The Royals took two out of three against the Angels and now stand at 20-17, a game and a half back of the division leading Detroit Tigers. In the midst of a nine game road trip, the Royals will now head to Oakland to take on the A’s in a three game set. Here are three things we can take away from the series in Los Angeles (read: Anaheim).

1. Alex Gordon is raking: After going 6/13 with a double against the Angels, Alex Gordon has now posted a scorching hot  .357/.362/.571 line in 58 plate appearances in May.

2. Jeremy Guthrie is who we thought he was: We couldn’t have expected Jeremy Guthrie to win every start, but he certainly fun to watch, having gone nearly a half season’s worth of starts without registering a loss. It appears Guthrie has begun to regress to his career averages, but he’s still going to be a solid starter who will be able to eat innings and will pitch well enough to the Royals in the game and give them a chance to win.

3. It’s time to panic for Mike Moustakas: Struggling mightily coming into the series, Moustakas’ woes continued as he went 1/14 against the Angels, lowering his line to a meager .194/.266/.339 in 139 plate appearances this season. Moustakas hasn’t shown any signs to suggest that he’s going to figure it out anytime soon and the Royals front office should be thinking about other options at third base, if they aren’t already. I assume the front office would prefer to promote from within, so they might consider giving Anthony Seratelli a shot. Seratelli has put up a solid .326/.423/.516 in 111 plate appearances at AAA Omaha this season.

After a good April and keeping up with A.L. Central leading Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Royals are 3-3 so far this May. But for the rest of the month, they have a tough schedule. They have a game against the Baltimore Orioles, then they play the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, Houston Astros, the Angels again, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Texas Rangers. Except for the lowly Astros and struggling Angels, the other teams are above .500 and possible playoff contenders.

Despite this month’s 3-3 record, there’s reasons for concern. So far this month, the Royals have six errors, with four of them committed in their two losses against the Orioles. The usually strong Royals bullpen lost a 2-1 decision to the White Sox Monday night and Luke Hochevar‘s errant pickoff throw to first in Tuesday night’s game against the Orioles led to a 4-3 loss. And in four of the six games played this month, the Royals offense scored three or less runs.

But it’s not all bad. It took until May 8 and 30 games into the season for the Royals to lose three games in a row. Last year, they lost three games in a row by April 14, eight games into the 2012 season. The starting rotation is pitching well, especially Jeremy Guthrie and Ervin Santana. Alex Gordon, Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Perez and Alcides Escobar are playing well. If Tim Collins, Kelvin Herrera and Greg Holland cut down their walks and settle into their roles, the defense quits making errors and the offense scores more runs, the Royals could get through May with a .500 or above record. Or they could implode and have losing record. Either way, we’ll know by June 1.

In four years Jason Motte went from a hard-throwing catcher to a pitcher who closed out a World Series championship and became a linchpin in the St. Louis Cardinals bullpen but, as is the case for many closers, now it is his turn to land on the disabled list with arm problems.

The Cardinals announced Saturday that Motte has a right elbow strain and will likely start the season on the disabled list. The team has a viable back-up in Mitchell Boggs, but Boggs could end up being the Cardinals closer for most, if not all, of 2013.

Although Motte technically has a sprained elbow, he underwent an MRI on Friday that found a tear in one of the ligaments. That sounds an awful lot like what shortstop Rafael Furcal experienced when he tore an elbow ligament Aug. 30. Furcal didn’t play the rest of the season and will now miss the 2013 season after he finally had Tommy John surgery.

That’s not to say Motte is headed toward Tommy John surgery and will be out for the year, but a tear in an elbow ligament doesn’t usually heal itself, at least not quickly.

But this isn’t doomsday for the Cardinals. They can still compete for a playoff spot or even win a World Series championship without Motte. Other teams have experienced this type of situation with their closer, and whether they got lucky to have a good fill-in closer or they simply had a deep bullpen, they still won a lot of baseball games.

For example, the 2012 World Series champion San Francisco Giants lost their closer, Brian Wilson, at the beginning of the season. But they eventually gave Sergio Romo the job and he finished game after game all the way to a four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

The Cardinals are even a step ahead of the Giants because they have a back-up closer ready before the season starts. The Giants had a closer-by-committee situation early in the season as pitchers such as Santiago Casilla tried to finish games before they settle on Romo.

The Cardinals already have Boggs ready to make a relatively easy transition from eighth-inning setup reliever to closer. Boggs led the Cardinals with 78 appearances in 2012 and had a National League-best 34 holds.

Plus, the team has a loaded bullpen that should be able to fill in any open spots without much trouble. Flamethrowing righthanded reliever Trevor Rosenthal has the stuff to shut down hitters for one inning, and the Cardinals have a bevy of righthanded relievers such as Fernando Salas and Edward Mujica who can continue to work the middle innings.

Motte’s injury also might affect the battle between Shelby Miller and Joe Kelly for the fifth and final spot in the starting rotation. The Cardinals could decide to give the rookie Miller the starting job and put Kelly in the bullpen since he worked eight games for the Cardinals in relief last season.

In any case, the Cardinals certainly won’t get the type of consistency from the closer’s role they had in 2012. Motte had all 42 saves for the Cardinals last season and tied with Atlanta Braves closer Craig Kimbrel for the league lead.

That’s a bit much to expect out of Boggs, who hadn’t had an earned-run average below 3.50 until he broke through last year and posted a 2.21 ERA.

But the Cardinals do have a deep enough team to survive an injury to their closer. This isn’t an obituary for their season, but the words to describe Motte’s 2013 season might already be chiseled in stone.

The St. Louis Cardinals project to have an Opening Day lineup full of players who will regularly get on base and it also features plenty of power to drive them in. The one thing the team will lack, however, is speed.

The Cardinals stole 91 bases in 2012, which tied them with the Texas Rangers for 24^th of 30 teams in Major League Baseball, but players who stole more than a quarter of the Cardinals bases last season are either hurt or no longer with the team.

Shortstop Rafael Furcal stole 12 bases last season but is out for the season with an elbow injury, and fellow shortstop Tyler Greene, who had nine stolen bases, is now with the Houston Astros.

That leaves the Cardinals with about four regular stolen base threats. Slow-footed but incredibly intelligent catcher Yadier Molina stole 12 bases last year and could very well steal another dozen or so this season. Rightfielder Carlos Beltran had 13 stolen bases last year, but he is 35 years old and has slowed down considerably in recent years after various knee injuries.

The other proven stolen-base threat from last year’s team is centerfielder Jon Jay, who had 19 last season. He will likely lead the team again this season unless outfield prospect Oscar Taveras makes the team, but even he hasn’t stolen more than 10 bases in a season during his four seasons in the minor leagues.

Shortstop Pete Kozma stole just two bases during his brief 26-game stint with the Cardinals at the end of 2012, but he once stole 24 bases in 2008 and had 13 in 2010, all in the minor leagues.

Other than those options, the Cardinals will likely enter the season with a pretty slow team, but that’s not necessarily a terrible fault.

The Cardinals won the World Series in 2011 after stealing just 57 bases, which ranked last in the National League, and only the Detroit Tigers had fewer steals with 49 that season. The Cardinals also made it to within one game of the World Series in 2012 while ranking 24^th.

And they aren’t the only team that has found it can win without stealing bases. In fact, just three teams that made the 2012 playoffs ranked in the top half of baseball in stolen bases. The Oakland A’s were ninth, the San Francisco Giants were 10^th and the Washington Nationals were 15^th.

Otherwise, all of the best teams didn’t steal many bases. The World Series-champion Detroit Tigers actually ranked dead last for the second year in a row, but they had great power and great pitching.

Those two factors are also why the Cardinals shouldn’t be too concerned about the number of bases they steal in 2013.

They have a lineup that should easily rank in the top 10 in all three of the Triple Crown categories, batting average, homeruns and runs batted in, and they have a pitching staff that should be more than solid if not for too many injuries.

Sure, Chris Carpenter is no longer an option at the top of the rotation, but the Cardinals have arguably the most young talent on their pitching staff since the days Tony La Russa decided to come to St. Louis because Matt Morris and Alan Benes were on their way to the big leagues.

The Whitey Herzog disciples will forever yearn for the days when Cardinals players of the 1980s slapped the ball into play and ran like the wind around the bases, but those days have long since passed. And they aren’t coming back anytime soon, at least not as long as the Cardinals furnish a lineup with five batters who can hit 20 or more homeruns.

So while the Cardinals style of play might not be terribly exciting on the basepaths, nearly every other aspect of their play is good enough that they will likely once again be playoff contenders come September.

Source: Sports Management Degree Hub

Trevor Rosenthal might have lost the battle for the final starting rotation spot, but the St. Louis Cardinals gained a great resource for their bullpen in 2013.

Trevor Rosenthal – photo from FoxSportsMidwest

The Cardinals officially said last week that Rosenthal is out of the running for the fifth spot in the rotation and will start the season in the bullpen. And while that might be disappointing for a pitcher who had a goal of winning that battle, the move should work out best for both sides.

Rosenthal can throw more than 100 mph and often looked as unhittable as any pitcher in Major League Baseball last season out of the bullpen, and the Cardinals will give him the chance to do more of the same in 2013.

As a reliever, Rosenthal could rare back and throw the ball as hard as he wanted without having to worry about stamina. That gave his fastball the extra few miles per hour that often make the difference in whether a hitter gets a hit or swings threw a pitch.

And he most likely would’ve lost that quality had he moved to the rotation.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander can still crank it up to 100 mph late in a ballgame, but he is a rare (almost unique) pitcher who can throw as hard as a starter as he could if he were a reliever. Others tend to lose a few miles per hour on their fastball once they’re asked to throw more than one or two innings.

Adam Wainwright began his Cardinals career out of the bullpen as the closer for the 2006 World Series championship team. He threw in the high 90s as a reliever but rarely reaches above 94 or 95 mph as a starter.

Granted, Wainwright is plenty effective as a starter and is on the precipice of receiving a whole lot of money because he can pitch effectively for seven innings or more. That could very well be the path Rosenthal eventually follows, but for now he is best suited for the bullpen.

He started one game at the beginning of spring training, and it didn’t go well. He gave up four runs on five hits in two innings against the Miami Marlins while walking two batters and failing to strike out anybody.

Sure, that was an early spring training game, but the Cardinals would be foolish to take a chance on a young pitcher in their rotation when they have others who they have already groomed to be long-term starters for the organization.

Those two are Joe Kelly and Shelby Miller, and they will battle for the final spot in the rotation.

Kelly did not look good in his last start, giving up two runs and three walks in two innings Thursday against the New York Yankees.

But Miller hasn’t been much better. He gave up two runs and three hits in two innings Friday against the Washington Nationals but walked just one hitter.

Overall, Kelly has more experience as a starter and is more of a sure bet than Miller at this point.

Theoretically, the Cardinals could give Kelly the starting job and send Miller to the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds to start the season. Then Miller could come up into the rotation and Kelly could slide to the bullpen if a reliever gets injured, or if the Cardinals find they need more depth in the bullpen.

That situation will work itself out in time, but at least the Cardinals already know they have a flamethrower who can shut down hitters late in a ballgame, even if he technically lost a job to get to that position.

Stan “The Man” Musial was unquestionably the greatest player to ever wear a St. Louis Cardinals uniform, but he was also one of the greatest people to wear any kind of sports uniform.

Musial died Saturday at age 92, and for the next several days many tributes will highlight his work on and off the field. He deserves every single one of them.

Musial was a great baseball player, no doubt, but he was also a unique person in the world of sports.

Sometimes that word is used to describe interesting personalities who do things that aren’t normal. For example, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych would talk to the baseball while pitching for the Detroit Tigers in the late 1970s.

Fidrych, and the many characters who speckle the sports landscape are unique in that sense, but Musial was unique because he was just good — at everything.

Musial had a career .331 batting average, he hit a franchise-record 475 homeruns, he was named to 24 All-Star teams, he won three Most Valuable Player awards and three world championships, and he set the National League record for hits at the time with 3,630. Remarkably, he got exactly 1,315 of those hits during home games and 1,315 on the road.

That symmetry is fitting for Musial because he never seemed to do anything wrong on or off the field.

He did, of course. He’s only human. But he was never involved in a scandal, he served his country as a member of the Navy during World War II, he was unquestionably loyal to his team and family, and he didn’t get caught in the trappings of fame that entangle so many athletes. That’s partly why he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, the highest honor for an American civilian.

It would be easy to use examples of Musial’s life as an opportunity to take shots at current athletes who have over-inflated egos and get into all sorts of trouble, but Musial’s greatness stands above celebrity athletes past and present.

Nobody has ever talked about how Musial was a tough son-of-a-gun who would run someone over regardless of circumstances, as Ty Cobb or Pete Rose might. People also don’t talk about Musial as someone who had a need to say something outrageous to the media just so his name would be in the newspaper the next day.

No one ever said those things about Musial because he simply didn’t do them, and that largely explains why Cardinals fans adored him so much. He combined greatness on the field with greatness off of it.

It’s been a rough year in sports heroes. JoePaterno, who had a reputation nearly as clean as Musial, died in January 2012, but not before his reputation was destroyed when reports said he didn’t pursue allegations of sexual misconduct by his defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky.

Cardinals fans know how it feels to have a revered sports figure’s reputation go from nearly perfect to uncaring, at best. Albert Pujols,perhaps the best Cardinals player since Musial, left the franchise last year after 11 seasons to sign a megadeal with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Musial’s life stands in stark contrast to all of those other famous figures. He had the chance to leave the Cardinals after the 1946 season. At that point in his career, Musial had spent five seasons with the Cardinals and had already been named to three All-Star teams and won two MVP awards.

A Mexican professional baseball league offered him $125,000 for five years, but Musial didn’t leave to take the money. He was only making $13,500 with the Cardinals, but he stayed and played the remainder of his 22-year career in St. Louis.

The inscription on Musial’s statue outside Busch Stadium says, in the words of former commissioner Ford C. Frick, “Here stands baseball’s perfect warrior. Here stands baseball’s perfect knight.”

No human is actually perfect, much less baseball players, but Musial might be have been as close as anyone who ever put on a baseball uniform.

As another offseason of eye-poppingly large free-agent contracts begins to wind down, the St. Louis Cardinals find themselves in an unfortunate, yet familiar situation as one of their biggest stars heads into the final year of his contract.

It was Albert Pujols in 2011; it will be Adam Wainwright in 2013.

The Cardinals co-ace is headed into the final year of his six-year, $59.4-million contract. That number is almost laughably low for a  Cy Young Award quality pitcher with a career 80-48 record, 3.15 ERA. In the past year, pitchers with less impressive numbers have signed contracts nearly triple the size of Wainwright’s current deal.

The San Francisco Giants signed Matt Cain in April to a six-year, $127.5-million extension. That was, of course, before he had a career season that included starting the All-Star Game and pitching a perfect game June 13 against the Houston Astros. The Los Angeles Dodgers also recently signed former Cy Young winner Zack Grienke to a six-year, $147-million contract. And those are just the big-name pitchers.

Even mediocre pitchers got paid big bucks this offseason. The Detroit Tigers signed Anibal Sanchez, who has a career 48-51 record and 3.75 ERA, to a five year contract worth $80 million. The Chicago Cubs were in the hunt for Sanchez, but they quickly turned around and gave Edwin Jackson, a 70-71 career pitcher with a 4.40 ERA, a four-year, $52-million deal.

If those types of pitchers are getting around $15 million per year, a pitcher with Wainwright’s record could honestly be looking at the possibility of a contract that pays him closer to $30 million than $20 million per year. That’s one heck of an investment.

The Pujols situation blew up in Spring Training of 2011 when Pujols cut off contract negotiations, and that issue lingered throughout the entire season. Pujols, of course, ended up signing with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for 10 years and $254 millions the following offseason.

The Cardinals avoided a similar situation with catcher Yadier Molina when they gave him a five-year, $75-million contract extension in Spring Training before the 2012 season even began.

If the Cardinals and Wainwright don’t reach a deal before the 2013 season starts, the unrest in St. Louis concerning the team’s best pitcher will build and build whether Wainwright pitches great or pitches poorly.

The Cardinals have plenty of incentives to get a deal done quickly, but Wainwright could play the system and cash in at the end of next season. The Cardinals would likely be able to sign Wainwright at a cheaper price now because no other teams are currently able to offer him contracts, and if Wainwright pitches great in 2013, that will also drive up his price.

The team’s other co-ace, Chris Carpenter, currently holds the record as the highest-paid pitcher in Cardinals history. He signed a five-year, $63-million contract in 2006.

Like it or not, the Cardinals need to be prepared to shatter that record with Wainwright because the price for good starting pitchers continues to skyrocket. It’s not impossible to think Wainwright could sign the largest pitcher’s contract in the history of the game, exceeding the seven-year, $161-million contract the New York Yankees gave CC Sabathia before the 2009 season began.

Otherwise, St. Louis baseball fans might spend next Christmas bemoaning the fact that one of the best pitchers in franchise history moved on to take a huge sum of money somewhere else.

After Pujols’ departure in December 2011, that’s probably a Christmas story few Cardinals fans would want to relive.

Correction: a previous version of this article claimed Adam Wainwright was a former Cy Young Award winner.  That has since been corrected.

The St. Louis Cardinals trotted out a new uniform this week that they will wear on Saturday home games during the 2013 season. The new alternate jersey has a great retro look, but the franchise could’ve taken one more step to truly take the new look back in time.

The new jerseys will be an off-white color similar to the San Francisco Giants home uniforms, and “St. Louis” will grace the front of the jersey along with the traditional birds on the bat. It will also have red piping run down the middle, which hearkens back to Stan Musial‘s playing days.

All of that makes for a nice look, but the Cardinals also should’ve brought back the hats the team wore when Musial led the team through the 1940s and 1950s at Sportsman’s Park.

In those days, the Cardinals wore a hat that had a navy blue top with the red, interlocking “STL” logo and a red bill. The hat, combined with the uniform style, made for one of the best looks in the history of the franchise. If the Musial’s statue outside Busch Stadium was painted, it would depict him wearing that style hat.

Instead, the Cardinals will wear the common all-red hats with the new uniform. That is still a fine look, but the Cardinals missed an opportunity to go all the way and have a completely new, yet historical uniform.

Now, before we go on for too long about how great the new uniform is, the Cardinals are likely to receive a fair amount of backlash for messing with the team’s current home and away uniforms. They were one of four teams, along with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees, to have just two uniforms: white at home and gray on the road.

The lack of uniform choices is something only historical franchises do because newer teams had no traditions to step on when creating their looks, and others just want to have plenty of fashion choices in an age of extreme marketing and one when football teams hardly wear the same uniform twice in the same season.

People’s concerns about the Cardinals jumping in the pool of alternate jerseys aren’t crazy. The Cardinals are a franchise that has some of the best looking uniforms in the sport in part because they are clean and consistent. Fans know it’s game time when the Cardinals take the field in their home whites. Any colored jerseys are for batting practice and batting practice only. Sadly, that can’t be said for many teams these days.

But, the Cardinals did a good job with the new look. The franchise last wore “St. Louis” across the front of the jersey in 1932, and it was a good-looking uniform. Plus, this will only be a once per week deal, just as the hats with the bird logo are reserved for Sunday home games.

The Cardinals did make one other significant uniform change, however, The team will now wear the –all-red hats on the road as well as at home. The navy blue road hats the team has worn on the road since 1992 will apparently be rarely used, perhaps for special occasions. That is still something the organization is trying to decide.

That’s also not a horrible change. The Cardinals wore red hats on the road in the past, but the blue hats did make the team look good on the road for 20 years. That change is more of a fashion change than the new jersey. Many teams are getting away from the dark colors of the 1990s, and this will move the Cardinals in that direction.

So although the changes will give the Cardinals a good new look that doesn’t take away from their long-standing uniform traditions, the old-style blue hat with a red bill would have completed the ensemble.

KANSAS CITY, MO (November 2, 2012) — The Kansas City Royals today announced several 40-man Major League roster moves.  Following the moves, the Royals now have 40 players on the club’s 40-man roster.

The club has reinstated left-handed pitcher Danny Duffy and right-handed pitcher Felipe Paulino from the 60-day Disabled List.  Both pitchers underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (Tommy John surgery) during the 2012 season:  Duffy on his left elbow on June 13 and Paulino on his right elbow on July 3.

In addition, the club claimed right-handed pitcher Guillermo Moscoso on Outright Waivers from the Colorado Rockies and claimed catcher Brett Hayes on Outright Waivers from the Miami Marlins.

Leaving the Royals organization is right-handed pitcher Blake Wood, who was claimed on Outright Waivers by the Cleveland Indians.

Catcher Manuel Pina was assigned outright to Omaha while left-handed pitcher Tommy Hottovy, right-handed pitcher Jeremy Jeffress and outfielder Jason Bourgeois were designated for assignment.

The 28-year-old Moscoso (name is pronounced “jee-AIR-moh mahs-KOH-soh”), who will turn 29 on November 14, has pitched for parts of the past four seasons in the Majors with the Rangers (2009-10), Athletics (2011) and Rockies (2012).  The 6-foot-1, 200-pounder made 23 appearances, including three starts, for Colorado last season and went 3-2 with a 6.12 ERA.  His best season came in 2011 with Oakland when he compiled an 8-10 record with a 3.38 ERA in 23 games (21 starts), allowing three hits or fewer in eight starts.  Born in Maracay, Venezuela, Moscoso was originally signed by the Detroit Tigers as a non-drafted free agent in 2003.

Hayes, 28, has worked as the Marlins backup catcher for parts of the past four seasons.  In 39 games in 2012, he batted .202 with six doubles after hitting .231 with five home runs and 16 RBI in 64 contests in 2011.  Known as a strong defensive catcher, Hayes has caught 19 of 74 attempted basestealers in his career (26%).  The 6-foot, 201-pound right-handed hitter was the Marlins’ second-round selection in the 2005 draft out of the University of Nevada.  His father, Tim Hayes, was drafted by the Royals but never played professionally.