Redbird Rants Recap: 2/19/12 – 2/25/12

I’d like to begin this space with an apology to our readers. This week was a frustrating one for many of you who tried to visit our site. The FanSided network of sports blog sites is 200 plus sites strong and the traffic as a network has been growing exponentially over the last few months, especially the MLB sites. The recent downtime was initially due to the inability of the old servers to keep up with the traffic. We went through the enormous process of switching over the sites to new servers during the middle of the week. During this time we tried to keep sites up as long as possible and often times they were working fine and in others they were not.

At this point we feel a majority of the issues are behind us, but there may still be some short periods where the site may not load or be slow in doing so. If this is the case, please try back in a few minutes. As the editor of this site and speaking on behalf of the staff here at Redbird Rants, we too were frustrated that our work was being held up and we could not get it out to you on a timely basis. Thank you for coming back and we would like to ensure you that we will do everything in our power to limit any downtime from here on.

The server issues make this column all the more important this week. Here are links to posts written by our staff that you may have missed. I hope you are able to sit back with a cup of coffee, tea or a Bloody Mary, whatever your preference and enjoy them now.

I began the Rants Daily series which will be a daily post intended to catch you up on all the Cardinals news from the previous day. When the season begins it will be the location of our game recaps, game previews and series previews. I wrote about Adam Wainwright‘s venture back onto the mound and how pitch counts may lighten his workload this season.

Jason Evans asked if new manager Mike Matheny was harming the team by not allowing some of the relievers stretch out, especially Lance Lynn.

Chris Ferguson gave us his top ten baseball movies. There are a couple surprises among the more popular choices. He also named David Freese and Matt Holliday the “Dynamic Duo“.

Marilyn Green wrote a letter to Matheny politely asking he do a few things for her.

Justin McClary finished off his prospect previews covering the pitchers. Yesterday he suggested a return to Whiteyball could not only be in the works, but be necessary when reviewing trends in the game and looking at the future crop of players in the Cardinals system.

Dennis McHawes questioned the Cardinals carousel of veterans flooding camp. It seems now that Tony La Russa is gone some former stars are making their way to spring training as coaches. Coincidence? Dennis also supplied us with his Who am I? Name that Cardinal feature.

As always, thanks to all of our readers and for their comments this week. Your comments provide us with the means to enhance our dialogue and help guide us to deliver content you want to read and pass along to others. Please check out the Current Staff page to view each author’s profile and twitter handle. Please give each author a follow.

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