Rants Daily: Cardinals shutout Marlins behind Westbrook

Jake Westbrook went into this season slotted into the 5th starter role. In the offseason, if he didn’t have a no-trade clause he may have been shipped elsewhere. Three starts into Spring Training and Westbrook looked to be completely on top of his game in a 5-0 win over the Miami Marlins.

Westbrook is resembling the pitcher the Cardinals traded for back in 2010. He pitched extremely well yesterday throwing four innings of shutout ball and striking out four. Even better, is he induced 6 groundball outs to 2 flyouts. Westbrook has a career groundball to flyball ratio of over 2-to-1 so performing at 3-to-1 is very encouraging.

The Cardinals were led offensively by Yadier Molina‘s three hits and three RBI and Matt Holliday‘s homer and two runs scored.

FLEXIBLE LINEUP

Manager Mike Matheny sent out a lineup yesterday that could be close to one used during the regular season. As reported by Jenifer Langosch of MLB.com, Matheny stressed that there are players who could see movement from the positions they were slotted yesterday.

Carlos Beltran was hitting second which has been a bone of contention for me, but I don’t run this team. Beltran does get on base often enough to warrant the slot, but my opinion is he doesn’t have the wheels for the two-hole any longer and his bat is still valuable in the run producing spot. I’ll just have to be happy that Matheny has said the lineup is flexible.

CARPENTER BACK ON THE MOUND

Chris Carpenter was on the mound yesterday throwing 30 fastballs at about 70-75% in his estimation, according to Langosch. He said both his neck and arm felt good after the session. He hopes to move to the next step of another session at a higher percentage of effort, or straight to a batting practice session. The Cardinals will have him evaluated this morning and develop a plan based on what they see and hear from Carpenter.

SECOND BASE COMPETITION LOSES ONE

The second base competition lost one member yesterday. Unfortunately, it is not because of performance, but due to the injury to Skip Schumaker. Schumaker strained his right oblique during yesterday’s game taking a swing. Schumaker was not exactly lighting the game up, but because of his experience he was still a viable option to win the second base job. Matheny felt this was partially his fault because he noticed Schumaker wince the swing before and didn’tgo out to have him checked. No one seems to think this is a minor issue as Schumaker suffered the same injury in the playoffs last season, and he says this feels worse.

Despite the fact that Daniel Descalso is having an excellent spring with the bat as opposed to Tyler Greene who is once again struggling with his, the position is still open according to Matheny. Matheny stressed that he is excited about Descalso’s play but spring stats “don’t go on the back on the baseball card”. So, for now Greene is still in it, but he needs to show something with the bat. Time is running out this spring and possibly on his future with the Cardinals.

BERKMAN BACK AT FIRST

Lance Berkman was back at first base yesterday going 1-for-4. Berkman knows that time in spring is running short and will be in the lineup as much as possible going forward. As I mentioned in my letter to readers earlier in the week reps are important and Berkman agrees.

"“I think you have to develop a rhythm,” Berkman said. “I’m a guy that needs to kind of see where I’m at. It never hurts to have the reps. You can definitely get stale. I probably need to play as much as I can the rest of camp.”"

TODAY’S GAME

Jaime Garcia is set to make his third start of the season. He will try to get through four innings of work or approximately 50 pitches based on the work of Kyle Lohse and Westbrook ahead of him. There is no lineup availabe for today’s game at this time.

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