Tipsheet: These Cards pitchers just getting started

Source: St.自存倉 Louis Post-DispatchOct. 31--The competitive window for the Cardinals remains wide, wide open. This team will contend for many years to come.With all this quality young pitching to build around, the Cardinals are destined for many more postseason adventures.The core players will remain: 19-game winner Adam Wainwright, MVP candidate Yadier Molina, No. 3 hitter Matt Holliday. line drive hitter Allen Craig and lead-off man Matt Carpenter. Veterans Jason Motte and Jaime Garcia will rejoin the group after recovering from injuries.The offensive upside of Matt Adams and Oscar Taveras is vast, as is the pitching potential of playoff hero Michael Wacha and hard throwers Carlos Martinez, Trevor Rosenthal and Kevin Siegrist.But this particular team won't get another chance to win it all. Several players on this 2013 squad won't be back.This is the nature of the business. Rosters turn over from year to year. Most of the 2011 World Series championship team was long gone this year. The time players have together is often fleeting.And so the Cardinals return home from Boston with a hollow feeling after failing to take a Game 6 stand at Fenway Park.Here is the sendoff they received from the national media:Jerry Crasnick, ESPN.com: "It was, in many respects, a terrific season for baseball in St. Louis. The Cardinals overcame injuries to starters Chris Carpenter, Jaime Garcia, Jake Westbrook and closer Jason Motte to rank fifth in the National League with a 3.42 ERA. Shelby Miller, Trevor Rosenthal, Adams and Seth Maness were impact rookies. Carpenter led the National League with 199 hits, and Wainwright won 19 games and ranked first in the majors with 241 2/3 innings pitched. The Cardinals outlasted Cincinnati and Pittsburgh to win 97 games and capture the NL Central, and summoned enough big moments to win a pennant. They needed a heroic effort from Wacha in Game 5 to outlast Pittsburgh in the Division Series, and forced Clayton Kershaw to throw 48 pitches in a single inning in a 9-0 victory in the National League Championship Series finale. But in the end, the Cardinals' offense deserted them against the Red Sox. During the regular season, the Cardinals led the majors with a .330 batting average with runners in scoring position. Against Boston, they hit .214 (9-for-42). The same lineup that led the NL with 783 runs scored produced only 14 runs in six games against Jon Lester, John Lackey and friends."Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports: "They'd lost the final three games of the World Series and were out in six. They'd won Game 3 on a last-batter obstruction call, then scored four runs over the next 27 innings. A lineup that had overwhelmed teams with precision at-bats, that set records with its aptitude for hitting with runners in scoring position, went flat. What had been that good for that long and -- by pitching exceptionally through most of the postseason -- reached the World Series for the fourth time in nine years, had become their frailty. It is the nature of the game they play, and the Red Sox were better. When it ended, and Koji Uehara had finished Matt Carpenter with a split-fingered fastball, and the Red Sox had met happily in the middle of the field, the Cardinals lingered at their dugout rail. Matheny had one foot on the top step, and he shook the hands of a couple of passing umpires. He nodded at the others. The uniforms change. The venues change. But every year the same scene. And one by one the Cardinals left that rail. They'd won the NL Central, then beaten the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers. They'd re-established who they are, and what they are, and how they do this. They'd produced pitchers like no one else, from a factory out behind Busch Stadium, it seemed. Big, young men, these polished pitchers would take the ball and obey Molina, and it got them to the second-to-last day of October. It would have to do."Mike Bauman, MLB.com: "As painful as this was for the Cardinals -- climbing this close to the summit, but coming up just short -- they are positioned for the future in a way that few other franchises could be. The Cards have a strong base of talent in the everyday lineup, though right fielder Carlos Beltran is a free agent. They will probably need to address their situation at shortstop, but one way or another, they should have the resources to solve this problem. An upgrade in center field is also needed, but the Redbirds could have that already on hand. Elite prospect Oscar Taveras could be the long-term answer. Only 21, he has repeatedly demonstrated his hitting ability in the Minors. But the single largest strength of this organization is its incomparable supply of young front-line pitchers. There may be no other team in baseball that could have taken a 15-game winner (Shelby Miller ) out of its postseason rotation. There can be an objection to the Cardinals finding no role for 迷你倉iller in the postseason, but that is not the point. The Cards' postseason rotation still was loaded with talent. Behind ace Adam Wainwright were three extremely talented young pitchers -- Wacha, Joe Kelly and Lance Lynn. Carlos Martinez, who has been used as a setup man, is another young pitcher with top-shelf stuff and another candidate for the rotation in 2014. On the face of it, the Cardinals will have what other clubs only dream of having -- a surplus of extremely talented pitchers. The groundwork for success was reinforced this year. There were injuries, there were setbacks, but the Redbirds still reigned as the NL's best team."Joe Lemire, SI.com: "It boasts 18 homegrown players on its roster, supplementing the likes of Yadier Molina, Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran and Allen Craig with an embarrassment of pitching wealth up and down its roster -- its bullpen is brimming with young arms other clubs must lust after, yet the Cardinals' Adam Wainwright-led rotation remains so amply stocked that the likes of Trevor Rosenthal, Carlos Martinez, et al., have begun their big-league careers as relievers. Their hitting prodigy, outfielder Oscar Taveras, saw his Triple-A season derailed by an ankle injury but is thought by some to be the minors' best pure hitter and a future superstar . . . If the organization wants, it can keep intact the nucleus of a lineup that, in the last three years, won a World Series, lost in the seventh game of the NLCS and lost in the World Series. The pitching staff has already been revamped -- only Lance Lynn pitched in both the 2011 and '13 World Series, but the churn should slow given the young arms who have debuted in the last two seasons."Danny Knobler, CBSSports.com: "They missed out on another championship, because they ran into an outstanding Red Sox team having a special season, and because a team that had crazy success with runners in scoring position during the season couldn't sustain it through October. The Cardinals hit a ridiculous .330 with runners in scoring position this season (no other team was above .282). They hit a back-down-to-earth .214 with runners in scoring position in this World Series, including .143 (3 for 21) in the final three games, all losses. They had more hits than the Red Sox in the final game (9-8), and more hits than the Red Sox in the entire Series (45-41). But the Red Sox were the ones with the big hits, as few of them as there were for either team. The Cardinals will look at it as opportunity lost, but the fact is they were outplayed. Even their two World Series wins came with the help of Red Sox mistakes. But they also led the World Series two games to one just four days ago. They led two games to one, and they had two more games at Busch Stadium, where they hardly ever lose. They led, and they lost, and they'll remember that."Will Leitch, Sports on Earth: "In 2011, the Cardinals won not necessarily because of big stars like (Albert) Pujols or Holliday, but because of performances that came out of nowhere. In Game 6 that year, after the Cardinals had tied it up in the ninth, they were behind by two with Daniel Descalso, Jon Jay and the pitcher's spot coming up. Those two players are mostly no-names now; in 2011, they were anonymous to all but the most devoted baseball fans. But they both singled, allowing Lance Berkman to tie the game for the second time in two innings. They were the little guys you need to contribute to make such a wild comeback happen. Then there is of course David Freese, who will be shown on a loop at Busch Stadium as long as baseball exists. But that was 2011. Now? They're just dead spots in the lineup. The Cardinals never really got much offense going in this series, despite some success from Craig, Holliday and Carlos Beltran, and that was mostly because of a relentless succession of outs from the bottom of the order -- Descalso, Jay and Freese. And Pete Kozma, too, a postseason hero from 2012. Descalso was 1-for-10; Jay was 3-for-18; Kozma was 0-for-10. And perhaps worst of all was Freese, who went 3-for-19, striking out seven times and hitting into a double play. The contrast between 2011 Freese and 2013 Freese, in particular, was profound. So focused and locked-in back then; so lost, glassy-eyed, confused and almost scared now. He was two different people."MEGAPHONE"I feel sorry for the St. Louis Cardinals when they have to sign all of them at once. They're going to have to bring a lot of money to the table, because you have a whole bunch of cats out there performing at that level on that stage. You're dealing with an unbelievable pitching staff. I tell you what, man, those guys, they're legit."Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, praising the Cardinals staff to reporters.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at .stltoday.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesmini storage