There are times in the offseason where it seems like there’s just nothing going on, that there’s barely any news, that everything has been hashed and rehashed plenty of times.
Then there are times like the last couple of weeks, when you wish for that much.
If you caught me on Gateway this weekend, you know what I’m talking about. Without Tara, there wasn’t enough stuff to discuss to get through a third of the show. You have to go back to January 9th to get an actual post on this blog (not this site, mind you–Doug and Dathan have done some good work in the interim). Even with that lag, there’s just not much out there.
I mean, Adam Wainwright got the Fred Hutchinson Award, which is pretty neat. The award is given to a player for outstanding community service and there’s no doubt that Waino exemplifies that. His foundation, the work he has put in making Big League Impact really a big league project, the things he does around St. Louis, all of that is amazing and a wonderful thing to be lifted up. It’s a great honor for him and a well-deserved one. Major kudos to the staff ace for this award.
Then there’s been the various prospect lists that have come out. The Cards placed one, Alex Reyes, on the MLB.com Top 100. If you are only going to get one, having him be in the top 10 is a good thing. Baseball Prospectus also put out their list and their team lists as well. St. Louis has some talent coming up, but a lot of it is a couple of years away. Reyes might be the only one (save folks like Tim Cooney who have already made their debut) that we see this year and even that’s iffy.
Of course, that gap has been the focus of recent articles by Benjamin Hochman and Derrick Goold, because, like us, they don’t have just a ton to write about either at the moment. The farm still seems to be pitching-heavy, with any offensive help multiple years away, if it develops at all. The club does have Stephen Piscotty, Randal Grichuk, Kolten Wong, Matt Adams, etc. at the big league level so that dearth isn’t just the worst thing in the world, but if someone does go down, it seems much less likely that the Cards will be able to pull someone out of Memphis and not miss a beat like they have over the last couple of seasons.
Goold has been talking about this doughnut hole, as he calls it, for years now and we’ve finally reached it. Like the eye of a hurricane, it’s a calm, almost dead spot that means help isn’t just a phone call away anymore. Sure, there will be bodies at Memphis that can be called up to fill a spot, but depending on who goes down or where the need is, it’s not as likely to be as successful of a “next man up” as it has been in the past.
Which is probably another reason, besides their general philosophy and the hedge against any hacking-related punishments, that the Cardinals have been jealously guarding their draft picks this year. While anyone taken in June isn’t going to solve the immediate problem, it’ll hopefully keep another hole from forming and the pipeline can begin again with its regular churning of talent.
That’s really about it. If you missed it, I was on Talking About Birds recently with Nate and Ben and that episode went up Monday. It was a lot of fun talking with those guys and I’d really recommend you check it out when you’ve got a spare hour and a half. Also, please don’t forget the Cardinal Approval Ratings are going on. I’m still hoping for 100 folks to fill it out in the next three weeks and right now we’ve got about 15. So if you haven’t, please take a few minutes and do so!
This afternoon, we’re going to start something a little different and see how it goes. I’ve always enjoyed reading “as it happened” news coverage, getting the perspective of the time rather than a retrospective look at things knowing how they all played out. With this being the fifth anniversary of the 2011 championship (and the first one that I “covered” as a blogger), I’m going to rerun some of my blog posts from that year. I don’t know how many I’ll do–obviously I’ll skip press releases and projects and such of that nature, but I’ll probably do a lot of the game recap ones–but I hope you’ll enjoy reliving that great season from the beginning.
Hopefully, given that pitcher and catchers officially report in a couple of weeks, we’ll have some things to talk about soon. It can’t get any slower, I don’t think!
