Tag Archives: Jake Westbrook

Just Imagine If There Was No Tommy John Surgery

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All of us as St. Louis Cardinals fans — actually, all of us as baseball fans — should be thankful for Dr. Frank Jobe, an orthopedic surgeon who died a few days ago at age 88. You may or may not have heard of him, but there’s no question you’ve heard of his greatest contribution to baseball: ulnar collateral ligament replacement surgery, better known as Tommy John surgery.

collage-Tommy JohnThat surgery is something we as Cardinals fans are quite familiar with, isn’t it? Jason Motte is still recovering from undergoing the procedure last May.

And just imagine what the 2011 Cardinals pitching staff would have been if there were no Tommy John surgery and a pitcher’s career — as happened with Sandy Koufax — just ended because of elbow injuries.

Of course there already wasn’t Adam Wainwright that season, since he’d had Tommy John surgery in February. But there also wouldn’t have been Chris Carpenter (who had the surgery in 2007), Jaime Garcia (2008), Jake Westbrook (2008), Kyle McClellan (2005 — and remember how good he was in the starting rotation early that year?) and Octavio Dotel (2005).

Just imagine … no happy flights and magical September and October without them, and that’s just one Cardinals season.

Also just one team. Last July Will Carroll, an expert on sports injuries, published a study at Bleacher Report that indicated one-third of current MLB pitchers at the time had undergone Tommy John surgery.That was 124 of 360 pitchers and even Carroll was stunned at the high number. Here’s his full list of the 124, if you’re interested.

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Catching Up With The Cardinals: Happy Retirement, Jake Westbrook

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Quick, who was the winning pitcher for the Cardinals in Game Six of the 2011 World Series?

Jake-WestbrookYes, it was Jake Westbrook.

And just like the other sometimes forgotten hero of that game, Westbrook too has now retired. He leaves with a 105-103 career record and 4.32 ERA, with his numbers during his four seasons as a Cardinal pretty similar: 36-32 with a 4.27 ERA.

Yet he did have some highlights as a Card.

Happy retirement, Jake!

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That’s A Perfect Home Stand Winner!

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Now that’s the way for the St. Louis Cardinals to finish the regular season: a 4-0 victory over the Chicago Cubs for a perfect 6-0 home stand, a final record of 97-65 for the best record in the National League, tied with the Boston Red Sox for top record in MLB.

9-30-collageBring on the Pirates or Reds!

Yes, the prize for having that best NL record (in addition to home field advantage throughout the playoffs) will now be a very familiar foe, pending the results of the wild card game at PNC Park on Tuesday night. But we have plenty of time to wonder about that — game one isn’t until Thursday at Busch Stadium.

For now, let’s appreciate what happened today.

And appreciating Jake Westbrook was what the first inning was about, while recognizing Yadier Molina with a standing ovation was what happened right before the first pitch of the game — Tony Cruz actually caught today.

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One More Cardinals Win Means Best Record

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With a record of 96-65, the St. Louis Cardinals currently top the National League — thanks to the Philadelphia Phillies hanging on to beat the Atlanta Braves last night.

one-1A Cardinals win today, or a Braves loss, would give the Cards home field advantage throughout the playoffs as well as the wild card winner of either the Pittsburgh Pirates or Cincinnati Reds as their division series opponent.

Once again, a magic number of one.

While it seems like Cardinals fans are all for achieving that best record, manager Mike Matheny doesn’t necessarily share that sentiment as Jason Mastrodonato writes at Cardinals.com:

“Maybe I should put more [emphasis on home-field advantage], but I don’t,” Matheny said. “My theory is people start overthinking that and over planning and trying to be a master puppeteer in how that all plays out. I think that stuff comes back and bites you. I think there’s too many good teams in this right now and we got to respect that, respect the game, just like we’ve done all season long and what we do is we go out and set our priorities.

“I made it clear to you guys right now, our priority is getting these guys ready for Thursday. But whenever we walk out there we also don’t want to lose that culture that we developed of going out and maximizing everything we’ve got while we’re out there out. No matter who we put out there, we’re playing to win all the time.”

So, does it look like Mike is saying “take that, everyone complaining about Jake Westbrook starting today”?

Anyway, yesterday’s game was a rather easy 6-2 win over the Chicago Cubs, and it was cruising along as another shutout until the ninth inning.

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Wacha Wows In One-Hit Winner

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Wacha 2All too often, kids come into professional baseball hot off of a collegiate career with potential through the roof. It’s not unusual for the transition to pro ball to take some time. It IS unusual for a guy less than a year removed from his final college game to not only be invited to Spring Training, but also force his way into the conversation about the Big League rotation.

When Cardinal veterans like Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright jump on board, you have to believe there’s something to it.

This spring, Molina said the 22-year-old Michael Wacha was Big League ready. Wainwright, when asked about the 2014 rotation said, “He’ll be there.”

Cardinals fans know first hand what happens when a guy doesn’t live up to the astronomical expectations. Colby Rasmus? Brendan Ryan? Tyler Greene? Not pretty. And with a rotation of Wainwright, Jaime Garcia, Jake Westbrook, Lance Lynn and Shelby Miller (which left out Joe Kelly and Trevor Rosenthal), there was no need to rush Wacha. Continue reading →

All Hail, Matt Carpenter!

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In last night’s 12-8 Cardinals victory over the Pirates that pretty much had everything, one player just did what he’s been doing all season: Matt Carpenter.

Photo: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Photo: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Carpenter led off the Cardinals first with a walk, scored on a Carlos Beltran single, tripled in the third, scored on a Jon Jay double, doubled in the seventh — the third of the Cardinals nine consecutive hits for the inning — and scored when Jon Jay singled.

Last night he tied Albert Pujols for the most hits in a season at Busch Stadium III with 98. (Chances are excellent he’ll break it, don’ t you think?) With his double — his 47th of the season — he surpassed Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby for most by a Cardinals second baseman in a season.

Carpenter is hitting .423/.464/.731 in September and has hit in every game this month (plus on Aug. 31, so he has a seven-game hit streak). He had the only Cardinal hits — two — in their 1-0 loss in Cincinnati on Tuesday.

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Lynn And Co. Can’t Quiet The Crew

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Apparently, the Brewers did their homework since the last time they faced the Cardinals. Of course, things have changed quite a bit for the Redbirds since then, too.

One inningLance “First Half” Lynn is tending toward the late-season struggles we hoped were a thing of the past. Jake Westbrook can’t seem to hold it together. Michael Wacha hasn’t been the rotation savior we’d hoped for. Neither has Carlos Martinez. Even Shelby Miller has shown signs of vulnerability after taking that line drive off his elbow a few weeks back.

And, the Brewers are the least of this rotation’s concerns over the next few weeks.

Last night, many will argue, was not really Lynn’s fault. A litany of innocent singles and a few less-than-stellar defensive plays quickly turned a 3-0 Cardinals lead into a 5-3 hole.

But, he had good stuff! They were only singles! Twice a double play could have/should have/would have been made if that slouch David Freese wasn’t manning third! Continue reading →

Can The Cardinals Please Stop Starting Jake Westbrook?

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To state the completely obvious, there’s a problem lately when Jake Westbrook pitches.

Jake WestbrookYesterday’s buzzkill of a game squashed the high of Thursday’s extra-inning comeback walk-off win over the Pirates and Kolten Wong’s major league debut as Westbrook gave up seven runs and the Cards managed only two hits in the 7-0 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

It was just another bad outing in a string of bad performances from Westbrook.

In three outings this month (only two starts, since he pitched in relief of Shelby Miller’s two-pitch outing on Aug. 7) he’s given up 20 earned runs (21 total) in 16 1/3 innings pitched on 25 hits with 12 walks. He’s faced the Reds, Dodgers and Cubs in those three outings, and they’re hitting .368/.463/.471 off him. In searching for some sort of silver lining, he’s only given one home run. At least he’s had 22 ground-outs, which obviously are what a sinker-ball pitcher needs to succeed. Of course, it’s the non-outs that cause all the trouble.

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Hopefully, Cardinals, That Will Be The Only Star Wars Night

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What’s that saying — it’s all fun and games until somebody takes a line drive off the elbow?

Westbrook 8-7

Yes, Jake, we felt the same way. (Photo: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Yeah. That was Star Wars Night at Busch Stadium. Two pitches, a Carl Crawford liner, Shelby Miller out of the game.

Then there were the nine runs allowed by Jake Westbrook (including six during his first inning of relief), four allowed by Keith Butler and four RBI by Skip Schumaker as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals 13-4.

But, hey, Rob Johnson pitched! Yes, the Cards backup catcher faced Dodgers relief pitcher Paco Rodriguez — and got a strikeout. (Not even our blog namesake ever got a K in his five career innings pitched.) It was the first time a Cardinal position player took the mound since Mr. Schumaker himself, back on Aug. 23, 2011, coincidentally against the Dodgers (and our namesake had a role in that game as well).

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Westbrook: “I’m going to be better.”

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It wasn’t Westie’s night. Boo

Five runs on four hits and five walks in five innings.

It wasn’t the rest of the lineup’s night, either. At least not like it had been the previous two evenings.

Just four hits. Three runs. Six runners stranded. One-for-nine with runners in scoring position, and three left with two outs. No magic two-out RBI this time.

And the Pirates won, to boot.

No, it wasn’t the Cardinals’ night. But, they’re going to be better. Winning teams make adjustments. They take nights like last night and figure out how to avoid the same mistakes again. That’s the idea, anyway.

“I’m going to be better,” Westbrook said. “It’s just a matter of figuring it out and getting back into the swing of things and getting back to where I was earlier in the year, getting a lot of ground balls and limiting my walks and getting a lot deeper in the ballgame than I have been.”

You know the best part about this road trip? It’s almost over. One game left today, and it’s over. You know what else? There’s absolutely nothing the Cardinals can do about the last 10 games. The wins were big. They were loud. Yet, the losses were louder. Even so, just like a good pitcher has to have a short memory, so does an entire team. Continue reading →