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Live Chats
Cardinals chat with Derrick Goold
Submit your Cardinals and MLB questions and opinions NOW; talk to Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold in a live chat from Jupiter, Fla., starting at 1 p.m.

by Mike Smithon Feb 22, 2013 at 9:03 PM
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Greetings from the press box at lovely Roger Dean Stadium, where Adam Wainwright has just left the mound and ended his first Grapefruit League start of spring. Wainwright threw 2 2/3 shutout innings and left two runners behind for Seth Maness. (Maness promptly got the third out.) Wainwright struck out three and allowed four hits, one of which was a double to the gap by former Cardinals pitcher/outfielder Rick Ankiel. Wainwright needed 22 pitches to get through two innings and finished his day with 48 pitches total, 27 which were strikes. Birthday Boy Rick Hummel is at my right cranking out the live blog for StlToday.com, and he'll continue to bring you up to date with the game there at C-Beat. I'm here to answer questions. The sharper the better, whether you want to talk Oscar or Oscars, contract extensions or elbow ramifications ... Off we go. -

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Weekly? Many we're feeding your baseball jitters hourly at StlToday.com. If someone isn't chatting, they're blogging. If they're not blogging, they're reporting. And when they're not reporting, they're writing for the Sunday paper. I don't think Rick Hummel has had time to turn off his laptop since he arrived here in Florida. -

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I am quite surprised. Kyle Lohse is not only coming off a strong season and a strong turn (when healthy) with a contending club, but he also fits into a needed niche in baseball: the known quantity starter. He's good for 180+ innings, a safe bet for 200 innings, and he's going to give you more quality starts than not. For a contending club, that's gold. For a club that fancies itself a contender, that's essential. To install Lohse as a No. 3 starter would give a team that kind of rotation that can elevate a team through the course of a long season. Pitchers like that are expensive for a reason. And there are a few teams out there (Hello, Angels!) who need a pitcher like that to transform their rotation from a hope and wish to a pillar of innings. The draft pick is an element. But for some teams it's a red herring, a convenient excuse to toss the fans or the media. Doesn't make the real reason. -
Do you agree that the Cards want to see Adam pitch a few games in the regular season before finalizing a deal or are you thinking they still get this done before Opening Day? Think the club will bend on the 4 year stance and go for a 5th year (possibly 6th optional year)? Gracias, sir. -
What are the Cardinals going to learn from a few starts into the season that they don't already know when it comes to a contract that is expected to eclipse $100 million, or at least could get close to it depending on the guaranteed years? Do they really need to see something in four, five starts of 2013 that they don't know from late 2012, from 2010, from 2009? Something about that doesn't pass the sniff test, not when they're talking about this much money and they're talking about Wainwright's intangibles as being part of his value. If he struggles in his first four starts, does that mean his price will drop -- he'll be more Jeremy Guthrie, less Cliff Lee? Big decisions aren't made on such small sample sizes. No, that position would imply two things: 1) the Cardinals want to see the youth they have, and 2) the Cardinals want to see if Wainwright gets antsy as opening day approaches and takes the security offered just to get darn thing over with. The Cardinals may be waiting to see if Wainwright will blink. "He won't," a source told me. -

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I'd like to introduce you to Ronny Cedeno. Check out today's paper for more: www.stltoday.com -

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The thing that is hard for fans to understand is that baseball is a business, a big business. Therefore while we yearn for the days of player/ownership loyalty, those times are passed. So, regarding Wainwright; he wants money, big money and can probably get it. The team has to keep finances in line. Is it not prudent for the team to wait on attempting a serious attempt to sign Wainwright until they see IF he is fully recovered AND how the young guns get along this year on the mound? Thanks for your thoughts. -
I think we're too quick to dismiss two things about Wainwright's recovery. First, he was strong down the back stretch of last season. Yes, you can bend and shape and Play-Doh factory stats, but consider during a 12-start stretch after the All-Star break -- a time when most Tommy John pitchers are returning to the game, not making their second-half start of the season -- Wainwright went 6-4 with a 3.05 ERA. He pitched 76 2/3 innings, struck out 72, allowed 70 hits, and gave up only three home runs. Looks pretty strong to me. Second, Tommy John recovery has a fairly proven rehab and return rate. The second full season back is when pitchers return to their previous form. It's not a shoulder which can lead one down what trailblazer and verbal frontiersman Bernie Miklasz first mapped as "Mulder Road." -

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He is not another guy. The ball jumps off his bat. He looks like a young kid getting his first taste of an improved competition while also still getting his timing. One weekend of games is not going to reveal or change his status as one of the minor leagues' top hitting prospects. -

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The Tulowitzki rumblings this morning are ripple effects from the winter meetings where the Cardinals, through the course of mapping the shortstop terrain for the coming season and winter, took the Colorado Rockies temperature regarding their franchise cornerstone. The dots are difficult not to connect. The Cardinals did it months ago. Tulowitzki is owed more than $100 million on his contract, including $20 million annually from 2015 to 2019. The Rockies have a prospect coming up at his position in Trevor Story. The Rockies are rebuilding, though their blueprint has been rewritten, wadded-up, rewritten, wadded-up, rewritten several times in the past decade. They've got to figure out what direction they're going and if Tulowitzki is the player to take them there, or perhaps he'll get frustrated and want a chance to get out and help the Rockies rebuild by not being there, but bringing a healthy return. Those factors have been in play for awhile, have been reported for awhile, and now it's just a matter of timing -- and whether all those factors lead to the Rockies taking offers. -

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Yeah, the NL Central's hold on the NL Wild Card berth -- either of them, now -- got a lot less strong with the departure of the Houston Astros. Teams won't fatten their record on the 100-loss club. But look for the AL West to get a Wild Card team (or two!) as a result. -

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It's an interesting question, Brian. I would imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that big, power arms often rely on that big, power fastball to get them through the minors and don't pay as much attention to their other pitches as necessary to remain a starter. Or, because that power can overpower in the minors without command, so that by the time they get to the majors the team only wants to use them in short bursts until they tame their fastball. Both of those elements are in play. But we're seeing more and more power arms and, as a result, more and more are also being used and developed and debuted as starters. Joe Kelly for example. Kelly had a lively arm, a plus fastball, and he came out of college as a closer. The Cardinals moved him into a starting job just to get him guaranteed innings to work on his secondary pitches. Voila. He never left and has shown that he can start. Power thrills. And teams do like to have that one, surefire, flamethrower in the pen who can get them out of trouble late in innings. -

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Wainwright's agent is out of the country. When he returns the Cardinals and the Wainwrights (if I can just shorthand that) are expected to meet face-to-face here in Florida to see where the next step in negotiations should be. The extension is still something the Cardinals want to try and work out, but right now they want to do it at their pace and at their price. -

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Welcome to spring training where those questions are answered. Matt Carpenter went away this winter to learn second base, but the thing about winter is there are no games to play, no major-leaguers to smack grounders in real, and most of all no linebacker-types barreling into you as you try to turn the double play. In short, Carpenter needs spring training to prove his winter transformation was the start of something, and not just an experiment. Descalso is the incumbent. He has the edge when it comes to starting at second. Carpenter has the bat. It's going to take a few weeks for this to play out.
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