Catching Up After 1 Week

timmurrrayphone

Spring Training. 

The Cardinals, like most teams now have a full week of games under their belts that you may or may not be paying attention to. If you like basketball or hockey, you're probably a bit out of the loop of what happened last week.

So let's get caught up together.

Biggest surprise? 

Shane Robinson. He's batting .556 with 2 HR and 7 RBIs. 1.675 OPS. 1.056 SLG. And yes, as far as we can tell from video and pics, he's still about 5'2". 

Robinson spent time going up and down from Memphis to STL, but by the end of the season, Matheny was using Sugar Shane on a pretty regular basis to keep Carlos Beltran and Jon Jay fresh down the stretch. 

What's this mean for the chances of Robinson on the opening day roster? Unfortunately for Shane, he's at the whim of Oscar Taveras. 

Yeah, what's going on with Oscar? 

7 hits. 6 RBIs. Leads the team in ABs and is getting time all over the OF. The Cardinals are still holding firm on their 'when he comes up, he's staying up' line. So Oscar know he needs to make the case for being on the opening 25 so strong the fans will cry CHEAP if the Cardinals send him to Memphis.

Another 2 weeks like the first one and it's hard to not see Taveras in the Cardinals 2013 plans. Arbitration clock be damned.

Give me the bad news, bro. There's got to be some bad news. 

There is. In no particular order:

1) Furcal is still hurt. Ronny Cedeno has been pretty bad (.133 AVG/ 2 errors). And it's starting to look like Kozma is the best option for the Cardinals at SS to open the season. Since you can't cut Furcal, and Cedeno is is already sunk money, the Cardinals might be more inclined to give Cedeno the shot at SS, deserving or not.

Point is, not having the elbow surgery is looking like a bad idea.

2) Ty Wiggington hasn't been the spark the Cardinals hoped for. It's a week in, but he's been less than impressive.

The pitching. Good?

It's coming around.

Unless you're Mike Wacha. Who's whiffed 8 in 5 innings and is pushing hard for a spot in the bullpen. Some are even calling him the Cardinals Spring Training phenom

The rest of the guys are only getting a couple innings here and there and it's a bit too early to start figuring out where the gaps are.

Jamie Garcia has pitched 5 innings without his arm falling off, so that's good. Wainwright has been tagged with 12 hits and a .444 BA against, but he'll be fine. 

So there you go. Big story so far is Furcal's elbow. Let's chalk that up as Week 1s big storyline. 

Arrow to top