Cardinals (Finally) Release Ryan Franklin

Prompted by the outcry from the St. Louis faithful, former closer Ryan Franklin was released from his contract Wednesday and is now officially a free agent.

Ryan Franklin has been the Cardinals closer for the last few seasons, but a very rough outing to begin the 2011 campaign proved too much to save his career in St. Louis.

Since 2008 and his start in the Cardinals closer role until the end of 2010, he had converted 82 of 97 save opportunities and was an incredibly formidable closer to end their games.

Early on in the season relations got ugly as Franklin went on to criticize the city, saying their status as the best fans in baseball was rather questionable after the treatment the showed him early on. Who could blame the fans though?!

So far this season Ryan pitched 27.2 innings in 21 games. In that span he blew 4 saves in the first 5 appearances and he was taken out of the role as closer. He now has an 8.46 ERA giving up 26 ERs on 44 hits.

The end of the line came last night in Baltimore.

The Cardinals enjoyed a 6-0 lead and brought Ryan in to kick off the 8th inning. At this point Redbird Rants Official Twitter Page began to blow up with displeasure that he was even entering the game. It didn’t take him long to live up to his name. He went 0.1 IP giving up 2 runs on 3 hits.

All night it became all about when will the Cardinals finally drop this guy, and late this afternoon the Cardinals finally made the news everyone has wanted to hear official.

This is the Cardinals second such release in the last few days behind Miguel Batista and probably not the last going forward. The Cardinals look to have no choice but to start exploring new trade options before the deadline the end of July. Who they really take in is anyones guess as a myriad of options keep making their way through the rumor mill. One thing for sure is certain, its time for John Mozeliak to start making some major moves.