Cardinals: Two Headlines They Didn't Want

Well, apparently they wanted one of those headlines. But nonetheless, signing one of the league's notoriously bad baseball players to head up your most important infield position doesn't really wax charming.

No, seriously. He's really one of the worst players in the league. Check out some of these stats that were compiled by the St. Louis Post Dispatch's Bernie Miklasz:

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Izturis has never been much of a hitter; from 2001 through 2007 he was among the worst in the majors.

Maybe the worst, if you buy into OPS (onbase + slugging) as a measure. Izturis literally had the worst OBP + SLG in the majors from 2001-2007 with an anemic .629.

We could forgive his lack of power if Izturis made himself useful by drawing walks and getting on base to set up innings. But Izturis doesn’t even do that. His career OBP is a hideously bad .295.

From 2001-2007, only four hitters had a worse OBP: Neifi Perez (.285), Tony Batista (.287), Pedro Feliz (.288) and Deivi Cruz (.293).

The Izturis walk rate is terrible: one for every 21.09 plate appearance.

Basically, the man is an out machine.

In terms of slugging percentage, only Brad Ausmus (.321) and Abraham Nunez (.324) displayed less pop than Izturis (.334) from 2001-2007.

In the Bill James stat, Runs Created/27, Iztirus was third-worst in MLB from 2001-2007, with a rate of 3.13. That means if Izturis took every at-bat for your team in a game, your team would score 3.13 runs. (By contrast, having nine Albert Pujols in your lineup would have produced 9 runs per game from 2001-2007).

Izturis has some speed but he’s been caught stealing 37 times in 99 career attempts, and hasn’t had more than 8 steals in a season since 2004.
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Cardinal fans: Cesar Izturis is not the answer to any of our problems. In fact, the 'Birds are actually coughing up 2.85 million to add another problem. The idea of signing a guy that doesn't hit and hasn't been able to field since 2004 just makes absolutely no sense.

You have to wonder if the signing had anything to do with taking some attention off the Cardinals other headline this week: the embarrassing video that's just been released of Tony LaRussa's roadside sobriety test.

I'm being serious, the Izturis signing is so bad you have to wonder if they Cardinals were desperately trying to move the media's focus in a different direction. And it worked. Most Cardinal fans are wondering if this is the stupidest acquisition in Cardinal Nation since Homer Peel was brought to St. Louis in a deal with the Phillies for Pete Alexander and Harry McCurdy way back in 1929. The following season, Peel hit .164 and his career on-base percentage was .294 - that's only one tenth lower than Izturis'. That's not batting average, that's on-base percentage. That's downright awful.

This is one of only a few things the Cardinals could have done this offseason that will actually make our division rivals happy. Lou Piniella actually walked in to Jim Hendry's office this week, looked him right in the eye and said, "can you believe they did that? Ha, I'll be damned. That's something else. You want a drink, Jimmy Boy? Just one. Just a little whiskey to celebrate?"

With Junior Spivey at least there was hope. Only a slimmer, but there was hope that he wouldn't be the worst player to ever wear the birds on the bat. With Izturis, there's no hope. That's 2.85 million...down the drain.

As far as the old ballcoach is concerned, that video is downright embarrassing. It puts to rest the idea that LaRussa was just barely over the legal limit and it makes all of those coaches who were with him that night look like irresponsible and immature stone-cold liars.

Number one: who lets their friend drive when they're in that kind of condition?

And I'm not even sure what number two is. Number one is lambasting. It's like your best friend punching you in the face for absolutely no reason. People could have died. I guess number two would be the fact that LaRussa is completely embarrassed right now and the guys with him are going to get off the hook. We've already forgotten about them, this one's on Tony. In the words of Lee Corso, "not so fast, my friends."

This is me calling those guys out, whoever they were. Part of this blame lies squarely on their shoulders. It wasn't like LaRussa, or anyone he was hanging out with, couldn't afford a taxi.

There's a clear cut message here. Don't drink and drive. Park your truck in a secure, safe location at the beginning of the night and sleep in the back of it. It works people. Maybe not as well in St. Louis as it does in small-town Durango, but it works. The idea is to be smart, one way or another.

There's a t-shirt I've seen with a no-smoking sign on it and under the sign it reads: "there are cooler ways to die." Killing yourself in a drinking and driving incident is not one of them. In fact, it doesn't even rank in the top ten of coolest ways to die.

So all and all, this is an embarrassing week for the Cardinal organization. The Izturis thing is terrible, but it doesn't compare to the punch in the gut LaRussa got when he woke up this morning and saw that his roadside test was all over the national media.

You have to wonder if that's even legal?

Is there a big football game tomorrow?