The St. Louis Cardinals suffered the first crack in their best-in-baseball starting rotation Sunday when they placed Jake Westbrook on the 15-day disabled list with elbow inflammation. The team decided to give Westrbook’s start to rookie John Gast, but they might have been better off to let a more experienced pitcher fill that role.

Joe Kelly made his Major League Baseball debut in similar circumstances last season after Jaime Garcia suffered a shoulder injury in June. Kelly went on to make 16 starts and post a 4-6 record with a 3.53 earned-run average, overall.

Although he didn’t have a winning record, Kelly did an admirable job filling a hole in the rotation last summer. He pitched six or more innings in all but three of his starts, and the Cardinals offense scored two or fewer runs in five of his six losses, and they scored just three in the other.

Kelly moved to the bullpen when Garcia returned in September and pitched well. He allowed just two runs in six appearances, but he also had a consistent workload by pitching about every third day. Manager Mike Matheny has significantly dropped his workload this season, and it’s shown in his results.

Kelly pitched twice in the Cardinals’ season-opening series in Arizona against the Diamondbacks, but he pitched only six more times the rest of April and had the fewest outings for any Cardinals reliever.

And then he imploded when the Cardinals did bring him into ballgames. He has allowed 10 runs in 11.2 innings pitched, but he’s also appeared in just three games in May. Perhaps a bigger role would help him get comfortable again and start to pitch better.

That’s also why a move to the rotation might help. Kelly would be guaranteed to pitch every fifth day, and he would be able to extend his pitch total well beyond what he gets as a member of the bullpen. He hasn’t thrown more than 27 pitches in an appearance this season, and that could quadruple if he moved to the rotation.

Plus, the Cardinals management wouldn’t have to hold its breath with another rookie on the mound to start a game.

Gast has been good for the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds. He’s 3-1 with a 1.16 ERA in seven starts this season in the minors, but there is always an unknown factor that comes into play when a rookie makes a start, and they often don’t pitch very deep into a ballgame.

The Cardinals might have left Kelly in the bullpen because they don’t want to force him to shift between starting and relieving if Westbrook comes back soon, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem since Kelly bounced between the rotation and bullpen last season and worked as a starter in spring training because he was in contention for the fifth spot in the rotation with Shelby Miller.

The Cardinals have even set a precedent for bringing up young pitchers this season when they brought Seth Maness and Carlos Martinez up from the minors. Both of those pitchers went straight into the bullpen and have done well.

Martinez gave up three runs Sunday to the Colorado Rockies in his third appearance, but he had not allowed a run and given up just one hit in his previous two outings. Meanwhile, Maness already has two wins, has allowed just one hit hasn’t walked a hitter in 3.1 innings through three outings.

Martinez and Maness could certainly become starters at some point in their career, yet the Cardinals will still send Gast to the mound while Martinez, Maness and Kelly sit in the bullpen.

Maybe Gast will be great and pitch the way Kelly and Lance Lynn did last season as fill-in rookie starters when they went a combined 23-14 with a combined 3.66 ERA.

But if he’s not, the Cardinals will have wasted games by hoping yet another rookie will do well in the rotation while Kelly sits in the bullpen.

The St. Louis Cardinals notched their Major League Baseball-leading 14^th road victory Wednesday with a 5-4 win over the Chicago Cubs and continued a trend that could pay off later in the season.

The Cardinals are 14-7 away from Busch Stadium and have won more games on the road than eight teams have won at all this season. That’s partially because the Cardinals have also played the most road games in baseball, but it is also the type of record that could set the Cardinals up for a great summer stretch.

The team is just 7-5 at home this season, but they have also played just one team in those 12 games that is under .500 for the season, and that’s the Milwaukee Brewers, who are 15-16.

Coming up, the Kansas City Royals will be the only team above .500 the Cardinals will face at home in May before the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks visit during the first week of June.

So expectations have to be increasingly high for a team that has jumped to the best record in the National League while playing 21 of 33 games on the road and many of them being against quality opponents.

Their 21-12 record is also surprising, given the bullpen struggles throughout April, but the bullpen has improved significantly of late and hasn’t blown a lead since Joe Kelly imploded by giving up four runs April 27 to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the seventh inning of a 5-3 loss.

Since then, the team has won seven of its next 10 games and pulled out to a three-game lead over the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates heading into play Thursday.

Not many people expected the Cardinals to be this good, especially this early in the season. If anything, the Reds were supposed to run away with the division, but they are 19-16, including a 6-10 record on the road.

In fact, the Cardinals are one of just seven teams to have a winning road record so far this season, but it is a large determining factor in success because all but two of those teams, the Diamondbacks and Cleveland Indians, are first or second in their division.

Now, however, the Cardinals will have to maintain their pace in upcoming games at Busch Stadium against the Colorado Rockies, New York Mets and the Brewers because this is a wonderful opportunity to bank wins while the team has a generally healthy roster, a starting rotation that is putting up historic numbers and a bullpen that looks as though it can hold a lead in the late innings.

Four relievers combined to give up no runs and just two hits in the final 3.2 innings Wednesday against the Cubs after Jake Westbrook allowed four runs and nine hits in his 5.1 innings.

That kind of relief performance is what it is going to take for the Cardinals to maintain their success. The starting rotation has combined for a historically low 2.25 earned-run average so far this season, but it is not going to be able to keep that pace throughout the season.

But, it saved the Cardinals through the first month and perhaps the bullpen is coming around at the perfect time.

That could make for a lot of fun summer nights this season at Busch Stadium.

The St. Louis Cardinals have gone through a 15-game stretch when they’ve scored more than three runs just five times, yet they’ve won eight of those games. So despite near panic that the lineup has forgotten how to hit, the team is still winning ballgames mostly because the starting pitchers have been terrific to start the season.

The starting rotation likely won’t continue to pitch with a historically low 2.15 earned-run average, which was the fourth-lowest starters ERA for April in franchise history, but there are several reasons to believe the offense will start scoring many more runs on a consistent basis.

Third baseman David Freese is currently in a horrible slump, hitting just .163 with no homeruns and three RBIs, and centerfielder Jon Jay is hitting .213 with two homeruns and eight RBIs. Those sound like great numbers compared to Freese, but the Cardinals need at least average production from both of those spots to contend in the National League Central Division.

The other aspect of this situation is the Cardinals’ opponents. The Cardinals have faced arguably four of the six toughest non-divisional opponents in April, the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants, Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals, and every NL Central team they’ve played has a winning record.

This isn’t going to be an easy season no matter how well the Cardinals play. Sure, the Cardinals could have four or five more wins already if the bullpen hadn’t been horrible to start the season, but chances are slim the Cardinals are going to go on any long winning streaks this season. The competition is just too good.

The Pittsburgh Pirates took two of three games from the Cardinals last weekend as A.J. Burnett threw another quality start Saturday, and rookie Jeff Locke shut them down Sunday (which isn’t surprising given the Cardinals typical struggles against left-handed pitchers, especially ones they haven’t faced before).

Then the Cincinnati Reds visited Busch Stadium for a very well-pitched series in which Reds starter Homer Bailey was the only starting pitcher to give up more than two runs in the three-game series when the Cardinals scored four against him Wednesday.

Those types of games are unquestionably difficult to watch when the Cardinals lose, but they are well-played games nonetheless. The offense does need to produce more runs, but good pitching has always beaten good hitting, and thankfully the Cardinals have good pitching.

Also, several Cardinals hitters are unlikely to stay stuck in their slumps.

Freese and Jay have proven throughout their careers they are good hitters who can make significant contributions to a lineup. Freese has a career .290 batting average, including his poor start to the 2013 season, and Jay is a career .294 hitter who has shown recent signs of life at the plate with three hits in a recent series against the Pirates.

Plus, the Cardinals schedule lightens up a bit in May. They will face the Chicago Cubs, New York Mets and San Diego Padres, which are already a combined 17 games under .500, for nine games in the next month. By comparison, the Cardinals’ April opponents are a combined 10 games over .500 as they head into May.

So although it’s easy to look at the winnable games the Cardinals lost in May, they should win more of those types of games this month because the schedule will be a little easier and, based on career averages, the offense should begin to produce more runs, especially against teams with weaker pitching staffs.

That all sets up what could be a fun month of baseball so long as the Cardinals avoid injuries, which isn’t a guarantee. This is the point in the season when they lost Allen Craig, Lance Berkman and Matt Carpenter to injuries for extended time in 2012.

The NL Central is too good this season for the Cardinals to jump out to a large lead, but St. Louis fans should be confident their team will still be at or near the top of the division by the time the calendar turns to June.

The St. Louis Cardinals finished second in the National League in hitting last season, but they also had plenty of stretches when the lineup didn’t score more than two runs, even when the pitching staff threw a great game.

And that trend has already continued into 2013.

The San Francisco Giants scored just one unearned run Friday off of Cardinals starter Jake Westbrook, who threw a very solid 6.2 innings and pitched well enough to earn a win, but the Cardinals couldn’t score any runs off of Giants starter Barry Zito and lost the game 1-0.

Yes, Zito is the same lefthanded pitcher who shut the Cardinals down in Game Five of the 2012 National League Championship Series, but the Cardinals have already shown signs of a team that will go through weeks when it struggles mightily to score a run, while other weeks it hits homers at an incredible rate.

In just the first four games of the season, the Cardinals scored 15 of their 17 runs in two games. They were held to two runs by Arizona Diamondbacks starter Ian Kennedy in the season opener, and then Zito and the Giants shut them out Friday.

This pattern is certain to cause frustration among fans who see starts such as Westbrook’s Friday outing wasted because the offense can’t score.

It’s also not a prototypical pattern of success. In fact, it was one of the biggest reasons the Giants beat the Cardinals in seven games in last year’s NLCS. No pitching staff is going to be able to carry an offense that scores one run in the final three games of that series.

The Cardinals actually scored 52 runs combined in their seven playoff wins last season, but they scored just five runs in their six losses.

And that one day hot, one day not syndrome carried into 2013. The Cardinals even showed inconsistency at the plate during the month of spring training games. They scored seven or more runs in nine of their 16 wins and scored three or fewer runs in 12 of their 15 losses.

Those numbers show the offense might be the most important factor for the Cardinals this season. Sure, the pitching staff has to pitch quality games more often than not, but the numbers say the Cardinals win-loss record is primarily defined by how well the offense hits.

When the Cardinals hit the ball well, they win. When they don’t, they lose.

That’s a pretty simple formula, but it’s also a scary one since the Cardinals have injury-prone hitters such as Carlos Beltran, Allen Craig and David Freese as important pieces of their lineup.

Beltran is playing through a fractured toe and has had trouble moving in the first week, Craig nearly injured his knee again by sliding into a wall in Arizona and Freese started the season on the disabled list with a back injury.

Those issues have surely played a part in the offense’s early struggles, and none of those figure to be major problems for the Cardinals throughout the season. Freese’s return by, hopefully, Monday’s home opener against the Cincinnati Reds will help, but the entire offense is going to have to be more consistent throughout the course of the season.

That means they’ll likely have to score more runs by playing small ball and moving a runner along the bases without getting a hit. Craig and Matt Holliday did a great job of manufacturing a run in the fourth inning of Tuesday’s 6-1 win over the Diamondbacks, which also happened to be the Cardinals only win of the season heading into play Saturday.

Centerfielder Jon Jay led off the inning with a double, Holliday then grounded out to second base to advance Jay to third and Craig followed with another groundout to score Jay.

The big homeruns and innings filled with bunches of runs might be fun to watch, just as a roller-coaster is fun to ride, but the steady, consistent innings that produce a run or two every day will more likely determine the Cardinals final record.

The St. Louis Cardinals will send nine players on to the field Monday at Chase Field in Phoenix for their season opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks, but they won’t have many replacement options if one, or more, of those players can’t play the entire game.

The team will have a dugout full of bench players, of course, but recent injuries have suddenly taken a lot of talent that would be on the bench and put it into the starting lineup.

The Cardinals already had limited depth at the middle-infield positions once Rafael Furcal found out at the beginning of spring training he couldn’t throw and would need elbow surgery. Pete Kozma suddenly became the team’s first option at shortstop with Ronny Cedeno as the back-up.

But then the team released Cedeno on March 19 after he hit .290 in 16 games with the club.

That left the Cardinals with three middle infielders: Kozma, Matt Carpenter and Daniel Descalso.

Carpenter had all but wrapped up the starting job at second base, but third baseman David Freese eventually succumbed to a sore back that had plagued him much of the spring. Freese will now start the season on the disabled list, and Carpenter will have to take over the third base job in the meantime.

As the game of musical chairs goes, Descalso will fill in at second base, and Ryan Jackson will take the spot on the bench as the team’s back-up middle infielder. However, Jackson has hit .136 so far in spring training and hit .118 in 13 games with the big-league club in 2012.

Granted, that is a very small sample size, and the Cardinals have seen with players such as Kozma how past struggles don’t predict a bad future. Kozma hit .236 in more than five years in the minor leagues before helping spark a late-season surge by the Cardinals in 2012 with a .333 batting average in 26 games.

Still, a player who hasn’t hit above .150 as a major leaguer isn’t much of an insurance plan to open the regular season.

The Cardinals made Freese’s move to the disabled list retroactive to March 22 so he will be eligible to play in the team’s home opener April 8 against the Cincinnati Reds.

So if all goes well, the Cardinals should have their starting third baseman back within the first week of the regular season, which would allow Carpenter to move back to second base and Descalso could become the utility infielder that provides solid production when the starters need a day off.

Right now the Cardinals can’t afford for their starters to take a day off.

And that could be something to keep in mind late in the season when Kozma and Carpenter, who have started a combined 95 games in two seasons, start to feel the fatigue of a full Major League Baseball schedule.

The same could be said for the Cardinals pitching staff, as well. Closer Jason Motte’s injury had a ripple effect through the bullpen and the starting rotation.

Mitchell Boggs will have to fill Motte’s spot at the back of the bullpen, but Motte’s injury also made Joe Kelly more valuable in a relief role instead of the fifth and final spot in the rotation, which went to Shelby Miller, who the Cardinals have groomed to be a starter throughout his minor-league career.

Kelly at least pitched out of the bullpen in college and made 15 appearances as a reliever last season for the Cardinals in the regular season and playoffs combined.

The Cardinals have remarkably sustained success through a multitude of injuries in the 2011 and 2012 seasons.

They’ll have to maintain that resiliency again in 2013, but this time there is no Carpenter, Descalso, Jon Jay or Allen Craig to insert into a key situation late in the game. Those players now must be the team’s foundation instead of its accessories.

The St. Louis Cardinals will open the season with the Arizona Diamondbacks on April 1.  Last season, the group of bloggers known as the United Cardinal Bloggers (UCB) pulled together to provide fans with an easy way to preview each series the club would participate in.  The collaborative effort became known as The Bird’s Eye View.

The UCB has once again drawn their collective talents to bring fans this newsletter service at the beginning of each series.  People who register for The Bird’s Eye View will receive an email on the first day of each series providing an in depth look at pitching matchups, key components and emerging news for the Cardinals and their opponents in the series.

The writers here at i70baseball are proud members of the UCB and will contribute to The Birds Eye View periodically throughout 2013.  We invite all of our readers to sign up for this email report by filling out the form located here.  Don’t worry, your email address will only be used to send you a copy of The Bird’s Eye View before each series the Cardinals play and will not be used for any other purposes or promotions.

Source: Sports Management Degree Hub

The St. Louis Cardinals reached an agreement with third baseman David Freese on Friday on a deal for the 2013 season. The deal will be for a reported $3.1 million dollars, and with it, the team avoided heading to arbitration to settle the deal. However, the deal represents the just beginning of potentially difficult decision making process over the next few years. And the relationship between the 30-year old and the club could be put the test as well.

Freese represents a paradox in several areas. He’s a late bloomer that’s coming into his own during his prime seasons. While his 2011 postseason heroics and honors set the tone, he really put his stamp on his future in what he delivered in the follow up season. In 2012, he played a career-high 144 games, while hitting for a .293 average, along with 25 home runs, 79 RBI, 25 doubles and 70 runs scored, all career highs as well. He took this into his first arbitration-eligible season, and the Cardinals responded with a $2.4 offer, while Freese’s agent countered with a $3.75 million offer. While they settled at about the middle point between the offers, he’s in a position to get some substantial jumps up the ladder in the next few years.

Freese is entering into his negotiation years at an interesting time, for both player and club. The third base market has seen the majority of its top flight players locked to contracts the last two years. Ryan Zimmerman, David Wright, Evan Longoria and Martin Prado have all received new contracts at the position in recent memory, essentially setting the bar for money at the position for the near future. These deals average at around $15 million per year over the life of a five year deal, and each represents a franchise cornerstone. However, it’s Prado’s deal from last month that is the most intriguing when accessing what Freese’s worth could be.

The 29 year old Prado signed a four-year, $40 million extension with the Arizona Diamondbacks shortly after being traded from Atlanta last month. This deal represents what he will play at through his majority prime years (it will expire when he’s 330. It is a cut below the massive deals that aforementioned group received, but still a very a solid value-to-length deal. The similarities between the Freese and Prado are there as well: both are one-time All-Stars, with similar career batting numbers (Prado a .295 career hitter, Freese .296). Prado is a more versatile option in the field, but Freese carries a .345 career postseason batting average, a place where much of his value comes into play.

Freese is a large part of the foundation of the Cardinals going ahead, although he’s a notch below the type of cornerstone performer Wright or Zimmerman is. He’ll play this season at age 30, and is past the type of deal that either a young player or a player with longer resume would get at his age. While a medium-length/annual salary deal such as Prado received makes sense, it’s also hindered by his arbitration status. More likely than not, the Prado-like extension wouldn’t be approached until terms are exchanged next year, and for good reason. The raise he will play at this season is a raise of $2.6 million. If he continues to play at the level he established last year, a comparable raise could continue along, rising at close to the $7 million per year level by the time he is eligible to hit the open market in two years.

The Cardinals could very easily continue to maintain Freese through his arbitration seasons as a cost controlled option that continues to be a “wait and see” property. But if the subtle, yet hard line he stood this winter is any indication of what’s to come, Freese understands his value, and he won’t be long for having non-committal terms. Especially as he’s playing through his highest earning potential seasons, and the team is showing a willingness to put money up early to avoid arbitration, such as they did with closer Jason Motte last month.

There are several lines of legit questioning that can go into such a deal, many of which will be answered this year. Can he have another healthy summer? Will he continue to grow as an offensive presence, has he did a year ago or plateau? Obviously, the franchise won’t be forced into having to make a deal for two more years, which will serve as a fair measuring ground of what to do. A deal over five years would be difficult, which age as a primary consideration. Also, there’s the fact that much of the core of the team is in a similar place, with year-to-year deals with Allen Craig, Jon Jay and Lance Lynn to tend to.

But locking Freese up to a deal has some urgency to it that cannot be denied either. He’s a productive and already showing his prime level of play, but the Cardinals are also evolving as a team regularly now, and will be on the verge of a mini-youth movement over the next two years, as their top shelf prospects begin to push into the picture at the Major League level. Finding the right deal to keep Freese situated in St. Louis is important, and provides face and play value stability to the team at difficult position to do so at. However, timing is everything. And there is nobody wearing the birds on bat has a more bi-polar relationship with time than Freese does now.

With the Hall Of Fame election announcement coming on January 9, 2013, it is time to review the ballot, go over the names, and decide who belongs in the Hall Of Fame.

There are twenty four men on the ballot for the first time this year and we will take a look at each one individually prior to official announcements. You can find all of the profiles in the I-70 Baseball Exclusives: Cooperstown Choices 2013 menu at the top of the page.

In this article, we take a look at Curt Schilling

Why He Should Get In
Schilling’s case is one that is defined by his performance in big games and the postseason.  While most of his regular season stats put him as a borderline hall of famer, his postseason numbers are seldom rivaled.  With a 11-2 record, a 2.23 earned run average, an average of over 7 innings per start, a WHIP below one and a strikeout per nine innings over eight, his postseason prowess will have many clamoring for his induction based on the postseason alone.

Why He Should Not Get In
Yes, he was a huge pitcher in the postseason and had monumental success on the biggest stage.  That being said, he does not have the hardware to back up his claim to Cooperstown.  Finishing second multiple times for the Cy Young Award simply makes him the second best pitcher during those seasons.  According to Baseball-Reference, he ranks as a slighly above the average hall of fame pitcher (according to the Jaffe WAR Score System).  However, advanced statistics have yet to play a large influence on hall of fame voters.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball
Follow him on Twitter here.

For most of the last quarter of a century, the Kansas City Royals have done something more difficult than achieving success…they’ve avoided it completely.

Royals fans are very well aware of the last time their favorite team played a post-season game. It was October of 1985, and there is a large group of Royals fans that have been born and graduated college and maybe even gotten their first promotion that have never witnessed this feat. This is truly a remarkable feat, especially when you consider the following things that have taken place in major league baseball since October of 1985:

• The Florida/Miami Marlins have managed to enter the league as an expansion team, and win 2 World Series titles
• The Colorado Rockies emerged as an expansion team and have qualified for the playoffs 3 times and played in one World Series
• The Arizona Diamondbacks entered the league as an expansion team and have qualified for the playoffs 5 times and won one World Series title
• The Tampa Bay Rays entered the league as an expansion team and have made 3 playoff appearances and one World Series appearance, and are currently on pace to make the playoffs again this year
• The Cincinnati Reds have made 3 playoff appearances and won one World Series title, and are currently on pace to make the playoffs again this year
• The Minnesota Twins have made 8 playoff appearances and won two World Series titles
• The Baltimore Orioles have made 2 playoff appearances and are currently on pace to make the playoffs this year
• The Pittsburgh Pirates have made 3 playoff appearances and are currently in contention for a playoff spot this year
• The Toronto Blue Jays have made 4 playoff appearances and won 2 World Series titles
• The Cleveland Indians have made 7 playoff appearances and appeared in 1 World Series
• The Oakland Athletics have made 9 playoff appearances, 3 World Series appearances, and won 1 World Series title
• The Seattle Mariners have made 4 playoff appearances
• The Milwaukee Brewers have made 2 playoff appearances
• The San Diego Padres have made 4 playoff appearances and one World Series appearance

The 14 organizations listed above are all similar in market size to the Royals.  Most of these organizations have had multiple runs of competitive/championship baseball in the time that the Royals have not even been able to put together one. The only organization that has managed to go longer than the Royals without a playoff appearance is the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals.  However, they are all but assured of making the playoffs this season.  While Royals fans likely are ready to throw their computers out the window after reading this, it provides some good perspective on just how pathetic this organization has been over the last 25+ years.