Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - Cardinals' Path Forward: Embracing Youth and Overcoming Struggles

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

0:04 Cardinals vs. Reds Rivalry 3:35 Inconsistent Umpiring in Baseball 6:40 Pallante's Struggles on the Mound 12:19 Lars Nootbaar's Exceptional Eye for Pitches 16:25 Cardinals' Youth Movement and Growing Pains 18:26 Masyn Winn's Development Journey 19:59 Nolan Gorman's Confidence Rebuild 25:33 Dave Duncan's Innovative Use of Analytics 29:06 Cardinals' Batting Issues Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms… 🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LOSTLCardinals?sid=YouTube Locked On MLB League-Wide: Every Team, Prospects & More 🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnMLB Follow on Twitter/X: @JDSPORTSRADIO Follow the show on Twitter/X: @LO_Cardinals Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! TonaI Tonal is the world's smartest and most effective strength training system that helps get you stronger. Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your Tonal purchase with promo code LOCKEDONMLB. That’s Tonal.com, and use promo code LOCKEDONMLB for $200 off your purchase. PrizePicks Go to https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONMLB and use code lockedonmlb to win $50 instantly when you play $5. You don't even need to win to receive your $50 bonus, it's guaranteed! Prizepicks. Run Your Game. Ibotta Ibotta is a free app that lets you earn cash back every time you shop. Right now, Ibotta is offering our listeners $5 just for trying Ibotta by using the code LOCKEDONMLB when you register. Just go to the App Store or Google Play store and download the FREE app to start earning cash back when you use code LOCKEDONMLB. eBay Motors From brakes to exhaust kits and beyond, eBay Motors has over 122 million parts to keep your ride-or-die alive. With all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to bring home that big win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime. FanDuel Now through September 22nd, ALL FanDuel customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get a THREE WEEK free trial of NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Visit FANDUEL.COM to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) #ForTheLou #stlcards #mlb #lockedoncardinals Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The St. Louis Cardinals' offense had no answers. Once again, as they get shut out by the Cincinnati Reds and fall back to the 500 mark. You are Locked-on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey, the Cardinals fans. I'm J.D. Haffern and I'm a National Radio Sports anchor, born and raised in the Lou, in a Lifetime Cardinals fan, and I'm your host for Locked-on Cardinals,

part of the Locked-on Podcast Network covering your team every day. You can find me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio. You can follow the podcast at L0 underscore Cardinals. I want to thank those of you who do make Locked-on Cardinals, your first list in every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube. You want to stop on by, like, subscribe, comment,

hit the notification button so you know when new episodes are posted. This is a show serving Cardinal Nation, giving the best fans in baseball, all of the info about the birds on the bat. Today's episode is being brought to you by Fandul, Now through September 22nd, all Fandul customers can bet $5 and get a three-week free trial of NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Visit Fandle.com to get started. So in front of, first off, 9-11 today.

So on the YouTube, as you can see, I'm sporting the stars and stripes, the red, white, and blue as much as I can. You know, it's a day of remembrance. You know, we will never, we will never forget what happened and where we wore. on that day on September 11th, but, you know, we'll use this day to, uh, to remember those lives who were lost in that great tragedy and, um, just, you know, never forget, right? I mean, what else can you say about it? Now, let's get to the baseball side of this. In front of hundreds of people at Bush Stadium, the Cardinals laid another egg against the Cincinnati rats who have utterly dominated them in their last four meetings.

The Cardinals have scored a grand total of four runs in their last four games against the Cincinnati Reds. The Cincinnati Reds bite you. This is not one of the great teams in baseball. This is not considered one of the great pitching staffs in baseball. For whatever reason, the Cincinnati Reds own them. Andrew Abbott, Hunter Green, both shut them down in the first two games of this last four game set. Then it was a bullpen game. Cardinals couldn't do anything against them.

Tuesday, it was rookie Rhett Louder, who looks like he might be something special, considering what his numbers have been so far since he's been called up to the show. He's allowed just one run in 15 and a third innings against the Brewers, the Astros and then the Cardinals. Now those two other teams are first place teams are pretty darn good. Then you have the Cardinals who haven't been able to hit much of anything since returning home this past weekend. They've scored a grand total of seven runs in their last four games. Now, the strike zone on Tuesday night was a joke, an absolute joke, one of the most inaccurate home plate umpires in the league. Sixty-nine-year-old Larry Vanover was all over the place

with his strike zone, per usual. The stats don't lie. He sucks normally. Tuesday night, he sucked even more than he normally does. I've actually got this, uh, graphic here. And I'm sorry that, uh, if you're listening to the audio version, you cannot see it, but you can see that on YouTube. Like that is like Stevie Wonder throwing darts. And he's just calling him strikes. Like, look at that. And the sad part is as you look at the, uh, the score card here, which by the way, it says, uh, what 80, 83%? Is that what I'm looking at air? accuracy, 83% called strike accuracy. And it actually favors the Cardinals by 1.41.

Like, more calls went the Cardinals way than for the Reds. And the Cardinals still got shut out. That's bad. But it was bad on both sides, you know, so much that Reds manager David Bell got tossed after L.A. the Cruz had back-to-back horrific calls called strikes against him that went the Cardinals way and he ends up striking out. David Bell was like, no, no, no, no.

I've had enough. I watched the Reds telecast last night just to hear what they were saying because I've told you that before. I like to tune in to what the opposing telecast is saying about the Cardinals and what they think about things. And, you know, they talked about the struggles and they talked about the attendance and how bad it was. and you know, Jeff Brantley, who actually played for the Cardinals for one year,

said that in the 35 years that he's been coming to St. Louis for baseball games, he's never seen a crowd that small and that sparse before. But they were also just laughing their butts off at the ridiculous calls that Larry Vanover was making against both teams last night. Obviously, they were a little more ticked off when it would happen against the Reds. But when it was a bad call against the Cardinals, they were giggling and stuff about it because they knew he was hot garbage last night. Like, it's pathetic that there is a man who has that much control over what's going on in a professional baseball game.

And is that horrible on a consistent basis because he, he's, when I went to the stats, only CB Buckner has a worse accuracy percentage. And it's like 92%. So it's not even remotely close to what we just saw last night. it's usually better than this. But that was awful. And some of these bad calls led to some of the struggles that Andre Palante had to go through. Your cardinal starter last night.

He walks five more hitters in this one, making it back-to-back appearances where he's walked that many, which, you know, it's unacceptable at this level. You can't survive walking five guys a game. You are not nuke La Luch from Bull Durham where you can walk 18 and then strike out 18. That is not you. Andre's got to be able to command the zone better with his pitches. But sometimes, you know, he would throw strikes and Vanover would just call him balls anyway, because that's what Larry Vanover does.

He's a 69-year-old man back there trying to do a job that appears that he's not qualified to do anymore. But it wasn't all on the Ump shoulders. As frustrating as it was to watch it for both sides, Palante was wild on his own. Let's not let him off the hook here. and it eventually caught up to him in that fifth inning when he walks the leadoff hitter, Jonathan India, which is a big no-no, allows a single to Ellie Dela Cruz, then a wild pitch, scoots him over to second and third.

Stevenson, he gets on strikes, but then T.J. Friedel, well-placed ball, singles to score both runs. Then we get the weird disengagement violation. I don't know what the hell happened there. That moves Friedel over to second base. He walks, spits or steer on the pitch, Friedel ends up stealing third base. So now it's first and third one out. Ty France comes up and hits a high tapper back to Palante. Like it was a high chopper.

Frito's got good speed over there at third, and Palante accepts the fact that the runner is going to score from third base is going to be safe at the plate. I don't have an issue with that. He throws it to first, but he does it in kind of a, it almost a lackadaisical way. Maybe he just didn't have a good grip on the ball. I don't know, but it was slow enough.

and not enough, you know, velocity on the ball that Spencer Steer, who was running on the play, he just keeps moving, goes all the way to third base. So on a tapper, back to the pitcher, not only does a run score from third, but a guy, a runner advances from first all the way to third, and there was no error involved. Like, that can't happen. That can't happen. Kudos to the Reds for being aggressive, but man, that bugged me a bit.

But that was it for the Reds offensively. Outside of that inning, they didn't do a whole lot with the walks that they were given. They did steal three bags, got caught once. Great pitch out. They were able to nail L.A. Dela Cruz at second base. But holding a team to three runs usually means success. That's usually a pretty good job by your pitching staff. And it just wasn't meant to be for the Cardinals,

who didn't have much going at all until the ninth inning. And that's where two of your best young hitters in your organization come up with a chance to really do some damage, right? And it doesn't happen. And it's unfortunate. We're going to talk about those at bats and why. This is something you might have to get used to, Cardinal fans, for the time being, I guess,

until this organization starts to get things turned around. You might have to start dealing with some of these failures at the plate from the young guys. So we'll get into that next year on Locked on Cardinals. With the season winding down, there's only so many home games left to catch. your cardinals in action and game time is an authorized ticket marketplace of major league baseball that makes getting tickets faster and easier. And as you've noticed, there are plenty of seats available at Bush Stadium, tiny crowd last night.

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we're going to get some of your feedback a little bit later here in today's show. So we get to the ninth inning, right? Cardinals haven't done dilly squat all night outside of Brennan Donovan, who had three hits and looks pretty good, considering he's dealing with the toe issue and the inflammation and the swelling and everything that's going on there had three hits last night. One of them was an infield single, but I digress. But outside of that, not a whole lot going on.

But ninth inning rolls around. Goldie had a couple of hits. He gets a single. Nato gets a single. Nud ends up walking. And I tell you what, to go back to this umpire thing for just a second, Nud has got the eye of a hawk. All right?

We know that. If you watch the games, you know Lars Dupar has got one of the best eyes in baseball. And it's almost to a fault where he gets called on pitches that are too close to take. and it burns him normally. Like last night, there was one pitch that looked like it was a strike and that at bat that they called the ball and Newt got the benefit of the doubt there.

But then there's other ones that are just a fraction outside. He thinks they're a ball, but he still gets rung up. And those are the situations where I wish New was a little more protective of the plate. But I can't wait to see when that challenge system they use in the minor leagues gets up to the major leagues. I'm very curious to how many that he and like Brennan Donovan, who's got another great eye and Matt Carpenter, if he's still around when it gets here,

I wonder how many challenges they're going to win because both of them seem to get called out on pitches that are balls, but are just a fraction off the plate. They just know the zone so well that they don't swing. So I think that's going to be very interesting to see those stats when they do become available. But bases load to nobody out now. All right.

Newt gets on. Jordan Walker's coming to the play. Huge spot for the big kid. Goes down swinging or goes down looking, actually, goes down looking on four pitches. Four pitches at all is all it took. So Cabal with the first pitch takes a great cut for strike one. Like a, like loved it. Love that he almost came out of his shoes trying to just park that sucker into Big MacLand because he's got that capability.

It was a vicious swing and he just missed it. pitch three was a ball, but Larry Van over called it a strike. It was clearly inside, another van over special, if you will. But the third strike was a great pitch. Just watch the cutter hit the low outside zone and he is gone. So he's still caught in between of what the hell he's looking for because he's trying to stay off the pitches away. So much to it where now they're throwing him strikes on that part of the plate and, you know, he's taking them. And then he's chasing ones that are off the plate.

He's just, he's working at it. He's working at it, but it hasn't clicked yet. Then you get rookie Thomas to JC. He gets a shot. He had scorched one earlier in the game, just a missile right at the left fielder. I think it was like a 108 off the bat. Like he gets in and gets called out on strikes on probably one of the worst van over calls of the night earlier in the game where it was up and out of the zone. Like that was probably the worst pitch the band over called and strike out.

Brutal. It was at his neck. and he called it a strike. But so Jacy's up in the ninth, gets blown away by four straight fastballs. Well, it was trying to hit it over the arch, basically,

and failed to connect on all three swings. I don't know why I said four straight fasts, those three straight, couldn't catch up. There was like 94, and then like 96, 96, and he was just woof, boof, it's just different.

It's different up at the major league level, I'm sure, in Memphis. He probably tags one of those, but it didn't work out this time. And he goes, down swinging. Then carpent hits. He gets burned by a terrible van over call on a two-o count and ends up striking out as well and that's your ballgame. So base is loaded. Nobody out. Three straight strikeouts. They don't even put the ball in play game over. Now as frustrating as this is and as upset as

I was watching it where I'm like, oh my gosh, how do we suck this bad? How are we so brutal in these situations. After I took a few moments to kind of take a step back and I was like, we better get used to this. You better get used to stuff like this in the final month of this season if you want to go with the young guys, which is what a majority of fans want the Cardinals to do. It's something I want them to do. But when you're going to have Walker, So Jacey, Baker, when, maybe Gorman at some point, Herrera, Pahez, Siani, he's still a rookie, Permian, and any other young guys that ended up getting at bats, because this is the time where they're going to be in situations and they're going to fail. And this is their time to learn from mistakes and from failures.

You're going to lose ball games because of some poor deep. defense, some bad at bats. And we have to be okay with that right now, which is tough. It's tough. But that's where we are. You know, I've been harbiting about turning the, turning the page on the veterans and rolling with the young guys. And this is like a typical result you're going to see from them until they can figure things out at the major league level until they become better hitters, major league hitters and get more comfortable at the major league level. It's just, it's part of this process that they are going to fail a lot. It's going to happen.

And we have to be okay with that because you have to look at the bigger picture right now. You know, if you ever want them to mature and succeed at this level, got to crawl before you can walk, right? Isn't that the old saying? And it's not going to be easy to watch this every night. It's definitely not because as a fan base, we have to. hate losing. You know, we haven't had many losing seasons until the last two years. This is not a losing season yet. We're at 500, but still, you know what I mean? Like, you're not going to the playoffs. Like, it's done. But this is like a necessary evil,

if you will, to get the better player later on down the road that you're hoping that these guys will turn into. Mason win last year. Remember this? Looked overwhelmed. So much that people are like, trade him. He's not going to make it. He's not. not going to be good at the major leagues. He can't hit. What happened there? What happened there? Things are much better this year. And you're hoping that this is a stepping stone to even better seasons moving forward. Mason Wynn is still a rookie this year. All right? This is his first full year. Then I know he's hit a lull here at the very end of the year, which happens to a lot of young players because they're exhausted. They're not used to the major league grind. You know, Jordan Walker,

He's just been in a strange situation all year. He's up. He does okay. Get sent down. Comes back up. He's a great second half last year. Comes back this year. Struggles, sit back down.

Comes back up for that weird platoon roll for a week. Then struggles. He gets sent back down. Then he's recalled again for good. And outside of the big game in New York, it's been a struggle. And it's weird because last year he hit at the major league level. They just fine in the second half. And it's like he's starting all over again this season.

So it has been a little bit of a bizarre roller coaster with Jordan Walker. But you got to let him figure it out. You got to let him figure it out. He's not going to get better by just seeing AAA pitching all the time. He's got to learn to hit the major league guys. Same thing for Nolan. Gorman lost playing time. All right.

So the Gorman situation, him because the cardals couldn't trust him to even put the ball on play anymore. He lost all of his playing time. And they were still at the point when they sent him down, they were kind of holding on a playoff aspiration still, right? So they sent him down. And since he's gone down, he looks like he's starting to get his confidence back. He popped a few more home runs since going to Memphis, six,

to be exact hit two last night on Tuesday night. Did that in 16 games. That's six and 16 games. 60 of bats. That's encouraging. Maybe he gets to come back up before the season is done. I hope he does. Because he needs to be able to do this stuff against major league pitchers. We figured it out. You can hit AAA. Same with like Luke and Baker. Figured it out. You can hit AAA. Now you got to learn to hit the big boys. Now you got to learn to hit the best in the world. And there's going to be struggles. but it's something that the cardinals have to be prepared and deal with.

Same thing with the fans. Like you can't just go, oh, all these guys suck now. No, they have to get better. The only way to get better is to face major league pitching. And there's going to be problems. What's the one saying, like, it's going to get worse before it gets better. You got to feel that way that this is, a path and there will be light at the end of this tunnel with these guys.

You know, so Jaycee's going to need time to adjust to Major League pitching. You got to be okay with it. If this is the path you want, you want the Cardinals to turn over and not be a veteran latent team anymore and go with the youth and you've got to be willing to take the good with the battle. I want to do some fan feedback from yesterday's episode on Miles Michaelis, because there was a lot of people chiming in yesterday. We'll get to that next here on Locked on Cardinals.

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It'll be in the description so you don't need to search. It's all part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. You're a team every day. So I want to start implementing more of your comments, more of your suggestions. I want to get your feelings out there. Each day we're going to go back to a previous episode and pick out some of the comments and stuff to have a little discussion. You know, it's like my own little locked on text line, if you will.

So yesterday we talked a lot about Miles Michaelis. It's been a hot topic because of his exorbitant contract and ginormous ERA. So there was a lot to unpack there. And a lot of people had some good opinions on this stuff. So CB says, we got spoiled for almost 30 years. Cardinals coaching was able to get the most out of mid-tier players. Those coaches and that coaching philosophy appear to be gone completely. from this organization. There is no Dave Duncan coaching pitchers and elevating them.

The Cardinals are mid in all categories, defense, offense, pitching, face running, and relief. This is a collapse of identity and failure of coaching. The other side of this is a catastrophic failure of the executive management. What happened to the exec suite that knew when to let pooholes go and who to find on the free agent market to bolster the team down the stretch? Michaelis is not the problem than good coaching would have made him far better. Oh well, I guess it is the lost 70s again. Well, first off, nice to see Dave Duncan, right? And his fashionable facial hair?

I hadn't seen him in a long time. So him with the facial hair there, getting inducted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame. That was cool. Dunk was one of the great pitching coaches of our time. And yeah, I agree with you. We were spoiled rotten for a number of years, where they would bring in busted up pitchers

from other teams, guys that nobody wanted around anymore, he'd come in, make a few adjustments to that certain pitcher, and voila, you've got like a 13 game winner. Like, it was incredible. It was incredible. And then there was a, I don't know if you saw the interview that Jim Hayes did with Duncan and talking about analytics. And, you know, Jim was like, you know, Dave,

you were kind of ahead of the time where you were using analytics. And, you know, now the rest of everything caught up, the rest of the league. well, what do you think about all that? And he goes, well, he's like, yeah, he's like, I like, I like, I would be using analytics differently than the way people are doing it right now. I would use them. And he went into this whole spiel and I'm like, go tell the Cardinals this. Can we not get Dave to be like some kind of pitching coach overseer kind of guy to just kind of throw some knowledge here and there?

Like shoot him a video. He doesn't have to be at the camps. He doesn't have to be, you know, at the game. and stuff, but can we send him video each week and be like, what are you thinking about here? What do you think here? I just need, I don't know, he's so good. He's so good. And he just, almost everything he touched turned to gold.

And it is unfortunate that, you know, we had this for so long. And now here we are with like you said, a mid team, a mid organization, a mid to below average coaching staff. Noto and Goldie got old real quick. The organization fell behind the times of development. They got lazy. They took it all for granted, the coaching, the fans. And now it's this cluster of just average everywhere you turn. And it's not going to be easy to get out of it right away.

And that's something that like you can't, I mean, unless you go spend crazy money, which they're not going to do, there's no way you turn this around in two or three years. Like it's something that's going to take a little bit. These guys that we're looking at now, the Jordan Walker's, the Cs, the wins, like all of them have to come up together and they all have to be good and become the players we think they're going to be if you want to see this franchise thrive again. I mean, you can keep patchworking your rotation stuff, but eventually it's going to collapse and it has.

And now you're waiting for that next, you know, that way, of talent to come through and they're not ready yet. Pitching wise. You're hoping next year you'll see you some of them, but it's more of like looking at it. It feels like this team's at least two years away. That's just my opinion. Randy says you have no choice but to keep Michaelis. He's been five times better than Wainwright's last year. I mean, you do have choice.

You can do whatever you want with. If you can cut him, you can trade them, you can do whatever you want with Miles and Michael. It's up to you. Yeah, he is having a better year than Adam Wainwrights last year. But that's not really saying much. Adam Wainwright had, who was injured, mind you, but it was still, oof, five and 11, 7.40 ERA. I mean, that was, that was rough to watch because Adam's like a friend to everybody.

And watching him struggle like that was painful for everybody, for him and his family, as well as the Cardinal Nation. The team sucked and he was getting creamed. And it was just bad all together. So we're glad he went out on a high note, though, and picked up that 200th win. Jack says, the Cardinals problem isn't an individual player. It's the whole team's batting. You are going to lack RBI as at home runs when your whole lineup is chasing balls out of the strike zone

and striking out at a high rate. Matt Carpenter is one of the best at seeing pitches and drawing walks on the team. Other players should pay attention when you see the pitches better and force a pitcher to throw more. It wears them down a lot faster, which produces hits and runs. They need batting coaches in the minors and major leagues that can train the player to draw more walks and less strikeouts. This has been the team's problem all year long. And also our players are shouldering the blame for it. I mean, I'm with you to an extent on that, Jack.

I've always been somebody who preaches patience at the plate. Like, I've always been that guy. When you're talking about like Matt Carpenter being able to take pitches, there's no better person in the league than Lars Newpar when it comes to chase rate in the league. like he is the 100th percentile. He is the best at it. Brendan Donovan's very good. 77th percentile, both of them, just incredible eyes. Like I said earlier, sometimes Newts is almost too good

where you'd wish he'd swing a little more and do some more damage, but it's hard to complain about it if the on-base percentage is there, you know? Carp has obviously been his normal eagle eye as well. But the rest of the team, they deserve to be, criticized. Goldie's in the 45th percentile in Chase rate, which is below league average. Aronado's in the 38th. He's worse. Contreras, 38th. So the All-Stars, which is those three guys, right, they should be should be shouldering some blame for it because they're doing it worse than some other guys on this team. One of them that actually, when I was looking this up,

surprised me, was Alec Berluson, because we all think about Alex Burleson. They're going to strike out a lot, right 16th percentile in chase rate do chase his stuff all the time but he has a strikeout 96th in strikeout raid so it doesn't really seem to make sense but those are the stats at baseball savant.com and here's the other thing with burleson and i just want to bring this up real quick why why does he swing at the first it feels like he swings at the first pitch too much like too much like it seems like it happens all the time and you'll get those endings where you know where it'd be like a seven pitch inning and Burleson's one of the problems where he swings at the first pitch makes an out and doesn't allow the, you know, doesn't make the pitcher do any work whatsoever.

So I looked at that too. Baseball reference says he's hitting 259 when he swings at the first pitch. When he takes the first pitch, he's hitting 280, 21 points higher. OBP 263 when he swings at the first pitch, 350 when he takes. Slugging 380 when he swings. 480 when he takes. OPS, 643 when he swings. 830 when he takes. In 225 plate appearances,

he has swung at the first pitch this year. 225, 308 he has taken. Maybe stop doing that. The stats are what they are. Maybe stop doing that, Alec Burleson. Think about it. Think about it. Tonight, the return of Lance Lynn

against Brandon Williamson. Again, Lance Lynn, no idea why he's pitching the night. I don't know why it's not somebody else that, you know, you want to keep your eye on for next year. Please, God, tell me you're not thinking about bringing Lance Lynn back next year. I told you leading into this year. It was a bad idea. It's been a bad idea.

As much as you love him as a personality, the dude's just not a good pitcher anymore. He's just, he's below average. Stop. Stop accepting average. Stop it. Look beyond that. Be better than that.

Cards have lost two in a row overall, four in a row to the Reds. My wife, who's a Reds fan, has been giving me hell. I need it to stop. If for anything, do it for me, Cardinals. Do it for me. First pitch, 645 St. Louis time. Thanks for making a lock. Cardinals, your first listen every day if you haven't already.

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