Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - How Does The Sonny Gray Injury News Effect The Cardinals Plans

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

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How does the sunny gray injury affect the Cardinals moving forward? Plus, what's up with the offensive issues? What is going on here? We discuss these subjects and more today with Jeff Jones on Locked on Cardinals. You are Locked on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. Hey there, Cardinals fans.

I'm Jady Hafer and I'm a national radio sports anchor, born and raised in the Lou and a lifetime Cardinals fan, and I'm your host for Locked on Cardinals, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network covering your team every day. You can follow me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio, as well as the podcast at L.O underscore Cardinals. We want to thank those of you who make Locktown Cardinals your first list in every day. We're free and available wherever you get your podcast.

If you find us on YouTube, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment. Don't be shy. Interact with us. We like to answer questions, good or bad, whatever your feelings are about what's going on with the team. Let us know. Hit the notification button so you know when those new episodes are posted because this is a show serving.

Cardle Nation and giving the best fans in baseball. All of the info about the birds on the bat. Today's episode brought to you by Fandall. Make every moment more new customers join today. And you'll get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet of $5 or more wins. All you have to do is visit Fandall.com slash locked on to get started. So joining us today, Jeff Jones, who I've been anxious to get on the show. He's been in Jupiter for a while.

He's back in St. Louis now. But from the Bell Bill Bill News, joining us today. You can follow him at J.M. Jones on Twitter X, and you can read his work at B&D.com. Good day, Jeff. How are we feeling now that you're back in St. Louis? Are you missing the blue skies of Jupiter already? You know, a little bit. I'm not going to lie. It's nice to wake up and have it be 75 degrees first thing in the morning. But at least this way, get a little bit of spring, you know,

get a little bit of dose back to reality before the season starts and the reality goes away again. Yeah, well, we're glad that you made some time to join us today. kind of a big day, dude, because some news dropped. Obviously, the injury to Sunny Gray happened on Monday. He's pitching in the second inning, and something tweaks in his right hamstring. He immediately grabs for it, and we all think the worst, you know, we're Cardinals fans. So we freak out. We start everybody's out of ledge, getting ready to jump off.

We don't know what to do with ourselves. And we got the news today from John Moseilock that it is a right, mild hamstring strain. So it's not the end of the world, but it's not great either because this is something that Sunny has dealt with before. What were your thoughts on the news today that it is a, quote, mild right hamstring strain? So I think all things considered this is probably about as close as you can get to a best case scenario for the Cardinals. Given, you know, given sort of the nature of the injury would have looked like in their caution and the run up afterward. I think that, you know, when you kind of look at the totality of spring training and the inevitability of pitcher injuries, it was always going to be unlikely to impossible that they were going to get out of spring without any of their starters coming out injured, especially when you consider the rotation.

It's five guys who are 30 to and older, right? So if the worst outcome for them, you know, again, three weeks to go in spring, but if the worst outcome for them is sunny gray misses, let's say, three or five starts, that is probably an outcome all told that they will be able to. to live with. I think an important thing to remember here is that the injury is the injury, but almost more important, as important, I guess, as the strain itself, is that, you know, Gray hasn't yet gotten into a third inning in a spring game. I assume that he's gotten there in live BP since I left at least. Actually, as I kind of back, probably not. He probably hasn't even gotten up the three innings of live BP yet. So it's not just a matter of making sure that the hamstring is healthy. He's also going to have to build arm strength still, right? This

happens kind of in the midst of a game where he was supposed to go three and approach, say, 45, 50 pitches for the first time. So this is going to require, you know, this is going to interrupt his natural build and it's going to require some of that as well. So even once the hamstring is healthy enough for him to get back on the field, there is going to be probably a longer than people are anticipating stretch where the arm is still building up. So just be prepared for that to be the case as we can sort of work through this.

Yeah. And Mo even put it out there that, you know, because everybody thinks about opening day, opening day. Is he going to be ready for opening day? The word that Mo used today was challenging for Sunday to be ready for that. Yeah. By the way, it's not. Well, I don't want to interrupt. Just very briefly, that's Mo for no, right? If you see Mo, challenging, that's Mo for no. He's not going to be ready for opening. Yeah. And like if, like Jeff said, like that means pretty much he's not going to be ready. And that was the one thing, too, is that this didn't happen. And I'm glad you mentioned that. This didn't happen in his fourth or fifth appearance in the spring where the arm strength is built up and he's ready to rock and roll. Because now he's got to stop everything because he's not going to be able to throw off a mound for quite some time now. We don't know the extent of the period of time that it's going to be before he can get back to doing that.

But he's kind of got to start all over again. And I know it's bad to try to predict things like this. but he has dealt with these kind of injuries before, specifically back in 2022 with twins. What do you think if you had to guesstimate would be a time frame that you might see him back throwing off of a mound, not in a major league game, but just back getting back to his routine?

So in 2022, he had the same injury twice, actually, and both times spent pretty close to three weeks, dead on the nose, on the IL, recovering. Now, again, as you mentioned, those were in the midst of the season, right? So he's in the midst of having, you know, a throwing program already being built up. I would say at this point, if Gray is back to throwing off a mound before the Cardinals leave Florida. So that's, you know, I believe they leave Florida a week before the season opens because they play the Monday, Tuesday in Arizona, or pretty close to the season open.

They play the Monday Tuesday in Arizona against the Cubs ahead of opening with Dodgers in LA. if he is on a mound before they leave Florida, they will probably be pretty happy with that development. I think either way, you're probably looking at him getting back up on a mound within a handful of days of opening day. And if that's the case, then depending on how much more he has to build,

maybe we're talking, you know, again, I hate to ask, I hate the guess, because you don't really know, I'm not down there. I haven't talked to Sunny this morning. My inclination would be just sort of given how long it takes to build up a pitcher in spring training and given his history of this injury, maybe we're talking about closer to the end of April before he is going to be an

option for the Cardinals in live game action. I think if you told the Cardinals today on March 5th, if you said the Genie came down and the Cardinals are told Sunny Gray will pitch in a game for you before May 1st, not faster, but not slower than that. I think they would take it, I guess, is the way to look at it. Yeah, that's one thing that I wanted to caution people is like, yeah, we're going to throw out some dates and stuff here. And these are, we're just throwing things out there from what we've seen in the past. So there's no guarantees that he'll be that quick or he'll be that slow.

Things change. We have no idea yet. But I would tell fans as well, be prepared to wait a little bit before Sunny Gray is back on a mound for the St. Louis Cardinals in live game action at Bush Nidium or anywhere else because we know that this is a grind of a season. and you're not trying to push it. You're not trying to win April and May, man. There's a long way to go in this one.

And to have him healthy for the rest of the years seems to be more important than just having him ready by the end of April. So, but we'll find out. We'll find out. This leads us into what are the Cardinals going to do now? What are their options? So we're going to talk more about what this does to the rotation. Who is into the rotation now if Sunny Gray is going to miss a decent amount of time here.

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Again, joined by Jeff Jones from the Belleville News, talking some Cardinals baseball. We're talking about the big news today was Sunny Gray, mild hamstring strain, no timetable is set, challenging to start for opening day or in Mo speak. He's not going to be ready for opening day. They're going to take their time with him and make sure he's ready for the rest of the season, which means we've got some shuffling to do, Jeff, when it comes to the actual rotation. Who do you think because everybody's worried now? All right, who's going to be our starter on opening day?

They're afraid it's going to be Miles Michaelis, Jeff. If you had to play some money down on one of these guys, either Matt's, Lynn, Gibson, or Michaelis, would Michaelis be the guy you think would make the most sense to start on opening day against L.A.? So I would actually say probably not for no other reason that when you kind of look at the way that they have the spring schedule structured. Michaelis and Gibson are sort of locked into their days at this point when you look at how their work has been built up and the way they have sort of written their spring around what their schedules look like. So then the question becomes who is it? And I'm not entirely sure. You know, if the Cardinals view that as a situation where they think there is still some pop and circumstance involved, it would not totally floor me to see Lance Lynn start an opening day just because he is the guy who has the most service time in the rotation.

and he is the guy who, you know, was making the big comeback, played for the Dodgers last year. So if you want to talk about that, yeah, I could imagine that happening. I could also imagine Stephen Matt's getting that start, again, just because he pitched yesterday behind Gray, and he is sort of on a shadow schedule that lines him up to make that possible. It's still early enough that they have some time to play with it, and so we'll see. But my guess is that you will see the Cardinals probably, we'll probably hear about it, maybe not being as big a deal as they wanted to make it when it was going to be great. And we'll see what seems like random is the wrong word,

but definitely a guy who maybe you wouldn't consider to be a traditional opening day starter could definitely be in the running to get that start for the Cardinals. And we've talked about the schedule being as tough as it is early on for the team. So just having it line up. I'm glad you said those words line up the way that things are working in spring training just seems to make a lot more sense. It's not so much where, you know, this isn't a playoff series against the Dodgers. It's not like game one.

It's got to be, you know, your top guy. No, it needs to just kind of fit whatever the plan is for the rotation for that first week when they're playing, you know, eight games right off the bat and doing some traveling coming from the West Coast back to St. Louis. So I'm intrigued. I like the Lance Lynn idea just because him being a former Dodger last year. And the last time he was on a mound for L.A., he was doing a lot of this, looking at the ball, go flying over the wall. It went, it went great for him in L.A. last season. So that's definitely,

you want to get extra ratings against Otney and Freeman and Betts in the bunch. So. Yeah. A Lance Lynn revenge game in game one of the season. There you go. I mean, that guys step up in those situations. And Lance Land's entertainment. Right. Exactly. Lance Lynn, certainly not one of those guys to be shy about, you know, getting pumped up a little bit to get on the mound against a former foe. A question about Lance Lynn, too, because I've gotten a lot of these on Twitter X. How come we haven't seen Lance Lynn yet at spring training? What is it about this plan for him that they've taken it a little bit slower with him compared to other people?

So the explanation has been that Lynn himself prefers to ramp up in his backfield settings versus the endgame settings. He's been around long enough that he kind of knows his system, kind of knows his progress, and he's comfortable with it. And I can say, I watched Lance pitch in person plenty of time while I was down there. I watched him throw one full bullpen session where seemingly he only threw cutters for 20 or 25 pitches, right? So it's not like there's no, it's not like there's no method to the madness there. Whatever Lynn is doing to build himself up and be ready for the season, they're going to trust him to know his body and know what he needs to be ready. I don't have any indication that there's like a lingering physical issue with Lance Lynn. There doesn't seem to be any of that.

And I believe he's scheduled to get into a game action perhaps this week, maybe even Friday at the double check. but I think that is on the, that's on the docket as well. So, you know, in this case, it's just a matter of a guy says, here's what I need to get ready, and you kind of trust him to go about. You know, the comparison point here would be Stephen Mats, who has also been on a slightly slower schedule, and that's a case where the Cardinals have said,

look, you know, we know how Mats has sort of worn down over the course of the full season before, and they're going to save the bullets by not having him pitch that much in game action, by having him get into games, you know, a week or so behind the other. starters save for Lynn. Max is hopefully going to leave Spring healthy, and now certainly they need him to do so. So they're going to hope that plan pays off for that. Once again, joined by Jeff Jones from the Belleville News.

You can follow him at J.M. Jones on TwitterX as well as at B&D.com, where you can get all the great articles that Jeff puts out there for you guys. How did Lance Lynn look to you physically? because we know that this off season, he was dedicating him to itself to get in a better shape, realizing he's a little bit older. He's got something to prove. How did he look to you physically outside of pointing out his pink Bronco? How was he looking down there in Jupiter?

He looked like Lance to me. I guess if you probably stood him up next to a photo of himself from last season, maybe he looked a little bit thinner, but I don't really know how he maintains that kind of over the course of his season and how he manages all of that. Yeah, there wasn't anything, nothing about him really stood out in terms of physical changes as much as it was a guy who looked like he knew he was ready and a guy who looked like he had purpose.

You know, the one thing I will say as well about Lynn is that even if he was not pitching like in game action, right? He was a guy who was a really consistent presence. So even from like the first days of camp, say Ryan Helsie was throwing a bullpen, Sonny Gray would be out watching. And so would Lance Lynn. You know, Lance was down.

definitely around when he didn't have to be when other guys were doing their work to kind of contribute as much as he's able to. So I guess my takeaways from what I saw from Lancelan and spring training would be, yeah, that's about what I would expect Lancelan to be up to. Yeah. And with, you know, the way we've gotten a chance to learn about Sunny Gray this year and how he's been on the microphone and said all the right things to everybody with media and teammates and stuff. you're going to need another voice coming out of that rotation now that Sunny's going to be down for a little bit. And I wonder if this is a spot that Lance Lynn will step up and kind of be that guy. So we'll have to wait and see when he finally gets on the mound. Now, this does open a spot up in the rotation.

If Gray is indeed going to miss a few weeks at the beginning of the season, the two guys that most people think are in the top competition for that final spot, even when they were discussing sixth man rotations to start the year, we're going to be Matthew Libertor and Zach Thompson. A little sprinkle of Drew Rom possibly, but those were the two top guys, or Libby and Thompson. In your opinion, if you had to make a decision today,

which one do you think they might go with? If I were going to make the guess today, I would say probably Thompson ahead of Liberator Biden knows for a couple of reasons. One, I think Thompson on the whole pitch better as a starter for them last season, I think they sort of saw more out of him in that role. And they're more willing, I think, to give him some runway.

to kind of repeat those results. The other thing I would say, too, is that I know that there are people in the organization who are very intrigued by the idea of Libertor as a short-ending reliever, and then very intrigued by the possibility of that kind of being the path that his career takes. So whether or not that happens eventually this season, you know, I would not be totally shocked to see Liberator make the team as kind of a swingman hybrid bullpen role. Maybe he would have been the number six type starter guy, right, if they had needed that in the opening days, whereas Thompson is a guy who maybe is better suited to anchor the Memphis rotation when he's not here starting games.

And so if I had to guess today, that is probably the way they would lead. But I do think it probably is going to evolve into a relatively pure competition. And I think you have it, you know, I think you have it right that it's Thompson and Liberator and maybe Rom is drafting behind them. If something were to happen to one or both of them or if you were to just pitch the lights out, then sure, Ron, I'm going to get an opportunity, but I think it's, I think it's the other two primarily, and I would say Thompson just ahead of Libertor at this point. All right. We're going to talk more about the bullpen here because I'm intrigued by a Matthew Libertor in the bullpen. I don't have an issue. Put him wherever he's best at. Wherever he's more productive at,

I'm fine with that. That's fine as long as he's cool with it and it doesn't bother him mentally. I'm down with that. That's not an issue at all. But I want to talk about the bullpen. We'll get Jeff's thoughts on who's impressing bullpen-wise because there's a lot of competition going on there. And I want to talk a lot about the offensive issues that the Cardinals have been dealing with thus far in spring training. So we'll have more with Jeff Jones coming up next on Locked on Cardinals. Get buckets with your first bet on Fandall, America's number one sports book because right now new customers, you get $150 in bonus bets with any winning $5 bet. Guys, that's $150 if your bet wins.

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Fandul, the official sportsbook partner of the NBA. Locked on his launch with first ever national sports 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube, and now it's also available on Amazon Fire TV and the Free Fire TV channels app. Locked on Sports Today is here for you 24-7 covering the top sports stories of the day with the local experts of Locktown Plus our national shows covering every league. Find Locked on Sports today right now available on the Free Fire TV channels app. Again, Jeff Jones, taking some time out today, joining us talking to, of Cardinals baseball. He covers the Cardinals for the Belleville News, which you can read at

B&D.com or follow him at J.M. Jones on Twitter X. Bullpen competition. This is one of the things that is nerdy as it sounds. It was something I was really excited about because offensively, player positions, there's not a ton of competition going on there, but you had all these new faces and new arms coming into the bullpen, and they're all competing for just a couple of spots. We've got the familiar names like Helsley and Guy Yagos and Jojo Romero. We know they're going to be a part of this. But among the new guys that were brought in, who are some of them that impressed you a little bit

and may have stood out above the rest? So in addition to those three, you can take Keenan and Middleton and Andrew Ketridge as well and sort of write them in pen and the bullpen in terms of new guys who are definitely going to be there. And that leaves you with three spots for roughly a half dozen pitchers, right so you're looking at guys some of whom that we saw last season john king for instance andre polante uh who's second behind guyago's for most appearances by cardinals reliever

in the last two seasons guys people are familiar with as well as some of these you know newer tools of your guys whom who arrived in trades and whom were waiver pickups uh and we'll sort of see how that shakes out i will say you know the one guy who leaps to mind who they are very impressed with uh is riley o'brien who they acquired from seattle for cash this wonder who's kind of bounced around, has been briefly in the big league with Cincinnati, was the draft pick of Tampa when Heinbloom was still running the draft there, and it has kind of, you know, moved on through the organizations in baseball sense. But that's a guy who, you know, he's a classic two-pitch reliever, fastball slider.

They really like the deception they get. You know, you watch O'Brien, and he's on these guys who starts kind of with his back-facing home plate a little bit twisted up. But he almost in some ways, kind of when you watch him pitch, looks like you're watching Tim Linsicum put into a task. stretchy, right? Because he's kind of, he's taller and skinny, but there's some similarities in terms of how they move. And so, you know, O'Brien is a guy who even, you know, in early February, the bullpens were upper 90s and, you know, then the slider is lower 80s and has that kind of

that big sweeping action to it. So that's a guy who I know that they like and who, you know, frankly, has kind of lit up the track man a little bit. And if you're going to, you're going to impress evaluators early in spring training, that's a pretty good way to do it. Ryan Fernandez has had some pretty good results in game situations. The really curious thing is obviously as a Rule 5 guy, he has to stay on the active roster for the duration of the season. You know, last year was kind of a half-time split, half a double A, half AAA for the Red Sox, and the AAA results were not very good.

Fernandez has gotten some game touches, but not a lot of priority game touches. Not a lot of time, you know, in the third, fourth, fifth inning of games where he would be pitching against other teams big league hitters. And that kind of is a giveaway for how they might slot some of these guys. Because when you look at when they're going to want to evaluate these relievers, if they don't know that well, they're going to see them against the best hitters of the other teams, not the guys who are going to high A or going to double A, who are in spring training games in the seventh, eighth, ninth innings, right?

And so, you know, if you start seeing Fernandez or Nick Robertson kind of get those assignments, maybe that's an indication of what the Cardinals want to see. To that end, you know, a guy whose name we should remember here is Wilking, Rodriguez, who is not technically a new guy who spent a full season with the Cardinals last year, got a full year of service time, caught some, you know, caught some first pitches, was in the team photo. Didn't pitch an inning in the big leagues last season. Pitch, I think, like five innings of Memphis on various rehab assignments before shutting

it down. And that's a guy who, again, they really believe in the stuff and the way that the stuff measures and they're interested to see how it looks in game action. Now, he had a rough game the other day. He got touched up, I think, for three runs in one inning when he pitched in the game the other day and that again was not against the ones that was deeper into the game as well so we'll see how you know how that works out i do think that when you're kind of looking at how these various pieces all fit you know it's hard for me to imagine a roster for instance with both king and palante they

both do roughly the same thing which is to say they neutralize left-handers and get the ball on the ground against them right those are guys who offer you pretty similar skill sets to each other in terms of length you know that maybe that's liberator and then you're looking at is there space for one of O'Brien, Robertson, Fernandez, Rodriguez, you know, if we assume it like O'Brien a lot, is there space for Palante as well? A lot of those things fit in. And, you know, if I, again, March 5th, if I were going to fill out the last three spots in the bullpen, I would probably in pencil, right, Libertor, Palante, O'Brien,

but there's plenty of time for that to change as we kind of come down the stretch of spring. Absolutely. And real quick, what was it about? Because Riley O'Brien, people who aren't familiar with them, it's not like he's 22, 23, just coming on to the same. In 29 years old, is there something that clicked for him over the last couple of years that had led him to possibly making this team compared to what he was doing with Seattle and Cincinnati in the past? You know, he's done work at some of the big labs. He's a Seattle guy. He spent some time with drive line and he kind of got all that sorted out. The thing for O'Brien, the K-rate has always been

great, he just walks the world, right? He hasn't had good enough command to kind of pitch around his own stuff and be in the strike zone enough to let things, you know, to let things really play out for him. So if he's found something, whether it's mechanically or through his film work, that allows him to, you know, cut the walks per nine to like three and a half from five and a half, that makes him a lot more competitive in short bursts as a reliever. And I think they believe, you know, whether it's his own work or what they've seen in him that they can unlock some of that. And again, like, this is a situation where the stuff just measures so well, right? All these teams now can measure spin and they measure velocity and they measure angle,

all, you know, number of inches on a break. All of these things are now quantified for basically every pitch, a pitcher throws off a mound in spring training. And O'Brien is a guy who sort of jumps off the chart in all of those categories and they will lean towards stuff. kind of when we talk about the struggles they had striking guys out last season, if they have a pitcher, and they think they do an O'Brien that has stuff, they're going to lean into stuff. And real quick, before we wrap things up today, some fans are starting to, shockingly, they were pretty patient over the first week and a half when it came to, came to what was going on with the offense.

And now people are kind of going, all right, when is this offense going to wake up? They're kind of worried a little bit. Paul Goldschmidt hitting the first. Cardinal home run of spring training today. Maybe it was you, Jeff. You were the bad luck, and that's why they couldn't hit any home runs. I don't know. But what are you seeing from what the offense has been bringing to these games that maybe we can calm people down a little bit when it comes to what this offense should be when

the regular season begins. You know, it's funny. My last day on campus was last Thursdays day. And as we broke up and we had the post game meeting after that game with the Nationals, I mentioned that I was going to ask about the homers as I was leading the next day. there was no one left to be mad at uh no they weren't concerned then i can't imagine they're all that concerned now it is spring training they are working on things as this thing goes and and like

this is something too that people people should know and should remember really truly roger dean is a terrible hitting environment they play all over the state you know they go up the four st louis to play the mats and they go down to palm beach to play the nats and the astros but really do keep in mind that Roger Dean is tough. Like even in Palm Beach, Drew Rahm had that first start against the Astros, or I believe it was Altuve and Bregnant, and they even Al-Tube and Tucker, whoever it was, the first two-hitters from the game for the Astros,

barreled up Drew Rahm. And those, like, those balls are gone during the regular season. Those are homers in the regular season. But the Florida win, knocked him down, and left-fielder caught him with the track, and, you know, no harm, no foul. So does it look great on paper? It does not, it's not ideal. But, you know, I believe as we started this conversation in the left,

but the Cardinals were up 5-1 on the Twins. Goldsman had a homer, Dylan Carlton, had a two-run double, maybe. So, you know, the offense will get there. And again, the thing to remember about the offense is that before Brendan Donovan got hurt, that was a top 10 offense in baseball. And whether or not, you know, look, they play 162, all the stats count. However, I do think it's reasonable to wait a little more, you know, put more weight on the things that happened before August 1st versus the things that happened after August 1st.

when it was like Irving Lopez and Junio Caracuto and Jose for me not there taking a badge, right? Like that doesn't happen if the team is winning more games and the offense, therefore, looks a lot better. So the concern is not totally unjustified, but I do think this is an instance where patience is probably the best outcome for everyone's mental health, if nothing else. And if you don't believe Jeff about Roger Dean being a tough place to hit, you know who else is having trouble hitting this year?

The Marlins in spring training. not lighten it up either. Guess where they play? Same spot as a Cardinal. So just take that into consideration, everybody. But I appreciate you being a voice of reason. Everybody relax. If they're doing this, if they're all hitting like 100, like right before they leave for Arizona, then maybe we can freak out a little bit, but they've still got plenty of time. I think it's a good rule of just let yourself enjoy spring training until St. Patrick's State. Then you can start worrying after that. All right. Once again, Jeff Jones joining us here today from the Belleville News. You can find all of his work at B&D.com. You can also follow him on Twitter X. An excellent follow on

Twitter X. If you're trying to get any of your Cardinals knowledge, make sure you hit him up there at J.M. Jones. Jeff, I appreciate you making you making time to join us here today. Hope to have you back on here real, real soon, my friend. Happy to do it anytime. All right. Thank you. And thank you guys for making Locktown Cardinals your first listen every day. If you haven't already, give us a follow. on TwitterX as well at L0 underscore Cardinals and a JD Sports Radio. Like, subscribe on YouTube. You can help our channel and our love for the Cardinals grow. Our drive to get to 10,000 subscribers before opening day is in full effect. We're making great progress. But could always use more.

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