade because it was terrible for this season–most people agreed the Rasmus trade made them better this season. It was next season, and the season after, and the season after that everyone was concerned about, because the Cards were sure to lose half of the players they acquired in free agency.
And since people didn’t think the Cardinals would make the playoffs, much less win the World Series, they felt a win now trade was dumb. We’ll see how the Cards play out in the post-season.
lohse v. halladay is a good start
This reminds me of the rivalry between a hammer and a nail.
They traded Colby Rasmus because they did not want him…. They have John Jay who is a better hitter & a better Center Fielder. It does not matter what they do in post season.
Jay is not a better hitter or CF.
and a better team mate….
lets be honest,,that trade didnt push the cardinals into the playoffs. none of them had a major contribution down the line. the cards needed the braves to collapse to get in. im a cards fan but i wanted them to get young talent in return, not rentals.
it was the braves that induced the cardinals going something like 20-8 in september? Sure they needed the braves to falter and they did, but don’t think that it would be the same without the trade.
how many wins did those 4 account for. i can remember a repcy loss. hell, pattrson didnt even play. plus our september schedule was abreeze. i think the cards went 20-8 without that trade.
Do you think we would still be where we were if McClellan was still in the rotation instead of Jackson? Do you think our record would be as good if we still had Miller and Tallet instead of Rzep? How about Batista/Franklin instead of Dotel. It was an obvious upgrade then and now that they got to the playoffs it paid dividends. Colby isn’t coming back, we got value for him- a playoff push and a draft pick.
So Cards are happy with the trade and we are happy with Rasmus. win-win?
if the cards didn’t make the playoffs, it would have been a win for Toronto. But they did. Its a win-win, yeah.
No way you are happy with Rasmus…. .173!!!!! Gimme a Break. You got a lot of potential with a bad attitude.
It’s a small sample size bud. Rasmus showed last year he can be great when he was 3rd among CF in OPS behind Hamilton (MVP winner) and Cargo (who almost won the MVP).
I’m happy with the trade. Sure, we gave up some nice players in Stewart and Rzep but it’s not like they are great nor do they have a high ceiling. Dotel and Patterson are “meh”. Sucked to lose Frasor, he did a nice job here but he was a upcoming FA so it’s not like he was coming back.
Helped the Cards as they got a good starter in Jackson, some decent bullpen pieces to a weak bullpen and they made the playoffs so I’m sure they’re happy too. In the long run… who knows?
I also don’t get where the “bad attitude” comes from. I mean I haven’t seen it. People said the same thing last year about Escobar but I haven’t seen it. Or Lawrie but I haven’t seen it. Does he not smile enough? Is that why he is viewed upon as a bad attitude or not “caring enough”? I think a lot of people just misunderstand people’s personality most of the time probably because it rubs off in a wrong way.
If a guy is too fiery, he is viewed upon as a douchebag or immature and when a guy doesn’t show his emotion, people say he doesn’t care or doesn’t try.
Personally, I don’t care about one’s personality one way or the other as long as the player is helping the team.
How about the article that came out where Rasmus said that he was not working on anything before Spring Training and not picking up a bat before then. He didnt listen to any of the coaches on hitting, and instead only listened to his dad. It’s very clear that his dad fights all his battles for him, in the media and in the cage. I personally don’t hate Rasmus, I just am glad that he is gone and the Cards are able to move on…Nothing about him being in StL worked and he needed to go and so we traded him because we had a better CF in Jay
Its not like the Rasmus trade was a terrible one for st.louis, it was that they couldve got more for Rasmus. This trade is just like the Escobar for Gonzalez trade, the Jays sold high on Gonzalez and bought Escobar low. This is the definition of sell high, buy low. Lets be honest Dotel is an below average pitcher now and hes only going to get worse because hes 37. Corey Patterson is crap and his numbers in St. Louis show it. Edwin Jackson is a young average pitcher, whos agent is scott boras, hes a guy that will pitch every 5th date. Scrabble is a great player but he has not proven that hes a starter, he pitches 1 inning 4 days a week. As of now this is a win-win trade, but just like the Escobar, Lawrie, and Morrow trades, the team will not regred trading the player, but they will regred what they got in return.
You say we could of got more, but I don’t think we could of. If we had traded him in the offseason then, yes, we could of got more (I believe the marlins wanted Raz for Uggla) but at the deadline he was hitting like .230 with mild power and a bazillion strikeouts(slightly exaggerated). I think they got very good value. And if Mo could of got Thames instead of Patterson it would of been a great trade.
A young center fielder (one of the hardest positions to fill) with high potential and not too far off from being named the 3rd best prospect in all of baseball. Ya i think you couldve got more for him, Jays signed Patterson and dotel as free agents and traded crap to get Jackson, the only person that we like from the ones we traded to you is scrabble (but we got 7 more scrabbles in the minors).
I think they could have gotten more talent, but that talent wouldn’t have fit the needs for this season as well. You have to give props to Toronto’s GM for looking at the Cardinals and seeing that they needed a #3 and bullpen help from both sides, then going out and building that package. He basically put together a round peg for a round hole.
I think the big problem that arose from this is how Larussa handled it. Instead of talking up Rasmus to increase his trade value (even if it wasn’t sincere), he bashed him pretty frequently leading to his departure. That is like a salesperson in your organization bad mouthing your own product and as a result selling it at a lower price. Organizations fire people like that or they eventually fail.
There’s no question in my mind that the arms we got in the Rasmus trade upgraded the bullpen, short term…when they were called upon to pitch, but just as importantly by taking pressure off our present relievers. The results prove it. Sure, I’d have loved to trade a third rate pitcher for a Mariano Rivera…who wouldn’t?…but reality dictates otherwise. We got help and the bullpen improved. That’s a win. Were they rentals? Who knows or cares…We’re in the post season and that’s a question for the off season and for 2012.
We’d watched for years, hoping for Colby Rasmus to grow into his talent…and the results weren’t evident…after awhile, you have to either fish or cut bait! That he IS so talented and would show exciting flashes of that talent must have made it even more frustrating for the club in a game where, increasingly, the future is NOW? I truly hopes he makes it and fulfills that talent…he seems like a nice kid who needs more than anything to grow up. For awhile, early on, this season he listened to Mark McGwire and started driving the ball to all fields instead of trying to pull everything out of the park…but then Daddy stepped in. I’m afraid that until and unless he stops listening to his father and shutting everyone else out and permitting him to live out his own frustrations and failures as an athlete through him, a failure with a fatal flaw is how he’ll be remembered…coaching high school in south Alabama and bitter. Or, in Colby’s case, dazed and confused and bewildered.