Not a Good Start

The Cardinals dropped the first game at Wrigley 11-4 yesterday, with only a Pujols HR much consolation. Mark Mulder turned in another bad outing, though those had started becoming a bit more rare. Mulder is the flashpoint of the most talked about issue in 2005 for Cardinal fans.

Last December, GM Walt Jocketty traded Dan Haren (a young starting pitcher), Kiko Calero (a fairly effective reliever) and Daric Barton (a catching prospect) to Oakland for Mulder. The idea was the Cardinals were getting a top of the line pitcher and making a push to have better pitching in postseason play, which is what undid them in the Series last year.

Barton was the key to the deal from the A’s point of view. He’d only completed one year of the lowest minor league, but he was showing himself to be an exceptional hitter. Haren and Calero were nice, but Barton is what got the deal done.

Now we are here into August, and looking back, well, it might not have been Jocketty’s finest moment. Haren has pitched pretty well for Oakland and has comparable if not better numbers than Mulder. Calero has been a non-factor—he’s been hurt most of the year. And Barton is in AA and doing well.

Mulder has been an enigma. Is he the guy that matched zeros with Roger Clemens earlier in the year, throwing a 10-inning shutout? Or is he the guy that gives up 4-6 runs in a single frame? Lately he’d been on a streak where he’d pitched effectively and had gotten his ERA down below 4 before yesterday’s blowup. For some reason (save the shutout referenced above), he’s not been able to pitch during day games very well. Thankfully most playoff games are at night.

Mulder has an option for next year at around $7 million. That makes for a tough decision in Cardinal land. Do you pick that up and hope after once around the league he’ll pitch better? Or do you let him go and watch Oakland reap the benefits of the trade for years to come? It’s a tough choice. I expect that, with the new stadium and the move from KMOX to the Cardinal-owned KTRS, the payroll will go up enough for them to pick up that option. Hopefully something will click and Mulder can get back to the form he showed in Oakland, when he was one of the top starters in the American League.

Cards were trailing today’s game 1-0 in the third. Saw some at lunch and listened on the radio coming back to work. Sounds like there’d been a number of mental mistakes already by the Redbirds. Hopefully they can overcome that.

And I am so ready for Yadier Molina to come back and do the catching. Mike Mahoney can handle pitchers, but can’t hit. LaRussa keeps bunting him or doing the hit and run so that he’ll stay out of double plays. The other catcher, Einar Diaz, isn’t much better. Molina should be back soon, but that’s what they said before the All-Star Game as well.

Not much going on here in the real world. It’s a PPT tournament tonight, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve done much better this year, winning a couple of times and finishing in the money 4 times, but it’s been a little while since I’ve brought home some cash, and I’d like that to stop tonight.

Quote from tonight’s Firefly episode “Bushwhacked”, airing at 6:00 CDT on the Sci-Fi Channel:

Alliance Commander: "Seems odd you'd name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of."

Mal: "May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."