As for Wallace, I hope the Cards leave Brett Wallace at AA for most of next season, no matter what kind of numbers he puts up. Then come August promote him to AAA and possibly a September callup depending on how well he is doing. Have Allen Craig start out the year in AA in LF and then in May promote him to AAA. That would make David Freese the odd man out and he would either be on the bench or traded for another prospect.

I don’t think I have all the answers, so those were questions in my own head and that led me to try to get the full story on Kopp.

One difference between Kopp and Maddux that I’m not sure is significant is that Kopp’s elbow is bent 90 degrees at the high-cocked position while Maddux’s is bent more like 135 degrees. I’m not yet convinced that that is significant, but you could argue that a 90 degree bend in the elbow at the high-cocked position, while widely advocated, isn’t ideal because it could theoretically increase the load on both the elbow and the shoulder.

As for Lynn, I figured it was a fatigue thing. Again, just playing devil’s advocate, as I’m sure it was a question that was in a lot of the readers’ heads.

I have some video of Kopp from March that I need to take a look at.

When I saw him then he was hitting 92 or 93 but with poor control. He had to back off to 90 or 91 to throw strikes. It could be that the effort to hit 93 pushed him over the edge either in terms of his mechanics (e.g. timing) or what his body can handle.

The issue with Lynn is that he’s never pitched this much, this hard in his life. Many guys hit bumps in the road after pitching a full college season and then playing in the pro Summer (and Winter) leagues. He could be dealing with fatigue problems.

I’m monitoring both of them.

- http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/Baseball/Pitching/ProfessionalPitcherAnalyses/JaimeGarcia.html

As for ERA and WHIP, those stats are highly flawed b/c they lump together a large string of individual events made by multiple players, eg the pitcher, hitter and the defense. making it extremely tough to separate the credit for the pitcher, hitter, or defense. WHIP and ERA fail to account for the actual contributions of the pitcher. Most pitchers’ ability to influence balls in play is relatively weak.

The reason why I pointed out his FIP (fielding independent pitching ERA) because those are situations he has control over. It’s a more useful estimate of a pitcher’s ability than ERA because it focuses on strikeouts, walks, hit batsman and homers, not on what his fielders did. And in Boggs case, he still had a good season, albeit not a great one. He was much better peripherally speaking than Mortensen, to be sure.

Like I said, I like Boggs. He makes all his starts, has a pretty nasty sinker but has inconsistent secondary stuff. If he could hone his curve and change up, I think he’ll be a very solid #4 starter.

not sure why he is still batting in the bottom third of the line up.