Closing Time

With the season inching toward us, one of the many questions the Cardinals must answer is who gets the ball in the ninth. After letting Izzy walk in the off-season (Mozeliak's best decision yet), the Cards addressed that they will diligently search the market for a closer. This was October. Now it is February. Where's our closer?

After letting basically every possible closer sign with other teams willing to spend a couple dollars, we're left with nothing. Nothing but same old Mozeliak sounding like a broken record. I've never heard "in-house" so many times in one off-season. Exactly how many people does Mozeliak keep in his house? There are also rumors of the possibility of a 'closer by committee' situation.

Moze is trying his hardest to run this team into the ground. His first year at the reigns; last year; the Cards finished fourth in the NL Central...their lowest division finish since 1999. And that was with the team exceeding expectations in almost every facet of the game. What if Wellemeyer had an ERA around 5 instead of his team leading 3.50? What if Molina had batted .230 instead of his career high .304? -which, including last season, is still 40 points higher than his career average. If this team would have performed to it's expectations, we would have been dead last. Moze needs to realize he got lucky last year and he's going to have to spend some money here or there to improve this team.

As we come back from that last tangent, the possible candidates for the closing job are Chris Perez, Jason Motte, Josh Kinney and Ryan Franklin. Personally, I don't think Franklin should be considered unless he worked his tail off and made some major improvements in the off season. He had his chance at the gig last year and actually out-stunk Izzy. I would be content with a committee closing crew of Motte, Kinney and Perez though. Not happy...but content. Kind of like when as a kid they ran out of pizza in the cafeteria and you got meatloaf instead. You're not happy because you missed out on that delicious pizza that could have gotten you 40 saves. But your content because you guess the meatloaf will at least keep you from starving. (Izzy=starving)

I hope that one of these candidates will stand out above the rest of them and make the coaches decision a easy one. If I had to make a preseason guess, I'd put my money on Kinney. But what do I know?

But all these questions and more will be answered as the season starts...Two days, 16 hours and 31 minutes til P's&C's.