Manzella had a .498 OPS coming into this game. He has 28 SOs in 90 PAs. He has 3 walks, only 2 uninentional. Those are Adam Everett-in-a-slump type numbers. Defensively, he's okay but nothing special. He's not that sure-handed and doesn't have tremendous range because of his body type.
Wandy starting to come undone a la a few years ago when he would implode in the middle innings. It would be a shame if this game got interesting again after a 9-1 lead.
I doubt it. Wandy was pitching a gem though up until this inning. He was doing it all actually, scoring and driving in a run to boot.
5 hits and 2 walks over 6 innings has led to 5 Cardinal runs. Talk about maximizing your scoring chances. Keppinger's error in the 1st contributed to only 1 of those runs. Wandy pitched much better than the scoreboard would tell you but that middle-inning semi-collapse combined with his rought start to the season does remind you a little too much of the old Wandy.
Lyon and Lindstrom have been nails but sure would have been nice to give those guys a night off with a day game tomorrow.
I still take this as a positive step forward for Wandy. He looked as good as ever through the first 5 innings. Now, he just needs to prove that the middle-inning collapse was just a fluke.
Yep his first start in the big leagues was against them. I want to say he faced Wainright and had a no hitter through the 5th or 6th until the pitcher broke it up.
Dicey situation but Sampson comes through. He started out last season on fire but came undone down the stretch. He only threw 55 innings but I think some felt that Cooper overworked him early in the season. I think he also got some kind of injury.
4 walks for Berkman. He has tied for the team lead despite missing a ton of games. He'll never lose that tremendous eye and plate discipline. That's what separates him from a lot of the very good hitters.
Not like they've been "overworked" this season. In fact I doubt they've both pitched two consecutive games all year.
That's another case of Pence overswinging the bat in my opinion. In addition to the ball being up high, he took a wild, spazzy swing at it. I'd like to see him slow down at times and just look to make better contact kind of like he did in his first AB tonight even though it led to an out. He stayed back and took a relaxed swing that turned into an opposite field line drive to the warning track.
It is nice to see the middle of our line-up producing. Hopefully things are starting to turn around for those guys.......its painful to see them hovering around .200
I think they did earlier in the year but regardless they pitched Sunday, Tuesday and looked like tonight followed by a day game manana, lots of innings over a short period of time. Irrelevant I guess at this point. :grin: Edit - Pretty much what Brownie just said lol
I have him on my fantasy team and was back and forth about playing him tonight. I ended up letting him play.
