St. Louis Cardinals promote Oscar Taveras, place Matt Adams on the DL

With Matt Adams sidelined with a sore calf, the St. Louis Cardinals made the decision on Friday to place him on the DL and promote Oscar Taveras to the big leagues.

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I asked on Friday whether or not the Taveras era would start in the immediate future. With placing Adams on the DL, it opened up right field and moved Allen Craig back to first base. My best guess was that, barring someone being injured, Taveras was not coming up until after the Super 2 deadline in order to give the team another year of control before arbitration kicked in.

Today, Bernie speculated the same thing that I do. John Mozeliak and Mike Matheny had to be not only on the same page with starting the service time for Taveras but Matheny has to be willing to play him. Over the last few weeks, the team has promoted several players from Memphis but, outside of pitching, very few have started. With two regular center fielders in both Peter Bourjos and Jon Jay, I can understand the reasoning with placing Randal Grichuk on the bench.

I do hope Bernie is right in that, unless a veteran or two are traded, Taveras gets the majority of starts in right field with Craig at first base. Adams will come off the bench as a pinch-hitter or double-switched into the game with making some spot starts at first. Again, this is barring a trade but it’s also nice to have some power bats to come off the bench–something that will not happen with a Daniel Descalso any time in the near future.

In making his major league debut today at the age of 21, Taveras became the youngest Cardinal to hit a home run in a MLB debut since Eddie Morgan did so in 1936. He also became the first Cardinal to hit a home run in his MLB debut since Steven Hill did so on 8/15/2010 against the Chicago Cubs.

The only other run in the Cardinals 2-0 win over the San Francisco Giants came on an RBI double off the bat of Jhonny Peralta that scored Allen Craig.

The two runs were enough to give Michael Wacha his 4th win of the season. The game was affected by rain a few times, not a surprise with Wacha throwing.

With a single in the 4th inning, Matt Carpenter extended his hitting streak to 13 games. Craig extended his hitting streak to seven games.

With a walk in the 8th inning, Matt Holliday extended his on-base streak at Busch Stadium this season to 27 games. This ties Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter (1938) and Taylor Douthit (1930) for the 8th largest such streak in franchise history. Solly Hemus (1953) holds the franchise record of 33 games.