In an expected move today, the St. Louis Cardinals declined the $11 million option on left-hander Mark Mulder. Mulder will now be a free agent and can work out for any teams and negotiate a contract with any of those teams.

Mulder was a big bust for the Cardinals as he was often injured during his two years with the team. Mulder earned $13 million from the Cardinals over the past two season and he only pitched 12 2/3 innings in those two years! Talk about a waste of money.

At best a team will sign Mulder to a minor league contract and hope for the best. He has to be ready to accept a low offer of 1-3 million per year and probably only a one year contract for the 2009 season. We will have to see what team steps up and takes the chance on him.

The St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies were tied 2-2 heading into the bottom of the eighth inning but then Ryan Howard and Pedro Feliz both hit solo home runs and the Phillies went onto beat the Cardinals 4-2.  You have to put that loss right on the bullpen as they simply didn’t do their job.

Kyle McClellan gave up the first home run in the 8th inning to Howard and then Feliz went deep off of Chris Perez.  McClellan ended up getting the loss on the game and is now on the season.

Cardinals starting pitcher Mark Mulder only recorded one out in the game before leaving the game with some shoulder discomfirt.  It is unknown right now how bad it is but I wouldn’t expect to hear good news.

With Mulder leaving the game so early, the bullpen had their work cut out for them and they did a good job up until that eighth inning.  Brad Thompson gave up two runs in 4 1/3 innings and that was all the runs the Phillies would get off the bullpen until that eighth inning.  Russ Springer and Jason Isringhausen both pitched good out of the bullpen.

Albert Pujols had a rbi sac fly in the seventh inning and then Troy Glaus added a rbi single right after that.  Those were the only two runs that the Cardinals would get in the game as they just couldn’t come up with the big hit in the ninth inning when they had a runners on first and second.

Cardinals Blog

The Cardinals took an 4-0 lead in the first inning of Wednesday’s game against the Mets.  New York starter Pedro Martinez struggled, and the Cardinals sluggers looked as if they had his number.

Aaron Miles and Skip Schumaker both singled to set the table for the Cardinals in the top of the first, Schumaker would score on Rick Ankiel’s single to center.  Also in the first, Troy Glaus hit his 12^th homerun of the season to give the Cardinals a 4-0 lead.  The game was stopped for rain in the third and play resumed 47 minute later.  Martinez did return to the mound; but seemed to be pitching better and more aggressively than he did in early innings.  After the runs he gave up in the first, the only other run he allowed was homer to Rick Ankiel, giving the Cardinals a 5-4 lead in the fifth inning.

Joel Pineiro started the game for the Cardinals.  He pitched 5 innings, giving up four runs on 11 hits, while striking out four and walking just one.  The Cardinal’s bullpen had some trouble as Kyle McClellan gave up one earned run in 1 2/3 innings of relief.  Mark Mulder allowed an inherited run to score as well as two earned runs in his 1/3 inning of work.  However, Springer, Perez and Franklin kept the Mets in check with Ryan Franklin getting the win. After the Mets took the lead 7-5 in the top of the seventh, Aaron Heilman entered the game in the bottom of the eighth and hit Ryan Ludwick with a pitch, Pedro Feliciano would come into the game and threw just one pitch to Chris Duncan that he sent over the fence in right field to tie the game at 7.  In the bottom of the ninth, it was Troy Glaus’s walk off homer that won the game for the Cardinals 8-7.

First pitch is scheduled for 8:15 p.m.  Mitchell Boggs will pitch for the Cardinals and the Mets will counter with Mike Pelfrey

Cardinals Blog

The St. Louis Cardinals are one hurt team right now as they placed six pitchers and one outfielder on the disabled list.  All listings are retroactive back to March 21st.

Chris Carpenter, Matt Clement, Joel Pineiro, Josh Kinney, Mark Mulder, and Tyler Johnson are the six pitchers that were put on the disabled list.

Juan Encarnacion was the outfielder put on the list.

The Cardinals are going to have a rough season if they can’t get some of those pitchers healthy.  They are going to need them if they want to have any shot in the National League Central.