Miserable Present, Intriguing Future

That said, the offense wasn't anywhere close to the story.  With Brad Penny and Kyle Lohse out, the start turned into one of those Tony La Russa specials, the bullpen game.  Why they decided to start Blake Hawksworth instead of PJ Walters, I'm not sure.  Don't get me wrong, I'm giving the Goat tag to Walters, so I don't know that he'd have done any better in that starting slot than Hawksworth, but at least Walters has been conditioned to start and has done so recently.  Hawksworth hasn't even pitched a lot lately.  I'm guessing they wanted to see if Hawk could move into the rotation, but I'm not sure this was a fair test.

Then again, after he got out of the first inning trouble that he made, Hawksworth did settle down before likely tiring in the fourth.  While the game was likely out of reach when Walters came in, he made sure it was by giving up four runs in the first, pushing the Dodger lead to 10-1 and making the rest of the game pretty much academic.  The Cardinal offense might be hitting better, but that's pushing it, especially when David Freese, Colby Rasmus and Yadier Molina were out of the lineup.

For a lot of fans, there was more focus off the field than on last night.  The first year player draft kicked off in prime time yesterday evening and, from all indications, the Cardinals had one of the best first and sandwich rounds.

As an University of Arkansas alumni, I was very excited to see Razorback third baseman Zack Cox get taken by the Cardinals.  As a Cardinal fan, you have to like the pick as well.  Cox was projected to be a top 10 talent, so for him to still be around when the Cardinals picked at 25 had to be a major surprise to them, but credit them for adapting to the situation and taking the best player available.  You can read more about Cox, with scouting reports from Keith Law and Baseball America, over here.

With their two supplemental picks, the Cardinals went with two righthanded pitchers.  Seth Blair comes out of Arizona State, while Tyrell Jenkins is supposed to be a very athletic pitcher coming out of high school.  Jenkins was also recruited by Baylor to play quarterback, so it could be a tough sign to get him into the St. Louis organization.  More on both of those guys can be found here.

The draft will be a major focus of today as well, and as always, Future Redbirds is your place to keep up (if you aren't doing so on Twitter, which you really should do as well).  There will be a live chat going on at FR today around 11 Central, so if you are in front of a computer, hop on there to see who the Cardinals take and whether or not it is a wise selection.

Tonight, the Cards look to erase the taste of the opener by sending out Chris Carpenter.  Carp's done pretty well against the Dodgers in the past:

	PA	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	SH	SF	IBB	HBP	GDP
Manny Ramirez	35	30	8	2	0	2	5	5	6	.267	.371	.533	.905	0	0	1	0	3
Garret Anderson	29	26	7	2	0	1	5	3	1	.269	.345	.462	.806	0	0	0	0	4
Jamey Carroll	18	16	6	1	0	0	1	2	2	.375	.444	.438	.882	0	0	0	0	1
Rafael Furcal	16	15	4	0	0	0	1	0	5	.267	.250	.267	.517	0	1	0	0	0
Andre Ethier	11	11	2	1	0	0	0	0	1	.182	.182	.273	.455	0	0	0	0	1
Russell Martin	9	7	1	0