The Cardinals begin a west-coast heavy road trip tonight in San Diego. Will they extend their winning streak? With the red-hot Jake Peavy on the mound tonight, it’s not likely. But the second two games of the series look good. A few pre-series notes:

• As the Cardinals prepare to face silky-smooth Padre first baseman Adrian Gonzalez (who is featured in an interesting Hardball Times article today), one can’t help but wonder what the series storyline might’ve been like had his sweet-swinging older brother Edgar V. (.377 OBP/.269 GPA) been called up to play for the Cardinals. Perhaps the ascendancy of his fellow Memphis Redbird Ryan Ludwick will pave the way.
• Will So Taguchi be in the starting lineup tonight? He’s had success vs. Peavy in limited appearances:

• The Padres have the decided pitching advantage tonight (Peavy FIP: 1.90; Wells FIP: 4.61). But Wells has had some success against SD, with a 4.20 qDIPS.
• The tragicomedy of Jeff Weaver’s career continues as the Mariners — who signed him to an $8.25-million contract this winter — kicked him out of their rotation and quite possibly are going to designate him for assignment. Wow, it’s a shame that the Cardinals were too cheap to sign him! At any rate, for those memory-challenged readers who are willing to give Weaver another shot with the Cardinals, let’s recall what exactly he did last year for St. Louis: a 5.75 FIP, which was even worse than his 5.35 FIP in Anaheim, despite getting great defense (.704 compared to .671 in ANA).

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.