Only Two More Days Without Cardinals Baseball

These are the last two days without baseball games. Isn't that wonderful to dwell on?  After Wednesday, basically every day from now to the beginning of October will have a Cardinals baseball game to watch and discuss.

The offseason is done. Now the real work begins.

With Ryan Ludwick's decision to stay home, only two Cardinals are going to the World Baseball Classic, and only one of them—Yadier Molina, is on the big-league squad.  Which means Cardinal fans, for the most part, can watch the WBC without holding their breath during a collision. Just as long as Yadi doesn't have a major collision at home during the WBC, the Redbirds should be fine.

It probably won't mean much in the long run for the third base job, but David Freese is limited for a couple of days with a sore Achillies'. It's still his job to lose, though. From everything I've heard, the Cardinals are not going to bring up Brett Wallace right now. 

Knowing manager Tony LaRussa, Freese could lose some time to Joe Mather, Brendan Ryan or Joe Thurston, but on the whole, I don't think a couple of days will cause much of a problem for him.

Matthew Leach has a good article up on "The Forgotten Outfielder"—Brian Barton. It's got to be tough for him. He spent a lot of last year in the bigs, and normally would have an inside track on at least a bench job. But with the bunch the the Cards have competing for a spot in the outfield, it'd take quite a bit of maneuvering and a heck of a good spring for him to make the cut this year. 

I think Barton is an interesting talent and I'd like to see him in St. Louis, but I'm not sure who he could surpass on the depth chart, especially if Chris Duncan is healthy and putting balls over the fence.

Here are some more notes on where to check out other baseball and sports-related info:

• The UCB Roundtable has kicked off, so if you didn't see it, the first transcript was posted over at Pitchers Hit Eighth on Friday. Today, check out The Rundown for the next question.

• If you like to argue sports, check out Sports2Debate.com. You can actually argue for prizes as well as just the satisfaction of being right. I can't believe something like this hasn't come along before. Right now, they are having their March Madness discussion, with 64 blogs facing off against each other. Should be interesting.

• I wasn't feeling well Saturday, so the scheduled Playing Pepper didn't happen. It will be up later today, if you wish to read about the A's and Rockies later on. Today's schedule will move to tomorrow and tomorrow's will move to Wednesday, where we'll have a triple header to finish it off on the same day the games get started.

It's a wonderful thing to think about on a Monday, isn't it?