I’d love to see Brett Wallace in a Cardinal uni within the next two years.

The Cardinals minor league system is looking to be in good shape according to one source I saw recently. Can’t remember now where it was but I think they were rated number 1 for future up and coming players or something like that. Maybe by MLN. Don’t have a subscription so I couldn’t read it anyway

Little searching and yep, that’s it. Here’s the teaser bit:
The St. Louis Cardinals have been named the MLN FAB50 Farm System of the Year 2008 by the editors for the best cumulative score of top players appearing in the FAB50 and in the Ones2Watch lists for this season.

http://www.minorleaguenews.com/baseball/affiliated/features/articles2008/07/15/00.php

A mild strain in his shoulder indicates (to me at least) that Carp may have been trying to overdo it. He only pitched two rehab starts, and hadn’t been stretched out in his two big-league starts yet.

Now all of a sudden he finds himself in the 6th inning and is trying to reach for a little more (he was hitting 96mph if I recall), and winds up straining the shoulder, maybe trying to compensate a bit for the still weak elbow.

Today’s word is that he’s got a mild strain and could be throwing again in a few days. Good news, but I’ll stay guarded on it.

I think Perez is your closer until he gives you a reason he shouldn’t be, point blank. And maybe even several reasons, just like the other jokers got their chances. Right now he’s the best thing going for the Cards in the ninth.

FWIW, the Cards had no shot at Sabathia – not with LaPorta going to Cleveland in that deal.

Carpenter is under contract to pitch and the Cardinals are in a playoff race. Medical tests can only reveal so much and that has to be taken into context with pain/discomfort that the ‘patient’ is reporting. If there are no clear medical problems or ones that “can’t be made worse” for example, and the player says he can pitch, then why not run him out there? Let’s say in Carpenter’s situation they put him out there and he blows out his shoulder. Would that be a result of not resting him enough, or would it be that there was an underlying problem that would have showed up in spring training the next year?

As I’ve mentioned before, I do think Izzy could have some medical ‘issues’ that aren’t being fully disclosed by the team. That feeling is based on past ‘history’ where Izzy was pitching with his hip injury. He was pitching awful and getting booed yet the Cardinals didn’t reveal the extent of his problem until after the season. I believe the rationale was that Tony didn’t want to give the other teams that kind of information. Certainly you can question the rationale of sending a player plagued by injury out on the field, but then again maybe we don’t see the Kirk Gibson HR if that were true?

All that said, I agree that Carpenter should be rested. My reasoning is that he hasn’t had enough time to properly build up his body to handle the wear and tear of pitching. Without proper conditioning (it’s not like he was just on the 15 day DL or something) then it would seem he would be more subject to muscle strains, etc. Then again, if I’m the team owner with a chance to make the playoffs then maybe you push a little harder than you should. Very fine line, but I would say the ‘risk’ lies with all parties involved.

With Wainwright I have mixed emotions. I think he is best served as a starter, certainly if Carpenter can’t go, but I’m also not completely sold on Perez as the closer during the stretch run. Right now he has to rely on the fastball, which is a wicked pitch, but he can’t locate it consistently enough. I keep thinking how devastating he would be with a decent offspeed pitch to complement the fastball. He’d have batters frozen in their tracks.

RE the trade deadline, I don’t mind them not adding anybody if it was going to take selling the farm to get them, but if the goal isn’t to go all out to win now, then it makes little sense to risk Carpenter either. Losing him for next year would be worse than losing the farm, especially in light of the pitchers we will likely lose to free agency. Where would we be right now though had the Cards added Sabbathia instead of the Brewers?