The Cardinals got all the All-Star Game representatives they deserved on the National League squad that will play at Target Field in Minneapolis on July 15.
Obviously, if you’re voted in like Yadier Molina was, you deserve to be there. Adam Wainwright is one of the two best starters in the league (along with Clayton Kershaw), Pat Neshek has had the best season of any non-closing reliever, and Matt Carpenter makes a great case as a backup third/second baseman with his good glove work and his .375 on-base percentage, which leads all NL leadoff hitters.
The only real surprise was Pittsburgh’s Josh Harrison making the team over the Cardinals’ Matt Adams, Philadelphia’s Marlon Byrd or San Francisco’s Mike Morse. That last player on the roster should be able to come off the bench and hit a home run, and any of those three not only provide more pop than Harrison, but give their team just as good of a chance to get on base. Harrison is really the only mistake on an otherwise predictably solid NL squad.
Other notes:
I loved that fans put Nelson Cruz of the Orioles on the American League roster. Unlike the baseball writers who vote on the Hall of Fame and have elected to keep suspected guys like Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza out of Cooperstown, fans have determined PEDs are part of the game; once a player pays his penance, he should be able to be honored.
If fans think Cruz should be an All-Star, why should Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Gary Sheffield be prevented from receiving baseball’s highest honor? Shouldn’t fans, who support the sport and the Hall of Fame, have some say in who’s honored? I think it makes sense for baseball to ask its fans, in a manner similar to how they ask them to vote for the All-Star Game, if they think those associated with performance-enhancing drugs should have a chance to get into the Hall. And if baseball’s customers say yes, those players should get a fair chance…
Perhaps the Cardinals will find some consistency and health and turn out to be the team we expected them to be. It just seems unlikely that so many guys in the throes of bad seasons will find their offensive stroke. The key guys in the middle of the lineup – Matt Holliday, Allen Craig and Molina – have all been woefully inconsistent this season, and we have yet to see Oscar Taveras become an impact hitter. It’s not often that four hitters in decline for 89 games can turn it around for their final 73. Even if the Cardinals can make a big trade for one hitter, that hitter will never see a pitch to hit with the Cards. Since the first of June, Molina hasn’t posed a power threat, and Craig and Holliday haven’t posed that threat all year. The only impact hitter in the lineup right now is Adams, and he can’t carry the load. Now the pitching is starting to feel the stress of such a feeble offense and, along with injuries, is regressing, too…
The Rams are less than two weeks away from their first training camp practice of 2014, and we are less than four weeks from the 2014 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction of former Rams cornerback Aeneas Williams. He joins Marshall Faulk in Canton, and should start a pretty significant run of Greatest Show on Turf Rams going in over the next few years. Next year, Kurt Warner, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt are all eligible to be voted in. None of them, of course, are guaranteed to be voted in on their first try. But no other quarterback who has started three Super Bowls has failed to get elected, so Warner should make it. While players like Walter Jones and Jonathan Ogden were great players who deserved their election, Pace was the ideal left tackle. He should be voted in. It may take some time for Bruce and Holt, as it has with many receivers, but their statistics scream for induction…
Williams, who is pastor at the Spirit Church in Ferguson, promises to deliver one of the great Hall of Fame speeches ever. I’m looking forward to his more than any speech in recent memory.
By the end of the week, we should be past LeBron James and NBA free agency, and it’ll be all football through January. Only eight more Sundays before the regular-season opener…