We're inching closer to real baseball, and today the Cardinals announced that Adam Wainwright will be the Opening Day starter. 

This surprises no one.

But there are still some big issues to resolve before the Cardinals start the season. So let's break down where we're at headed into the last 2 weeks of spring.

Oscar. Will he make the team? Looks like this is a no. He's been getting some PT still, but his average has tailed off the past week as better pitchers go deeper into games. He should be fine for the long-haul since he's a guy that kills pitching that's close to the plate, but the Cardinals don't want to start the clock on his MLB service time unless they have to. They don't have to. 15% he opens his MLB career in April 2013.

Shelby or Kelly. Who's the 5th starter? Miller might have to be spectacular to win the job at this point. Kelly out performed him this week in the game the press has hyped as a 'showdown'. Miller might be optioned to let him work a regular turn as a starter, even though some want him to take the Adam Wainwright path and play from the MLB bullpen. 75% chance Joe Kelly is the 5th starter.

Kozma or Cedeno. Who's the SS? Kozma. 90% chance.

I'd spend more time going over this battle, but it's not even close at this point. Cedeno has been slow playing his ramp up the regular season. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Now, the Friday Links...

Found dog. LINK HERE

College. LINK HERE

Don't mess with painted cowboy. LINK HERE

The 55 gallon bucket of lube. LINK HERE (SFW)

JT on SNL. LINK HERE

How you resume. LINK HERE

Yes. That JT link wasn't ironic. He pretty much killed it on SNL and we're going to have to prepare to accept the fact that your grandparents had Sinatra. Your parents had the Beatles. And we have JT. Have the best St. Patrick's Day weekend you can possibly have. Keep it respectable kids.

What. The. Heck. 

So STL wecolmed The Flying Saucer, a new bar, to town last week. They've got 200 beers on tap, doors close to Busch Stadium and a cool little deal where you get a plate (sacuer) posted on the wall once you try all 200 beers.

You can only get 3 punches on your card at a time, so the soonest you can get a plate is 67 days.

Oh, and on the plate? You can write whatever you want.

That's where Joe Hoffmann comes in. He's a Royals fan living in STL. And his plans is (was) to make the first plate a memorial to Don Denkinger (see 1:27 of this video for a refresher if you forgot who Don was).

Eeeeeek.

Fortunatly, we have a protagonist in this saga... Richard Haegele. This proud American and Cardinal fan has decided to match Joe, drink for drink and have the first plate be a tribute to Stan Musial. 

You can contribute to his cause: LINK HERE

Thanks to Ashley Petterson for pointing out Jessica Lussenhop's story on this. We'll keep you updated if any major news breaks in the next two months.

Carlos Beltran is tired.

But not too tired to take a selfie right before he dreams of whatever Carlos Beltran dreams about (nose jobs for teammates?)

Instagram. Making baseball better for all of us:

It's here.

The final, final Bachlor of the 2013 season. Sean is going to pick one of two women to spend the rest of his life with. And by rest of his life, we mean until US Weekly stopts reporting on the new couple and need to split up to generate some "buzz".

We're covering it live. 7p to 10p central time tonight. Join. Share. 

News Item 1: 'Nathan For You' airs on Comedy Central. 

Did you enjoy 'Da Ali G Show' before Sacha Baron Cohen became too famous to do his deadpan interviews in character? Then you're going to love this show. People have no idea how to handle him. Give the show a look. 

News Item 2: 590 KFNS is re-branding as 'The Man'.

Also, The Morning After is leaving for a TBD station owned by Inside STL and Bubba The Love Sponge will be in the market. 1190 AM is going to be 'The Woman'.

News Item 3: The STL Cards medical staff has cost the team $20 million in 2013 already.

I think even Y! Sports would say this is a bit sensationalistic. But at the same time, the Cardinals have chronically had situations like Furcals where it's Ok, it's Ok, it's Ok, he's out for the season.

I'm sure that it's harder to predict the health of elite athletes (ahem, Ray King, ahem) than it is Joe Blow, but maybe, just maybe, we'll get a nice surprise... like a player coming back early from an injury.

Now, the Friday Links...

When a girl has a problem in engineering class. LINK HERE

To the woman who crapped her pants. LINK HERE

Truth. LINK HERE

Parkour goat. LINK HERE

AD/HD. LINK HERE

How to float. LINK HERE

That's it. That's the week. We're only a couple weeks away from the NCAA tournament and temperatures over 30 degrees. Winter is almost vanquished. Keep calm, friends. 

And so the Rafael Furcal era ends in St. Louis.

With the announcement of Tommy John surgery, Furcal is out for 2013. Considering how botched this situation has been since September of last year, the chances of the Cardinals running this back in 2014 fall somewhere between 0% and 0%. 

He's a free agent and he'll be more than free to shop around for the best deal he can get.

So as we stand on March 7th, Ronny Cedeno slides into the Opening Day starter role, until Pete Kozma unseats him before April. We've covered Cedeno before and Kozma is a light-hitting minor-leaguer who had a crazy good September/October, but is less than a stable long-term solution.

What do the Cardinals do? WHAT DO THEY DO?

Thankfully they have Shaun Sayer, a guy who follows the Cardinals on The Facebooks and is ready to share the answer:

So there you have it.

Quit "crying poor", Cardinals. And get "Tulowiski" on this team ASAP. It's something I personally hadn't considered, but now that it's been posted online, I totally agree with.

I'm not just BSing... I had the Live Blog about 1/2 done when Tierra came out and laid down so quick and hard, France got embarrassed. 

Then I read the rest of the jokes I had and they weren't much better. (See below if you want to peek at what I had down.)

                                                     (The process. Yes, that's GMail used for spellchecking)

Some thoughts?

1) Chris Harrison led off the show calling it the "best season ever". Sean isn't a bad guy. Hell, he seems like a pretty normal dude. Just not the best Bachelor ever.

2) Lesley. Would have bet a buck she was the next Bachelorette. But she didn't get a prime edit tonight. Didn't get any couch time. And had a bite pulled where she mentioned she knew what she was getting into and didn't like the drama. I still think she's the favorite... but not a run-away favorite. 

3) The Alton Telegraph is running a sexiest man in Alton contest. I was not not using this tonight. LINK HERE

We'll be back next week for the big finale. 

Spring Training. 

The Cardinals, like most teams now have a full week of games under their belts that you may or may not be paying attention to. If you like basketball or hockey, you're probably a bit out of the loop of what happened last week.

So let's get caught up together.

Biggest surprise? 

Shane Robinson. He's batting .556 with 2 HR and 7 RBIs. 1.675 OPS. 1.056 SLG. And yes, as far as we can tell from video and pics, he's still about 5'2". 

Robinson spent time going up and down from Memphis to STL, but by the end of the season, Matheny was using Sugar Shane on a pretty regular basis to keep Carlos Beltran and Jon Jay fresh down the stretch. 

What's this mean for the chances of Robinson on the opening day roster? Unfortunately for Shane, he's at the whim of Oscar Taveras. 

Yeah, what's going on with Oscar? 

7 hits. 6 RBIs. Leads the team in ABs and is getting time all over the OF. The Cardinals are still holding firm on their 'when he comes up, he's staying up' line. So Oscar know he needs to make the case for being on the opening 25 so strong the fans will cry CHEAP if the Cardinals send him to Memphis.

Another 2 weeks like the first one and it's hard to not see Taveras in the Cardinals 2013 plans. Arbitration clock be damned.

Give me the bad news, bro. There's got to be some bad news. 

There is. In no particular order:

1) Furcal is still hurt. Ronny Cedeno has been pretty bad (.133 AVG/ 2 errors). And it's starting to look like Kozma is the best option for the Cardinals at SS to open the season. Since you can't cut Furcal, and Cedeno is is already sunk money, the Cardinals might be more inclined to give Cedeno the shot at SS, deserving or not.

Point is, not having the elbow surgery is looking like a bad idea.

2) Ty Wiggington hasn't been the spark the Cardinals hoped for. It's a week in, but he's been less than impressive.

The pitching. Good?

It's coming around.

Unless you're Mike Wacha. Who's whiffed 8 in 5 innings and is pushing hard for a spot in the bullpen. Some are even calling him the Cardinals Spring Training phenom. 

The rest of the guys are only getting a couple innings here and there and it's a bit too early to start figuring out where the gaps are.

Jamie Garcia has pitched 5 innings without his arm falling off, so that's good. Wainwright has been tagged with 12 hits and a .444 BA against, but he'll be fine. 

So there you go. Big story so far is Furcal's elbow. Let's chalk that up as Week 1s big storyline. 

And by 'We' I mean Mountain Fresh, the brains behind the operation. And on this site, that really isn't saying much.

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Fresh. And to Grandpa Fresh who I know is over the moon his son has finally proven his manhood.

Let's keep close tabs on Rick Ankiel around FEB 28 2021. Ok, everybody?

Seriously, though... thumbs up to mom and dad. The CD has a new daughter!!!!

Justin Timberlake has been all over the place the past few weeks. 

The Grammys. New songs. Target commercials. Your mother's bedroom. You name it, and he's been in it. So it's not a big surprise that people on The Book are re-living his greatest hits. 

Just today, we saw the very excellent 'History of Rap PII' that JT performed on Jimmy Fallon's talk show way back in July 2011. LINK HERE

Pause was taken, though, when Jimmy and JT made their way into the crowd for a sing-along to Biz Markie's 'Just A Friend". That's when Cardinal guy showed up. (4:18 mark)

Look.

We pride ourselves on catching people in Cards gear. So we apologize for seeing this one way to late.

But props to the Cards dude that will live on in infamy with the throwback tee. Well played, sir.