Chain Saw Mcculloch …

I don’t like the Strike Percentage statistic because it doesn’t really count the percentage of pitches thrown in the strike zone, but, if we are going to look at this stat I would like to know how much variance there is across hitters and, for the Cardinals, how it varies through the lineup. I feel like strike percentage is primarily dependent upon the temperament of the hitter. I believe Pujols has a lower strike percentage because he doesn’t need a lot of strikes to do his thing. I suspect that Yadier Molina would have a noticeably low strike percentage, too, when compared to the league average. Care to check?

By the way, Mike Shannon and John Rooney were putting in a case for Ludwick as the MVP tonight. Sounds pretty good to me.

i will always remember opening day 1997 — that was the year i was the booth assistant with kmox. the cardinals started the season on the road in montreal with an off day (if that’s not a bad omen i don’t know what is!). they proceeded to to drop three straight to the expos and then went to new york where they dropped another three straight (the stats say that it was instead houston but i firmly disagree with that). the birds limped home 0-6. on a cold, rainy april night in st. louis the cardinals found themselves tied 1-1 in the 9th in a rematch with the expos. mcgee came in as a pitch hitter and sneaked one just over the wall to win the game 2-1. the few people left at that moment made so much noise you’d think we’d just won it all. pure magic.

having said that, 51 should not be officially retired. i would like it to be informally retired, which is has been. i believe the only player to wear 51 since willie was bud smith, and that was just briefly. i’m pretty sure he wore it, was sent down and when he came back up had a different number. anyway, i like the informal approach better.

if it were up to me only seven numbers would be retired by the cardinals (1 ozzie, 2 red, 6 musial, 9 slaughter, 17 dean, 20 brock, 45 gibson) and here’s why. those seven players meet what i’ll call the “pete cerneka retired number criteria”. there are three categories.

1 - iconic player: what does this mean? well it is qualitative but we can say that the player needs to have had his best years with the team and done very special things to help the team win. the player needs to be more than a household name during his time with the team. there needs to be an emotional connection as well. all of the retired numbers now have this with the exception of boyer, who i believe had his number retired because he died rather early and while managing the team. also notice here that the category says “player”. this eliminates busch outright. honor the man in other ways, not with a number. also, let’s get this out of the way now; retiring robinson’s number across major league baseball is dumb. again, honor the man in another ways (see the informal retiring, which would be much, much cooler). he did not play for the cardinals and so his number should not be officially retired by that team.

2 - majority of years of a players career: most of the player’s career should be played with the team retiring the number. it’s not practical to say that only players that played their entire career with a team should be eligible, especially for players who did not have control of that before free agency. but a majority of the career is not unreasonable. this eliminates sutter who was iconic but only played four seasons in st. louis and chose to go to atlanta as a free agent.

3 - hall of famer: before this category willie’s number gets retired, but here’s where he gets bumped. again with the excpetion of boyer and busch, all of the retired numbers now are in the hall and that’s the way it should be. willie was a great player, an iconic player and most of his career was with the cardinals, especially his best ones. and he chose to come back to his team at the end of his career. but while mcgee was a great player he was not a hall of famer. he was probably two or three great seasons away and in the big picture of things that’s a lot. i think one more batting title, another mvp and 2500 hits get him in but that didn’t happen and it wasn’t really close to happening.

honors like the hall and a retired number are very, very special and should be protected and reserved for the very, very best. as mush as i loved willie, he does not fall into that category.

as far as baines is concerned, the white sox are a pitiful club with a pitiful history compared to the cardinals. maybe clubs like the white sox and cubs need different criteria in figuring out what numbers to retire. i’ll let fans of those teams figure that out. i say only seven right now, with an eighth in the pipline. but even sir albert has just a little more to go to cross that line just yet.

clearly there’s something going on with ryan. as a pure ball player, he’s fine, but that’s not how larussa sees him obviously. although i did read that larussa told ryan that barring an injury, he’d be back in september. granted, his average had slipped to to the .240s but for most of the season he had been hitting fine and had committed just three errors while making appearances in close to 80 games at three different positions (SS, 2B, 3B). but he was sent down and the birds went out and got felipe lopez who was released by washington — the nationals for pete’s sake! — where he was hitting in the .230s, had 10 errors in 100 games and was a club-house cancer.

reyes, however, is different and i disagree that he was a potential solution to the innings we needed to fill in may, june and july. the guy was 2-14 last year with an era in the 6’s. in fact, i feel like the cardinals did everything they could to get him straight. in the eight appearances he had this year with the cardinals he allowed runs three times and had only two innings where he recorded 1-2-3 outs.

reyes is a mystery because on the triple A level he dominated, but he couldn’t translate that into big league success. whether that was duncan’s faulty i don’t know, but there was no reason for the cardinals to hang onto him. i wish him the best of luck in cleveland, even though he once told me he wasn’t a baseball fan and was simply playing for one big contract before he’d retire and surf the rest of his life in california. still best of luck to him.

every job has its advantages and disadvantages. teaching may be the perfect example. teaching is hard. it’s physically hard and emotionally hard and can even be spiritually hard. at doesn’t pay enough for the work being done and is largely a thankless job. but there are benefits, like winter break and summers (for most teachers). there’s also the chance to work with kids and in fields that compel you. and there’s the knowledge that you won’t be traded to another school before thanksgiving.

baseball and every other job you can think of are the same way. yes there are negatives to being a baseball player, like you work almost non-stop for 8 months or more, and you’re on the road a lot, away from your family, friends and stability. you can get seriously hurt and there’s no true guarantee of long-term employment. and of course unless you are an premiere player and can demand a no-trade clause, there’s always the possibility of a trade. but you know all that going in and like almost everyone on the planet, choose to be a part. to me it’s like feeling sorry for players because they they pull a muscle of have to have surgery. well i say to them, too bad boys! that’s what you signed up for. when i’m busting my butt in january and you’re on the beach, i won’t expect you to write a blog entry about how much you feel sorry for me. instead think about how i’m going to kick back on some sunny sunday in june with a beer in hand while you might play 15 innings, then get a few hours of sleep on a plane before you start another nine. and when you get released but still collect your paycheck until the end of your contract, you don’t have to write about the guy who gets down sized and his paychecks stop coming immediately.