PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The New York Yankees second-biggest signing in a blockbuster offseason has corner real estate in the spacious clubhouse at Steinbrenner Field — perfect locale for CC Sabathia to survey all the drama that comes with wearing pinstripes.

The hulking lefty who powered Milwaukee to the postseason last year signed a seven-year, $161-million deal with the Yankees and is the face of a renovated pitching staff for baseball’s largest payroll. After talking a bit about the All-Star Game last week in Tampa, Fla., he was the first to kindly test-drive the initial set of questions for The P-DQ (some had changed by the time Adam Wainwright fielded the questions). As he did, Ian Kennedy and a few of the other pitchers around him gathered to listen …

***

Advice from a parent that has stayed with you …

To be humble.

Memorable Christmas or holiday gift …

My wife bought me a car last year. A Mercedes S65.

Word or phrase you use too often is …

Well, I don’t know if you can write it down.

Favorite superhero?

Iron Man.

Best fictional baseball player?

Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn

Greatest achievement?

Being a good father.

Current State of mind?

Relaxed. (And he says this looking around the Yankees clubhouse on the day its swarming with media because Alex Rodriguez is going to talk publicly about steroids for the first time.)

Greatest extravagance or indulgence?

My house. Definitely, my house. It’s nice.

Favorite ballplayer growing up?

Ken Griffey Jr.

First car?

1998 Camaro

Current car?

That gift, the 2008 Mercedes S65

Place you’ve got to visit before you die

Jamaica

Who would be in your Fav Five?

President Obama, my mom, my wife, my boy Drew Gooden and LeBron James.

Most embarrassing song on your iPod?

I’m thinking, probably “2 Legit 2 Quit,” M.C. Hammer.

Movie you’ll stop to watch whenever it comes on is …

Coming to America

Sing in the shower or in the car?

Both

You know you’re in the minors when …

You eat peanut butter and jelly every day.

I tune out when people talk about …

My weight.

***

On a quick personal note: Remember the Rocky. In Denver this morning, The Rocky Mountain News, the newspaper that made me want to go into newspapers, printed its final edition. It is an unnerving time for the industry, but the shuttering of one of the finest and best newspapers in the country has to get everybody’s attention. I treasured the chance to work at the Rocky, the paper I grew up clipping box scores from each morning. Without fail, it offered some of the finest baseball coverage around — and that was before there was a team of its own to cover. Yesterday the Twitter feed from the newsroom read like a scrolling eulogy. Columnist Dave Krieger runs through the names that made it all happen, dear friend Rick Sadowski says farewell from a road trip, and my boyhood hero Drew Litton captures the moment as only his pen can. The Rocky will be missed. Here’s hoping there aren’t more to follow …

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JUPITER, Fla. — It probably started on the flight to spring training a few years ago.

On the back page of Vanity Fair, the magazine always runs its “Proust Questionnaire”. It is basically a series of provocative questions that help reveal a person’s qualities, a person’s values, but also, hopefully, a person’s personality. (You can check out the questions asked here, at the magazine’s official website.) It’s one of the first-read pages of the magazine for me, and it was always something I thought would be fun to try in this baseball arena.

For the past couple years, I’ve been trying to toy with how to adapt that questionnaire and apply it to spring training, or to ballplayers in general. All of those questions wouldn’t fit, and there has be some playful and baseball-based questions heaped in there, too. Fiddling around a few weeks ago, I took two parts Proust Questionnaire, three parts baseball and a dash of Sports Illustrated’s pop culture questions and blended together a series of questions to ask ballplayers this spring. Figured it would be a good exercise. Already a few players have answered — CC Sabathia drew a crowd in the Yankees clubhouse the other day as he went through about 20 questions — and the blog offers a great forum for this.

If you have suggestions for fine-tuning the questions, please pass them along. It’s take me some time to strike the right balance, and I hope to make it better. Hope to put up a couple a week through spring.

First up for the P-DQ: St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright.

***

Advice you’ve received from a parent that sticks with you …

Mind your manners.

Memorable Christmas or holiday gift your received …

One time my brother had this really old basketball that I thought was the coolest basketball in the world. They asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told them I wanted a ball just like that, the ball that he had. So, he wrapped up that ball and gave it to me, and I was really disappointed that got an old basketball. But it was a joke. He had a new one that he gave me. He got me with that one.

Word or phrase you use to often …

I have to watch all of my words now. I’ve got two little kids now. How about, “I can’t.” One time saying that is too much.

Favorite superhero?

Wolverine

South Park or The Simpsons?

Simpsons

Greatest achievement?

Having my children.

Current State of mind?

At ease.

Your greatest extravagance or indulgence?

I love barbeque. I would rather eat barbeque than anything, every day.

Favorite ballplayer growing up?

Steve Avery. Tom Glavine. Greg Maddux. John Smoltz.

First car?

1989 Jeep Cherokee

Current car?

2008 GMC Sierra 2500

Place you would like to visit before you die …

I’d like to go to two places before I die. I’d like to go to Rome, and I’d like to go to Israel.

I tune out when people talk about …

The NBA

I wish I knew how to …

Play guitar really well.

Who would be in your Fav Five?

Bobby Flay. Greg Maddux. My wife. Georgia football coach Mark Richt. My brother.

Most embarrassing song on your iPod?

Great question. I’ve got no embarrassing songs on my iPod that I can think of. (Ed. note – then “We Will Rock You” begins playing in clubhouse.) Oh, “Fat-Bottomed Girls,” Queen.

Movie you’ll stop to watch whenever it comes on …

Tombstone.

Sing in the shower or in the car?

Anything country, all the time.

You know you’re in the minors when …

Your paycheck doesn’t have a comma in it.

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The New York Yankees have told Alex Rodriguez to keep the cousin, whom he says injected him with steroids, away from the team, the newspaper Newsday reported Thursday.
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JUPITER, Fla. — With his first batting order of the spring pinned to the corkboard in the clubhouse, manager Tony La Russa met the media this morning to deal with some real lineup sticklers.

We read that lineup like it’s a horoscope, like the names fluttering here and there from spot to spot are so many tea leaves. Like it’s the Rosetta Stone to La Russa’s true feelings about his ballclub and the players that make it. So, when Rick Ankiel appears at cleanup for Game 1 — especially coming off a year when he had the look of a cleanup hitter — there are questions about it. When Joe Mather slides down to No. 9 (a move La Russa was sure to tell the third baseman about before doing it), there are questions about that. Khalil Greene hitting seventh? Questions.

Into that volley of lineup questions and La Russa replies, I floated this trial balloon: Would you ever, during spring training, take a look at hitting Albert Pujols cleanup? Just to see …

La Russa looked like he had just swallowed a dime.

“Where did Stan hit?” he said. “I’ll leave it that.”

Stan, of course, is the only Stan when it comes to the Cardinals — Stan Musial. And all the time we’ve spent digging through box scores and tracing the fault lines of his impact on the Cardinals in the past year or so, and the gut says, well, Stan always hit No. 3. Better check. On the indispensable Baseball-Reference.com, it is possible to see where Musial most often hit in the order and how he did at each place in the order. At least, it is possible for his final 1,000 or so games in the majors. Details from his early career aren’t available in the splits, but the final 1/3 of his career offers a glimpse of what La Russa implied.

Take a look (first At-Bats, then batting line — BA/OBP/SLG) for where in the lineup he hit during his final 1,038 games:

2 AB … .000/.333/.000
49 AB … .265/.410/.490
1,940 AB … .313/.391/.525
449 AB … .336/.416/.570
622 AB … .278/.363/.453
210 AB … .281/.359/.448
22 AB … .227/.370/.273
30 AB … .233/.303/.267
58 AB … .310/.431/.414

(Historical aside: Musial’s 3,000th hit came on May 13, 1958, and he got it from the nine spot, pinch-hitting for the pitcher and cracking a double at Wrigley Field.)

So Musial hit most in the No. 3 spot, but appears to have hit best in the No. 4 spot — with far fewer at-bats and hardly any real value as a oranges-to-oranges comparison. The reason for all of this is clear: Baseball tends to bat its best hitter No. 3. That’s part of La Russa’s theory. He wants Pujols to bat in the first inning — even if there is ample evidence that average outcomes of innings show that the cleanup hitter often hits with a man on base in the first inning and gets more cracks with men on base. (See: Troy Glaus in early 2008, when he was tops in the NL for a couple months.)

Earlier this spring, John Dewan’s Stat of the Day was what position in the lineup hits most often with at least a runner on base. There was only one spot in the order that had 50 percent of its at-bats with a runner on base: It was cleanup — at exactly 50 percent. The Nos. 3 and 5 hitters were tied for second, according to Dewan, with 48. Over the course of a season that’s the difference between, say, 300 at-bats and 288.

Clearly, one of the reasons why a cleanup hitter often has a runner on base is because the hitter ahead of him is The Best Hitter and The Best Hitters tend to be the ones who get on base a lot. QED. So, it’s not certain that if Pujols bats fourth he’ll have more at-bats with runners on base because he was that runner on base. If Pujols were to slide into the cleanup role, to make it work the Cardinals would have to have a No. 3 hitter worthy of replacing him. Are any positives — like a binge of RBIs — from Pujols hitting fourth negated by who hits third? And likewise, is the dropoff less at cleanup than it would be at No. 3?

La Russa used history as his advocate.

“I’ll ask Red,” La Russa said, referencing Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst. “I should ask him that. Why didn’t you hit Stan cleanup?”

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Read more…

Alex Rodriguez was booed, then homered in his first game since admitting he took performance-enhancing drugs. The New York Yankees slugger started the spring training season with a two-run homer and two walks Wednesday against Toronto. The third baseman left in the fifth inning.
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JUPITER, Fla. — Infielder Skip Schumaker’s first diving play in a game this spring training came this afternoon at about 1:30 p.m. EST, for those of you keeping score. Dashing to his left, Schumaker dove, snared Joe Thurston’s speedy grounder, got to his feet, and …

Threw high to first base.

“I have to realize I have more time,” Schumaker said later. “I can only learn that in games.”

Schumaker said his goal is to improve each day at second base, but that play was a step back. He’s too hard on himself. Thurston was safe, sure. So what? Schumaker’s team already had four outs in the innings and only needed to get one more before getting their first at-bats and rallying after a couple innings and one impromptu home-run derby to win, 7-6, or 13-6 depending on how you score the last inning. Yes, you read all of that correctly. Five outs an inning. Impromptu home-run derby.

Welcome to manager Tony La Russa’s fun house scrimmage, where 13 hitters make up a team and things only get stranger from there.

For those of us in the baseball-writing business there can’t be a better day in spring training than when La Russa gathers his flock for a coach-pitch scrimmage on the eve of the St. Louis Cardinals first Grapefruit League game. What other day can we uncork some grand phrases as:

A “walk-off homer in a losing effort” (as Brandon Berger did when he hit a home run in the final at-bat of a 2005 scrimmage, only to have his team lose by a run).
A “clutch four-out RBI double,” as Chris Duncan had Tuesday.
An infield hit for first-round pick Brett Wallace that was “ruled an out by La Russa, just, well, just because.”
And, of course, the “five-out inning”.

La Russa split up his roster into teams of 13, assigned eight position players to each team and then split the 10 remaining players into pods of five designated hitters. For the sake of this explanation we’ll call the teams Team Ankiel and Team Rasmus, after their respective center fielders.

How the teams were organized in the field:

TEAM ANK: C Jason LaRue, 1B Allen Craig, 2B Skip Schumaker, 3B Tyler Greene, SS Khalil Greene, LF Nick Stavinoha, CF Rick Ankiel, RF Ryan Ludwick and a host of DHs.

TEAM RAS: C Yadier Molina, 1B Albert Pujols, 2B Joe Thurston, 3B Joe Mather, SS Brian Barden, LF Chris Duncan, CF Colby Rasmus, RF Brian Barton

Team Rasmus had first crack at the bat, and Jon Jay led off with a double to the wall. He took third on a groundout and scored on a sacrifice fly. Not sure a coach-pitch game is really supposed to be about the small ball, but …

After five outs, Team Rasmus took the field and withstood a barrage of hits.

David Freese homered. Tyler Greene followed a few batters later with an RBI double. Khalil Greene followed with an RBI single, and Rick Ankiel capped the inning with a two-run blast. It was during this game a couple years ago that Ankiel injured his knee. In the couple scrimmages since, all he does his hit home runs. He flat raked pitching coach Bryan Eversgerd.

Rather than give the whole play-by-play of this improvisational coach-pitch game, here is how MLB.com Matthew Leach and myself recapped the game used my new toy that is perfect for these things, Twitter (Tweet? Twitteroni?):

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MHL: Jay leads off coaches game w/first-pitch double off wall.

MHL: Schu makes diving play on Thurston, but throw is high.

dgoold: david freese cranks homer in coach pitch game. best way to save achilles heel is trotting around bases.

MHL: Ank 2-r HR.

MHL: Barden sweet backhand deep in hole, gets Knoedler.

dgoold: la russa announces rule change. reduces outs by two for one team. i am covering game under protest.

MHL: Team Ank only gets 3 outs for bottom 2nd, after 5 outs in each of first 3 half-inns. @dgoold calls shenanigans.

MHL: Official TLR explanation: if you are ahead by 3, you only get 3 outs.

MHL: Tied in bottom of last inning. Team Ank evidently has 11outs to score a run.

dgoold: taut game here at roger dean. headed into some inning score tied and la russa making up rules.

dgoold: cardinals could really use a clutch four-out hit here.

MHL: Tgreene drives in winning rn w/double to deep left, scoring Schu. Team Ank bats team Raz. Now 8-6 and counting.

MHL: Delacruz caps it w/ 3-run jack. 11-6.

dgoold: prospect luis de la cruz a catcher mashes homer to left. wont be long before he is trying out second base.

MHL: Rules still being made up. now going to a HR-only round?

dgoold: la russa now calls for home run derby. big swingers only. one pitch. one swing. as true to game as shootout in hockey.

MHL: Team Raz gets a chance to catch up, but only one pitch per hitter, and only HRs count. It’s not pretty.

***

If you are not familiar with Twitter, it is — quickly — a feed of microblogs, each of which is limited to 140 characters. (Aside: After the other day’s question, I have been alerted to three major leaguers who do use it, including CC Sabathia and Barry Zito. Lefties.) It’s been an intriguing experiment this spring training and seems perfect for this kind of stuff: Nonsense covering from a nonsense game. All that we can get from the above exchange is that my phone doesn’t does capitals and La Russa enjoys warping the rules to his whims. He took away outs when he wanted, added outs when he wanted to get guys at-bats.

Would make for one Escher-esque box score.

The real clutch hit of the day came when Tyler Greene roped a line drive to the left-field fence, snapping a 6-6 tie and giving Team Ankiel what has to go into the record books as a 7-6 victory.

Team Rasmus was given some kind of XFL-ready chance to tie game with a one-swing home run derby, but few could crank the ball over the wall on command. Tyler Greene (again) and Justin Knoedler were the only two players to leave the ballpark. Ankiel and others put shots to the warning tracks.

At stake was “beverage service,” according to La Russa.

Even that rule has changed. It used to be the game was played for the right to skip one of the long road trips — be it Fort Myers or Viera. Now, they play it to see which lineup has to fetch water and Powerade for the other team. First five outs an inning and a screwy home run derby to decided the game. Now this? Is nothing sacred? La Russa asked when the scrimmage was no longer about the road trip.

“When we scheduled two trips to Fort Myers,” he said.

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The Cardinals have 35 games on their Grapefruit League schedule.
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JUPITER, Fla. — With so much of the attention focused on the transplanted infielder two doors to his left, Joe Mather has been able to quietly go about his new life as a third baseman without many questions and without the entourage of spectators every time he bends to scoop a grounder.

After all, it’s not like he hasn’t been there before.

There was a time — actually Jupiter was the place — when Mather was a lanky, athletic shortstop looking for coordination and traction in his baseball career. He, like many people in the Cardinals organization, saw him moving to third — or, a few times, moving on with his life. He didn’t really fit shortstop, was too tall at a power forward-like 6-foot-4 to play second base and figured to grow into the power profile of a corner infielder. A few years ago, one of his handful here at High-A Jupiter, Mather played a bunch of third base. Injuries at levels above him moved him up and then moved him around.

Cardinals UT Joe Mather takes grounders at third base, where he will spend most of the spring working. (Photo: Chris Lee — P-D)

Once his bat matured and the power arrived, that kept him in the lineup. He nomadic in the field.

That stayed true until he arrived in the majors last season and the Cardinals expressed a reluctance to put him anywhere but the outfield. Sure, they’d have him roam center and they were eager to see him in the corners, but manager Tony La Russa said it wasn’t too likely he’d see time at his former haunts — third or first. But that is so 2008. A few weeks into 2009, the plan changed. Mather was going retro.

As the Cardinals roster took shape for 2009, it was clear that the best way for Mather to win a job with the team was to diversify. There is a need for a righthanded bat on the bench, and there is vocation open — one not unlike the post held by Scott Spiezio a few years back.

In an interview with a couple reporters today, Mather spoke about that, footwork and the degree of difficulty between what he’s doing and what the guy to his left is:

Q: How goes the work at third base?

Mather: It’s a different spring training in the infield, at third base, than it is in the outfield. Nothing against the outfield. I love the outfield, too. It’s a change of pace coming in and I’m having a lot of fun learning how to play the infield again.

Q: Do you recall the reason you didn’t stay at third base?

Mather: I moved up because of injuries. I moved up because the third baseman got hurt. When he came back, the left fielder got hurt. … Cody Haerther got hurt in left field. It was kind of find a place to play. Outfield was open. I got stuck out there.

Q: You came into all this, came into baseball as a shortstop, but was there a feeling that third base would be where you landed?

Mather: I thought that, yeah. I had that thought. I only played a few games there when I signed. Next year I was over there. I was first, third, first, third. Then the injuries happened.

Q: Kind of figured out quickly that there weren’t many shortstops who looked like you …

Mather: Yeah not too many. There really never got under my skin. I always felt like I could do, like I could still play short. You look at a guy like (Troy Glaus), who played short all the way through college. I still always felt like I could do it.

Q: There’s a lot of reaction at that position, have you improved here already in the past week or so? Can you that fast?

Mather: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Just more comfortable. Footwork and the hands are completely different. The position takes work. It’s not something that you can just go out and do unless it’s something you’ve done for 10, 15 years. I think the biggest test is going to be in the game.

Q: Did they spring this on you recently, or did you know coming in you would have to show some versatility?

Mather: I knew I was going to have to. When we found out about Troy (needing surgery on his right shoulder) I was taking groundballs at third pretty quickly.

Q: Had you been before that?

Mather: No. No.

Q: Pretty quickly? Few minutes?

Mather: Within a couple days. A couple days. Well, probably the next day.

Q: Are you getting a lot with (Jose Oquendo)? Has it been with Jose, (Joe Pettini) and Pop Warner? How does that kind of work?

Mather: The majority has been with Jose. He’s kind of the guy to work with if you’re an infielder, especially if you’re a guy who hasn’t been there very much. He sees a lot of stuff. He takes pride in fielding the groundball. If you have a guy like that, which we have, he shows me what I’m doing wrong, what I’m doing right.

Q: What kind of keys does he give you? I’m sure there are general techniques, but I also think there are individual keys …

Mather: We talk a lot about footwork, crossing over - backhand, backhand as much as I can. It’s a lot of reaction stuff. He’s got something for where this leg is going to be, where this leg should be. He’s got a lot of information.

Mather goes to the backhand, playing third. (Photo: Chris Lee — P-D)

Q: Have you taken balls at any other position?

Mather: Right now? I go out in the outfield and shag a little bit.

Q: It’s not the same …

Mather: Not really. I always feel pretty comfortable out there. I’ve always felt really comfortable in the outfield. I take some out there after the game, but it’s not like I’ve been working out out there the past couple weeks.

Q: You and Skip Schumaker ever have a laugh about this?

Mather: We haven’t had one sitting down together. But I know I look over every once in awhile and kind of look at each other and go, ‘Well, we were a little farther apart this last year.’ I think he’s having a good time. He’s working his butt off. I think moving to second is a little tougher than going to third.

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Read more…

Wellemeyer’s success with the Cardinals rewards Duncan’s foresight.
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JUPITER, Fla. — Some of the best parts of our ever-expanding universe of online St. Louis Cardinals coverage are the slide shows that Post-Dispatch lens-crafter Chris Lee puts together from each and every day’s workouts.

If Lee sees it, there’s a good picture of it.

During the afternoon, Lee puts up a slide show from that day’s activities. They can be found at this link — Chris Lee Slide Shows — and they are updated daily. This afternoon, Lee was kind enough to pass along a couple of his snapshots from this morning’s workouts. The first one I’ll put up in the B-Land blog involves the Cardinals pitchers, including Mitchell Boggs (pictured below) constructing a marvel of modern architecture out of the baseballs scattered around the infield from practice.

Those are the facts. You can provide the captions. Keep ‘em clean.

***

PITCHERS’ PYRAMID

Your Caption Here (Photo: Chris Lee — P-D)

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