According to Ken Rosenthal, the Mariners have emerged as the favorite to sign JeffWea, describing this as “a blow to the World Series champion Cardinals,” following up with the observation that “[t]he loss of Weaver likely would leave the Cardinals to start the season with an all-right-handed rotation of right-handers Chris Carpenter, Anthony Reyes, Adam Wainwright, Kip Wells and Ryan Franklin.” If there is any worse kind of all-right-handed rotation, it’s one of right-handers. If I’m interpreting that right, JeffWea has also taken the rare Pat Venditte career route, pitching both lefty and righty, if the loss of his services leaves us with such a right-handed rotation of right-handers. Rosenthal gets good info, though, so I’ll stop picking on his lousy article. I honestly don’t care whether Weaver signs with the Cardinals or not, although I feel a slight lean towards the “go to Seattle and we’ll pick you up from the DFA pile again” camp. I’d rather go with what we’ve got and pick up a little more depth at AAA should Franklin stink or one of the chiddlers get sore—I like Chris Gissell as a good FA option and expect a few potential starters will be available on waivers late in the Spring. Sadly, Narvie will be one of them. Jamey Wright signed a minor-league deal with the Rangers and has a good shot at making their team out of spring training. I’ll be following him as I have every year for the last several.

Alan Benes has quietly retired and Tim McKernan scored a very nice interview with him.

Looking around for news as to whether Chris Gissell has signed a contract somewhere in the world yet, this article turned up. He’s teaching a pitching clinic is his home state for 7-14 year-olds with Rick White.

Completely unrelated, but this Zillow website is pretty fun to play around with. My house has appreciated nicely in the 4.5 years that I’ve owned it.

NHL.com is streaming the All-Star game live at this link.

One more: I don’t think articles from the Onion would be as funny without the author’s picture.

I’ve driven in some pretty bad conditions, but nothing ever close to this bad…

It’d be funny if it weren’t so damned expensive.

The Fighting Illini won a crucial game tonight, beating a very good Indiana team 51-43 here in Champaign. Indiana had rolled off five straight wins after dropping their B10 opener to tOSU. They’d dropped UConn in their last game and had been shooting at an unsustainably good rate—Big Ten Wonk today had argued that when their shooting eventually returns to earth they’ll still rack up wins on the strength of their defense and ball protection. Both teams coughed up the ball often and missed the hole when they held onto it. The difference in the game as far as I can tell: Illinois had fourteen more free throw attempts than Indiana and made nine more of them. Sean Pruitt continued his excellent play. Mark Tupper has a write-up at his blog.

Brian Carlwell got five minutes and Marcus Arnold had four. Speaking of Arnold, I saw him at Red Lobster this past weekend. He was dealing with a broken nose and no playing time in that day’s disappointing loss to Wisconsin, so I didn’t say hello. While there, I ate the Ultimate Feast and was pleased to find that it wasn’t poisoned. (If you like that joke—the waitress insisted that my dinner party sit along one side of the table after I ordered the Ultimate Feast. If you like both of those jokes, you’ve got an excellent sense of humor and are probably quite handsome and/or beautiful.)

There was an article in the local paper recently about the NCAA considering a ban on male players in women’s basketball practice. I’d never heard of the practice, but it makes a whole lot of sense. The Illini team has two women who’re taller than I am and those two would understandably need comparably sized players to work against that the bench can’t provide. Sounds like political correctness gone awry—surprising coming from the NCAA, I know. It’s hard to believe that a coach would do anything to inhibit the development of their scholarship athletes, so I don’t see a legitimate problem here. (The text of the recommendation is here, the description of the CWA that’s made it is here.)

This week is the NHL’s All-Star break. I didn’t know that until tonight, when I noticed the Blues go from Saturday to Friday without playing a game. The games are being carried on the Versus Network, which I have to guess is a renamed OLN. Brian Milner is unimpressed with the NHL’s marketing efforts.

Back to work.

Dan Szymborski posted his 2007 ZiPS projections as an excel spreadsheet today. Included is a projection for Hey… Listen favorite Chris Gissell, whom ZiPS likes quite a bit:

4.42ERA 114IP 122 H 61RA 56ER 16HR 76K:30BB

That ERA would be the 91st lowest among starters with more than sixteen starts—a little misleading since it includes five bullpen appearances that you’d expect would skew his projected ERA slightly lower. He’d project to be a pretty good fifth starter… Better than Ryan Franklin:

4.90ERA 156IP 171H 93RA 85ER 23HR 78K:54BB

Here’s hoping he lands a pitching job somewhere in the major leagues this year.

Brian Lawrence wasn’t included in the projections.

Some available right-handed hitting outfielders who project better than Preston Wilson are Mike Colangelo, Adam Hyzdu, Bernie Williams, and Shannon Stewart. I’ve never thought much of Stewart—he could barely hit LHP when he was healthy. Adam Hyzdu looks like an intriguing candidate. Minor League Splits likes his defense and he creamed LHP to a 0.413/0.520/0.744 line over 121 at-bats in the PCL last season. Ryan Ludwick (already signed with an NRI) projects to slug better than any of them, while walking less—but doing both better than P-Dub.

A friend of mine sent me this problem a week ago:

• In a street there are five houses, painted five different colors.
• In each house lives a person of different nationality.
• These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

Who owns the fish?

Necessary clues:
1. The British man lives in a red house.
2. The Swedish man keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Danish man drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The Blends smoker lives next to the one who drinks water.

It looked like an interesting problem but I didn’t give it a try at the time. These are the sorts of questions that were given in the Analytical section of the GRE test back when I took it (and that I spent waaaay too much time playing with.) While reading through a manual tonight for some help on a project I’m working on that involves the Logooli language, I came across the solution to the problem. Apparently it’s called the Zebra Puzzle. Based on this example from the manual I was reading, it was easy work to code up the clues (here) so the TRALE logic engine could solve the problem:

HOUSE1 house
       COLOR yellow
       DRINK water
       NATL norw
       PET cat
       SMOKE dunhill
HOUSE2 house
       COLOR blue
       DRINK tea
       NATL dan
       PET horse
       SMOKE blends
HOUSE3 house
       COLOR red
       DRINK milk
       NATL brit
       PET bird
       SMOKE pallmall
HOUSE4 house
       COLOR green
       DRINK coffee
       NATL germ
       PET fish
       SMOKE prince
HOUSE5 house
       COLOR white
       DRINK beer
       NATL swed
       PET dog
       SMOKE bm

The German owns the fish and they live together in the green house, second on the right, where he drinks coffee and smokes Prince. (Yeesh!)

Probably not the best use of my time, but it was fun and I learned a few things… So what’s 2% of six billion?

The Cardinals signed So Taguchi today to a one-year contract with a mutual option. He’ll make a base of $925,000 with a $100,000 buyout. The Cardinals thus have four outfielders set in stone and are searching for a fifth outfielder, preferably one who can put some hurt into left-handed pitching and play all three fields at least credibly. I’d like to see Bernie Williams play in St. Louis and collect the thirteen home runs he’ll need to reach 300 for his career. The Cardinals are apparently talking to Preston Wilson’s agent. I’d be happy with P-Dub coming back, since he fits the need, i.e. hits lefties, can defend all three fields. Let’s assume that Preston is re-signed and the 25-man roster is more or less in order, awaiting ST competition to decide the fifth starter and bullpen personnel.

Assuming that, let’s talk about depth. The bench players are in place to take over for injured starters, now who replaces those bench players when they move up in the depth chart?

Aaron Miles is backed up by Brendan Ryan, who’ll play shortstop at Memphis this season. Brendan tore a ligament in his left wrist during last year’s Spring Training after advancing quickly in the farm system during his first three years of professional ball. He was a standout for the Cardinals in the Arizona Fall League. I’m excited to see what the big right-hander can do this Spring and throughout the season. He’ll likely look like an upgrade over Miles as the utility middle infielder by the all-star break—and that’s coming from someone who thinks Miles is a pretty good baseball player.

It’s hard to say who Gary Bennett’s backup will be. Eli Marrero wants to convert back to catcher, but Memphis will have two (or three) full-time catchers in Michel Hernandez, who spent much of last season injured; Brian Esposito, who also plays some outfield; and minor-league phase Rule V draftee/international man of mystery Omar Falcon. Although Falcon was taken in the AAA-phase of the Rule 5 draft, he isn’t required to play the season at that level, and so Falcon will most likely share time at AA with left-handed batting Dan Moylan, who was hurt most of last season. I’m sure Eli is the first man up there, and I’ll be keeping an eye on Bryan Anderson who will probably start the season no higher than Palm Beach, and probably at Quad Cities where he’ll have more opportunities to play more often.

In the outfield, there’s Skip Schumaker and Reid Gorecki would be the choice to come up if Edmonds was DL’ed, as both are solid centerfielders, but as of yet haven’t come into their own as batters—I’m hoping this is the season for Skip, though. Ryan Ludwick and John Rodriguez would be the first up for some pop in a corner outfielder.

The last bench player is the one who I’d predict most likely to have a disappointing season: Scott Spiezio. His backup is the rare bird who can play 1B, 3B, LF, and RF. Derek Wathan looks awfully similar in that they’re both switch-hitters who can play a few positions, but Wathan has nowhere near the power that Spezio brings, and I don’t know that he’s ever spent much time at the corner infield spots. There’s a three-year-old scouting report on Derek here. I’d like to see the Cardinals improve their depth here by picking up Marshall McDougall, who was cut by the Rangers last season after unsuccessfully attempting to come back from a serious wrist injury. He’s got a strong bat—did some truly amazing things in his junior year of college. His defense is pretty bad, but he’d be a dangerous guy coming off the bench if he gets healthy this season. His career would be helped if he developed himself into a Spiezio-type of super-sub. He’d probably play mostly at first for Memphis with some time at 3rd and in the OF corners, depending on how Travis Hanson looks this season.

Unrelated but I’d been waiting for this.

Corporal Jason Dunham was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor last Thursday. His citation is here, joining Sfc. Paul Smith as the only two recipients since the 1993 Somalia, and one of four since the Vietnam war.

In attendance for the ceremony were six living CMH recipients: Barney Barnum, Brian Thacker, Bob Foley, Gary Littrell, Bob Howard, and Al Rascon.

First off, why does Bil McClellan get paid to write? I can’t imagine how dull it would be to actually talk to the man about baseball—or whatever foibles and whimsies he usually writes about.

Second, my pop told me that Feraro’s Jersey Style Pizza in Soulard also sells Taylor Ham sandwiches. Sure enough, the menu at their homepage has ‘em on there for $5.75, and you can get Taylor Ham on your pizza if you want. I’ve never tried that before. Those in St. Louis should give one of these ‘dwiches a try. Great after a night on the town.

On to business…

The big news today is that the Blues beat the Devils, 3-2, to pull within a tie of the Columbus Blue Jackets for last place in the Western conference. The Blues are 8-6-4 since Andy Murray took over.

Mark Mulder also signed with the Cardinals, an incentive laden contract for two years with a club option. The guaranteed salary is $5mil for 2007 and $6.5mil for 2008, so in the worst case scenario where Mark Mulder’s pitching career never recovers from his rotator cuff tear, the signing won’t cripple the team’s ability to sign other players. In the the best-case scenario, Mark Mulder pitches like an ace and earns $43 million dollars over the next three years. I’d reckon neither of those scenarios are probable—a hopeful, yet not un-likely scenario is that Guacamulder pitches a little worse than his 2005 numbers for four or five months this season and around his 2004 numbers in 2008/9. It’s a worthwhile risk. I’ll be anxiously awaiting his rehab stint.

The Cardinals also signed Ryan Franklin, a right-hander who had a few decent seasons starting for the Mariners until last year, when he pitched out of the Phillies bullpen until being DFA’ed. The Reds traded a PTBNL (named Zac Stott) for him and he showed improvement with the Reds. A flyball pitcher with the Mariners, he learned to keep the ball on the ground in his smaller home parks in 2006. He’s got five decent pitches in his bag of tricks: fastball, curve, slider, change, splitter. For most of his career, lefthanded batters had a hard time hitting him when he didn’t walk them—a fairly intriguing split. Aside from being five years older, his recent career looks a bit like Jeff Suppan’s after 2003 if you squint your eyes right and lop off the Pirates portion of Suppan’s 2003 season. I hated the signing when I first saw it, but there’s enough there to be intrigued by this $1mil contract. He’ll get competition for the fifth starter spot from Brad Thompson and Chris Narveson in Spring Training—Looper will probably get a start just to keep these guys honest before switching to late-innings duty.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Narveson is likely to survive the waiver gauntlet. I expect the Cardinals to try to re-assign Narvie to minor-league camp as soon as he has a bad outing and would withdraw him if someone claims him. There are a whole bunch of good pitchers out there without options remaining who look like better bets to contribute this year that he should be able to get in plenty of work in AAA this season. I sure hope we don’t let him get away for nothing, though.

The Cardinals will sign another right-handed outfielder (Preston Wilson, presumably) before ST, but aside from that and restocking AAA, this should be it—barring injury, of course. And so, we can perform the first roster prognostication of the 2007 offseason. These are the twenty-five players I expect to see on the opening day 25-man roster:

Rotation

Carpenter – Reyes – Wainwright – Wells – Franklin

Brad Thompson’s fighting for a roster spot in my reckoning. He’s still got an option year available—it wouldn’t surprise me much if he was a starter for the Memphis Redbirds to begin the year, even though he’s a solid MLB quality pitcher.

Regular Fielders

C: Yadier Molina
1B: Albert Pujols
2B: Adam Kennedy
3B: Scott Rolen
SS: David Eckstein
LF: Chris Duncan
CF: Jim Edmonds
RF: Juan Encarnacion

I’m guessing Jimmy Ballgame’s shoulder is healed up and he’s ready to play come opening day. If not, here’s hoping Skip Schumaker or Reid Gorecki have phenomenal Springs. Let’s hope they do either way.

Bench

UT 2B/SS: Aaron Miles
UT 1B/3B/COF: Scott Spiezio
C: Gary Bennett
OF: So Taguchi
OF: Preston Wilson

It doesn’t look like we’ll be making any offensive upgrades on the bench. I’d have liked to swap out Preston Wilson with someone more reliable (Bernie Williams was the crazy idea the other day). So Taguchi showed some uncharacteristic defensive lapses last season and, postseason heroics aside, isn’t much of a weapon off the bench. The alternatives are Skip Schumaker and Reid Gorecki, both excellent defenders with questionable ability with the whole bat-swinging part of the game. I’m hoping both of those fellows have good seasons at the plate in Memphis. Only one of them can play center-field in any one game, though. That’s probably to the advantage of both to play all over the outfield next year.

Bullpen

RHP: Jason Isringhausen (Closer)
RHP: Braden Looper
RHP: Josh Kinney
RHP: Josh Hancock
RHP: Russ Springer
LHP: Randy Flores
LHP: Tyler Johnson

I’d be stunned if LHP Ricardo Rincon began the season with the Cardinals. If he’s healthy and effective, he’ll be traded off like Mike Myers was for Kevin Ool in 2004. It’s undoubtable that we’ll see LHP Troy Cate called up at some point this season. I expect big things out of Andy Cavazos this year, too.

This exercise seemed ridiculously easy this offseason compared to last. No doubt, the baseball gods will surprise us with unexpected performances in March to make these prognostications look silly.

It’s not the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, but this AP feature is pretty damned silly. Scooter provides better quality information.

This article in the Palm Beach Post about McGwire is a nice piece.

Thanks to Davers in the comments for providing us with endless joy at work. Go thee to a webpage that looks nice (not this one) and past the javascript junk below in the address bar and hit “enter”. It’s quite marvelous.

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position=’absolute’; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval(‘A()’,5); void(0);

I used it on Bernie Williams’ home page. The Yankees don’t have room on their roster anymore for Williams now that they’ve signed Min-kay-vich and Kai-row. I think he’d be an ideal fifth starter for my beloved St. Louis Cardinals, replacing Preston Wilson from last season’s roster. He’d be fun to root for and I think he’d have a lot of fun playing for the St. Louis faithful—and who wouldn’t want to play with Albert Pujols. He’d be a great clubhouse presence and I’m sure Tony would love to have him on his team. Bernie’s thirteen home runs away from 300 for his career, so I’m thinking he’ll want to come back for one more season, even if it isn’t with the Yankees. I’d also think that, although he’d probably get more AB playing for an AL team, he wouldn’t want to play against the Yankees and would rather head to the senior circuit.

If Bernie Williams became a Cardinal, we’d have three switch hitters on the bench. His old scouting report suggests he’s exactly what the Cardinals need:

He prefers the ball away, especially from the right side, where he can drive the ball with power to right field. He feasts off soft-tossing lefty types.

Williams hit very well against LHP in 2006:

133AB .323/.387/.549 7HR 14BB:11K

He’s three baseball years younger than Moises Alou, who just got $8.5mil from the Mets (whose 2007 roster will also sport the 49! year! old! Julio Franco). ZiPS likes Williams to put up a .267/.343/.410 line in 2007, better across the board than Encarnacion’s .265/.315/.405 projected line. His right-field defense looks was suspect in 2006 according to Tangotiger’s defensive system.

A wail would go up in certain quarters of Cardinal Nation that this is Timo all over again. I would not join in the chorus (as I did then). It’d make a lot of sense and give us a pretty solid bench, with good above-replacement level OF options at AAA in Ryan Ludwick, John Rodriguez, and possibly Reid Gorecki.

I didn’t watch much in the way of sports this weekend. Saw the endings of the Cowboys-Seahawks game (poor, poor Romo) and the Giants-Eagles game (poor, poor Romo). Missed Illinois’ worst home loss in men’s basketball since 1976 (both games to TOSU). I’d planned on watching all those games, but History Channel ran a two-day marathon of Band of Brothers. I’ve seen it several times before but if it’s on, I’m watching it. I should really buy the DVD set, since I like it so much. While watching on Sunday, I worked on a project for a while and took breaks to read the wikipedia pages on the men portrayed in the movie. The scene when Lt. Speirs takes over the assault of Foy is one of the more amazing and dramatic parts of the miniseries, so I started with him. Good to learn that he’s still alive, having retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. The wikipedia entry on the 506^th PIR has links to entries for several others of those men in the miniseries, as well as a link to that regiment’s Veterans page, where we learn that the current manifestation of the Currahee returned from deployment in Iraq this past November.

It turns out that I won’t get to go to the Champaign stop of the Cardinals Caravan tour this Thursday. I was looking forward to talking with Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan a bit, both players whom I’ve long kept a close eye on. I wanted to talk a little hockey with Dan McLaughlin, too. Alas, it isn’t to be. I’ll be in Chicago, meeting with people from D & M Professional about what sorts of products they should be developing for the higher education market. It should be a fun and productive trip.

The Champaign stop was at noon on a Thursday, anyways. Schools would be in, so I wouldn’t have been able to kidnap a kid to bring with me so as not to look like an overgrown fan-boy.

The dates and rosters for the 2007 Cardinals Caravans have been announced for next week. I’m definitely going to the one in Champaign next Thursday:

Players: Randy Flores, Skip Schumaker, Brendan Ryan, Chris Lambert, Ken Reitz, Ken Dayley
Emcee: Dan McLaughlin

I’ve been an unapologetic fan of Skip Schumaker since his first call-up. He made a one-hop throw from the warning track to home plate that was beaten by about six steps by the runner. Dude’s got a cannon. I had my fingers crossed this past season that he’d significantly improve his offensive numbers in his second AAA season as he’d done in his second season at AA, but he didn’t. He took a lot of third strikes with full counts. If he could become a hitter in the mold of David Eckstein—mastering the art of fouling off the close pitch—he could be a much more valuable fourth outfielder/defensive specialist than So Taguchi. I’m looking for big things out of Brendan Ryan this year. If he has a good season, he’ll be the starting shortstop for the 2008 Cardinals.

On Saturday, it looks like I’ll have to make the short trip to Bloomington for this group:

Players: Anthony Reyes, Aaron Miles, Brad Thompson, Colby Rasmus, Blake Hawksworth, Danny Cox, Al Hrabosky
Emcee: John Rooney

Colby Rasmus is our farm system’s undisputed top prospect, the center fielder who may very well take over the reigns from Jimmy Ballgame in 2009. Anthony Reyes projects to break out as our #2 starter next season after pitching an absolute gem in Game 1 of the World Series. Blake Hawksworth had a fine 2006 season recovering from significant injury and should join the Cardinals rotation in 2008, possibly late in 2007.

Should be fun.

With no doubt, my favorite sports blog in existence is Big Ten Wonk. John Gasaway is just a fantastic writer with an easily recognizable style. (I’m pretty sure he’s got a macro built into his text editor for pasting “Edvard Munch-level horror” and other formulaic expressions he uses.) I’m quite certain that I wouldn’t like college basketball nearly as much as I do without the analysis he contributes, in spite of the exceptional run that the U of I men’s team has had over the last several years. Watching a sporting event without the analytical background isn’t all that much fun for me. BTW does an excellent job of explaining what gives the meaning to meaningful statistics, like when he castigated ESPN’s analyst for referring to Indiana as the best rebounding team in the Big Ten based on raw counts of balls rebounded:

Last night the ESPN Plus announcers in Assembly Hall praised Indiana for “leading the Big Ten in offensive rebounding,” noting that the Hoosiers, going into last night, averaged nearly 14 offensive boards a game.

Forgive me, but (insert throat-clearing noise here): Aaaaaiiiiieeeeee!

Why, at this late date, do announcers still talk like this? This cannot be a complex concept: a high number of offensive rebounds indicates a high number of missed shots. What’s important, of course, is not the number of offensive rebounds but the ratio of offensive rebounds to misses….

In a post yesterday praising The Ohio State University’s shooting, he wrote the following sentence that made me laugh out loud, which happens a lot less frequently while staring at a computer screen than teenagers’ IM Chat logs would suggest:

That pushy weenie known as regression-to-the-mean suggests, of course, that the Buckeyes’ shooting can’t continue to be this good.

That’s a line that’ll get me laughing pretty often down through the years.

Incidentally, Dave Studeman has a good essay up at HBT discussing that pushy weenie.

I’ve found RotoWorld to be an excellent source for baseball news here in the offseason. It’s a Fantasy Baseball website—I don’t play in any fantasy sports leagues, but they’ve do a very good job of aggregating news stories big and small at this page. They also include a little bit of fantasy analysis that’s usually snarky but not at all without value. For example, Neal Cotts signed a contract with the Cubs today and RotoWorld leads off the analysis with this line: “Someone has a sense of humor, as the only incentive in the contract is a $150,000 bonus for being named World Series MVP.” That’s pretty funny. Might as well have held out for a million dollar incentive, given the probability that a middle reliever/second lefty for the Chicago Cubs would be named Most Valuable Player of the World Series.

I’ve been advocating a plan of signing about three AAAA/rehabbed starters to split contracts and letting them compete for the fifth starter role in Spring Training. The master plan would be to sign Mulder and let the best of these guys pitch until he finishes his rehabilitation. Ideally, the AAAA starter surprises in the first half and you end up with an always nice surplus of starting pitching. Looking around for good candidates, where “good” is defined primarily by durability and where the pitcher may have succeeded in front of a better defense, I’ve liked the idea of bringing Chris Gissell back from Japan, picking up Brian Lawrence after he spent all of last season rehabilitating from significant shoulder injury, and signing Jamey Wright, as I argue for every off-season.

I’ll toss out the names of two more candidates today. The first is Brad Voyles, who was Larry Borowski’s 2006 ST dark horse candidate to make the 25-man roster. He asked about Voyles in an early interview with Memphis pitching coach Dyar Miller:

He might be the most polished pitcher I have. He doesn’t have overpowering stuff, but he knows how to pitch, knows how to hold runners on. He throws a fastball, a little cutter, and a curve, and he can get that curve over for a strike any time. He has a tendency to pitch backwards — throw the curve early in the count, then come back with the fastball. I don’t always like that approach, but when you can get the pitch over it works. His control has been pretty darn good. A lot of it comes from maturity. He told me the other day, ‘Man, I wish I knew how to pitch the way I do now about seven or eight years ago.’

As you can see from his baseball cube page, he developed as a relief pitcher and was converted to a part-time starter in 2003 with the Royals AAA team. His 2006 season sadly was cut short after a serious freak injury to his pectoral while warming up to pitch.

He’s currently a free agent pitching as a starter in the Venezuelan winter league. (team page.) He’s pitching mighty well, to boot. He struck out nine over seven innings on 12/8/2006 against Magellanes, allowing only one run on a walk and a hit (the only hit a home run to Erold Andrus, according to that day’s box scores from the Venezuelan league website.

[Update: ARRGH!! Before even finishing this post, I swear on my life, Brad Voyles suddenly pops up on Rotoworld as signing with the Twins. Along with Sidney Ponson... Un-freaking-believable. The Cards really need to sign some people to play in Memphis. It'd be nice to bring back Brian Falkenborg, at least.]

The other pitcher is Ben Hendrickson, a formerly big prospect for the Brewers. He’s said to have a curveball that drops off like an anvil, has dominated AAA batters (although he got lit up down the stretch, possibly because the club told him he wouldn’t be called up in September.) His option years are used up and he’d have to have an incredible Spring to crack the rotation. Jeff Sackmann doesn’t like him and the folks at Brewerfan.net are ready to cut ties. There’s no chance he’d make it through waivers unclaimed (and almost certainly would be claimed before the Cardinals would have a chance.) It’ll be interesting to see if he finally manages to make the jump this season—now that he has to make it.

One last note… Brandon Claussen still hasn’t been signed anywhere after being non-tendered by the Reds. He’d probably be ready around the same time as Mark Mulder. It would be good to contact his agent and keep him from signing a minor-league deal anywhere until after Mulder does. I think he’ll get his career back on track—he’d make a good Plan B if Mulder signs with another team.